The Dish

Now, they’re after Internet pills. Yes, there are some addiction issues (but, then, there always are). But why cannot the state treat citizens and doctors as grown-ups? What business is it of the government to decide whether someone cannot use a prescription medication for pleasure or relief if she decides it’s something she wants to do and a doctor is prepared to prescribe it? Ditto steroids. Frankly, the way in which the internet has broken down some of our puritanical attitudes toward the pharmaceutical revolution has been a great step forward for human freedom and medical or recreational choice. I guess the possibility that someone out there may be experiencing actual pleasure is enough to send the government into a full-scale panic. We’re used to the insane war on illegal drugs. Now they want a war on the legal ones as well. Can’t Rush Limbaugh protest this incursion of over-weening government? Oh, wait …

THE NYT AND HALLIBURTON: Oxblog is on the case of a weirdly missing quote from the NYT online. Can’t give too much credit to Halliburton for turning around Iraq’s oil production, can we? They also do a useful round-up of the surprisingly good news from Iraq.

THE THREAT OF SAMISH-SEX MARRIAGE: A new amendment proposal from the New Yorker.

PRAGER ON THE PASSION: A sage and balanced analysis.

MOORE ON MARRIAGE: The fundamentalist judge takes a stand against the religious right amendment. Yes, I just wrote that sentence.

RIGGING THE BIOETHICS COUNCIL: More evidence of the Bush administration’s catering to the anti-technological views of some on the far right. More reason for Independent voters to reconsider their support.

GENERATIONAL CLASH: Baylor University’s president lashes out at a student newspaper editorial supporting – shock – equal protection under the law. The editorial board will get a talking to. When the kids at a place like Baylor don’t get the older generation’s hostility to equal marriage rights, the culture really is changing. Nationally, the generation gap is really striking. The under-40s see the issue completely differently than the over 60s. Does it make sense to pass a constitutional amendment when the younger generation opposes it by a large margin?

Maybe I was too detailed in my response. Here’s a reader’s reply:

“David Frum’s list of hypothetical situations where one state recognizes a gay marriage, another doesn’t, reminds me of the ‘Conflict of Laws’ course I took many years ago in law school (2 credits). Despite its seemingly recondite subject matter it turned out to be useful on almost a daily basis to a practicing business lawyer, because conflicts of laws between states in fact pop up all the time on everything from property ownership to inheritance to tort liability to insurance contracts — and no field is less uniform even now than ‘family law’ governing marriage, divorce, parenthood and children. In fact courts already have “choice of law” rules to answer every question Mr. Frum poses.”

But that wouldn’t whip up enough hysteria to pass a Constitutional amendment, dummy!

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: Here’s a good point:

“You claim in your blog that ‘It looks increasingly as if anyone who cares about fiscal sanity is going to have to sit this election out.’ However, isn’t it obvious that the only way to impose some sort of fiscal sanity is to vote Kerry — resulting in a split government that can’t reach any sort of agreement as to how to spend money?
Additionally, if we are going to spend money like drunken sailors wouldn’t we rather have Kerry, who will at least tax the baby-boomer generation that is benefitting from all this spending, instead of Bush who wants to run up huge deficits and force these problems on future generations… people like ME?
As an uncatered to libertarian in my twenties, I think the answers to both of these questions are ‘yes’ and ‘yes’. I intend to vote Republican except for President, where I intend to vote a big fat ‘D’. Then I’ll sit back and pray for government gridlock.”

I think this guy is right. If you take seriously the fact that this country is headed toward fiscal catastrophe in the next decade, then restraining spending and raising some taxes in the next four years is almost as essential as tackling the entitlement crunch. Neither Bush nor Kerry wants to help. They’re both cowards (although Kerry seems to have a better grip on fiscal reality than Bush does). So gridlock is the best option. The combination of Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress was great for the country’s fiscal standing. Independents and anyone under 40 concerned with the deficit don’t need a Perot. They just need to vote for Kerry and hope the GOP retains control of at least one half of Congress.

GOD HATES SHRIMP: A new campaign for the religious right to join. Leviticus 11: 9 – 12 cannot be wrong. Boycott Long John Silver’s!

NOTICING EVIL: David Frum parses Mel Gibson’s verbal non-committal on whether the Holocaust really took place as we know it did. Bill Safire is unnerved as well. Gradually, conservatives are cottoning on to the real agenda behind “The Passion of the Christ.”

Maggie Gallagher shows her cards today. She is not only opposed to civil marriage for gay couples but is also opposed to Massachusetts’ deciding to have civil unions as a separate but equal category in their Constitution. Fair enough. But it behooves the social right to be clear about where they stand: against all benefits and protections for gay couples and against any notion that gay and straight relationships are equal. Then she raises various bogeymen:

It will be open season on the Catholic Church and other religious groups and organizations that sustain a different vision of human sexual ethics. Hate-speech codes, yanking of broadcasting licenses, and termination of the tax-exempt status of traditional organizations – just a few of the legal threats looming. Far-fetched? In Europe and Canada it is already happening.

Puh-lease. There is something called the First Amendment in this country; and it protects freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression. If Fred Phelps’ constitutional rights are protected, then the much milder public doctrines of the Catholic hierarchy will be as well. And that is only right and proper. I have no interest in persuading people to approve of my life and relationship. To be honest, I couldn’t care less what others think about it. As long as I am treated equally under the law, I’m happy to be described as a pervert, an instrument of Satan, or even a Democrat. Bring it on! But don’t confuse your constitutional right to condemn me with your constitutional right to deny me equal protection of the laws.

If it could happen to Churchill… could it befall Bush? Why a wartime leader’s success can be his electoral downfall. My latest Time column is up.

CASUALTIES FALL: Good news from Iraq on two fronts. The U.S. military casualties in February amounted to 23 – half the previous month’s. It’s the lowest monthly number since the invasion and represents a very steep drop-off from the 110 casualties last November. The number of wounded has also hit a new post-war low. Credit goes to those trying to control the Sunni insurgency. There are front page stories when soliders are killed (and rightly so). But there should also be front-page stories when we make real progress. And that’s why it’s also good to see the New York Times trumpet Iraq’s rebound in oil production and revenues. Well ahead of schedule. When you put all this together with Ayatollah Sistani’s acquiescence to end-of-year elections and the new cooperation of the United Nations, you have the architecture of real success. Fingers crossed. I have, naturally, a question about this success. Could Halliburton have had anything to do with it?

Those mullahs so beloved of the Europeans are at it again. Having decimated the already powerless opposition to Islamist theocracy in their recent “elections,” they are trying to undermine Gaddafi’s policy of WMD disarmament. From the Telegraph:

Western intelligence specialists have learned from interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects, captured close to Afghanistan’s border with Iran, that a militant group of Libyan extremists is being protected and trained by terrorism experts from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Hmm. What a surprise: al Qaeda in league with Iran.

BUMILLER LOST: Wonkette has the best reaction to the last Democratic debate. For my part, it confirmed something I’ve suspected for a while. John Kerry is highly unlikely to put John Edwards on his ticket. And his spending plans make even George Bush look fiscally responsible. A must-read this week: the Washington Post’s analysis of Kerry’s big spending budget plans. It looks increasingly as if anyone who cares about fiscal sanity is going to have to sit this election out.

THE GOODS ON NADER: A liberal argues that Ralph Nader has not suddenly become a bane to pragmatic liberalism. He’s always been a vain, monomaniacal enemy of liberal reform. Jon Chait is on a roll.

AGAINST THE AMENDMENT: One site has accumulated evidence that 48 senators are now on record as either against or very cool to the religious right amendment to the constitution.

SCHRODER ON THE ROPES: He wasn’t just beaten in the Hamburg elections. His party was buried. The best blog on German politics also catches up on Der Spiegel.

GIBSON ON NON-CATHOLICS: They’re all going to hell. That includes all those evangelicals who are flocking to his movie and even his wife.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “The Constitution says that all men are created equal, and it doesn’t say that all men are created equal except for gays. Just like everyone else who is born in this country, gays are endowed by their creator, God, with inalienable rights, and among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At birth, whether your are born in Russia, Cuba, South America, or New York, you are born equal. The difference is that our [American] babies grow up to live free.” – Barry Goldwater, my kind of Republican.

David Frum cites several examples of potential legal thickets over marriage rights and asks me to say what I think of them. He asks whether the federal government would be required to recognize Massachusetts marriages. Right now, DOMA says no. For the feds, same-sex couples don’t exist. The rest are all versions of the same hypothetical: that some legal challenge might occur that involves the legal standing of a Massachusetts civil marriage of a gay couple in another state. For example: “Two married Massachusetts men are vacationing in another state. One of them has a stroke. The hospital concludes he will never recover. Local law requires the hospital to ask the next of kin whether to continue treatment. Whom should it ask?” Legally, the most apposite statute is the following one from Massachusetts, delineating the scope of a civil marriage from that state:

No marriage shall be contracted in this commonwealth by a party residing and intending to continue to reside in another jurisdiction if such marriage would be void if contracted in such other jurisdiction, and every marriage contracted in this commonwealth in violation hereof shall be null and void.

So deliberate attempts to bypass other states’ laws on the matter would seem to me to be fruitless. But what about when one spouse of a Massachusetts marriage is inadvertently traveling elsewhere, and something happens, as in Frum’s vacation example? I’d hope, for humane reasons, that a spouse would not be denied access to a hospital room elsewhere or ruled out of a precious medical decision. But I’m afraid, given DOMA, given the public policy exception of most states, such a cruel decision would be fully legal in other states. It is possible, of course, that a handful of “legal incidents” of marriage could be upheld by courts in other states – but that’s a long way away from the actual marriage being fully recognized. In other words, I would reluctantly acquiesce in a married couple being torn apart if they traveled across state borders. That happened often when anti-miscegenation laws were valid in some states but not others (a full treatment of the miscegenation precedents can be found in my anthology, “Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con.”) I’m resigned to it happening again.

TURNING IT AROUND: But let’s turn the question around. In every instance Frum cites, he wouldn’t only be happy to prevent such basic protections from being recognized in other states. He would ban them outright in Massachusetts – or any other state – as well. Frum also opposes all civil unions laws and domestic partnership laws for gays. He would keep it impossible, in other words, for any gay man to have even an iota of the privileges he enjoys as a heterosexual legal spouse. Or am I wrong here? So my question back to Frum is simple: which of your 1,049 civil marital privileges would you be willing to grant a married gay couple?

Mel Gibson was asked what he felt about potential backlash against his movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” He responded, with classic Christian grace: “I don’t know where it’s going to fall. And quite frankly… you want to hear something? I don’t give a flying fuck.” The man who allegedly only put as much violence in his movie as occurred in the Gospels was also asked how he would greet Frank Rich, one of his more prominent critics. Gibson replied, “I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick … I want to kill his dog.” This is the man now hailed as the savior of America’s evangelical Christians. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

“The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which ‘the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one’s skin or color or race’ are minor indeed. Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs.” – Hannah Arendt, Dissent, Winter 1959.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY II: “Long before he emerged as the spear-carrier for the sort of Catholicism once preached by Gen. Franco and the persecutors of Dreyfus, Mel Gibson attained a brief notoriety for his loud and crude attacks on gays. Now he’s become the proud producer of a movie that relies for its effect almost entirely on sadomasochistic male narcissism. The culture of blackshirt and brownshirt pseudomasculinity, as has often been pointed out, depended on some keen shared interests. Among them were massively repressed homoerotic fantasies, a camp interest in military uniforms, an obsession with flogging and a hatred of silky and effeminate Jews. Well, I mean to say, have you seen Mel’s movie?” – Hitch on Mel Gibson’s S&M religion.

Here’s a bizarre sentence in National Review Online:

The gulf we place between ourselves and God through sin is bridged only by that intense physical agony Gibson depicts and is taken to task for depicting.

I think that’s a fair inference from Gibson’s movie. But it is theologically very suspect. Would our sins have been expiated if Jesus had only been flogged twenty rather than forty times? (The Gospels do not tell us how brutal this process was. For some reason, the evangelists reduced the episode to a couple of sentences. Gibson makes the flogging the centerpiece of the whole film.) If Jesus had been roped to the cross and died of asphyxiation, rather than being nailed there, would we still not be saved? If the nails had been placed in his wrists rather than his palms, would we not have been redeemed? Of course some of these details are there in the Gospels; but Gibson’s loving obsession with them, his creepy love of watching extreme violence, is nowhere found in the Gospels.

Let’s take a few clear examples. The Gospels do not tell us that the jailers of the High Priests beat Jesus to a pulp before he was even delivered to the Romans, or that he was thrown in chains over a prison wall, almost garrotting him. That’s Gibson’s sadistic embellishment – so that Jesus already has one eye shut from bruises before he is even tried. The Gospels do not say that the flogging of Jesus was so extreme and out of control that a centurion had to stop it because it had gone beyond any of the usual bounds of Roman punishment. That again is Gibson’s invention. In the crucifixion scene, the Gospels do not say that in hoisting the cross, it fell down by accident so that Jesus was pinned headfirst between the cross and the earth, his crown of thorns thrust even deeper into his skull. Again, that’s Gibson’s interpolation. It’s as if Gibson’s saying that being crucified isn’t bad enough – you’ve got be crushed face down by timber first if you are going to save all mankind.

I repeat that there is something deeply disturbed about this film. Its extreme and un-Biblical fascination with human torture reflects, to my mind, not devotion to the message of the Cross but a kind of psycho-sexual obsession with extreme violence that Gibson has indulged in many of his other movies and is now trying to insinuate into Christianity itself. The film could have shown suffering and cruelty much differently. It could have led us into the profound psychological pain that Jesus and his mother and disciples must have endured by giving us some human context to empathize with them; it could have prompted the viewer to use his or her own imagination to fill in the gaps of terror, as all great art does; it could have done much more by showing us much less. But the extremity is Gibson’s obvious point. I can understand why traditionalist Catholics might be grateful that there is some Hollywood representation of their faith. But they shouldn’t let their gratitude blind them to the psychotic vision of this disturbed director – and the deeper, creepier, heterodox theology that he is trying to espouse.

“I saw The Passion of The Christ last night. I am still processing through what I saw and how I feel about it. The only thing I can say for sure right now is that it was, without question, the single most disturbing thing I have ever seen.
A couple years ago I went to the movies and watched Hannibal. When I left the theater I felt this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was a very disturbing experience….but for different reasons than The Passion. When I left Hannibal I felt disturbed at myself, at the fact that I had willingly paid money to watch such gratuitous and gruesome violence. Not only was there cannibalism, there was a scene where Hannibal drugged a man, cut off the top of his skull, sliced off part of his brain, and fried and ate it in front of the man. The entire movie was sickening. And I watched it with friends for “entertainment”. I left the movie as sick at myself as I was at Hollywood.
The Passion was different. After it was over I couldn’t do anything but sit and stare blankly at the screen. The violence in this film was terrifying, but in a totally different way than in Hannibal. I have been a Christian for most of my life. I have done a lot of missions work and, I’ve felt, have served Jesus well. I have thought of myself as a pretty good person who never did anything terribly wrong. But I did do something terribly wrong. I am complicit in, and responsible for, the savage murder of an innocent man, of my Lord. My faith demands that I accept this truth. I am equally complicit with every other person who ever has, and ever will walk this earth.
This Passion brought that point home with me in a totally new way. I’ve always known Jesus’ death was terrible. Always knew he died for me. But never really thought through just how horrible and terrifying it must have been. Watching this movie was, to me, like being there as a witness to the act. As one complicit in His death, I might as well have been one of those shouting “Crucify!” I might as well have spat on Him, laughed at Him, placed the crown of thorns upon His head, and driven the nails into His hands. It was for my sins that He embraced the cross and willingly paid the terrible price. All my life I have taken Christ’s sacrifice for granted without ever really considering the true cost of the cross in terms of the brutal and savage pain I inflicted upon the Savior. That is what I find most disturbing. It’s also why I can never be the same after watching The Passion of The Christ.”

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “My parents were out of town for the week and I had returned from spending the weekend at a friend’s house to see in our mailbox the new issue of TIME. I did the usual flipping through that the “average” 20 year old would do. I glanced through what it had to say about Gay Marriage and then continued on my way to the back. I saw your essay, “Why the M Word Matters To Me.” I read with undivided attention and full interest. I began to tear up as I read on. I felt an immense similarity in your life to the events that I have experienced. I understand, I am young. However, I feel being gay has given me a “leg up” in terms of any and all emotional torment one can experience. When I got to the last paragraph everything seemed to freeze. I read the line where you said that you want to remember a young kid out there that’s reading this and for him to know that his love has dignity. I think after that essay I put a whole life-time of tears into tissues. I have never been so touched by anybody’s words of compassion. I truly feel that you gave me the hope and courage I need to fight on to have that beautiful day where I can say “I do” to the person that I love and am willing to spend the rest of my life with. I also believe that you gave me the honor to be able to come out to my parents, an act I have dreaded for the past 5 years.
I’ve been through institutions for depression and suicide. I’ve done my fair amount of rebellion. I also believe that I have had my heart broken at times for falling for straight guys and expecting something that would never come, I don’t want to assume but I believe that you have probably been there as well. I’m not the flaky kind that breaks under pressure very easily, I have a good record of standing my ground, so it’s a bit awkward for me to be crying while writing this to you. I can’t express how grateful I am that there is someone out there that knows what it is to be hurt and what it is to long for something. You are my courage.”