The Inherent Colonialism of the Left

Not the most thoughtful analysis but I read a blog posting in which the author takes issue with those who "promulgate and promote the notion that, because of his father's background, Obama has an anti-colonial mindset. And what is so bad about that, anyway? Colonialism is: 'the control or governing influence of a nation over a dependent country, territory, or people.' The US started out as a colony and didn't care much for it."  No.  The U.S. started off as a group of separate colonies, and people in all the colonies wanted to enjoy all the rights of British citizens.  When this seemed impossible, they took to the notion of independence and the colonies became sovereign states.   If they didn't confederate, they wouldn't be able to resist the Crown and keep their independence, so sovereign states voluntarily joined a confederacy under the Articles, and then voluntarily ratified a document constituting "a more perfect union."  This document was crafted with the express purpose of keeping the federal government from exercising imperial authority over the states.  It defined essentially a sort of corporation of the states.

The problem with the sort of anti-colonialism that Obama appears to embrace (as D'Souza argues in 2016, citing among other things Obama's quick return of the Churchill bust and his position on the Falkland Islands) is that it is the progressive class warfare trope writ large.  If one nation is doing well and another isn't, the well-off nation must be bettering itself at the others' expense.  There is no economic win-win scenario scenario for the leftist.  (As I've noted previously, D'Souza's 2016 illustrates some problems with this view.)
Notice here also that progressives have had muted (if not missing) outrage over Soviet Russian colonialism over Easter Europe.  Very little to say about that. Maybe because all that was done in the name of spreading the wealth.

But I want to get into my principal theme here, that as much as the Left condemns intervention on the foreign front (though ignoring it under some circumstances especially if the "League of Nations" is for it) and downplays the need to be strongly armed against global threats, it believes in a government force against its citizenry (and disarming the public against such) and power being consistently more centralized and nationalized.

In other words, the Left seems to support the autonomy of foreign states, often when there is reason to think there is a great potential threat, while disdaining the autonomy of our domestic states whose powers of autonomy are nominally guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.  How many left-leaning citizens continue to be bothered by federal troops incinerating children in Waco, because the militarized ATF didn't like being repelled by armed citizens (a jury found in favor of the Waco survivors exercising their 2nd Amendment rights against armed invaders) and so they gassed them with tanks.  This happened under the direction of so-called liberal peaceniks.  It makes you wonder what would happen if American states decided to secede from the federal government.  Would people that balked at intervening in the affairs of dictatorships seriously send federal troops in to force subservience on penalty of death?

The assumption that the federal government will opt for the Lincoln precedent (level the states if it will keep them "in the fold") itself demonstrates the colonial attitude. (As Kathy Bates said in Misery, "It's for the best.")  When it comes to how certain Islamist nations treat their women, we have nothing to say (it is their country after all), but Supreme Court Justices here have reveled in their power, not simply to keep government powers within their constituted limits, but to expand federal power by dictating what the states can legislate.

Whenever anyone says that conservatives are going to outlaw abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade, you should recall that there was abortion before Roe v. Wade, in the states that allowed it.  The court decision  for Roe v. Wade (based on a lie if you now ask Jane Roe) took the matter out of state autonomy based on a dubious interpretation of Constitutional privacy.   Now your federal government can be involved in almost any matter between you and your physician except when it might involve the life of a defenseless feeling creature (that thing that is referred to clinically as a fetus).  The right to privacy disappears in those cases.  And the federal government is licensed to interfere with state affairs on the basis of judicially minted "reproductive rights."  Isn't that useful?

Here's what I suspect.  In that social upheaval during which the Democrats abandoned "states rights" after they lost their fight against civil rights legislation and the progressive radicals steered the party toward identity politics and America-blaming, something happened.  Not only did progressives see a party that was disoriented and ripe for the taking.  Not only did Democrat politicians see in young protesters a chance to demagogue their way into a new clientele/constituency.  I think that the most radical progressives and socialists and Marxists licked their lips when federal troops descended on Little Rock in 1957.  I think it was at that time that they started to see in identity politics the key to breaking the 10th Amendment protection against centralized, nationalized power.  There is nothing like an expansive court decision for making federal guns descend on a locality.  And there is nothing like morality questions for making expansive court decisions.

Now there are your everyday average progressive types that think, strangely enough, really do think that progressivism is all about individual liberty and putting all the power in the one place you can trust (the federal government) to guarantee those individual liberties.  Big Daddy Fed will protect you from your state, from your community, from your employer; just hand over your guns and all information concerning your economic transactions.  And Daddy will take care of you.  Uncle Ho, Uncle Mao, Uncle Sam.  Oh my!

Let's forget about Iraq and focus on Afghanistan, since Obama said that's what we should have done all along.  All this effort in Afghanistan just to exact revenge on bin Laden.  Wouldn't it have been nobler to go into Vietnamistan with the express purpose of replacing their government with one that would respect human rights?  Will the governments in Egypt and Libya be less oppressive to women and homosexuals?  Or is just having Islamist governments that are more hostile to Israel its own reward?

You say we'd be treading on their culture, interfering wrongfully, violating the Prime Directive?  (Supposedly though, the Civil War was (retroactively?) justified precisely for imposing a set of values.)   Why don't progressives think that they are doing the same thing to states all over the Union?  Why are liberals content to push their liberal morality and their secularism and scientism (their values) on the local conservative masses that are too stupid to know what's good for them?   In that case they think the imposition is justified.  Why, it's my country and I'm going to make everyone in Texas live how I know the country should live!  What about making Saudi Arabia live up to the standards that you know are right?  Oh no! I can't do that. It's not my country.  That would be unethical! 

When we are talking about foreign states, especially Muslim states, those states are given a dignity that domestic states here are not — that even though there may be large segments of their society that seem prone to oppression in the eyes of liberals or even in the eyes of most Americans, especially compared to any of the states of the U.S.!  Why?  How can liberals be so silent (or supportive!) about so many nations that have little or no commitment to liberty, and at the same time decry the U.S. (and its conservatives in particular) as theocratic, radical, ultra-religious, hateful, destructive, extremist, etc.  Comparing the Tea Party movement to Salafis?  Really?  ... But sharia as national civil code?  Oh that's just people keeping their culture!  Don't knock it if you haven't bothered to understand it!  Ah, the selective multi-culturalism of the Left!

And their selective colonialism!  An approach that, instead of following Reagan's successful peace through strength example,  tries to level the playing field where America is one of many world powers (like Israel is one of our closest allies in the Middle East) but the people can be coerced with overwhelming federal might into anything that is forced on the entire population (whether through judicial fiat or through populist demagoguery). Don't want the federal government to take your guns?  From your cold dead hands?  Judging by the rubble at Waco, from your incinerated dead hands!  Lying next to your incinerated children.  You citizens can't be trusted with weapons so we're going to Tiananmen Square your asses with these tanks.  ATF?  That's another name for an armed force and in Waco it was an armed force of berserkers turned loose on citizens without due process.

With the 10th Amendment being gutted, the states are once again becoming colonies, no longer self-determined, paying ever-growing tributes to an Empire in a tiny country known as the District of Columbia.  The only thing that makes us a true large Republic of smaller republics is respecting the 10th Amendment.  The only thing that warrants federal intrusion of armed forces is a threat to national security or a threat to "Republican Form of Government" (Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution) in a particular state.  Liberals here vote for Empire as long as the imperial actions are limited to the 50 states currently under its jurisdiction.

One of the criticisms of the modern revolt against this imperial imposition, was that, unlike the modern Tea Party movement, the Boston Tea Party was a revolt against an evil corporation, ergo it was more like Occupy Wall Street than the modern Tea Party.  This is the first time I've heard that the Boston Tea Party had little to do with the 1773 Tea Act and with the Revolutionary War in general.  The "Destruction of the Tea" as it was known then was a political protest against a policies in which the British government was "picking the winners and losers" in colonial commerce in order to fill its coffers after a war in which many colonials had fought and died.  At the time, a little commercial terrorism (by local capitalists) was a safer political statement than confronting redcoats.  The East India Co. was practically a GSE of the British Empire, and the colonials were sending a message to Parliament that they recognized it as a way of funding the Empire.  So it may be a more complicated situation to analyze, but reducing the destruction of the tea to the same nebulous anti-capitalist outrage of people that envy the salaries of executives is an extremely superficial analysis.

This reminds me of the quick retraction (well, not a retraction, more like a sudden stunned silence) of the criticism over Sarah Palin's 1773 non-gaffe.  Don't party yet like it's 1773, people.  And yes, not everything significant that happened in the 1770s happened in 1776.  

fifty-first state

The writing goes slow tonight...

Might I suggest some musings on "If The 51st State Were Muslim"?

And passing thoughts...  I find the pervasive use of the word "race" confusing.  Beyond a rather simplistic notion that preponderances of alleles can result in preponderances of behaviors, the notion of race to me seems not just ill-defined but not useful to anyone but racists.  It is truly arbitrary whereas sex/gender is not.

Sex/gender rather is a gift from God/Nature/Evolution (whatever your point of view), its nature's invention not ours (something biologists call dimorphism), and that goes a long way toward explaining why we retain such barbaric practices as having separate Olympic events for men and women (separate but equal!).

Also recently, a review of the movie Cloud Atlas.

X-Men, Children's Films, & the Gospel of Normalization

After seeing X-Men: First Class, a pretty well-made movie, I heard a teen exclaiming about how much she liked the Mystique character and supported her decision to be a terrorist (she didn't use quite these words) in light of the terrible anti-mutant oppression she endured.  This passion and the similarity of this feeling to the pervasive "enlightened" moral relativism view of the terrorist/freedomfighter distinction brought something to mind:

There was a moment in a previous movie, X2, in which the director couldn't remain content with people drawing their own parallels to gay normalization without a nice big push.  A young mutant teen "comes out" to his parents about how he's a mutant.  The reaction of one of his parents is to ask whether he's "tried not being a mutant."  I might have missed the implication had that made a lick of sense; it didn't fit at all.  It didn't work in the scene.  So it was a ham-handed, eye-rolling political message shoehorned into an otherwise interesting movie.  But I'm sure it has nothing to do with the director actually being homosexual.

I had a moment watching X-Men: The Last Stand in which I wondered whether the "cure" for mutation motif was a kind of dystopian 1984-esque commentary on the ex-gay movement.  If you haven't heard of this movement, outside of the California governor's (Jerry "No Plan and Proud of It" Brown) attack on it, it's because the Left has absolutley no interest in hearing from the people who believe that "conversion" therapy has worked for them and made their lives better.  No, the Democrats support your decision to change your genitals if they don't suit you, but not your orientation.  After all, your orientation is something you were born with.  In the end, one of the X-Men vies for the "cure" because her mutation keeps her from having normal relationships.

It would seem that we are supposed to get the impression that "normal" humans are being a little ridiculous at being afraid of human beings that are able to do things like bypass any home security, control someone's mind at will, impersonate any living soul,  kill someone with a thought, etc.  Just because ever growing numbers of people can do these things, it doesn't mean that the general population is less safe.  No, this concern is an absurd idea to the people that think the average citizen can't be trusted with guns because God knows what could happen.

If you think I am reading too much into this you should read the many quotes in Michael Brown's post about the intended parallels in X-Men.  In addition to the insider comments on the film, Brown quotes one reviewer as saying, “As I watched the film, the connections and similarities were startling. You could have made the X-Men gay and the script would have worked perfectly.”  Whatever the writer and director intended, I have a hard time fitting the intended gay rights narrative to many scenes in the film, not to mention many fundamental aspects of the story.  However, society's rejection of gifted individuals through misperceiving their difference as a defect is a narrative that in broad terms naturally appeals to the gay community.  The attempts to connect the basic story to the political movement to make society recognize LGBTQ as normal and worthy of celebration through laws/jurisprudence (i.e., political coercion) comes across as forced and superficial through some ungainly humor (the awkward "mutant and proud" dialogue, for example).

Chad Thompson, an ex-gay writer, has written in "More Than Mutants" that he sees some definite agenda in the writing of the movies.  Of special interest though, he points out the third movie's plot points (likely unintended) support for ex-gay therapy.  (Here in California, the state is anti-choice with regard to conversion therapy.)  But one of the most interesting things in his article, to me, is his quote of gay actor Ian McKellan, “As a gay man, some people think that it ought to be cured and made normal again, and I find it as offensive as someone saying that they have a cure for the color of their skin.”  Do you find it as offensive as saying that they have a cure for having the wrong reproductive organs, Sir Ian?  After all, aren't we told that gender and race are equivalent class-based social constructions?  This is a tenet of the liberal creed, near as I can tell.

A left-leaning friend once opined some contempt for Michael Jackson's "Don't Matter If You're Black or White" message since it appeared to be hypocritical given that Jackson apparently didn't feel comfortable with dark skin.  I've wondered since if that friend still feels that way, and if he would think someone who got a sex change would be hypocritical for saying that it doesn't matter if you're male or female.  Which arguably is a message in Cloud Atlas, one of the directors of which recently was surgically given female parts.  (The Wachowski Brothers are now the Wachowski Siblings, if you catch my drift.)

Michael L. Brown has also highlighted this apparently bizarre inconsistency of the new orthodoxy in his article "Glee Celebrates the 'T'."  He rhetorically asks whether it would be socially acceptable for the Glee character who is a "woman in a man's body" to come out as a Caucasian in a black person's body.  Perhaps Unique would be uniquely more comfortable in his body if he had different skin.  You can actually feel liberals across America rankling at this idea.  In the 2005 movie that sought to normalize transsexuality, the protagonist says "After my operation, not even a gynecologist will be able to detect anything out of the ordinary about my body. I will be a woman. Don't you find it odd that plastic surgery can cure a mental disorder?"  You won't have a disorder in which you mind can't accept your body once you change your body to fit what it can accept.  Maybe Jerry Brown can outlaw any non-surgical therapies that address this issue.  (Michael Jackson had a mental disorder which made him hate his skin, and physical skin treatments cured him.  Don't you find that odd?)

If you don't think of X-Men as primarily targeted for minors, then consider this.  In the animated feature Para-Norman, Norman has a unique gift.  He is isolated because he is different and people, because they don't understand him, think he's weird and repulsive.  [SPOILER ALERT] The paranormal entity that threatens his town was once a child with a similar gift, mercilessly oppressed and killed by intolerant Puritans in God-fearing Pilgrim garb. (Think of Dan Savage's recent and public anti-Bible rants.) Not content with the idea that this is something to which lots of geeky kids might relate, the filmmakers work in their own specific plug for the New Normal.  The big dumb jock who you might assume is too dumb (or simply put off) to notice that a pretty girl is throwing herself at him, mentions at the end of the movie that he has a boyfriend.  Some boys talk to ghosts and some make out with other boys.  Different is okay.  Group hug, everyone!

It's only a matter of time before Disney works little messages like this into their films, being humbled by the low turnout for their films with more explicit political innuendo (Pocahontas and Hunchback come to mind), offering a little remedial morality adjustment to the children of social conservatives.

The Ol' Progressive Policy Ratchet

Income tax started out as a relatively modest level and hardly effected the average person.  That's grown over time into something that I'm pretty sure was dismissed as an absurd scenario:

Citizen X:  Where will it end?  If we give in to this, expenditures will keep growing until the government is taxing the common man and taking 20%, 30%, 40% of his paycheck for the "common good"!
Citizen Y:  Listen to this nut.  He's indulging in the ol' slippery slope fallacy.

Well, that's water under the bridge ... Or toothpaste out of the tube.  It all happened so long ago that Jay Leno's Jaywalkers aren't the only ones who think that we've always had the income tax.

But the income tax is not the only story like this. ...


I've been told that we should evaluate policies only on their stated intended immediate effects.  Yes, despite the repeated finagling of progressive social engineers and misrepresentations of their goals, we should fasten the blinders to our eyes and pretend that this has never happened before.   We should take the message as it is spoken the mass of people that have been convinced to buy into the particular liberal social change, and not be worried whether there is a deeper strategy that is related to past strategies.  No, trying to foresee where things are headed are the flat-earth doings of raving conspiracy nuts.


No, dear reader.  You might as well don your tin foil hat now.  Because you must accept this dichotomy:  either you must accept the good intentions of the Progressive mob at face value or you must believe that the whole thing is all a big farce.  To the right you will see how this dichotomy is applied.  (Click on the picture to enlarge.)

And surely the Roe v. Wade decisions wasn't going to inevitably lead to normalizing 3rd trimester abortions until people would begin wondering whether we should classify newborns as 4th trimester fetuses and kill them too.  The questions 'Where is this leading?' and 'Where is it going to end?' were just not treated as legitimate questions.

And a more obvious and more recent issue has been summed up thus:

Initially, homosexual lobbyist groups said, "All we want is to be left alone."
Then, a few years later, they said, "We just want our lifestyle to be accepted."
Not long after that it was, "We want our lifestyle to be legally recognized as a civil union."
And finally it went all the way to, "We want nothing less than marriage" . . .

How many decades back would you have to go before you'd find someone scoffing at the idea that gays would lobby to break the term "marriage" away from its roots in British common law and a universal tradition? before they'd scoff at the idea that children would be taught in school that having two daddies or two mommies or a king marrying a king was as normal as anything else?  that anyone that says a negative thing about homosexuality (hate crime) would be given remedial normalcy training? that childrens' movies would have references to homosexuality?  Nobody could have seen any of that coming. (And if they did, they shouldn't have!)

Surely, the way things have turned out have really nothing to do with the specific plans in 1970s of the core gay rights groups to undermine the tradition of marriage by commandeering the traditional institution for homosexuality, so that the whole idea of normalcy could be weakened and destroyed?  That's crazy talk.  And here's why:

Lots of gay people now simply like the idea of society accepting their relationship on exactly the same terms as all the age-old male-female union we've been calling marriage for centuries.  They want society to be forced to accept same sex unions on the same terms.  Love for everyone!  Since these regular folk have no nefarious agenda, there can be no relevant agenda that we can be legitimately worried about!  It's all coincidental that the leaders in gay activism talked about completely undermining society's traditions completely rather than securing the sweet blessings of holy matrimony for themselves.  That was then, this is now.   If we seem to be going down a slippery slope, it is all just your imagination.  Move along.  Nothing to see here.  Pay no attention to the same-sex curriculum behind the curtain.

After all, there are no tell-tale signs of inconsistency, such as demanding that people accept themselves as they are if they have gay attractions and then demanding that people not accept themselves as they are if they don't like the plumbing they were born with.  It's not like they're singing "Born This Way" for one cause and not the other...  *crickets*    

As one truly dear and well-meaning advocate of social acceptance told me, the gays just want society to back their commitment to live honorably -- and isn't that good for everyone?  Just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad.  Isn't marital sanctity the opposite of perversion?   And what about the polygamists, I asked.  Aren't they entitled to society's blessings on their commitments?  Ah, that's different: that's a union of more than just two people; and besides people get weird with it and collect child brides.  

I guess not everyone's entitled to society's stamp of approval.  Certainly not those that bitterly cling to their religion. Those perverts!   Oh, maybe we won't get around to arresting them just yet, but we're sure not going to say that any of that polygamy weirdness is normal.  Weirdos.  ... And now back to Polygamist Eye for the Transsexual Guy.  

I met Abdul at a conference on Muslim thought. I've only attended the one talk on Muslim criticism of Christianity. The 90 minute monologue gave me a headache. He thinks it's "very interesting" that it gave me a headache. He says it in this hungry way that makes me think "He's like these evangelicals that think you're getting convicted whenever they've managed to annoy the hell out of you."

But he wants to talk, so we stop for a little coffee and chat. He's very down on the decadence of the West.

"If we were to adopt your American ideals in our countries, what would the total erosion of our culture?"

"Our country wasn't founded to secularize us or take away our religion. It was founded to keep the cultural traditions of our religion and our families from being dictated by government."

"But your Constitution is not protecting you from that now. It is used to allow your government to secularize your culture, to teach the children a different morality, to teach the government's truth."

"Yes, that's true."

"Your country's pluralism is just an excuse to rob you of your culture and your morality."

"I know. But it doesn't have to be that way."

"If you want the Muslim world to believe that, you'll have to show them. You are the experiment, and it is failing."

Islam and multiculturalism in Canada

Interesting comments from Muslim Canadians:

Arjomand, who calls herself a "victim" of sharia law -- a strict set of rules based on Islam's holy book, the Qur'an, that subjugates women, as well as allows for the chopping off of hands for theft etc. -- says part of the reason she decided to immigrate to Canada was because she had heard about official multiculturalism.
"I thought how wonderful, but not anymore," she declares.
"I came here for Canadian values, not sharia values. I fled Iran on horseback because the values there threatened my very life. If people want to live under sharia or the way they lived back home, let them go back," she said.
Kanwar agrees. He says the time has come for the Canadian government to tell new immigrants "once you're in Canada we expect you to be totally devoted to Canada -- no divided loyalties."
"This country," added Kanwar, "is a democracy and democracy is founded on Christian principles.
"Canada is -- like it or not, take it or leave it -- a country founded on Christian principles where the vast majority of citizens are Christians," said Kanwar.
"Yes, there's separation of church and state but even that was a principle founded by Christians and Christianity.
"If Muslims, or anyone else, doesn't like living in a land filled with Christians or in a democracy they should get the hell out."

A commentor on that page writes that Kanwar has chosen a devotion to humanity over a devotion to Allah. I disagree that Kanwar is an apostate. I think that as many Christians have discovered you don't have to choose one over the other. I don't believe, and I hope the Muslims don't believe some of our modern interpretations of the 1st Amendment are the only school of thought on this, that the choice between a secularized society and a theocracy is a false dichotomy based on a distorted view of Jefferson's "separation of church and state".
   
The criticism of Canada's bend-over-backwards policy toward immigrants is especially noteworthy coming from these Muslims that are invested in their democratic liberties. This criticism seems to be denounced as racism in America, but then that is the easiest way to shut down an argument, but Europe generally doesn't do this (except in the last 10 years for Muslims) and when Americans expect a European country to do this, the response is predictable. As some commentators have pointed out, some ideologues will look to Europe's laws to interpret our Constitution on any matter but this one.
    
I do think that the attack on polygamy reaction to communities based on shariah in place of the law of the land is a misplaced problem. To me, the attack on Mormon or Muslim polygamy has a strong anti-religious basis. A country shouldn't have to modify their marital legalities to deal with it, but we should be wary of completely ignoring these people in our recent reevaluations (or dismissals) of common law.   In the recent criticisms of DOMA, a conservative commentator recently inveighed that before DOMA there was no precedent of federal involvement in state marital law.   Really?   He's apparently unaware of the Reynolds vs. US decision from the days when anti-Mormon sentiment was National Republican Party platform?  This Supreme Court decision is unreversed, and it establishes the U.S. (i.e., the federal entity) as the final authority on what is good for the social order.  

 As good a case as can be made for states deciding what is appropriate, this decision has created a hopeless muddle in terms of how the Fed is involved vs. how "full faith and credit" should be interpreted. As Constitutionally flawed as DOMA may or may not be, it follows from the effect Reynolds had on the reach of our federal government. (The Court made its decision based on the expert advice of a sociologist who told them polygamy was unhealthy for everyone.) Unfortunately, an amendment that protects the states from an unlimited "full faith and credit" interpretation while also protecting a state's right to determine their marital particulars will require a compromise -- a thing present at the founding of this country but now extinct. It is not our elected officials that will determine policy -- it's our Supreme Court that will decide whether a progressive or traditionalist vision is the right way for the whole country, which was founded on uniformity.

However... the thing that offends some people about Muslims is that more than one woman will be allowed to live under one house -- like in Charlie Sheen's house. Who do these polygamists think they are?  Overpaid actors?  The very idea!

If the 51st State Were Muslim

There's little doubt in my mind that Obama's previous stance on gay "right to marry" (as was that of Bill Clinton who has also "come around") was calculated to increase his odds at winning the Presidency.  Even when my opinion of him was at its peak, I didn't doubt that Obama was more liberal than his moderate trappings.  The opinion of his VP (or that of his daughters) would not ordinarily change his mind in an election year.  So why would Obama take such a risky decision unless he felt that he had so little credibility in his finance-related policies that he had no choice than to stop pretending that he is a moderate and start crusading for his side of the culture war?

I think people generally have a right to live how they want to live when it isn't obviously causing harm.  How much control municipalities have over that right is something that is yet to be truly ironed out, since there is, and has been, different ideas about what is bad for the community.  But there is also the fundamental question of how much power a community (no, not a nation, a state perhaps, but not necessarily) has the right to decide how their children are raised, what they are exposed to.  There's a balance between freedom and democracy, between protecting the individual from the community and protecting the community from the individual.

A recent NY Times op-ed (5/9/2012) opined that marriage rights "are too precious and too fragile to be left up to" the democratic process.  The scope of people's inalienable rights are best decided by wise judges.  If the wisdom of the people is scary, I find much scarier the wisdom of judges basking in the warm light of their own enlightenment.  Liberals seem to like the most fundamental issues to be decided in the least democratic manner.  Look up Thomas Friedman's lament about our "one-party democracy" [sic] in which one political party is allowed to interfere with the plans of another.  (What a world!)  If I had a dollar for every liberal that praised an authoritarian goverment with an atrocious civil rights record, I think I'd be  rich.

Now, some of the same people that love Chavez and Castro, deplore DOMA as a civil rights violation. Hmm.  Here's where even many conservatives get it wrong: Many people think that DOMA is the federal government's lone foray into marriage rights. Wrong. While homosexuals can have a ceremony, call themselves married, wear rings, and announce their wedding without committing a crime, it isn't the same for the people on "Sister Wives," who never ask for or expect the privileges of the legally married and yet are potentially in trouble with the law for living as they do.  The "civil rights movement of our generation" would gladly redefine marriage in a way that would leave these people out in the cold.  They are, after all, "fundamentalist" religious people--not a demographic the Left is remotely interested in.  And most religious people, orthodox Mormons included, are not willing to fight for them.  The ACLU's official policy is pro-plural marriage, but this seems to be merely a plank for challenging the definition of marriage.

It is not a crime in most of the U.S. for a man to father children by several women simultaneously.  In Utah it has been a crime for a man to cohabit with multiple women or otherwise pretend that multiple women are his wives.  This has been true since Lincoln orchestrated the passing of an anti-polygamy law (that he promised Brigham Young not to enforce as long as the LDS would not make trouble in the Civil War), which also made it legal for the government to seize excessive riches from religious corporations in Utah.  Utah was coerced into enshrining anti-polygamy into state law as a condition for statehood, and there it remains enshrined.   I suspect that in Utah a man can father children by as many women as he can as long as he doesn't live with them. I suspect a man could be living with two male sexual partners and not be violating any law in Utah.  A man could probably be living with his legal female wife and their shared male lover (polyamory) and not be violating any law. No, I think it's only a man cohabiting with more than one woman that violates the laws that Utah was coerced into passing by the federal government.

Many equate gay marriage with the issue of interracial marriage.  After all, isn't Loving vs. Virginia a precedent for gay marriage?  There's already a federal ruling that it doesn't apply.  But that aside, I think that there are at least two fundamental differences between the two issues.  One is that gender, unlike "race," is not an arbitrary distinction.  Otherwise, men and women's restrooms are "separate but equal," and the fact that there are double standards on who can walk around barechested is an affront to the Constitution.  I think, in general, there is more physiological and neuropsychological difference between a brother and a sister than between genetically diverse people of the same gender.

The other fundamental difference is historical tradition.  Vastly different cultures have enshrined the idea of marriage as between a man and a woman.   It's not religiocentric or ethnocentric.  In Greco-Roman cultures where homosexual relationships were tolerated or even encouraged, there was one kind of marriage.  A read about an Indian man recently who was told by his mother that he could "f*** an alligator" for all she cared as long as he married a woman and had a family.  Modernism and feminism has deplored the historical tradition of marriage with little softening by postmodernism and little care for the history of the economics of households.  A new marriage for a new age.  (Polygamy, by comparison, is a historical and recurring flavor of marriage and was a part of the life of various heroes of Biblical tradition: Abraham the "father of our faith", Jacob/Israel, and David.)

Incidentally, I never understood those who opposed interracial relationships on supposedly Biblical grounds.  Moses had an Ethopian wife after his Midianite wife.  Boaz, the great-grandfather of David, had a Canaanite mother and a Moabite wife.  Joseph had an Egyptian wife. David offended God by stealing the Hittite's wife.  (God seemed to honor that marriage.)  Everybody was marrying everybody else. Semites marrying Hamites marrying Japhethites. All good. Biblical references supposedly against interracial marriage--pretty weak by comparison.

Back to gay marriage...  My opinion would probably not be considered conservative by many "paleoconservatives" in that I think that not just civil unions or plural marriage but cohabitors in general and non-cohabiting betrothals should count for certain rights that are applicable to "choice of law" rules across state boundaries. A state would have a right to not recognize a second marriage made in a state where polygamy is legal, but should still be subject to certain contractual obligations (regarding inheritance, for example) implied by the civil contract made in the state of origin.  Too messy?  We already somehow manage something like it.  Why should a husband be allowed a hospital visit but not a fiance?  Why should someone be admitted just because he claims to be a blood relative while a domestic partner is not allowed even if the patient specifically vouches for him/her?  A state could pass a law from which a person could have a notarized statement that is recognized in a hospital for visitation rights.

But I disagree with Obama's regulatory czar Cass Sunstein that marriage as a legal concept should be abolished.  Marriage law has its basis in English common law as it is the basis for federal law and state law for almost all of the states.  Common law is assumed and referred to by our Constitution.  Marriage is a civil contract which is entered by a husband and a wife in which the two parties have separate responsibilities and different contractual expectations.  Which role you can assume is determined completely by your gender.  Statutory law can modify it, adjust it, and has done so over the years, but not redefine it.  

Here's a thought experiment I often turn to:  Imagine an Islamic country like Iraq, as though Maryland was currently as Muslim as it was once Catholic.  Let's call it Mohammedland, instead of Maryland--or Americastan, if you prefer.  Let's say that we had a national interest in setting up a democratic government with free elections, that the people of this land cry out to us to give them democracy.  Let's say further that Mohammedland eventually gets adopted as a state after 10 successful years as a democratic republic. For five years, they've lived without oppression.  But they have a proud Muslim tradition.  Their Department of Justice has words from the Koran prominently displayed on the building with a picture of the Dome of the Rock where Mohammed was taken to Heaven.

Their legislature starts out with a call to prayer, and there is an area outside where legislators may voluntarily pray toward Mecca if they are Muslim.  No one is required to be Muslim to serve in the legislature, and the one non-Muslim legislator from a county with many Catholics, Jews and Armenian Orthodox, well, he observes the prayer moments in respectful silence. They have a public school system where the kids learn scripture from the Quran as part of their cultural history.  There's no religious persecution but Islam permeates the culture and the civil life. They talk about evolution in school but they also talk about criticisms of evolutionary theories in school (they even refer students to books about intelligent design they keep in their libraries); 94% of the people believe in special creation after all.  They recognize polygamy but not same-sex marriage.  Homosexuality is not a crime as it is in many Muslim countries, but the Americastani constitution precludes homosexual marriage.  The government considers homosexuals as first-class citizens.  and allows them to live as they will, but 97% of the population considers it a terrible affront to their culture and society to recognize a homosexual partnership as a social institution.

After 10 years of their democratic experiment, they enter into statehood with its privileges, thinking naively that the Constitution really does reserve to the states powers not specifically granted to the federal government.  They don't realize that their educational curricula will be cleansed of Islam (and anything remotely favoring theism) for the benefit of their secular and Judaeo-Christian minorities that might be offended by references to Mohammed.  Criticism of of the Modern Synthesis of evolutionary theory will be outlawed. The words of the Quran will be scoured from their Dept. of Justice; the Dome of the Rock will be gone.  An atheist will sue their state over the existence of the dedicated prayer area in the public forum of the legislature, and he will win in the Supreme Court.  There will be a private ecumenical chapel instead. Their children will be taught liberal sex ed that covers safe anal sex. Their children will get abortions without their permission or knowledge. They'll be read books promoting gay marriage, and attend state universities where liberal professors will tell them to question authority as long as the authority is parental or Muslim. Their tax dollars will be used to not merely prepare their children to engage the world on a new intellectual level but to indoctrinate their children against their culture.

Now if we had set up that kind of system in Iraq, there would be no shortage of progressive voices crying out against our arrogant overriding of their culture, intrusion into their sovereignty, redefinition of their culture.  The relativists would all be standing up for Iraq because it is a sovereign state, unknowing (or conveniently forgetting) that our states once had sovereignty.  The Middle East rightly fears Westernization and fears democracy, because they've seen how Europe and the U.S. has redefined "democracy" as secularization.  We've given them firsthand evidence of how you can't forbid Congress from respecting a mode of worship without forcing secularization on a culture.  So why should we be suprised if they repeatedly bomb schools we set up in Afghanistan even if they are being set up by a President with a Arab name?  They've seen what liberals mean by "democracy."  In a "democracy," even a representative one, even in a republic, some things are "too fragile and precious" for goverment by the people; they are instead determined by an elite group of unelected academics. Welcome to Utopia, our Muslim friends. Resistance is futile.

In California, the Prop 8 episode was interesting.  The homosexual comunity was "betrayed" by the African Americans and Catholic Latinos that didn't share the "progressive" view of marriage. (Some liberal commentators noted ironically that the black voter turnout for Obama might have kept Prop 8 from failing.) They vilified the Mormons instead though, which accounts for a relatively tiny minority out here.  Gay rights activists said the facts were deliberately skewed about the effect of the court ruling on marriage.  People were "crazy" to think that their children would be exposed to alternative kinds of marriage.  Is it crazy?  Is it crazy to think that once a state redefines marriage, all of a sudden a special interest group will point out that the curriculum is "hetero-centric" and unfairly biased toward heterosexual marriage as uniquely normative?  (I smell hate crime.) That homophobia will be seen as an epidemic problem that can only be cured by exposing kids at a early age to images of happy homosexual marriage and scientific(?) studies that all lifestyle is nature not nurture?  As one left-center person put it, "They're lying about it not affecting education--it would have to have an effect--but so what?"

Does anyone really think that if a law had been proposed granting greater status to civil unions and domestic partnerships (those longed for hospital visitation rights, for example) that it wouldn't have passed?  After Prop 8, Orson Scott Card wrote about Californian Mormons who had gay friends that would no longer speak to them because they had voted for and endorsed Prop 8, even though their Mormon views had not changed and .  Concerning Prop 8, since the resulting riot, most people probably follow a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. (Unless they voted on the side of liberty, the enlightened choice favored by the non-Hispanic white voters of California. Don't give me that look; it's the liberals that are constantly reminding us what category we belong in.)

I don't know. On the one hand, I've disliked the whole concept of being licensed to marry. Do I need the state's say-so? For matters of custody though and "community property", there may be very important rules for distinguishing between living together and having a semi-permanent union. And there is also a community's ability to control what their kids hear and how they're raised, and what impressions they get in their mandatory attendance at school. I think it was disingenuous in the Prop 8 that a marraige redefinition wouldn't affect what kids are told in school. The ACLU already used a kid's harrassment to wrangle a no-opt-out same-sex training. What will it be like when all of a sudden the curriculum unfairly portrays heterosexual marriage as the norm? One kid's pain is another progressive's golden opportunity. Many people don't care what their kids see in school; and the parents that do, well, their opinion really doesn't matter.

I read one blog that made an argument that DOMA was unnecessary BS because "choice of law" already kept one state from overruling another state's laws. All DOMA seems to do is ensure that a state can't be coerced into acknowledging marriage laws that aren't their own. This is the part that is hated most, and yet it is the one that does most to protect state sovereignty. The part of DOMA about federal acknowledgement also protects states from "end runs" around state law. So it ensures that states can continue dictating their own policy. Since DOMA there have been suits where people have married in one state and tried to get it recognized in another--citing the very "full faith and credit" clause that people were "ridiculous" to worry about. In one such suit is was specifically recognized that there are thousands of federal laws referring to marriage, and DOMA was meant to keep them from being co-opted for relationships the people's representatives never intended the laws to apply to, and to keep one state from dictating national policy.

So I think that the individual has a vested interest in his/her personal liberty to have relationships without society's "permission", but I also think that a state and a community have a vested interest in how that relationship is recognized on a social level. I think almost any proposition to grant civil unions more privileges would have gone over here in CA. I don't think progressives want that. I think the hard left wants the next generation to be malleable and be shaped into the utopian society, free of the ignorant superstitions of their parents. It's not enough that they own the entertainment world, but they want the schools as well.
Now, as I understand it, there is also common law with regard to marriage. The Constitution, federal law, and most states' law is based on English common law. Marriage is a civil binding agreement with two parties: a husband and a wife. The two roles have different responsibilities and liabilities, and you don't get to choose which role. (Feminism would denounce it as sexism, but then feminism has been fine with certain inequalities.) That is the basis and precedent of the social law, subject to modification (but not total redefinition) by democratic statutory revision.

I think a provision could be made for protecting the economic and personal interests of domestic partners, polygamists, civil unions, common law marriages across state lines without affecting a state's protection against recognizing a marital status that it considers antithetical to its culture. But it has to be something that the states can live with. Something that doesn't involve North Carolina being forced to give their kids "sensitivity training."