The Dish

Two terrific and fresh pieces out on equal marriage rights. James D. Miller looks at the issue as how to deal with a “brand”. He argues:

Brand name analysis proves that civil unions for gay couples can’t fully substitute for marriage. If you started a fast-food restaurant, it would be easier to call your place McDonald’s than to use some new unknown brand name. Sure, in time you could build up this new brand to become as locally well-respected as McDonald’s name, but for the near future at least, you’re better off going with the existing brand.

Miller says the critical question is whether expanding marriage to include gays will “dilute” the brand. I think it will strengthen it by making it universal. Meanwhile, recently married John O’Sullivan thinks imaginatively about the future when gay marriage is a part of the social landscape:

People thinking of living together would then have three choices: civil marriage, religious marriage, and household partnerships. In effect there would be a competition between these three institutions for their custom. Which would be likely to prove most popular and durable? One can only guess at the result of such choices. Here’s my guess … Traditional marriage might well emerge strengthened from this evolutionary test.

I’m truncating his argument here, so please be sure to read the original. I don’t want to Dowdify him.

WHAT THE FMA WOULD DO: Meanwhile, I keep getting emails from people who think the Federal Marriage Amendment is not such a big deal. Here it is:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

Note how the states are effectively barred from providing anything that resembles marriage or any of the “legal incidents thereof.” It’s an attempt not only to reverse any state that wants to have same-sex marriage but to invalidate all domestic partnership laws, any state-provided benefits, or any support for same-sex couples anywhere anyhow. It’s a massive power-grab from the states, in an area where states have always had constitutional authority. If you merely want to stop one state’s marriages being nationalized, you have the power already. It’s called the Defense of Marriage Act, alongside the long established precedent of states being able not to recognize out of state marriages for public policy reasons. The FMA, in contrast, is an attempt to use the federal constitution to rob gay citizens of any rights in their relationships whatsoever, regardless of where they live or what their states want. It’s not conservative. It’s a radical attempt to impose one religious view of marriage upon the whole citizenry for ever. It’s about the constitutional disenfranchisement of an entire class of citizens.

Here are some pictures of dorm rooms in Tehran university after the government thugs have “disciplined” various freedom-seeking students. Here are some more – of what was done to the students themselves. Yesterday, three student leaders were seized by the regime’s goons and are now in capitivity. It’s useful to see the true face of tyranny – a face so familiar and comforting to the anti-American ideologues running the BBC. Yesterday, the Beeb’s leftists described the 1999 massacre of students as a “police raid.” Yeah, and Tiananmen Square was a street fight. How do these BBC apologists for theocratic terror live with themselves? (More on Iran on the Letters Page.)

Predictions of a huge public backlash against Lawrence vs Texas do not seem to me to have been borne out. That may change if Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court rules in favor of marriage equality next week. But meantime, the far right seems a little divided and a little disoriented. It seemed an odd time for the head of the Family Research Council, Kenneth Connor, to resign – but last week, resign he did. Was it because he was lukewarm about the far right’s new gambit – writing an anti-gay marriage plank into the federal Constitution? Who knows? Blogger, “The Right Christians,” has some thoughts and theories. Here’s why I think the Federal Marriage Amendment won’t work for the anti-gay right. Constitutional amendments are extremely hard to pass. They normally need overwhelming public support – like the 90 percent plus support for a ban on flag-burning – but even then they tend to fail. Polls show Americans divided by 39 percent to 55 percent on equal marriage rights – hardly an overwhelming consensus that should be enshrined for ever in the Constitution itself. Moreover, those numbers have moved considerably in a few years, again suggesting that it would be foolish to mess with the Constitution to resolve a volatile and fast-changing issue. Lastly, conservatives rightly view the Constitution as a sacred document to be messed with only very carefully. Many conservatives will oppose such an amendment on those grounds alone. They should. One unconservative consequence could also be that such an amendment serves to retroactively invalidate what could be thousands of marriages by the time such an amendment would even have a chance of passing. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful use of conservative resources: going around the country actually trying to break up committed couples. And all under the pro-family banner! You can see the slogan now: Support the family – break up marriages and take kids away from parents. I wish it were merely funny. But it’s tragic.

His compilation of Communist sympathizers – provided to the British government in 1949 – will now see the light of day later this summer. Timothy Garton Ash comments.

PATRIOTIC RAP: Here’s a lyric even arch-conservatives could support:

Draft me, pass me the M-16
Give me a buzz cut, ask me if I give a f**k
I’m comin’ out blastin’
Military four fashion
Twelve close castin’, for weapons of mass-distraction
Outlastin’ all the privates in my company
Fightin’ for my family, and the cats that grew up with me
My band of brothers, rarely just smother the enemy
Razor blades cut ya face and leave a scar so you remember me
Lurkin’ to leave y’all with bloody red turbans
Screamin’ “Jihad!” while y’all pray to a false god

A little crude, I guess. But it’s hip-hop. And it’s not a pose. Rapper Canibus joined up, finished his military training at Fort Knox, and is now a cavalry scout/reconnaissance specialist.

He adopts Mbeki’s appeasement. All to avoid some rough headlines? Disappointing, to say the least.

CALLING HILLARY FAT: Ms Coulter takes the high road again.

NYT ERROR PAGE: Worth a look – if only for a chuckle.

SORRY: For the infrequent posting yesterday. Blogger was screwed up again. I’m beginning to think I’ll have to use another platform.

I was long criticized for using this blog to expose the extraordinary attempt by Howell Raines to turn the New York Times into his personal vehicle for quixotic left-liberal causes – or simply to throw his weight around. He was an insufferable, arrogant tyrant. As more details come out, the most paranoid anti-Raines arguments gain more traction. Now here comes David Margolick’s piece in the new Vanity Fair. I offer a single example:

Worse, Raines would not let facts get in the way of a story he had ordered up or a point he decided to make. “Howell wanted a thought inserted high in one of my stories,” says a metro reporter. “The only problem was, it wasn’t true. Mind you, this was on my beat, a beat he didn’t really know about. I said to the editor who was the message-bearer that it wasn’t true, and it didn’t belong in the story, period. A while later he came back to me and said, ‘Well, you’re right, but Howell wants it anyway.’ It became clear that the editor had not fully conveyed my arguments to Howell, because he was afraid to. I said, ‘F— that — I’ll tell him myself.’ And he literally seized my arm and said, ‘You don’t want to do that.’ And ultimately the editor-intermediary and I compromised on a version of what Howell wanted that was just vague enough not to mean much, but still close enough to a falsehood to make my very uncomfortable.”

It was as bad as we thought. Even worse, actually.

TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAN: A blogger’s open letter. Here’s another take. And another.

Students call off their July 9 protests in Tehran when threatened with a massacre. All the more reason to extend our visible support and solidarity. But less organized resistance seems to be continuing.

“Judgment Day is approaching for those who have shed the blood of tens of thousands of innocent Iranians. Judgment Day is approaching for those who have ordered the stoning of women. Judgment Day is approaching for those who ordered the bombing of the Jewish community center in Argentina. Judgment Day is approaching for those who ordered the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon and the Khobar Towers in Riyadh. Judgment Day is approaching for those who started the chant: “Death to America” and everything America stands for. Judgment Day is approaching for the Islamic Republic of Iran. It may not be tomorrow, but soon this evil regime will join the other evil regimes in the dustbin of history. Judgment Day will come.” – Pooya Dayanim, National Review.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY II: “It is almost over, my trip back to home. I feel both sad and happy. I’m sad becasue I have to say good-bye and happy because I got to come back. Everyday was sweet and magical. It was the most memorable trip of my life. The reason I came back is this: I missed Iran and its people. I missed my home where everyday of my childhood was spent at. There are many who say they love their land, yet they never put an effort or the will to come for a visit. I did with the help of my parents. I did because I wouldn’t have been me if I hadn’t come back. People forget what a life without freedom is and how it feels to be watched and told what to do or how to dress. Where words of complaint can lead to death.” – from a young Iranian girl, blogging about what has been done to her country. (Via Jeff Jarvis.)

NOW, HUNGER STRIKES: Iranian students use the ultimate non-violent weapon. Economic failure helps build support for regime change in Tehran. Winds of Change also has an excellent round-up of recent Iranian news and activism. I learned a lot from the WhoMan as well.

GET IN LINE: Asparagirl will be at the Iran anti-theocracy demo in NYC tomorrow. It’s at 11 am to 2 pm at 47th St. and 1st Avenue. In D.C., the rally today is at 10 am, at the West Capitol.

“Just wanted to apprise you that the Anglican Schism already occurred long ago. I’m not being flip. It in fact occurred. This, after the Lambeth Conference back in 1978 which gave the green light to the ordaining of women as priests. Ever since then, a veritable slew of parishes, formerly “high-church” parishes, pulled out of ECUSA (Episcopal Church USA), creating several orthodox Anglican “communions” outside the See of Canterbury, or the “official” Anglican Communion. The problem, however, is that once the over-arching communion is broken, the new orthodox communion(s) brought forth as rivals continue the process of fisuring — but doing so amongst themselves — such that there exist several Anglo-Catholic all claiming to be the communion truly “Anglican” and orthodox. And as my orthodox Roman Catholic friend assures me, this is the nature of all heresies — they keep fisuring until they go out of existence, leaving the rock of St. Peter standing, having weathered the storm — as it always has for two thousand years.” – more unconventional wisdom on the Letters Page.

THE SILVER LINING: From Afghanistan. You won’t read this in the NYT.

BUSH AND GOVERNMENT: He’s no conservative in a small government sense. Spending billions we don’t have, piling on regulations, burdening businesses, Bush is turning into a Nixon in domestic economic policy. He will regret it. So will we.

My 2002 man of the year is back stateside. And shunning the press. A class act, still.

ON SECOND THOUGHTS, DON’T SUE ME: Mark Glaser looks into that blogger libel decision. Not as encouraging as it seemed at first.

AOL BLOGS: Yes, the behemoth will soon unveil its own blogging software – and the advance reviews are good.

THE INCREDIBLE WILLY: Yep, the Hulk is hung.