Andrew Sullivan

A Ruling At The Corner Of Church And State

Split 5-4 along partisan lines, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday in Town of Greece v. Galloway that the town, in upstate New York, did not violate the Establishment Clause by opening its monthly town board meeting with prayers, even though those prayers were almost exclusively Christian. Sarah Posner summarizes the majority and minority opinions:

In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy relied on the Court’s 1983 decision in Marsh v. Chambers, which upheld the practice of opening state legislative sessions with prayer by a government-funded chaplain. Writing that the founders “considered legislative prayer a benign acknowledgment of religion’s role in society,” Kennedy maintained that “[a]n insistence on nonsectarian or ecumenical prayer as a single, fixed standard is not consistent with the tradition of legislative prayer outlined in the Court’s cases.”

Georgia State University constitutional law professor Eric Segall has described Marsh as creating a “pernicious historical test” that relies on the centuries-old precedent of prayer rather than a constitutional analysis of whether legislative prayer violates the Establishment Clause. As Justice Kagan argued in her dissent, joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor, “Greece’s prayers cannot simply ride on the constitutional coattails of the legislative tradition Marsh described.”

But some of Kennedy’s colleagues on the right, Ian Millhiser notes, thought he didn’t go far enough:

This final portion of Kennedy’s analysis is joined by just three justices because Justice Antonin Scalia joins an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas calling for the Court to go even further. To Scalia and Thomas, the only kind of religious coercion banned by the Constitution is “coercion of religious orthodoxy and of financial support by force of law and threat of penalty” (emphasis in original). So unless the government threatens to jail or fine you for failing to pray, lawmakers can more or less do whatever they want. (Indeed, Thomas would go even further than that. In a section of his opinion that Scalia declines to join, Thomas writes that the “Establishment Clause is ‘best understood as a federalism provision.’” This means that Thomas believes that the separation of church and state applies to the federal government only.)

The upshot of [yesterday’s] opinion is that Kennedy and his fellow conservatives have finally begun a project they were expected to begin the day O’Connor retired. By the time this project finishes, it is unlikely that many limits will remain on overt government endorsements of religious faith.

Garrett Epps compares the circumstances of the case to those of Marsh:

Marsh is good law, and no party to Town of Greece was foolhardy enough to ask the Court to step back into the “legislative prayer” thicket. But there are crucial differences between the Nebraska chaplain’s invocations and those at the town-board meetings in Greece. To begin with, onlookers in Nebraska were in a gallery, while the chaplain addressed the members of the legislature. No citizen was called on to do business with the legislature during its session. And the chaplain, after first referring to Jesus in his early prayers, stopped the practice when a Jewish member quietly objected.

In Greece, however, citizens come to the town board not only to watch but to supplicate such favors as building permits and zoning changes. The “chaplain of the month” faces the audience, not the members, and often aggressively asks attendees to bow their heads and pray, and as noted, the prayers are rife with theological claims not only controversial to non-Christians but troubling for many of the faithful. The town board, which has a town employee solicit a different member of the clergy every month, has designated only four non-Christians to pray in 15 years of official prayer. (Those four were picked just after litigation over the prayers began, and the nod has gone to Christians for the six years since.) In Greece, moreover, once the lawsuit was brought against prayers, at least one volunteer chaplain responded by tongue-lashing the dissenters in his official prayer.

As Dahlia Lithwick sees it, the ruling completely sells out religious minorities:

I think the interesting change in the court’s posture today is that sectarian prayer in advance of legislative sessions is no longer characterized merely as “prayer.” In the hands of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who writes for five justices, these benedictions are now free and unfettered “prayer opportunities.” And “prayer opportunities” are, like “job creators” and “freedoms,” what make America great. …

“To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian,” Kennedy wrote for the five-justice plurality, “would force the legislatures that sponsor prayers and the courts that are asked to decide these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech.” In other words, not only did the court move the goal posts—from now on sectarian prayer will be permissible until it isn’t—but it also threw out the rule book and benched all the refs. From now on, says the court, it’s improper for government or judicial officers to second-guess the motives of the prayer policy or the prayer giver. To the extent the court ever played a role in ensuring that minority religious rights were not trammeled by well-meaning majorities who fervently believe that here in America we are all basically just country-club Judeo-Christians with different hairstyles, the jig is up: From now on we just do as the religious majorities say, so long as nobody is being damned or converted.

Allahpundit examines the distinction between sectarian and non-sectarian prayer:

But won’t sectarian prayer raise the risk of religious indoctrination? It’s one thing to pray nonspecifically to “God,” but if you’re praying to Jesus then you’re obviously endorsing Christianity. Kennedy’s answer to that is interesting: The reason it’s okay to have prayers before a legislative session is because those prayers aren’t really designed to spread the faith, they’re more just to “solemnize” the occasion. That reminds me of the idea of “ceremonial deism,” a term that’s been used in dissents before to mock the Court’s willingness to tolerate minor government endorsements of religion so long as no one takes the endorsement very seriously. Technically “In God We Trust” may violate the idea that the feds shouldn’t be taking sides between believers and nonbelievers, but it’s so vague and so rote that it’s basically lost all religious meaning, which makes it okay. Kennedy’s offering a twist on that.

Will Americans agree with SCOTUS on this ruling? Allison Kopicki thinks so:

Nearly three-quarters of American voters said that “prayer at public meetings is fine as long as the public officials are not favoring some beliefs over others,” in a Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll that was conducted in December. About one-quarter of voters said that prayers should not be allowed, as prayers of any kind suggest favoring one belief over another. Nearly 9 in 10 Republican voters voiced support for prayers in public meetings, compared with 6 in 10 Democrat voters and three-quarters of independent voters.

But Paul Waldman believes that support is qualified:

Somewhat ironically, those who advocate for more state sponsorship of religion almost always do so in generic terms. They don’t say we need more Jesus in public schools, they say we need more God. They say that because they believe it will be more persuasive to people of other faiths, and precisely because they know that if more “God” got into public schools or state-sponsored events, it would be their God.

But I wonder how they’d feel if it weren’t. For instance, Dearborn, Michigan has a large Muslim population. Would people be okay with every city council meeting starting with a prayer by an imam, or with cheerleaders at the high school making banners with praise for Allah? In other words, how would they feel about religion getting entwined with government if it weren’t their religion?

Eugene Volokh dissects Kagan’s argument that prayer would be permissible if the town invited clergy “of many faiths” to perform it:

So if the Town of Greece had deliberately invited more non-Christian prayer givers (which apparently it hadn’t done until complaints started coming in), then even the sectarian prayers that were actually delivered would have been acceptable even to the dissent. “When one month a clergy member refers to Jesus, and the next to Allah or Jehovah — as the majority hopefully though counterfactually suggests happened here — the government does not identify itself with one religion or align itself with that faith’s citizens, and the effect of even sectarian prayer is transformed.” …

Note that the dissent does not indicate how often non-Christian prayer givers would need to lead the prayer (under the invite-clergy-of-many-faiths option), though it appears that proportional representation relative to the population might not suffice. If 95% of the religious worshippers in an area are Christian (probably pretty likely in many places, and perhaps in the Town of Greece itself), then proportional representation would mean that a non-Christian religious speaker would offer prayers only once every two years; it’s not clear whether that would suffice, given the majority’s “one month … and the next” analysis.

Serwer objects to both opinions on the grounds that prayer is prayer, sectarian or not:

The problem with the majority opinion is that the invocation beginning Greece’s town board meetings clearly favored Christianity, even if, as Kennedy suggests, there’s a long tradition of doing so and the imposition on non-believers was minimal. The problem with the dissent is that Kagan’s argument against using “sectarian prayer” to open government proceedings is really an argument against having any kind of prayer in such settings at all.

One could question whether such “nonsectarian prayer,” cleaved as it is from the specifics of religious belief, can really be called prayer, but Kagan’s reference to terms “common to diverse religious groups,” gives the game away. The very existence of prayers opening legislative sessions indicates a state preference for people of faith over people who do not adhere to any religion.

The “moment of silence” that Greece used to begin its town meetings with until 1999 would seem like the fairest compromise, and the one least offensive to the Constitution’s prohibition on government religious favoritism. With a moment of silence, every believer can pray according to their beliefs, and every non-believer can use the moment to consider the solemnity of the event.

Elizabeth Dias rounds up other reactions to the ruling:

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty called Monday’s ruling a “great victory” for religious freedom. “Prayers like these have been taking place in our nation’s legislatures for over 200 years,” said Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel at the Becket Fund, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Town of Greece case. “They demonstrate our nation’s religious diversity, and highlight the fact that religion is a fundamental aspect of human culture.” Penny Nance, president of the Concerned Women for America, also applauded the ruling. “Everyone wins, including the staunchest atheists, when we allow the free exercise of religion or non-religion according to a person’s conscience,” she said in a statement. …

But the losing plaintiffs also have some religious leaders on their side. Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, stood against Monday’s ruling and may be allies for the opposition as the fight continues. “If there is any positive side in this disturbing decision it is that the court makes clear that if ‘the invocations denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation, or preach conversion…That circumstance would present a different case than the one presently before the Court,’” Gaddy said. “The distinction is a difficult one to make and one I expect will cause the courts to revisit the issue soon.”

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #203

A confident reader starts us off:

It is obviously somewhere near the DMZ in Daeseong-Dong.

Another is less sure:

I’ve narrowed it down to either Surabaya, Indonesia or Elmira, New York. Close call, but I’ll go with Surabaya, Johnny.

Another:

Tehran, Iran. I’d say the white buildings and the palm trees are dead giveaways. I will leave the rest of the details for your insane VFYW sleuths to figure out.

Another has Fox-colored glasses:

Benghazi. Because no matter the question, the answer is always Benghazi. (And the contest picture could actually be Benghazi…)

Or farther west?

First time entrant. I spent a year studying in Senegal and this reminds me a lot of Dakar. I’ll guess the picture was taken somewhere around the Medina district.

A family duo looks to the Middle East:

Based on the minaret featured in this week’s picture, my six year old and I are guessing Muscat, Oman.

That was actually this week’s most popular incorrect guess. Another:

The minaret in the background is a close-but-not-exact match to the principal minaret of the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. Several other Omani mosques bear similar designs, so it has to be that country, and probably Muscat. But I just can’t find a closer match! Along the way, though, I’ve learned a lot about Arab architecture, which is always fun. But this sole distinguishing feature is just too tough to match. I’m eager to hear more about those windowless-on-two-sides buildings that abound in this view. They’re definitely unique, but challenging to describe to a search engine.

Another nails the right country:

Hyderabad, India. Specifically, an area you might see on the flyover road from the airport. I could be wrong about this, but the minaret in the right middle ground and radio tower in left background make me a little more certain.

Another studies the scene in more detail:

Urban sprawl punctuated by palm trees, radio towers, and a lone white minaret. The minaret looks round or octagonal, with an onion dome on top, in the architectural style of many Indian/Pakistani mosques. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to narrow it down much further. The most similar minarets I found were in Jaipur, India, so I’m going with that for lack of a better idea.

Another almost has it:

Ten-second guess: this reminds me of the minarets in Northern India (vaguely reminiscent of the ones at the Taj). But this is clearly not the Taj itself, and I’ve got too many errands to run today to search. This looks a little too whitewashed to be Agra or Delhi, the first two places I might have otherwise started looking, so I’m going with the Pink City of Jaipur in Rajasthan. It’s still a big city and has its share of hazy air, perhaps a little less so because it is in the desert. Although the palm trees don’t quite fit with this city, and it troubles me that you would show a View from Bangalore the next day, but this could be an attempt to throw us off the track. To thine instincts be true. This feels like Northern India and so I’m going with that …

On the off chance that I’m close, my best memory of this part of the world is a week in the sacred city of Pushkar, about three hours away, with its masses of Hindu pilgrims, famous camel fair, and great camel trekking in the Thar desert. More monkeys, cows, and camels than cars on the inner city streets near the lake, but no alcohol, meat, or dairy in the food either. Interesting efforts to make pastry without butter.

A former winner gets the correct city and hotel:

Diabolical. Do you know how hard it is to find an image of Agra, India that doesn’t show the Taj Mahal? I knew the minaret at the center of the image was the key. A building in the lower left has a strong Greek influence, so I spent a bit of time around the Mediterranean. But focusing the search on the minaret I found an image of a similar minaret under construction in Agra. Then there came the wading through endless pictures of the Taj Mahal. From up close, from far away, crushing it between two fingers Kids In The Hall style. Everything.

Then, I found the above image. Bingo. Today’s window is from the Gateway Hotel in Agra, looking southwest, thankfully 180 degrees away from a view of the Taj Mahal.

Out of the 23 contestants this week, only a handful correctly guessed Agra and the hotel. For some context, below is a map plotting all of the entries this week (zoom in by double-clicking an area of interest, or drag your cursor up and down the slide):

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Another former winner goes through her methodology:

For me, the only distinctive and potentially unique clue in the photograph was the tall, solitary minaret. Its design and decorative elements suggested the Pakistan-India-Bangladesh region, but when I couldn’t find it through various searches, I looked much more broadly. I soon realized that minarets vary incredibly, even in a single region, and for what is basically a simple architecture form. No two were the same unless part of the same mosque.

Eventually I found a 2004 photograph of a new mosque being built in Agar, India, near the “Park Plaza Hotel”. Its minaret, although still under constructed, was recognizable as that in the contest photograph. From there, I began checking hotel views in the area until finding one very similar to the contest view.

I have little confidence in my exact window guess but believe it is on the eastern side of the hotel’s southern face and on a higher floor. I compared nine photographs taken from various windows or facing the hotel exterior. The aim was to find angles that would include the shed-like building along the perimeter wall and only a limited portion of the eastern lawn and palms. The contest view also looks down on a tall tree growing to the east of the pool-lawn complex. Other features such as walkways and columns in the balcony railing helped narrow the options. It was hard to rectify the angles at which many of these shots were taken.

Thank you for the tour of minarets.

Another:

This one was one of the most difficult I’ve ever seen on the Dish. The nondescript mosque surrounded by nondescript housing somewhere where there’s both palm trees and non-palm trees. Very tough. Anyways, given the smog and the fact there seems to be bathrooms in the bottom right corner of the photo with an “M” and “W” implying an English speaking country, I’m going to guess it’s somewhere in Lagos, Nigeria. I’m sure Chini will set me straight.

Enter Chini:

Man, if this entry were a B-17 it’d be coming in for a landing more shot up than the Memphis Belle. Allergies this weekend turned me into a red-eyed, sore-throated mess that could barely speak, much less search. By Monday I was basically nowhere, not to mention sleep deprived. But sometimes a change of scenery works wonders; for me that change took place on a train crossing the Delaware. What had eluded me all weekend long suddenly appeared with a few taps on an iPhone, followed shortly thereafter by a rather loud and inappropriate exclamation. (Much to the chagrin of the twenty-something sitting next to me who nearly spilled their beer in response.) So I suppose all roads don’t lead to Rome; this one led me to Agra, India by way of Trenton, New Jersey.

This week’s view was taken from roughly the sixth floor of Agra’s Gateway Hotel. The photo looks west, southwest along a heading of 237.34 degrees. The best part is that the Taj Mahal sits exactly a mile away in the other direction. That and the number of online reviews for the hotel mean that this contest may have quite a few responses from people who’ve stayed there, as was the case with VFYW #151.

Not so, it seems. Teamwork paid off in this case:

Ouch, this one was hard. In our previous entries we had some lucky breaks, or at least we could narrow our search fairly tightly. This time we really had to log some hours on Google. After a day and half of searches and discussion we realized that several continents were still in play.

The obvious clue was the minaret in the background. Traces of that minaret’s style could be seen in many places, but my wife concluded that the closest examples were appearing on the Indian subcontinent. We focused there. I spotted a 2004 photograph of a minaret under construction in Agra that was similar to the one in the contest photograph. Hopping on Google Earth to examine Agra, I located a promising tall hotel (before I was able to find the minaret) and it had a photograph that was almost identical to the contest one …

Seen to the right. No one guessed the exact window, room or floor this week, but our winner – a regular player who has contributed some colorful entries in the past – came pretty close:

I actually forget how I found this, except that it was awesome and I impressed myself. We’re looking southwest from the Gateway Hotel in Agra, India, from a room on the less desirable side that affords no view of the Taj Mahal. We’re on the fourth floor, by my calculations, in the southeasterly wing of the building, and my bet-hedging guess – based on some worldly assumptions about the distribution of the Gateway’s 100 rooms and suites – is that we’re in Room 411. Photo of the window attached.

Nice work. From the photo’s submitter:

My husband was in India, and knowing my obsession with the View From Your Window Contest, he sent along this photo. It was taken in Agra at the Gateway Hotel, Sunday morning, March 23. It’s room 517, to be precise.

If you choose to use this for the contest, I’ll be very impressed with the winners. First off, a Google Image search of Agra, India turns up 99 pictures of the Taj Mahal for every 1 picture of something else. And secondly, there’s no street view on Google Maps. So two of my primary tools for locating these things are essentially useless.

See everyone Saturday for the next contest (which will be easier this time, promise). Meanwhile, a reader responds to last week’s contest, in which we noted that Orlando, Florida was “probably the only US location we’ve ever featured that hasn’t elicited a single contestant’s praise or fond memories”:

Like half the Midwest, my family moved to central Florida in the ’80s, and it was indeed a stark landscape. Its beauty – like much of non-beach Florida – reveals itself very slowly: sinkhole lakes, hanging moss, summer showers you could set your clock by. You need to watch out for gators as you canoe the Wekiva.

It is the South – to everyone except other Southerners, who view us as suspiciously purple. And I know it’s a sickness, but I love Florida’s reputation for weirdness. They say if you shake the United States, all the odd bits settle in Florida.

Not to get all heavy, but I’ve often thought that to live in New York, LA, Chicago or even Boston, is to see yourself, your everyday experience (or at least some version of it), continually reflected back at you in movies, TV, books and magazines. These are stories of love, crime, comedy, tragedy, of the human experience in all of its complexity and contradictions. By living in those places, you know that You exist; your story is worth telling; it is important.

In Orlando, your story will never be told. In fact, Orlando is a town built upon an industry whereby millions of people visit it in order to experience a fantasyland version of every town except Orlando. Millions visit Orlando, but almost none see it. Orlando becomes a mirror for tourists to travel long distances to recreate where they came from, but with all the sharp edges smoothed off. It may be why that Orlando often feels like nowhere, or anywhere. Why the people who move here don’t transfer their allegiance from where they came to here. If they did, their stories would no longer be worth telling or important, they would become invisible, like the people who clean your room while you go to the theme park. No locals go to those places, unless it’s to relieve tourists of their money. We live in an entirely different world from that. And it doesn’t suck.

This will be the only note you get in defense of Orlando. And now that I think about it, I may be OK with that.

But that reader isn’t alone:

I live here in Orlando and wanted to write to defend our much-maligned city. When I read, “Ordinarily I would write something interesting about the city or the structures in the picture, but we’re dealing with Orlando,” I just get annoyed.

What most people think of as “Orlando” is practically its own independent municipality, Tourist Land, many miles from where the vast majority of residents of Real Orlando live. Universal and SeaWorld are out in the tourist corridor near the convention center, 15 miles from downtown – and Disney World is its own jurisdiction! People fly into the airport in Southeast Orlando, drive straight across the southern end of the city to I-Drive or Disney World, Universal Studios or Shingle Creek, all in plowed-over citrus groves or swamp; stay their entire time out there, in an environment built almost exclusively for tourists; and then drive back to the airport when vacation’s over.

When tourists visit New York and stay in Midtown, no one assumes that the lights and tourist traps of Midtown are representative of New York City. But for some reason, people think Orlando is just strip malls of kitschy T-shirt shops and fast-food restaurants.

In Real Orlando, we have historic downtowns and housing districts with significant history that long predates the modern tourist experience. DeLand and Winter Garden are old citrus-growing towns; and Maitland dates to the Second Seminole War. Zora Neale Hurston lived in Eatonville in 1887 and a festival in her honor is still held each year. One of the quaintest little Central Florida towns, Winter Park, dates to the 1850s and has an adorable historic district on Park Avenue that has been a shopping district for locals since the 1920s.

So when I hear people put down poor little Orlando, it’s clear to me that they only know Tourist Land and not the real Orlando!

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

How Journalists See Journalism

Most are unhappy (pdf) with the state of their profession:

Among the more negative findings are that U.S. journalists today are less satisfied with their work, less likely to say they have complete autonomy to select stories, much more likely to say that journalism is headed in the wrong direction than in the right one, and much more likely to say that their news staffs have shrunk in the past year rather than remained the same or grown.

Other findings indicate that U.S. journalists are less likely to consider reaching the widest possible audiences and getting information to the public quickly as very important roles, and more likely to emphasize the importance of investigating government claims and analyzing complex problems.

(Hat tip: Romenesko)

Getting Closer To A Deal With Iran

The signs are obvious: a faction is now revving up skepticism of the talks, wanting new conditions to be imposed, creating new slogans – “no consensus, no surrender” – and waving the flag. Another day at the Weekly Standard? Leon Wieseltier on a roll? Kenneth Pollack, that accountability-lite supporter of the Iraq War, and still pronouncing on WMDs in the Middle East? Nah – the fundamentalist extremists in Iran:

An event [over the weekend], organized by a group identifying itself as “the anxious” and held at the site of the former U.S. embassy in Tehran, drew dozens opposing the temporary nuclear deal, the local Shargh newspaper reported. Participants chanted slogans such as “no consensus, no surrender” and waved Iran’s flag and posters that read “details of the negotiations won’t remain a secret.”

Like the neocons, the revolutionary forces in Iran are trying to smear the politicians trying to move forward, highlighting Rouhani’s past failures the way the GOP is banging on about Benghazi. But Rouhani is apparently standing firm and the deal’s shape is emerging quite clearly:

Getting to the heart of the matter, many points seem close to being settled. Iran is ready to cap at 5% its production of enriched uranium and to limit its current stockpile from further enrichment. The controversial underground facility of Fordow will probably end up as a kind of research and development unit. The Arak reactor’s original configuration allowed the yearly production of about ten kilograms of plutonium, enough for one or two bombs. Ali Akbar Salehi, chairman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), has hinted that this configuration could be modified in order to accommodate low-enriched uranium fuel rather than natural uranium. This would reduce Arak’s plutonium production capacity by a factor of five to ten. And Iran has already confirmed that it has no intention of acquiring the fuel reprocessing capacity indispensable for isolating weapon-grade plutonium.

Yes. We. Can.

Do I Sound Gay? Ctd

Readers continue the thread:

I thought you or your readers might be interested to know that there has been a sizable amount of academic research done on this topic. You might want to check out J. Michael Bailey’s work out of Northwestern University, specifically “‘Gaydar’: Accuracy and the Role of Masculinity–Femininity,” which ran in Archives of Sexual Behavior in February 2010. From my understanding of this particular study, “sex-atypical speech” is actually the most correlative predictor (among speech, appearance, interests, movements) of observer positive identification of male homosexuals. Although, of course, not all self-identified male homosexuals exhibited sex-atypical speech.

In contrast, while “speech” also positively correlated for lesbian identification, it was the lowest correlate. For lesbians it was the “appearance” of the target that correlated best with positive identification.

Another reader illustrates how “sounding gay” can vary across cultures:

I’m Filipino, whose first language was Tagalog.

To me, sounding gay in Tagalog means not lisping but nasality of vowels. Tagalog itself does not have perceptibly nasalized vowels in its phonology. Furthermore, to my ears, gay Tagalog intonation patterns are closer to women’s than men’s (or, at least, mine mirrors my mom’s intonation, not my dad’s).

Another points us to David Sedaris’ classic story about being pulled out of fifth grade for speech therapy. Another urges gay men not to take it too personally:

I’ve enjoyed the discussion so far, but I think one thing we forget is that pretty much everyone hates the sound of his or her speaking voice when they hear it in a recording, especially the first time they hear it. Video causes even more distress. I think this is basic human insecurity, and, although it makes sense that gay men feel this insecurity in the context of masculinity and societal attitudes towards it, we should not try to make it a gay issue. Being a little unsure of oneself is much preferable to being cocksure.

Another opens up:

I was interested to read how you felt that you acted more stereotypically gay before you came out, and how you adopted more stereotypically dude-like affectations and pursuits after you left the closet. It reminded me of the feeling I got almost immediately after I came out: I finally felt that I was a man.

In my youngest years, before puberty, I was often mistaken for a girl. It was embarrassing. And when I got older, but before high school, the bullies made me feel like a girl. I wasn’t badly bullied, though I had a few incidents. But the bullies taunting was usually to make other boys feel like girls, to make them feel that the bullies were the real boys and the bullied were the same as girls.

It was only after I came out that I finally felt like a man. I am not quite sure why, although I finally felt authentic and realized that there were other men who were authentically just like me, and they, just like me, could be authentically attracted to and authentically love other men. I was also then able to accept whatever effeminacies I have as part of the man I am.

I don’t know if I sound gay. I have heard recordings of my voice, and it does sound completely different than I hear it in my own head, which is so odd. I suppose it sounds more gay than I would like. I guess that’s a last vestige of my own internalized homophobia, which is so hard to kill when you’re a 50-ish gay man. But I am so grateful for the feeling of being authentically male that I never had before I came out. I remember trying to explain that to my mother when she was so upset at my being gay.

Catch up with the whole thread on sounding gay (or British) here.

We’re All Nate Silver Now

John Sides shares the WaPo’s midterms forecast:

Right now, the model estimates that Republicans have an 82 percent chance of re-taking the Senate.

How did we arrive at this conclusion? You can read more about that model here, but in brief: the model looks at Senate elections between 1980-2012 and estimates the effect of several key factors in the country and in individual states or races — the rate of economic growth, the popularity of the president, whether it’s a midterm or presidential year, the most recent presidential election outcome in that state, whether the incumbent is running, and each candidate’s qualification (measured as highest elective office to date).

Why do these factors add up to a significant GOP advantage? The main problem for Democrats is that it’s a midterm year — and the president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterm. Moreover, conditions make it difficult for Democrats to overcome this tendency: the economy is not growing that strongly and, partly as a consequence, President Obama is not that popular. Moreover, as many have noted, many seats that the Democrats must defend this year are in Republican-leaning states.

Kilgore explains how this model differs from all the others:

Election Lab, reflecting the proclivities of its “fundamentals matter most” proprietors, will place more emphasis on economic and approval ratings factors than on current polling, certainly until late in the cycle. Unsurprisingly, Election Lab enters the fray with a more robust prediction of Republican Senate gains than the competition, showing not only Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Alaska, West Virginia and Louisiana flipping from blue to red, but also Iowa and Michigan, which most observers show as leaning Dem. That’s particularly interesting since they also have Kay Hagan is pretty good shape in North Carolina.

Meanwhile, Kyle Kondik looks ahead to the 2016 Senate races:

Of the nine Senate Republicans who represent states Obama took in 2012, seven will be on the ballot in 2016. Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin will likely start the cycle with their odds of winning reelection no better than 50/50. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa could easily get another term if he wanted it, but he’ll be 83 on Election Day 2016 and might retire, triggering a highly competitive race. Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Rob Portman of Ohio and Marco Rubio of Florida will probably start as favorites by a small margin, assuming they run for reelection. Additionally, Democrats could credibly target seats in less conservative red states—places like Arizona, Georgia, Indiana and North Carolina—particularly if some incumbents, such as the 77-year-old John McCain, retire.

How To Interview A Politician

Over the weekend, Washington’s journalistic class was hobnobbing with the people they cover. Bob Woodward has helped pioneer access-journalism in which favored courtiers in The Village act as stenographers for the powerful – their skills deployed merely to figuring out which of their exclusive sources is telling the truth (a wrinkle unknown, it seems, to the access-journo of the day, Jo Becker). The idea that they would wreck their access by asking a politician questions that he really doesn’t want to answer – “Isn’t your wife German?” (see above), “Can you give us evidence for your crazy pregnancy stories?” – is preposterous.

So I give you the above video, by the intrepid BBC political reporter, Nick Robinson. Watch him go for the jugular, and watch him not release his grip until the prey is whimpering, near-lifeless on the ground. A joy to watch, and Hitch, I suspect, would approve.

What Is The Ulysses Of Romance Novels? Ctd

A reader flags this post by Sarah Wendell, who criticizes the dismissive coverage of News Corp’s $415-million acquisition of Harlequin last week. The reader vents:

Why is it reporters and their editors can write seriously about porn, marijuana, party drugs, fraternity hazing, gay sex, and numerous other topics, but come unglued when they have to write about romance novels?

I suspect reading romances is one of the most closeted behaviors American women indulge in. I am sure there are people who read the Fifty Shades of Grey books that wouldn’t be caught dead reading a Harlequin Presents paperback, in public or in private. Even violent video games are treated with more respect than romance novels. I’m a little baffled as to why the Harlequin I’m reading is somehow intellectually stunting, but episodes of Game of Thrones or 24 or even CSI are important parts of the culture – important enough to be reviewed in multiple mainstream publications, while romance novels are ignored and the business of romance is treated like a joke.

Another is less convinced that the genre deserves respect:

The search for a Ulysses of the romance genre is really misplaced. It’s a search for profundity in pornography, albeit pornography directed at women.

Now, I like pornography as much as the next man, and some pornography can be sublime, but its intent and effect are somewhat orthogonal to true art. It suppresses rather than invites reflection. So I find the pursuit of profundity there to be profound misunderstanding of the nature of the genre. Though male-centric pornography is visual while female-centric pornography is verbal, that detail does not alter the nature of the genre.

Tying in Caleb Crain’s musings on the state of the gay novel, another reader takes the conversation in another direction:

The gay novel is doing just fine if you accept romance as a part of fiction. Gay romance is a booming and very successful genre. The majority of gay romance readers, though by no means all, are heterosexual women. The majority of writers are as well. I think that qualifies this email to fit into your End of Gay Culture Watch thread as well.

The concept that straight readers won’t find gay characters “relatable” is provably false. I think it’s more likely that readers of any sexuality simply aren’t that interested in literary fiction. Actually, I don’t even think it’s the age-old literary-fiction-vs.-popular-fiction battle in this instance. Many of my friends are authors, and my Facebook news feed is currently filled with friends of mine proudly announcing their Lambda Literary Awards nominations. Several of them are in the romance category, but not all.

Maybe it’s time writers of gay fiction look to themselves and the content they produce instead of finding reasons the market isn’t responsive. The market loves a good story.

A less high-minded reader:

My romance cannon. That’s what I’m going to call it now.

Heh. Earlier Dish on romance novels here.

Coral Creations

Amelia Urry looks at the work of artist Courtney Mattison, who constructs ceramic coral reefs:

Mattison’s newest piece, Our Changing Seas III, depicts a hurricane-spiral of bleached corals coalescing to a bright center. You can read it as a message of hope or one of impending doom, depending on your disposition, but Mattison tries to stay on the cautiously sunny side. “I really hope I’m not building monuments to reefs, memorials of their demise,” she told Grist over the phone. “I would really like these to be celebrations of them — but time will tell.”

The work has a larger mission:

At the heart of Courtney Mattison’s artwork is her desire to inspire real-life changes in how people view and treat the world’s oceans and environments. Similar to the Our Changing Seas series, Courtney Mattison’s Hope Spots collection comprises 18 vignettes, each of which represents a vital marine ecosystem in its ideal form (that is, protected from various threats such as global warming or pollution).

See more of Mattison’s work here.

(Photo by Arthur Evans)

Everyone Knows When You’re Faking It

Paul Bisceglio flags a study that explains how we evolved to distinguish between genuine and feigned laughter:

Genuine laughs are produced by an emotional vocal system that humans share with all primates,” [Gregory] Bryant says in a press release. This system seems to have really strong control over our windpipes, so it allows us to shoot out quicker breaths of air when we laugh for real than when we fake it. We laugh faster as a result.

Fake laughs, on the other hand, “are produced by a speech system that is unique to humans,” and come out slower, says Bryant. (Yes, animals laugh, too.)

This speed difference between real and fake laughter is subtle, but not small enough to escape the perceptive powers we’ve honed over millennia of human evolution. Our senses are fine-tuned to pick up the most minute acoustic variations—and for good reason, Bryant and [Athena] Aktipis write. Detecting feigned laughter is an important survival tool. “You have to be vigilant,” Bryant says, “because you want to discern whether people are trying to manipulate you against your best interests or whether they have authentic cooperative intentions.”