The Dish

“Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one; the other is the quite different question — how far Christians, if they are voters or members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for everyone. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.” – C.S. Lewis, from “Mere Christianity.” What an extraordinary contrast to the current religious right.

It won’t happen, largely because, er, McCain is a Republican, he would outshine Kerry anywhere he went, and, in the good senator’s own words, “It’s impossible to imagine the Democratic Party seeking a pro-life, free-trading, non-protectionist, deficit hawk.” But at the same time, you can see why it’s tempting. McCain represents the kind of Republicanism that independents admire and support: fiscally conservative, strong in defense, and yet hostile to the sectarianism of the religious right. But that Republicanism was defeated in 2000 in South Carolina, when George W. Bush unleashed the attack-dogs of the far right. Many of us hoped that Bush would integrate McCainism into the party. He hasn’t. Instead, he has entrenched the fanatics who defeated McCain in the primaries. So the McCain fantasy endures. A Kerry-McCain ticket would steady the nerves of those who worry about Kerry’s defense posture, and McCain could be deputed in office to wrestle with some of the more populist stands he and Kerry support: demonizing the drug companies, for example, or campaign finance reform. can you imagine a McCain-Cheney debate? Priceless. McCain is also a little like Max Cleland, a war hero savaged by the Bush machine. he has every reason to want a little revenge. and it’s a dish always best served really, really cold.

A SAUDI THAW? More evidence of some positive developments in the Arab-Muslim world after the liberation of Iraq.

JAYSON BLAIR GOES FOR IT: So what does Blair do now? What would you do if you wanted the purest, darkest revenge against the newspaper that eventually rejected you? You’d go on Bill O’Reilly and you would describe the New York Times as a den of leftist, ideological conformity in which any dissent from left-liberalism is tantamount to career suicide. You’d confirm the most paranoid critic’s view that the NYT is as objective as a MoveOn ad. Watching the spectacle last night had my jaw drop close to the floor. Can we say chutzpah! Now, as it happens, of course, Blair may have a point. (Although he greatly exaggerates.) But the fact is: Blair would say anything and indeed has said anything to get attention. His credibility on this issue is no different than his credibility on any issue. Sorry, Bill. A liar’s a liar. Even when they might inadvertently stumble onto something close to the truth.

TEN PERCENT: That’s the percentage of Catholic marriages that end in an annulment. At least according to this source. And here are some of the reasons allowed for divorce, I mean, annulment. Here’s another amazing statistic: “American Catholics make up 5% of the world’s Catholic population, but they get 80% of the Catholic world’s annulments.” And then here’s something that Stanley Kurtz should consider:

In the early 1960s, about 300 declarations of nullity came from the United States each year; today that annual figure has grown to over 60,000. By any measure, that is a staggering increase.

I wonder if Kurtz will write an essay blaming the Catholic church for the decline in marriage in America, as he has blamed gays for it in Scandinavia. This one institution has presided over an exponential increase in de facto divorces in the U.S. in the last forty years. And getting an annulment really isn’t that hard: 90 percent of applications for annulments are granted. Maybe Kerry didn’t need any extra influence at all! It’s the Catholic church that has opened the door wide to the decline of religious marriage in America. So where’s National Review on this one? 60,000 Catholic annulments for straights a year, and NRO devotes all its energies to gays? Frankly, I do not believe that annulment is such an awful thing. It may be humane in many cases. But it’s important to note that even the Catholic church, which claims to have absolute standards on questions such as marriage, makes exceptions to its rules for the human beings it ministers to. But only if they’re straight.

“JOHN PILGER: Tony, do tell me – how do you mount a peaceful resistance to an invading force, which Human Rights Watch this week described as out of control, as rapacious, which has bought a kind of murderous street fighting, which is – and I’ve just said – has killed, you know, in their ‘Shock and Awe’, they killed up to 55,000 people. Robert Fisk, the independent correspondent, reckons that something like between 500 and 1,000 Iraqis are killed indirectly as a result of the American presence every week in that country.
Now, how do you say they should all sit down and say to the Americans: “You must go.” “It should be a peaceful resistance.” There are a lot of people actually opposing it peacefully and, if it was reported…
You know, I follow the reports of a number of human rights observers in Baghdad. There’s an enormous amount of peaceful resistance but on the other side of the resistance – and it’s one resistance – there is also fire being fought with fire. I don’t think one has to approve that. In fact, you can’t approve, under any circumstances, in my opinion, the killing of innocent people. But you have to understand why it happens. In the same way that we have to understand why September 11 happened.
TONY JONES: Can you approve in that context the killing of American, British or Australian troops who are in the occupying forces?
JOHN PILGER: Well yes, they’re legitimate targets. They’re illegally occupying a country. And I would have thought from an Iraqi’s point of view they are legitimate targets, they’d have to be, sure.
TONY JONES: So Australian troops you would regard in Iraq as legitimate targets?
JOHN PILGER: Excuse me but, really, that’s an unbecoming question.” – from an interview with ABC News in Australia. (Hat tip: Tim Blair.)

OUTING THE ENEMY: Maine’s Christian Civic League is planning to “out” lawmakers and political leaders in the state after the league failed to pass a constitutional amendment to ban civil marriage for gays. Money quote from a recent email from a League leader:

Since this matter of “sexual orientation” is of such fundamental importance that we must turn civilization on its head to accommodate it, we feel duty-bound to help you gain a better understanding.
We will therefore be writing about state leaders in coming months regarding their “sexual orientation.” We are, of course, most interested in the leaders among us who want to overturn marriage, eliminate the mother/father family as the ideal, etc. The list is long, so we won’t lack for material.
If you can help us, please do. E-mail us tips, rumors, speculation and facts. The more information we have the better. We will respect and honor confidentiality. Help the League stand for righteousness.

That’s right: righteousness.

WOLCOTT ON BLOGS: The dyspeptic critic, Jim Wolcott, celebrates blogs in the current Vanity Fair. Since it’s Vanity Fair, it must include the usual smears against anyone not in the anti-war left. Wolcott duly obliges. Jeff Jarvis has the goods.

Lawrence Kaplan dissects the idiocies of the Hollywood airhead.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: From a priest on the whole question of annulments:

I think you’ve brought pre-Conciliar vestiges of the conception of annulment into your description here– perhaps the sacramental theology that says some sort of “magic moment” either takes place, or doesn’t, in the celebration of a sacrament. The Church (today) would never, never say, nor in its teaching imply, that the marriage never “took place.” It says that the parties, however well-intentioned, had some defect in their commitment that did not come to light until after the sacrament was celebrated. In other words, the sacrament itself has gradual effects that take hold over time. In the case of an annulled marriage, the fullness of the sacrament’s grace cannot be realized or (better) accepted because of some serious obstacle that, for whatever reason, the spouses did not discover in their sacramental preparation. Along these lines, it is interesting to note that the sacrament of marriage is conferred on the couple not by the presiding minister (though a priestly/diaconal witness is canonically mandated), but by the couple itself. Actually, I find the Church’s teaching on annullments to be one of the more humane aspects of its canon law. Of course, it is subject to abuses, is easily misunderstood (because of the changes involved in Vatican II sacramental theology), and, sometimes, skewed by a stereotypical understanding of Church authority.

So how does it work when one of the parties adamantly refuses to recognize it?

I just observed Jayson Blair casting aspersions on the ethics of Slate’s Jack Shafer and of the New York Times for assigning Shafer a review of Blair’s book. Blair was on Larry King. Yes, Blair is criticizing other people’s ethics. He has the same syndrome as Stephen Glass. Saying you’re sorry does not mean you’re sorry, let alone taking responsibility. He hasn’t apologized to a single person he plagiarized; he hasn’t sent written apologies to his superiors. He is even claiming that he was sexually abused as a child but won’t name the perpetrator! Could that perpetrator still be abusing children? Has that occurred to Blair? Or is that made up as well? And toward the end of the fawning interview, Blair even tried to become a poster-child for mental health awareness. Give me a break. This charlatan is making money from this exercise in sociopathology. And the rest of the media – including Larry King – are helping him.

Yes, there are two different countries within a country right now. But it’s not red and blue exactly. It’s not even secular and religious. Or north and south. More accurately, as blogger FrozenNorth explains, it is between those who believe we are at war and those who believe we aren’t. I’m in the former camp. So are some Democrats, Republicans and Independents, despite their deep differences over other issues. As 9/11 recedes, I’m not even sure this is a vote-winner for Bush; but it strikes me as essential that he make it the central issue in the campaign and that Kerry be forced to tell us why he believes it is not a war, and how he believes we can defeat terror while returning to the “law enforcement” policies of the 1990s. I may be unable to support a president who would defile the constitution. But equally, no one should support a candidate who cannot be trusted to take the war to the foes of this country. Before they take the war to us – again.

You don’t need to read this report to know that this country has a problem. Just walk through any airport and observe the throngs barely able to move or breathe or sit in a regular chair. I’m a libertarian kind of fellow, so I see no need to get harrumphy about this. The experience of obesity cannot be in any way pleasant for the person involved – physically, psychologically, emotionally. It must be a prison for many, a prison that in many cases should prompt sympathy and support; and the huge profits to be made from diet pills, diet fads and exercize programs reveal the extent of the phenomenon. What’s to be done on a collective basis? I have an idea: nothing. If people want to eat themselves into misery and early death, it really isn’t anyone else’s business. If businesses want to cater to getting people fat and then helping them get thin, and no one is committing outright fraud, what’s the problem? It’s a free-ish country, and the gluttony and vanity industries are part of what keeps this economy going. I fear, however, that Big Food is soon going to be getting the same treatment as other perfectly legitimate industries, such as Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol. McDonald’s has already removed their Super Size options. Who’s next? Ben and Jerry’s? Friendlys? The usual scolds are already prepping their jeremiads:

“If the government said, ‘You really ought to cut back on soft drinks and juice drinks,’ those lobbyists would go berserk. They don’t want to take on the food industry,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and public health at New York University.

Of course, I would take this view because I’m libertarian on these kinds of issues. But I am a little perplexed by the silence of the religious right. I mean, isn’t gluttony a deadly sin? Shouldn’t fat people be shamed, denounced, or loved and saved? This affects far, far more people than, er, well, you know where I’m going here. How many sermons have you heard inveighing against extra fries? Just asking.

COULD MOORE RUN? Tim Noah tries to encourage the Ralph Nader of the religious right.

SANITY ON THE RIGHT: If you need to be reminded of how low much of American conservatism has now stooped in its vulgar embrace of anything that suits its culture-war purposes, then read William F. Buckley on Mel Gibson’s idiosyncratic splatter-fest.

One important issue in John Kerry’s past has been studiously avoided this election season. It’s the annulment of his first marriage to Julia Thorne. The Catholic church declared the marriage void – despite the fact that it lasted eighteen years, produced two children, and the annulment was fiercely contested by his first wife. How can such a marriage be understood to have never taken place, as annulments imply? Here’s how a story in the Washington Blade explains it:

Political opportunity arose again after Paul Tsongas announced his retirement from the U.S. Senate in 1984. Kerry won the race to fill that seat and entered into what current wife Teresa Heinz called his “gypsy phase,” commuting between apartments in Washington, D.C. and Boston, and dating actresses Morgan Fairchild and Catherine Oxenberg as well as a former law partner.
Kerry and Thorne finalized their divorce in 1988. After Thorne requested an increase in alimony in 1995, Kerry sought an annulment of their marriage from the Catholic Church, a move observers saw as retaliatory.
Kerry eventually received the annulment from the Boston diocese despite Thorne’s vehement objections. Past media reports did not indicate the grounds on which Kerry sought to annul his marriage of 18 years, after it produced two children, and the campaign also declined to provide any explanation.

Hmmm. I’ve long felt that the annulment issue in the Catholic church has never been fully debated. Who gets an annulment? How is that different from a divorce? It gets at many double standards on marriage and divorce (straight and gay) that the Catholic church and John Kerry and many others have.

BACK-LASH-LASH: A Washington Post poll finds growing support for legal unions for gay couples, but the issue is still highly volatile. Nevertheless, it’s clear that a majority opposes the extreme step of amending the constitution to prevent any state anywhere from enacting civil marriage rights for gay couples. When people realize that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not affect civil marriage, I think their opposition will grow some more. And it’s also clear that president Bush’s endorsement may actually have solidified opposition to the amendment, as anti-Bush Democrats have come around on the issue (their qualms about civil marriage for gays may well have been trumped by their suspicion of Bush and the religious right). You can make too much of these polls. The shifts are minor. The polls may shift again, depending on events. But the data show one claim from the social right disproved. They argued that this issue would rally the country behind George W. Bush, swing Democrats their way, and decide the election. So far, no dice. Bush has flatlined in the polls; opposition to the amendment has firmed up; all the publicity has led some to think seriously for the first time about marriage rights.

“The assumption that there must be a single national definition of marriage — traditional or open-ended — is mistaken and pernicious. It is mistaken because the existing constitutional framework has long accommodated differing marriage laws. This is an area where the slogan “states rights” not only works relatively well, but also has traditionally been left to do its job. We are familiar with the problems of integrating different marriage laws because for the last 200 years the issue has been left, fairly successfully, to the states. The assumption is pernicious because the winner-takes-all attitude that it engenders now has social conservatives pushing us down the constitutional-amendment path. For those who see the matter in terms of gay rights, this would be a tragedy. But it would also be a tragedy for those who genuinely favor local autonomy, or even those of us who genuinely favor keeping the constitutional text uncluttered by unnecessary amendments.

If today’s proponents of a marriage amendment are motivated by the fear of some full faith and credit chain-reaction set off in other states by Massachusetts, they needn’t be. If they are motivated by the desire to assert political control over what happens inside Massachusetts, they shouldn’t be. In our 200-year constitutional history, there has never yet been a federal constitutional amendment designed specifically to reverse a state’s interpretation of its own laws. Goodridge, whether decided rightly or wrongly, was decided according to Massachusetts’ highest court’s view of Massachusetts law. People in other states have no legitimate interest in forcing Massachusetts to reverse itself — Massachusetts will do that itself, if and when it wants to — and those who want to try should certainly not cite the Full Faith and Credit clause in rationalizing their attempts.

Unlike most other hotly contested social issues, the current constitutional marriage debate actually has a perfectly good technical solution. We should just keep doing what we’ve been doing for the last 200 years.” – professor Lea Brilmayer, Wall Street Journal, today.

I’m not sure they’re worth much right now. All they’re measuring is short-term ups and downs. We won’t get a real sense of the race until the summer or early fall. But I’m struck by how the constitutional amendment endorsement has not had any measurable upward effect on Bush, as some might have predicted. Although he has an advantage on the general issue of marriage rights for gays, that advantage disappears when he changes the subject to amending the constitution because of it. I was struck by this finding in the Washington Post poll. To the question “Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling – The issue of same-sex marriage?” the respondents broke 52 percent disapproving and 44 percent approving. Now that could mean that some disapprove of his support for the amendment, or that some think he hasn’t been supportive enough of the amendment, or any number of permutations. But it does convey the sense that this issue isn’t an easy one for the president. It’s volatile. Bush’s positioning can seem cynical or extremist or weak. Bush’s gut instinct – which was to leave this issue alone – was and is the right one. We’ll see if he sticks with it in the months ahead. He’d be far better off campaigning on education and taxes and the war against terror. (By the way, the issue on which Bush gets the worst grade is … the deficit! The voters aren’t dumb.)