The Dish

In urban Oregon, the usual massive turnout. In rural Oregon, the atmosphere is different than West Virginia:

After Obama took a shellacking in last Tuesday’s West Virginia primary, some analysts suggested the loss showed the Illinois senator was having problems connecting with blue-collar, working-class voters.       

None of that was in evidence Saturday in this Douglas County timber town — the first stop in a weekend of campaigning in Oregon for Obama, who holds a large lead in polls leading up to Tuesday’s primary election.

YouTube here. One detail:

A few kayakers held their paddles and tried to keep their kayaks straight as they watched the candidate, who stood on a makeshift platform.

(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty.)

Steve Chapman makes a strong case that the California court may have tried too much. I certainly see the point, and I sympathize with its core argument with respect to judicial restraint. I worried about this myself and would be lying if I did not confess to some mixed feelings. At the same time, I can also see how exactly this argument could have been used against the Perez v Sharp decision sixty years ago – when the same court struck down miscegenation bans far more popular than the current ban on same-sex marriage.

It will be argued that that ruling was based on racial discrimination which has a clear jurisprudential lineage. Applying strict scrutiny to sexual orientation has no such legal precedence. And yet it is also true that sexual orientation is as ineradicable as gender (arguably more so) and as central to personal identity as religion. If those two categories enjoy constitutional protection, why not sexual orientation? That’s why Judge George’s personal understanding of gay people is relevant. And why the case is powerful.

I stand conflicted here: my head is with restraint; my heart and my head are with equality. But now the decision is made, it seems clear to me that those of us who support marriage equality need to ensure it gains the democratic legitimacy it deserves. By making, as we have for two decades, arguments that can persuade and testimony that can explain. We have work to do – and every gay Californian needs to find one straight person a day to explain why this issue matters so much.

Troubling signs for Senator Stevens in Alaska.

Best not to post pictures of yourself at a party on the day in question on Facebook. Your boss has a modem, dude. Oh, and he’s right: nice wand.

Its one way to get noticed, I suppose. And to add insult to injury.

… I’m getting an award in New York City from Immigration Equality. Come join the fun.

Josh Levin on all those closeted Solitaire players. Not me, man.

… that your uncle is getting about Obama. A literary deconstruction from TNR.

She’s still at it.

More extreme even than Benedict. A reader notes:

The priest who denied communion to Doug Kmiec because he supports Obama obviously didn’t get the memo, that memo written in July 2004 by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in response to a query from the American bishops, which said in part:

"When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for the candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons."

We are, in these days, in the presence of some proportionate reasons that include an unjust war with no viable exit strategy, the embrace of torture, and more.

I’d suggest that Catholics who support Obama wear buttons or other tokens of that support when they go to Mass. If they’re denied communion, they can give that memo to the priests who’ve denied it to them.

I’d prefer no political buttons at mass of any kind. But my reader’s point is well taken. When some priests deny communion because of support for a presidential candidate, the conflation of politics and religion is hideously complete. And that is the goal of the theocons: to erase any space for private conscience or any distinction between public and private.