The Dish

It won’t die, will it? Spinsanity is on the case.

On the marriage issue, here’s the question that needs asking of the president: if he is opposed to marriage equality, does he support civil unions? Just a suggestion.

Ryan Lizza checks in with the now-surreal Dean campaign.

Don’t miss a wonderful, terse polemic on National Review Online by one Lance Izumi on the consequences of president Bush’s spending binge and big government philosophy. Invoking Hayek and Friedman, he rightly insists that classical liberalism requires not just that taxes be lowered but that government spending be reduced as well. The whole point of cutting taxes was to put pressure on spending. Here’s what I fear Bush might accomplish: a huge jump in the role and size of government, and a spiraling debt. When the crunch comes, a future Democratic president will simply raise taxes back up to finance the spending Bush has unleashed. In fact, he may have no option. The result will be a big gain for statism and a big net loss for individual freedom. I grew up inhaling Hayek, Friedman and Thatcher. It breaks my heart to see a Republican president trash much of their legacy.

My last boyfriend died Tuesday of AIDS complications, and after traveling to LA today, where he lived, I went to his memorial service and reception. He was an amazing guy, a former Mormon, with a huge heart and astonishing determination to fight illness after illness. When we were together four years ago, he endured two heart attacks, chemotherapy and KS, and I never heard him complain once. In fact, he often cheered me up. He was an inspiration in many ways, although we had sadly drifted apart the last couple of years. Anyway, I can’t focus on much else right now. He never made it to forty. God bless, Brad. It was a great blessing to have shared part of our lives together.

“Good-bye, Andrew. I am going to leave you for now. I cannot take anymore articles about gays. This really grieves me because your site was a great read on all other subjects. So instructive. But gay issues have taken over and it’s become unbearable.” – one of dozens of similar ones.

As usual, worth a gander. I worry that we’re morphing. Here’s his statement about whom to supoport this November:

Tavis: Do you think that President George W. Bush deserves to be reelected?
Hitchens: [sighs] Well, it’s a tough call for me. I wasn’t-I certainly wasn’t for his election the first time round. I didn’t want Albert Gore, either, and I’m glad it wasn’t Gore, by the way. One has to face that fact. I must say I’m a bit of a single issue voter on this. I want to be absolutely certain that there’s a national security team that wakes up every morning wondering how to take the war to the enemy. I don’t have that confidence about any of the Democratic candidates, but I think that a Kerry-Edwards ticket would be made up of people who have shown that they are serious on this point, yeah. So I’m not dogmatically for the reelection of the President, but I’m for applying that test as a voter.

I’m pretty close to that. But my other two big concerns are the fiscal future and civil rights. I’ll try and support whichever candidate seems to me to be more credible on righting our fiscal ship in the near and distant future. And, of course, no self-respecting gay person will be able to support president Bush if he wages war on the most basic civil right by the most devastating means possible: a constitutional amendment.

RAMESH ASKS: If I believe that marriage is a basic civil right for all, why don’t I support or want the Supreme Court to rule so? Good question. I’m running to catch a plane but my brief answer is: I don’t believe people’s basic civil rights should be up to a majority vote. That’s why we have courts at all – to check majority tyranny. (When was the last time you heard a conservative worry about democratic tyranny?) I do believe in the process of debate, winning over the public, and doing this legislatively if at all possible – because it makes the reform more stable. I don’t think I can be accused of not living up to this. I’ve never filed a suit in my life. My work has been entirely in the sphere of public debate. I’ve written reams on this, including one early and critical book on the subject, and one anthology, where I published the arguments of my opponents! I’ve debated in TV studios and colleges across the country, literally hundreds of times. I’ve lost many readers because I have become a crashing bore on the subject. So obviously, I’d be thrilled if the country now suddenly agreed with me and passed laws in every state to allow gays to wed. But that’s not how these things happen. It takes time. In a mere fifteen years, we’ve clearly made enormous progress. We have marriage in three countries – Holland, Belgium and Canada. We’ve moved public opinion dramatically in our direction. The younger generation gets it entirely. But courts have a role. I don’t believe courts should never do anything but rubber-stamp majority decisions. I think the argument for equal marriage rights is so constitutionally strong it will take a federal constitutional amendment to deny gays their rights. I suspect the religious right agrees. So we now have to see if the general public finds gay couples such a threat to their life that they will write discrimination against them in the Constitution. I have to hope and pray they won’t. But I cannot be dismayed when courts include gay people as equal citizens in this republic. That’s their job. And it’s their constitutional duty.

Of course they can. Whether they will or not is another matter. My take on the Democrats’ underlying strength.

IRAN SHIFTS: Oxblog has a compendium of stories about growing restlessness in Iran. One simple fact: the pro-democracy forces in that poor country will only gain momentum if we manage to hold a real election in Iraq. Meanwhile, even Syria sees the beginning of a democracy push. (Hat tip: Glenn.) And Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation becomes more transparent. All this is good news. Would it have happened without our resolve over Iraq? I doubt it.

THE GUARD STORY: Here’s a blog entry that serves as a guide to reporters who really should ferret out the full details of the president’s National Guard service. Why? Because it’s going to be an election issue. Because there are fuzzy parts of the story that need more focus. Because finding out the facts is what reporters are supposed to do. (Hat tip: Josh.)

THE CHURCH PILES ON: The BBC is taking it from all sides these days. But mainly from the right. And here’s another apology.

HEADS UP: I’ll be on Real Time with Bill Maher this Friday night on HBO. My fellow panelists: Carole Moseley-Braun and Rob Schneider.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s response to the Massachusetts legislature is not as groundbreaking as people are making it out to be. It’s just the logical conclusion of the Goodridge decision, a ruling the legislature decided to try and side-step. The Justices in the majority mercilessly home in on the central meaning behind so-called “civil unions” – the only defense of them is that they are a device to maintain exclusion, especially when they are substantively identical to civil marriage. In that sense – same thing, different department – they’re a text-book case of “separate but equal.” If you’re going to give gay couples the same rights as straight couples, why are you calling it something different? If both can drink the same water, why a different water fountain? The only answer can be: to keep the stigma in place. But stigma as such surely has no role under a constitution that affirms equal rights for all citizens. It’s not the court’s role to rule otherwise. The only judicial activism in this case would have been if the Court had decided that, in spite of the state constitution, the public’s own discomfort with a minority would be justification for maintaining that minority’s second class status. Legislatures are entitled to legislate stigma. Courts are supposed to interpret the Constitution. If the Constitution guarantees equal rights for all, and marriage is one of the most basic civil rights there is, and gay couples can and do fulfill every requirement that straight couples can, what leeway does any Court have? I’m constantly amazed by these claims of judicial “tyranny.” Was Brown v Board of Education tyranny? It’s exactly the same principle as operates here: separate but equal won’t do.

A NEW DYNAMIC: But there is a new dynamic at work. First, the White House is smart enough to know that this issue is dangerous for all involved. If the president makes marriage equality an issue in this election, he must know that John Kerry will not allow him to be more against gay marriage than Kerry is. Kerry is strongly opposed to allowing gay people to enjoy the same civil insititution he has used himself twice, and yesterday he reiterated that. So the issue for the voters becomes: do you support Bush who wants to amend the constitution to strip gay couples of marriage rights, civil unions, domestic partnerships and any civil recognition at all; or do you support a man who opposes gay marriage but backs civil unions for gays, a state-by-state solution, and no constitutional amendment? Not such a slam dunk for Bush. In fact: advantage Kerry. But before anything can happen, we will have actual, real, living marriages in America that are between two people of the same sex. So the debate will then become how these people’s marriages can be undone, revoked, retroactively extinguished. The religious right and the Catholic bishops will be on a mission to expand … divorce!

ANOTHER VIEW: I know you’re all sick of me on this topic, so let me point you to another person’s view, a heterosexual, who may persuade you better than I can. After all, my life, my relationship, my friends, my family, are involved. And it’s always good to have another view.

“John Kerry’s long, angular face has something of the abstraction of a tribal mask. The features are at once stark and exaggerated, and, with the exception of his mouth, none of the parts appear to move.” – Philip Gourevitch, the New Yorker. My italics. The evidence mounts …

ANONYBLOGGERS: Anonyblogger Atrios recently called the New York Times’ Nick Kristof “human scum.” Welcome to the pond, Nick! Of course, Atrios is immune from personal attacks because he’s anonymous. Salon picks up on the double standards here.

MARRIAGE IN MASS: I’ll be commenting in tomorrow’s blog. Swamped right now. Bottom line: great news.