I can’t read Spanish and haven’t seen the text of the bill, so I can’t determine whether the hilarious spelling mistake in the second paragraph of this Reuters report is accurate:

Spain’s parliament gave initial approval to a law legalizing gay marriage on Thursday in a move likely to rekindle conflict with a Catholic Church that has just elected a new conservative pope.

A packed public gallery erupted in cheers and applause as the speaker announced approval of the Socialist government’s proposal, making Spain the third European country to legalese gay marriage.

“It’s unfair to be a second-class citizen because of love,” Socialist legislator Carmen Monton said. “Spain joins the vanguard of those defending full equality for gays and lesbians.”

I can’t say I’m entirely impressed by the reasoning used by one quoted activist: “I’m going to get married for the sake of activism, for love, and for a question of dignity.” Getting married to make a point? Lovely. But then, activists of any stripe often do have a serious case of single-issue-itis.

In any case, the bill has another round or two of approval to go through, but it’s apparently expected to pass. It also appears to have good public support.

Civil unions have been signed into law by the Connecticut governor. No court case. Very cool. Even the marriage-or-bust types are reeling it in enough to recognize that there’s much to celebrate:

Love Makes a Family, a gay rights organization that wanted legislators pass a gay marriage bill, called civil unions an important step toward protecting the rights of same-sex couples. But Anne Stanback, the group’s executive director, said the fight is not over. [“Love Makes a Family” sounds like the kind of entity that should have a headmistress, not an executive director–SRK]

“As important as the rights are, this is not yet equality,” she said.

Naturally, it’s that last quotation that 365Gay has seen fit to use as its quote of the day. Whatever. On the opposite side of the country, the Montana domestic partnership bills were voted down by its House of Representatives this week; that it passed the Senate was apparently big news. Things go in fits and starts.

The Connecticut House has passed its civil unions bill. The governor hadn’t threatened a veto, but she had supported an amendment (eventually added) to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Following the House vote Rell issued a statement saying, “I am pleased that the House of Representatives passed this amendment and made it clear that while we will recognize and support civil unions, marriage in Connecticut is defined as the union of a man and a woman.

“Passage of this bill will extend civil rights to all couples, no matter their gender, and send the unmistakable message that discrimination in any form is unacceptable in Connecticut.”

Good for them.

It’s touching that Dean has the patience to keep coming up with new anagrams of his position on gay marriage, as if one day one of his gay friends might listen. But then, as someone’s bound to point out, I’m sitting here writing this post, so who am I to talk?

Anyway, one thing he’s going off about in the comments is the epidemic of revisionist history among quite a few SSM advocates. I think it’s worth expanding backward on that point a little.

People used not to understand fertility. I don’t just mean human fertility–they didn’t understand why crops grew and hunt animals were plentiful sometimes but not others, either, any more than they understood why sex sometimes produced children and other times didn’t. Further, the competition for precious resources was fierce. Even after the invention of cavalry and chariots and catapults and cauldrons of pitch, war essentially meant hand-to-hand combat; and there was a lot of war. There was also a lot of disease.



What all this boiled down to was that human societies knew they desperately needed to keep replacing themselves and the things they subsisted on, but they were never quite sure what was going to work. Things like nitrogen-based fertilizer, filmstrips of sperm and ovum meeting under a microscope, and mechanical refrigeration are all very, very new in human history.

You already know this, so why am I bringing it up? Because I think it’s easy to forget how the pressure to ensure fertility at all costs has shaped civilization. (Well, Japan, with its disorienting blend of super-modernity and raw primalness, has not lost a lot of its old rites.) When people oppose gay marriage because they assume there’s no love or commitment in our relationships, they’re being ignorant and need to be told so. Even in old times, there were people who reproduced and people who didn’t. There’s no reason gay people can’t contribute to civilization just because we’re not contributing children, and having two people willingly take stewardship over each other’s welfare has obvious benefits.

But you can argue that, and argue that our ability to care for each other needs protecting in a world of competing interests, without necessarily concluding that marriage has to be expanded to do it. The ability to choose your own life partner is a pretty new thing. Maybe it needs a new institution. Maybe it would do better without any overarching institution but a range of contract options. Maybe, maybe, maybe. The point is, the debate is still going on, and not even all of us who are gay can agree that SSM should be legalized or why. Its advocates are not doing themselves any favors by acting as if the correct conclusion were obvious to, like, any fair-minded person with a brain.

I meant to draw attention to a link I got from Joe yesterday, but I got sidetracked by spring cleaning. (Is there anything worse than having dingy sheers at your windows? I feel so much better now.) Anyway, here’s part of his response:

I realize that for me hypocrisy is the trigger, but the justification is political. Outing is a legitimate and reasonable political response to the current political climate. It’s a deliberate, open, and peaceful act of nonviolent resistance, an act in some ways similar to civil disobedience. (And not, as Mike Rogers suggests, merely reporting.)

I know it’s obnoxious to assume that people are disagreeing with you because they don’t understand what you’re saying, rather than that they do and just think you’re wrong. Nevertheless, I think Joe isn’t focusing on the real point.

One of the most precious things in a free society is the ability an individual has to set his own priorities, to make his own trade-offs when he can’t optimize all values at once. In traditional societies, the wider group decides what trade-offs are best, which is why people who have their own ideas about where their talents lie or what means happiness for them so often leave them. Outing someone takes away that right. It says that self-assigned arbiters of the proper way to be gay get to dictate that someone has to be openly homosexual and just deal with the resulting loss of options. Anyone who plans on doing such a thing had better be armed with something less lame than “But he’s a hypocrite.” (Sorry, Michael. I know you’re not writing a dissertation here, but when we’re talking about revealing things about people’s private lives without their consent, you’re going to have to do better than that.)

It’s not just that hypocrisy is insufficient as ethical grounds for outing–though it is. It’s that there may be nothing hypocritical about these people at all. If some people believe the best work they can do is as legislators or campaign leaders, and they’re willing to keep quiet about their private life to facilitate it, where’s the hypocrisy? I’m about as big a flamer as you can get without physically being on fire (as a straight acquaintance once put it), but I oppose the campaign for gay marriage, I oppose hate crimes laws, and I oppose the endless workshops for elementary school students about the variety of sexual options open to them. Perhaps I sincerely and mistakenly believe a few things that are inconsistent with each other, but I can assure you that there’s no double-dealing or cowardly self-preservation involved. It’s not at all hard to believe that there are conservative gay politicians in the same situation, and that’s their lookout.

And as for the civil disobedience analogy, I’m sorry, that just doesn’t work. Civil disobedience involves putting yourself on the line and risking arrest in order to make a point. Outing involves screwing up other people’s lives without risking anything of yourself. There’s no comparison.

Michael has posted a review of a new book on gay marriage. It’s an issue he and I disagree over, and from what he says, the book doesn’t break a whole lot of new ground–though even I hadn’t heard Naomi and Ruth described as lesbians. Did Orpah leave because she felt like a third wheel? Anyway, Michael’s a fair-minded guy, and his evaluation is worth reading. The book is In Support of Same Sex Marriage and Gay Rights in America.

Megan McArdle has an essay up about gay marriage, which is a fascinating read. It’s fascinating both because she makes good points and because she falls all over herself to assure people that she’s not just ragging on gays. Personally, I find it a little insulting to be approached so gingerly, but I can understand where she’s coming from. These days, we’re flatly informed that anything less than full marriage equality is a mark of second-class citizenship.



Added on 4 April: Megan says that there’s nothing wrong with assuring friends and loved ones that you’re not trying to stick it to them. Point taken, especially since she didn’t soften her argument itself in order to do so.



Eric has his own post up that, as always, is worth reading. I think there are gays who are sincere in wanting to commit to the obligations of marriage in order to get the benefits, but the far louder talk about getting our relationships respected sure makes it hard to believe that the majority aren’t more concerned with self-esteem-building. It’s a mark of how mainstream we’ve become that we’re as entitlement-minded as everyone else now.

Gay News reports that Connecticut’s civil unions bill has passed its three General Assembly committees and is ready to go to the State Senate:

Gov. M. Jodi Rell has endorsed the concept of civil unions, though she said last week she would like the bill amended to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Rell has not said failure to adopt such an amendment would provoke a veto.

If the bill becomes law, Connecticut would become the first state to allow same-sex civil unions without the threat of court action.

Wouldn’t that be cool?

Oh, great–this discussion again.

I’m not sure if I’m a neolibertarian or not, but I think I’m awfully close to what they’re driving at.

Speaking of libertarianism in general, I’ve long thought of the hard-core libertarians–the really serious, no-compromisers–as the Marxists of the right. Interestingly enough, Scott Kirwin sent me an article in The American Conservative recently which makes that exact point, and makes it quite well: Click here to read Robert Locke’s “Marxism of the Right.”

Dean’s correct. The article is good. I do think, though, that it only addresses those who are hard think-tank/political-activist libertarians:

Free spirits, the ambitious, ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual eccentrics often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism, the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government.

Wacko Libertarian Party types might believe that, but Virginia Postrel, for example, certainly doesn’t. As you read Locke’s article, it becomes increasingly clear that what he’s refuting is only the perfectionist libertarians, who can’t see any grey areas in anything at all. Those people annoy the living bejeezus out of me, as they do a lot of other people, and I found very satisfying Locke’s temperate-but-vaguely-aghast tone in pointing out their flagrant idiocies.

But still. I voted for Bush. I’m in favor of free markets, private gun ownership, school vouchers, the WOT, strict readings of the Constitution, and social security privatization; I’m against hate-crimes laws, campus speech codes, campaign-finance reform, the push for gay marriage, the ruthless secularization of the public sphere, UN-worship, and Richard Gere. I’ve had plenty of people tell me, “Dude [or sometimes Bitch], whatever you call yourself, you’re a conservative,” and that’s fine if they feel that way, but I persist in referring to myself as a libertarian, not a conservative.

It’s not something I have a hang-up about. It’s just that, in the grand scheme of things, I think liberty is more fragile and needs more protection than tradition. The reason so many sensible people are calling themselves conservatives is that, at this historical moment in America, tradition has taken a bruising, with insights passed down through the ages flung aside or simply ignored over the last 40 years. Recapturing that wisdom is a big and important job, but I don’t think it’s the vast mission that animates civilization. The world is chock-a-block with societies that respect tradition just fine but offer their citizens miserable lives. It’s our liberty that makes us different and makes us a beacon to them. For the use of the word, it’s worth being occasionally mistaken for a LP head case; and it has the added advantage of alerting people that they’ll have to listen to you to find out what you actually believe.

A Typical Joe commented to my most recent effusion on gay marriage with this:

I don’t agree with the argument (from Sean at The White Peril via Dean’s World)

but it is not anti-gay.

That’s a more civil response than one often gets on this topic; for that I thank him. [Uh, either I just got dizzier or there was just an earthquake…lessee, 22:00…have to check NHK.] I feel at a distinct disadvantage disagreeing with someone who looks so adorable with his partner (I think there’s some kind of law: only one smiler per gay couple), but I’m going to do my best, at least on one important point.



I know, or at least am willing to believe, that for a lot of rank-and-file gays, the fundamental issue isn’t psychological affirmation. But, you know, as long as overachieving, careerist urban guys are the ones making the public arguments, status is going to sneak into them somehow. Believe me, I am not casting stones here–I am perfectly capable, in my weaker moments, of detestable thinking along the lines of, Dammit, I was the obedient show-child growing up. I have the summa cum laude Ivy League degree and the management job. I don’t do drugs or hang out at sex clubs. I donate to charity and pay my taxes and NO POSSIBILITIES SHOULD BE CLOSED TO ME.



You cannot just look at Andrew Sullivan’s and Jonathan Rauch’s and Dale Carpenter’s CV’s and have a comprehensive map to their psychology. But you also can’t tell me that the milieux they move in don’t color what they think should be theirs for the asking. Again, I’m talking about men I much admire, despite Sullivan’s recent shakiness. And it’s pretty much a truism that those who get the public microphone are going to be those who (1) want it and (2) have resources to compete for it.



I just wish that people with a different point of view (just so it’s clear, I’m not ascribing this thinking to Joe, just using his post as a lead-in to it) would take more opportunities to stand up and say, “Look, we’ll take care of being respectable in our day-to-day interactions with our family and neighbors–leave that out of it. It’s not that we’re not as smart as you are, or that our expectations are blinkered, or our horizons are shrunken, or anything. We don’t want to be prom queen for a day. We don’t want attention. We just want the government to make it possible for us to count on being able to provide for each other and then get out of our lives.” I can certainly understand why they don’t, though.



Added on 24 February: In the comments, Michael refers to his latest post on marriage. It’s here.