Monday Music

by folkbum

May or may not be safe for work. I can't tell.



Garfunkel and Oates.

Wisconsin Gay Marriage Ban Challenge Draws Attention

Check out MAL's piece in The Advocate, a hard-hitting national magazine indicative of the growing power of the LGBT civil rights movement.

The anti-banning marriage case, William C. McConkey v. J. B. Van Hollen), makes one contemplate the day that discrimination against gays will be as much an imprecation as open discrimination against ethnic minorities.

Civil rights advocates in Wisconsin are hopeful for a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision late this year that will send the gay marriage ban the way of state statutes banning marriage between difference races that were overturned in Loving v. Virginia (1967), a case referenced in the appellant brief. But it is ambiguity and not concern for equality that will perhaps negate what many here regard as a stain on Wisconsin’s reputation as a pioneer in civil rights.

Psych 101

by capper

Dad29, a sometimes reasonable person, put up this picture and opened the comment thread for discussion.

My new friend, Billiam, put up this comment:

Hmmm, because 2 men holding hands is not natural. 2 men holding guns is an exercise of a Right Guaranteed by The Constitution. Now, no one is trying to ban men holding hands. Sadly, the same can't be said of a Constitutional Right.

Seeing that Bill is a conservative, this would seem a logical response for him. Wrong, but logical.

Wrong in the sense that just this past year, Wisconsin joined a number of other states in banning gay marriage. No states have banned the 2nd Amendment, although to be honest, there have been attempts.

But the answer to the question can be found in any Psych 101 text. It is a version of the fight or flight response. When people encounter something that is foreign to them, or that they don't understand, it is human nature for the person to feel threatened. When faced with a threat, real or perceived, it is also human nature to want to flee from it, or to fight it.

Since homosexuality is not the norm for most people, and many, including myself, can't understand the feelings that a homosexual person may be experiencing, it makes them foreign, and people have a hard time accepting that. Since the normal person would feel rather silly running everytime they encounter a homosexual or find themselves faces with the fact of homosexuality, they respond with fear, which leads to anger, which helps with distancing themselves emotionally.

I have had many gay friends. The man that married me and mrs. capper was gay, as was one of our ushers. We attend the usher's commitment ceremony. Even though I cannot understand the homosexual point of view, I can understand that it is not a threat to me, my masculinity, or my marriage. That is why I had voted no against the ban, and hope to see it repealed some day. It is nothing more than prejudice against gays.

But the thing that really prompted me to write on this subject wasn't Dad's post or Bill's comment. It was another comment by someone named Amy:

Yes, Billiam did (nail it), with an extension: we are also endowed with a God-given right to protect ourselves, and Catholic teaching recognizes that right beyond even the Constitution.

That only made me think of this:

Michigan's marriage-amendment chickens have roosted

by folkbum

In the (as it turns out, almost entirely superfluous) Cheddarsphere debating over the amendment to ban gay marriage and any other substantial similar legal construct, the pro-amendment forces demanded, repeatedly, evidence that such a broadly worded measure would do anything besides what its sponsors told us it would do--namely, bar only marriage and civil unions. We anti-amendment folks cited open cases in places like Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan, but none of those cases had gotten to a sufficent point of resolution that the pro side couldn't dismiss them in that way they do.

But now the Michigan Court of Appeals has spoken, and it turns out we on the anti-amendment side were right:

Public universities and state and local governments would violate the state constitution by providing health insurance to the partners of gay employees, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled Friday. [. . .] "The marriage amendment's plain language prohibits public employers from recognizing same-sex unions for any purpose," the court wrote.

A constitutional amendment passed by Michigan voters in November 2004 made the union between a man and a woman the only agreement recognized as a marriage "or similar union for any purpose." Those six words led to the court fight over benefits for gay couples.

Gay couples and others had argued that the public intended to ban gay marriage but not block benefits for unmarried opposite sex or same-sex domestic partners.

The appeals court agreed with the Michigan attorney general, Republican Mike Cox, who said in a March 2005 opinion that same-sex benefits are not allowed in a state that does not recognize same-sex unions.

Well, okay, there is yet one more step--the Michigan Supreme Court--but as you can see, the amendments with the kind of broad language that the one passed here in Wisconsin last fall do, indeed, produce results beyond what the backers so disingenuously described to us.

Consider:

1. We have plenty of government institutions around the state that offer domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples. Many of those places--the City of Milwaukee, for example--actually require that auch a partnership be supported by extensive documentation showing that the relationship is, indeed, substantially similar to marriage.
2. We have a broadly worded amendment that bans the recognition of same-sex relationships that are "substantially similar" to marriage.
3. We have a Republican Attorney General who supports the amendment, and seemed not to care that both his predecessor and his election opponent raised concerns about an interpretation of the amendment that would ban domestic partner benefits.

Those are the three ingredients that have gotten Michigan to where it is. Whatever the resolution in Michigan's high court, you can bet there are forces watching from here in Wisconsin ready to file suit against government agencies that offer domestic partner benefits.

And, relatedly, we were also told repeatedly by the pro-amendment forces that passing this amendment would stop questions of same-sex relationships' status being defined by the courts. I guess we see how that turned out, eh?

Anti-Gay Marriage and Civil Unions Amendment, the folkbum recommendation: Vote NO November 7

Shall section 13 of article XIII of the Wisconsin constitution be created to provide that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state and that a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state?

I'm going to be blunt here for a second: For a significant part of the "yes" crowd, this amendment is all about the butt sex. They don't like it, and this is a chance to register that disgust.

For a significant part of the "no" crowd, this is about same-sex marriage (or, perhaps, civil unions). They want it legalized, and this is a chance to register that desire.

The amendment is actually about neither of those things--if it passes, the butt sex will still be legal, and if it fails, same-sex marriage will still be illegal. Even if we get what we want, we won't get what we want.

For a small, teeny, tiny slice of people in the middle, this vote is actually about the scope of the amendment's wording, whether it's too broad and overreaching or just broad enough to stop those activist judges. It is on them--I'd guess maybe five or seven percent of voters, total--that the burden in this election falls; this amendment will succeed or fail based on their choice in the voting booth.

For me, the choice is easy. I'm part of the "no" crowd as described above; I believe there is no reason (and I have argued this exhaustively over the last two-plus years) to deny gay and lesbian couples the rights and responsibilities (and the title) granted automatically to heterosexual couples through marriage. Whatever horror stories partisans try to spin about Scandanavia or Massachusetts, no conclusive evidence exists that the sky has fallen where gay marriage is legal (see this post, for example).

For many bloggers on the right--Dad29 is a good example--the choice is easy. You know by his constant references to "homosex" marriage and his insistence that Mark Foley's predatory nature is normal for gay men that his understanding of the issues doesn't get far beyond what parts go where. And, as nice as Dad29 may be in real life, his is an attitude rooted in bias and prejudice against people who engage in that behavior--behavior which both hurts no one and, as with sex in any "heterosex" marriage, is not what truly defines a relationship worth recognizing. See, for example, this story of two men whose connection is not rooted in sex at all. But Dad29's irrational obsession with the butt sex would deny these men a satisfaction for "the need for mutual love and affection."

For Julaine Appling, the point-woman for the "yes" vote here in Wisconsin, the choice is also easy, and she is well-poised to harness the discriminatory impulses of those who hate the butt sex. Cory Liebmann has documented her ultra-discriminatory history:

Appling attended Bob Jones University in the 1970s, receiving three degrees. During the time that Appling attended Bob Jones University, they refused to admit African American students. Bob Jones started admitting married African American students in 1971 and single African American students in 1975. This is also a university whose chairman refused to fly the campus flag at half-mast when Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Chairman Bob Jones, Jr. called the civil rights leader an "apostate." The University that Appling chose to attend also banned interracial dating until 2001. Prior to that year, the University said that it would expel students who dated or married "outside their own race" or "espouse, promote or encourage others" to violate those rules.

It is clear that Julaine Appling's education at Bob Jones University is informing her thinking on discrimination. University officials held that its ban on interracial dating and marriage did not discriminate against anyone because it applied to all races equally. Compare this with a statement from Appling's organization, which, after saying that the amendment would not discriminate against anyone, continues to say the following: "all Americans have the right to marry, subject to certain conditions that apply equally"

There is a more intellectual flavor of proponent, too, the Rick Esenbergs and Owen Robinsons of the world, convinced that a yes vote is all that will save us from the courts--"black-robed mullahs," in the words of another blogger. Esenberg, in particular, has spent three of his last four posts (as of this writing) telling us how what happened in New Jersey (their Supreme Court pulled a Vermont, ordering that the state offer either marriage or civil unions to same-sex couples) is The End Of The World And Could Happen Here Any Minute Now And We Must Pass This Amendment To Protect The People From The Courts.

It's this argument that, on the one hand, is far more persuasive than people who don't like the butt sex or people who insist on forcing their religious views on the rest of us. But on the other hand, this is also the most ridiculous, since the "will of the people," which supposedly would be subverted by the courts--was subverted by the Jersey court, they say--is against the sentiment of half this amendment. Let me rephrase: Their argument is that the will of the people (as expressed, for example, by a vote on an amendment like this, or through their elected representatives) should not be overturned by a court. And if same-sex marriage were imposed, that would be the case.

But a solid majority of Wisconsinites are in favor of offering civil unions to same-sex couples: A 2004 Badger Poll (.pdf), taken when the amendment was first up for discussion, found that an amendment that made no mention of civil unions--in other words, banned only marriage--polled at 64%, well above the 53% the amendment as written polled (these results were mirrored in a St. Norbert poll earlier this year, which I haven't been able to Google up, but is referred to here). A Badger Poll from earlier this year (.pdf) found support of civil unions--outside of the context of the amendment--had support of a full 60% of Wisconsinites. If what happened in New Jersey happened here, it would finally force the legislature to confront the fact that most of us here feel that same-sex relationships do indeed deserve protection, rights, and recognition, whether we call it marriage or not. In other words, a civil unions ruling would make the legislature actually implement the will of the people--hardly the End Of The World scenario Esenberg and his ilk would have us believe.

Another, even more silly argument from that side, is that if the amendment fails, the next day there will be court cases demanding legalized same-sex marriage. I doubt that, in part because Wisconsin's law against same-sex marriage has been challenged and stood previously. But we also know from experience that even if the amendment passes, there will be court cases galore. Everyone who's honestly looked at this recognizes that the "yes" side is just as prone--if not moreso--to using the courts to get what they want. The Alliance Defense Fund, for example, already has a history of filing suit here in Wisconsin to stop same-sex partner benefits. This was the same Alliance Defense Fund tapped by John Gard and the legislature to defend the state against the suit to provide partner benefits at the UW.

Finally, it's also important to remember that this amendment, like the death penalty referrendum, relies on Republicans' belief that voters are rubes. If they really cared, they could have had this amendment on the ballot 18 months ago, but they chose to delay protecting the people from the evils of gay marriage long enough that it would boost turnout for Mark Green. In fact, some on the "yes" side were a bit giddy at the news from New Jersey, figuring it would galvanize and energize Republican voters (and they accuse us of making this partisan!).

In the end, as I said at the beginning, the vast majority of us will be voting on ths amendment not based on the subtleties and ramifications of its wording, but rather on the broader notions it represents--either we don't like the butt sex or we don't see why our gay and lesbian friends should be denied equal rights just because they're born loving differently than we do. Clearly, I fall into the latter camp, and I encourage you--even if you don't like the butt sex, even if you have been tempted by the silly arguments of the Esenberg camp--to vote no next week. An amendment denies the legislature the ability to implement the popular civil unions; an amendment provides the impetus for those who hate the butt sex to fill the courts with lawsuits for years to come.

And an amendment which denies rights to citizens has never been done before here in Wisconsin. This is not the time to start that tradition, either.

Vote no on November 7.

Rick Esenberg and the ADF

A follow-up to something I mentioned yesterday: Rick Esenberg has clarified his relationship to the Alliance Defense Fund:

First, I do not work for ADF and I will not take upon myself the burden of agreeing with every position taken by every client they represent if for no other reason that I am not aware of them. What I do with ADF is consider referrals from them of pro bono work. I was asked to blog on a law blog they have created. This does not mean that I become involved in everything they do or that they consult with me on anything they do. I think ADF is a fine organization that provides excellent legal representation to religious conservatives (on lots of issues that have nothing to do with gays and lesbians), but Rick is not ADF and ADF is not Rick.

Thanks to Rick for explaining his role; as I noted, given the paucity of appearances of his name on ADF's website, it seemed unlikely that the connection was strong.

However, Rick goes on in that post to say this, about the ADF and the possible consequences of the language in the second sentence of the anti-gay-marriage-and-civil-unions-and-any-other-substantially-similar-legal-arrangement amendment:

As to what position ADF will take on domestic partner benefits, I don't know. I think the question is too imprecise to even hazard a guess. I do know that they have taken the position that reciprocal benefit schemes are OK. What they are hinky about (and, I think, rightly so) is in creating statuses that are "marriage lite." They don't mind people sharing benefits (as long as its not part of a status like marriage) or entering into agreements under which they may assume certain obligations toward another.

My opinion, after thinking a lot since I first blogged about it in March, is that the amendment would not prohibit an employer from saying that you can designate another person to share your health insurance. I can't tell you whether people employed by ADF would agree. They are smart guys and girls and form their own opinions.

That completely doesn't square with reality; in the post I linked to yesterday, Joshua Freker documents that time after time the ADF has gone after partner benefits, both in Wisconsin and around the country. Neither Josh nor Rick distinguishes that these challenges seem to be of public employees' benefits, not the private sector; but as a public employee (Milwaukee Public Schools), I can tell you that I don't want the ADF meddling in what my employer can and can't do, the way they tried to in Madison. And ADF-affiliated attorneys have challenged more than just bennies, up to and including domestic violence protections.

These are not abstract "Oh, gee, I don't know what would happen" sort of questions. Rick Esenberg, too, is a smart man and a smart enough attorney to know precedent when he sees it. He's waffling when he says he doesn't know what ADF might do. And his defense--that the ACLU might sue demanding recognition of same-sex marriage without the amendment--is not enough to cover that waffling.

McIlheran Watch: Is it OCD?

Or does Julaine Appling have compromising pictures?

There must be something to Patrick McIlheran's need to devote three Sunday columns in a row to the anti-gay-marriage-and-civil-unions-and-any-other-substantially-similar-legal-arrangement amendment. (Reminder: please vote no.)

Today's column is full of ridiculousness, but includes a paragraph or three on something I actually know something about, and I can tell you he's full of it. He writes,

We even have an example of gay marriage. Journalist Stanley Kurtz has written extensively on the Netherlands, blessed as recently as the mid-1990s with a low rate of out-of-wedlock childbearing. Then came a successful campaign for gay marriage. Unmarried childbearing, already rising a bit, did a hockey-stick bend upward. For eight years, it's outpaced the rest of western Europe.

This is mainly among opposite-sex couples, which shows how including gay couples changes the meaning for everyone. The change repurposed marriage away from bonding mothers, fathers and children, making it instead about a couple's love.

In which case, says Kurtz, why bother with the confining hassle of marrying? The law no longer prefers it. In fact, he says, more unmarried Dutch now say they're having children "as a test of their couplehood" - yet fewer ever marry. This inverts the purpose of marriage, making children an instrument to serve adults' emotional satisfactions.

Stanley Kurtz is a favorite among anti-gay-marriage people, as I learned during my very first "battle" as Iron Blogger Democrat (start at the bottom and read up), a battle I won handily on the subject of constitutionally prohibiting gay marriage. As it turns out, Kurtz's research on Scandanavian gay marriage--assuming he's not putting his partisan thumb on the scale--simply does not project at all onto the US. Here's one little bit that I wrote then:

His "study" of Scandinavian marriage was published in The Weekly Standard, not a peer-reviewed journal. He held anti-gay prejudices, based not in "science" but his own standards of morality (really, read some of his earlier writings), before he started. And there is no easy way to map the Scandinavian results onto this country, as the study shows that the easy availability of hetero- and homosexual civil unions undercut marriage; we do not have a history here of civil unions!

Indeed, I found opinion pieces of Kurtz's going back years before his "study" of Scandanavian gay marriage was undertaken. And I also found a piece from M.V. Lee Badgett at Slate about exactly this issue. Economist Badgett eviscerates the primary point McIlheran borrows from journalist Kurtz for his column. Here's just a taste:

The main evidence Kurtz points to is the increase in cohabitation rates among unmarried heterosexual couples and the increase in births to unmarried mothers. Roughly half of all children in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are now born to unmarried parents. In Denmark, the number of cohabiting couples with children rose by 25 percent in the 1990s. From these statistics Kurtz concludes that " … married parenthood has become a minority phenomenon," and—surprise—he blames gay marriage.

But Kurtz's interpretation of the statistics is incorrect. Parenthood within marriage is still the norm—most cohabitating couples marry after they start having children. In Sweden, for instance, 70 percent of cohabiters wed after their first child is born. Indeed, in Scandinavia the majority of families with children are headed by married parents. In Denmark and Norway, roughly four out of five couples with children were married in 2003. In the Netherlands, a bit south of Scandinavia, 90 percent of heterosexual couples with kids are married. [. . .]

No matter how you slice the demographic data, rates of nonmarital births and cohabitation do not increase as a result of the passage of laws that give same-sex partners the right to registered partnership. To put it simply: Giving gay couples rights does not inexplicably cause heterosexuals to flee marriage, as Kurtz would have us believe. Looking at the long-term statistical trends, it seems clear that the changes in heterosexuals' marriage and parenting decisions would have occurred anyway, even in the absence of gay marriage.

Read, as they say, the whole thing; you can also read Badgett's discussion paper (.pdf) on the subject, which even makes his points in convenient chart form.

The title of McIlheran's column today is "The amendment's cruel? Alternatives are crueler." This implies that allowing gay marriage (which defeating the amendment itself would not do) would be "cruel." To support that, he turns to a partisan who can't even read demographic tables right. Therefore we must, McIlheran says, write discrimination into the constitution.

Seems to me, if we're going to go mucking up the constitution of this state, we need something stronger than that.

"God's words are very clear on what marriage is."

Or so believes Julaine Appling, the prime mover behind support for the antigaymarriageandcivilunions amendment, according to Cory Liebmann at OWN:

Another thing said by Appling in La Crosse also reveals another true motivation for this amendment. She reportedly told the church that "God's words are very clear on what marriage is." So why is she only saying that in churches? Why doesn't she start running commercials making statements like that? Because in public she is pretending that the core reason for this amendment is societal in nature, when it is really one of personal religious belief. The day that we start putting anyone's personal religious views into the state constitution, we endanger our very form of government.

But what Cory doesn't understand is that, indeed, the Bible is as clear as can be:

King Solomon loved many foreign women besides the daughter of Pharaoh (Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites), from nations with which the LORD had forbidden the Israelites to intermarry, "because," he said, "they will turn your hearts to their gods." But Solomon fell in love with them. He had seven hundred wives of princely rank and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned his heart.

Clearly, at least a few hundred wives per man is okay; any more than that and good religious men might go heathen.

I want an amendment about that.

Where's the Logic in Gay Marriage Ban?

Guest blogger Steve Paske here. For once I'm going to resist the urge to argue against my fellow educators on the subject of what we should be paid. Though normally quite moderate, an article in my home State Minneapolis Star Tribune (I just returned from overseas and am with my parents for a few days), has brought out my left-leaning side on the gay marriage issue today.

It seems that the Washington State Supreme Court upheld the State's ban on gay marriage on Wednesday. Now here is an issue where I just don't understand Conservative logic. And remember that in any good arguement with a Conservative you will hear the line, "Conservative's arguements are based on reason and logic, liberal arguements are based on emotion."

But let's look at the logic behind the decision made in Washington State. In defending the Court's decision to uphold the ban, Justice Barbara Madsen wrote,

"The gay marriage ban is constitutional because the Legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival."

Essential to survival! I believe if I were to check out current world population figures there would be about seven billion people on the planet today, including about 300-million in the U.S.A. But by virtue of the conservative logic of this decision, we're to believe that human existance would be threatened if we allowed the marraige of gays.

One word: Absurd! For Justice Madsen to insinuate that the legalization of gay marraige could even put a dent in the birthrate is insane. Even if it did have a dramatic effect, let's say a 5% drop, I fail to see how that would hurt the State of Washington in any way.

The fact is that those who argue that gay marriage should not be allowed are generally basing their arguments on an emotion called faith. While I respect the rights of Christians to consider the act of homosexuality as immoral, I fail to see why their view of morality is what gets to dictate legislation.

This issue is precisely the reason we have a separation of Church and State. The founding fathers (who no doubt conservatives would point out, must have disdained homosexuality) wrote the Constitution in a manner that would protect the rights of individuals that didn't quite fit in with the most popular beliefs of the day.

In my opinion the only way to justify a ban on gay marraige would be to prove that it harms society, and to prove it in a logical way. Clearly the Court is stretching logic when it argues that homosexual marraige be outlawed because of the effect it might have on procreation and the survival of the species. If it's more kids they want I will happily volunteer to be a part of that process. And in that process there is no need to discriminate against people who are gay.

McIlheran Watch: Hey, Gays, Go Back in the Closet and Let me Insult You

As the debate over various gay marriage amendments heats up--nationally, again, where is fizzles--and here in Wisconsin, it's interesting to watch pundits' true colors coming out. Even the circumspect ones might leave enough pieces lying around to put together into a full picture. In Patrick McIlheran's case, the picture is not very attractive.

We already know that he favors the anti-gay marriage (and civil unions and other substantially similar arrangements) amendment because he really wants to criticize the gays. In a November column, he wrote (my emphasis),

The campaign for gay marriage is all about denying anyone the ability to disagree. If we are told by legislators or courts to permit same-sex marriage, then any disagreement we might have with it can have no effect on what we do or say. The law will have told us that we must regard the couple as married, even if we think that's nonsense.

That's because marriage isn't about mutual affections, an ungovernably private matter. Nor is it the prerequisite to intimate relations: No one suggests a lack of a legal document has kept any couple pining in separate beds.

Rather, marriage is about declaring those mutual affections before the world and having the world in turn regard two people as a unit. [. . . O]nce the state says marriage includes mutual husbandry, there's no disagreeing. The moment you treat the couple any differently than any other, you'll find yourself cornered by a motivated, high-end pro-bono lawyer ready to dice, slice and ice you. Good luck.

In other words, shut up and let me insult you all I want.

And now we now also know that Pat doesn't just want even want to know gays exist. In response to MPS school board member Jennifer Morales's coming out this week:

Frankly, I suppose that like many I’d prefer to say nothing--and that she hadn’t made a public thing of it. Did we have to know this? There is a virtue in discretion, after all, a reason bedrooms have doors.

The way modern society is disposed, we are not supposed, upon learning someone’s homosexual, to think less of him, since we’re not supposed to regard homosexuality with moral disapproval. Yet the plain fact is that a great many denominations and their adherents do view gay sex as morally problematic. What can a public coming-out be, then, but, intended or not, a confrontation with what many people think is a matter of right and wrong?

Such a declaration could, I suppose, be presumed a morals-neutral thing, but this seems absurd: One does not come out as a fan of the color red or as being fond of pickles. [. . .]

I know the act of "coming out" is a big thing if you feel your sexual preference is the defining characteristic of your life and you’ve kept it a secret. But if it’s therapeutic to tell someone, surely therapy could be achieved by involving family and a circle of friends, by some step short of bringing all Milwaukee, whether they wish it or not, into a confidence.

The fact that gays and lesbians exist, and that we know about them, is too much for him to handle. Jeebus forbid that he should have to know that something exists that he disagrees with.

(The full story on Morales's coming out is here. I say good for her. I find it interesting that McIlheran critiques Morales, a public figure, for making it public, while it's his paper--on whose editorial board he sits--ran the story.)

In NO! News--Big Victory for Fair Wisconsin

Among other big fights this fall--for Jim Doyle, against Sensenbrenner, and for the 8th CD--there is the fight against the amendment that bans gay marriage, civil unions, and any substantially similar arrangement.

Fair Wisconsin, the people who bring you the NO on the Amendment blog, have secured a big victory, one you won't hear about in the media, I'm sure (see update below). They announced today that they now have 72 county coordinators in the fight against the amendment:

“With six months until Election Day, we have assembled a massive grassroots outreach program with lead volunteers on the ground in every single Wisconsin county,” said Fair Wisconsin Campaign Manager Mike Tate. “These volunteers live in every corner of Wisconsin and come from all different walks of life. They are highly motivated and passionate about defeating the ban and keeping discrimination out of our constitution.”

The county coordinators will serve as leaders willing to be contacts for other volunteers in their area. They will also help to provide a local perspective on why more and more voters oppose the civil unions and marriage ban.

We need to recognize that the pro-discrimination folks will have massive mobilization as well. Fair Wisconsin's achievement here is huge and gives the good side of the force significant boots-on-the-ground capability.

Please contact Fair Wisconsin if you are interested in volunteering or donating to help the cause.

(Update: The media have covered it, kind of. Susan Lampert Smith mentions it in a bad column today, and the Wisconsin Radio Network did an item.)

Wednesday Quotes

Drum: Your income ought to be about $4,000 higher than it is, but instead of getting that income you get bought off with a $200 tax cut from the Republican Party. Meanwhile, the lucky duckies at the top get a 100% pay increase and a 30% tax cut. It's a good time to be super-rich in America.

Neiwert: Because these potential abuses exist, a sense of ethics is obligatory for anyone who possesses this power. It's why the Society of Professional Journalists has a Code of Ethics that abjures such behavior.

Ed Thompson: Ed Thompson says the No. 1 issue in Wisconsin this year is defeating a Republican-backed constitutional amendment that would emphatically ban same-sex marriage and similar civil unions. [. . .] The GOP-run Legislature is attempting to "pass laws of prejudice against people," Thompson told convention-goers. "If you can accept that, you're not a Libertarian. You're not even an American. You're a bigot."

Grumps: The CIA is paying people to read blogs and then believing what they read because, you know, if it's on the Internet it has to be true. Then they pass it on to our President in his daily briefing reports. GW doesn't believe what he reads in the papers so he ignores it, then gets his news from blog digests. Think about how often Spivak and Bice get it right and then be very afraid.

Pocan: Hey GOPpers, I have a suggestion for a version of TABOR for you. How bout you just close the state coffers to every special interest that winks at you and limit spending in the next budget? Or is that hard to do in an election year?

Lynch: Yesterday the governor had to veto yet another Republican attack on the SAGE program to reduce class sizes. The legislature actually passed a bill that would let schools take funding to reduce class sizes and then not reduce class sizes.

Mark Pocan recounts the "debate" on the Hate Amendment

Rick Esenberg tells me I shouldn't call it the Hate Amendment, but I do, and will continue to. Later I may explain why I call it that instead of the more cumbersome amendment to ban gay marriage, civil unions, and any "substantially similar" legal arrangement amendment.

I also put "debate" in quotation marks, since only two people seemed to speak in favor of the bill:

The only Republicans to debate the merits of the measure were the author, Rep. Mark Gundrum, and Rep. Eugene Hahn. Hahn’s debate centered on the need to follow the Bible – or as he stated, the B-I-B-L-E. He spelled it out as to not say the word aloud.

Gundrum, for his part, briefly answered a few questions about the bill, but finally let a little of the real conservative red meat on this issue out as he talked about his fear of multiple people getting married in the Netherlands. He also heard there were “polyamorists” in Wisconsin.

So there ya go. Read the rest, as it includes a nice moment courtesy of Milwaukee's Jon Richards, and some pretty scary stuff about John Gard.

Something sort of good about Sensenbrenner

For the most part, Sensenbrenner's take on gays is he's anti-marriage but pretty much live and let live when it comes to domestic partnerships; it's nice of him to offer second-class citizenship, don't you think? He has spewed some of the usual rhetoric about "the gay invasion" into Americans' marriages. Still, anti-gay initiatives have never taken center stage in his platforms. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but my research says no.

I know he helped pass the House statute to "protect" the rest of the U.S. from recognizing Massachusetts marriages.

Considering this, here's a scenario I'd like your opinion on. The right will take swift action here in Wisconsin, if the State Legislature passes its anti-rights bill targeting the lgbt community. It looks like it will win. And this time there won't be any gray areas, i.e. allowing basic civil rights such as domestic partner benefits. They want it all: no hospital visits, no inheritance rights, no d.p. arrangements, and certainly no adoptions.

They even came up with these nifty pink triangles for us to wear. You know, separate but equal.

What's going to be interesting in this election year is how Sensenbrenner will bring this state initiative into the fold of his reelection campaign. He certainly won't be able to ignore it. When I asked his staffer in D.C. for my article if he'd be running with this on his platform, I got the standard, "No comment."

The right is on the run this year, even if smug conservatives or cynical progressives don't want to admit it, and they'll try and sway voters their way using this tactic, just as they did in 2004. In addition to immigrants, gays will be on the right's whipping post. Sensenbrenner won't be able to ignore the issue, because he needs the right.

Is he really for this take-no-prisoners approach to the lgbt community?

Maybe they're correct about the 5th District being untouchable, and I'm in la-la land. But I think even WI Republican voters will ignore this hate-filled approach because they know they're not getting any return on investment from extremely high taxes. (Bryan Kennedy has a lot of information on that, bk2006.org) And those are just the people who are still working, or haven't been devastated by a serious illness in the family, or from chronic un- and under-employment.

I forecast Republican burnout at the polls. Even among people who secretly hate gays.

The Hate Amendment, coming soon

I do hope all of you are following the news from the Action Wisconsin team and their No on the Amendment! blog. The Assembly seems poised to vote on the amendment to write the ban on gay marriage into the state Constitution next Tuesday (this would be a good time to call your Assemblyperson).

They also have had a number of interesting articles up profiling real people, and a new series profiling the real scary people, including Channel 30 fixture (Makes Me) Ralph Ovadal and the Wisconsin Marriage Defenders.

Debunking Arguments for the Hate Amendment, Part Four

I've been neglecting my occasional series on Wisconsin's anti-gay-marriage amendment while building up a folder full of bookmarked pro-hate arguments. I'm going to try this week to get out from under the backlog. Today's contestant is a repeat customer, Lucas from the right-Cheddarsphere blog Wild Wisconsin. You may remember Lucas from our debut installment of this series, when I considered his first four reasons for favoring an amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions in this state:

1. God said that homosexuality is wrong.
   
2. Homosexual marriage will destroy traditional marriage.
   
3. It's all about the Children.
   
4. It reduces marriage to attraction.

Each of those reasons is full of holes and, singly or collectively, cannot justify writing discrimination into our state constitution. Not to be outdone, though, Lucas offered four more reasons in a recent post:

1. Laws are Not Enough
   
2. An Amendment is Not a Duplication
   
3. Marriage Merits Protection in the Constitution
   
4. The Supreme Court is Ready

Again, none of these is persuasive: These mostly end up being duplicative of the kinds of arguments advanced by the policticians, folks like Scott Fitzgerald who cannot come right and say, "God says!" and get away with it. Of course, Fitzgerald himself has been the subject of this series, where he was taken to task on arguments much like Lucas's new reasons #1, 2, and 4, so I won't bore you by repeating myself. Lucas's #3, though, deserves notice here. He writes,

I think we should be able to drive 75mph on the interstates. Does that mean I want a constitutional amendment to ensure that I can? No. Such an issue does not rise to the level of a fundamental right or liberty and should be left to the legislature to decide by law. But certain foundations of civil society that should never change and are not dependent upon the circumstance or age we live in are to be rooted in the Constitution. Marriage rises to that level. The mini societal unit of the family upon which all other parts and forms of government are built is at stake. There is no reason why this would change; family and marriage have always been, always will be, and will always be a positive influence on society. An amendment is appropriate.

Lucas does three things here: One, he avers that marriage is a basic civil right, agreeing with the majority opinion in the landmark US Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which finally invalidated anti-miscegenation laws in--and it still boggles my mind that it was this recently--1967. Two, he declares that marriage "should never change," implying, of course, that marriage never has changed. And three, he declares that "all other parts and forms of government" are based on marriage. To Lucas, these three things add up to enough reason to pass the amendment. But Lucas is either wrong in his assertions, or undone by their actual implications. In reverse order (there's a reason):

I do not know where Lucas learned his history and civics, but our governments--local, state, federal--are not "built" on marriage. It is good to have stable populations and strong families, but the founding documents of the country, in particular, make no mention of marriage, family, children, and so on. In fact, from the first century or so of this country's existence, you wouldn't know that women even existed, let alone were necessary and critical as half of that "mini societal unit" that was so fundamental to our government it is never discussed.

Marriage "defenders" often rely on the argument that marriage is some kind of fixed star, that it has always been as it is now, and should never change. Yet even the most elementary investigation of history or anthropology shows that this is not true; back when our forms of government were being built upon marriage (in Lucas's mind), women were chattel in this country, essentially owned and dominated by men and passed between men to cement property deals or strengthen aristocratic blood ties. There is a snide comment in there about how fundamentalists wish we could go back to that, but I don't think that's what Lucas wants. But he should read up on the history and varied definitions of marriage, including centuries of change just in this country.

Finally, if indeed marriage is, as Lucas puts it, "a fundamental right or liberty" (and I concur that it is), then the government cannot deny access to that liberty to anyone, particularly through targeting a class of citizens to deny the right to. The fourteenth amendment is clear in that it offers equal protection to everyone: No state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This amendment is diammetrically opposed to the language and the spirit of that amendment. To deny the right of marriage to gay men and lesbians is to create a "special right" for straight couples--an argument Lucas made pretty explicitly in that post of his debunked here last month.

But Lucas returns to this same argument in another recent post:

Why Homosexual Marriage Destroys Your Marriage
It always comes back. I can never write enough it seems about how allowing homosexual marriages will destroy the rights of those who are already married. It really surprises me because it seems like such a universal concept in understanding constitutional rights and responsibilities: when you allow those who have a fundamental and destructive difference to enjoy the rights that another group enjoys, the first group's rights will be destroyed. This isn't just about homosexual marriages.

Let me try and give some examples. As I said in a comment, if we gave frogs the right of citizenship--even one frog the right of citizenship--we would strike a blow against the citizenship of every other American. Froggy would now be able to vote (diluting the effect of your vote), have a right to life (your two-year-old could be convicted for killing a frog), be free from unreasonable search (DNR couldn't look inside his home), etc. I know this all sounds crazy but is the point coming thru? Letting froggy attain the rights of citizenship even tho he is fundamentally and destructively different destroys the rights of all the rest of American citizens.

Take another example. Harvard gives out degrees to those who graduate from Harvard or to those it deems worthy of them. Now Harvard is perfectly free to start handing out degrees to anyone who graduates from highschool, but by doing so Havard would expect to hear an outcry from its alumni because their degree would be worth much less. Their "right" to the benefits of a Harvard degree was destroyed when others were freely tossed degrees.

Back again to the issue at hand. If I were given a marriage license because I love my computer (which I'm not sure I do at this moment seeing my keyboard just quit on me) I hope we can all agreethat traditional marriage would be destroyed. The issue then, is not if allowing a new group (homosexuals) to enjoy a right can destroy the rights of those who already hold that right (married couples), but if there are fundamental and destructive differences inherent in homosexual marriages that will destroy traditional marriage.

I believe there is, and that is what the debate should be about.

I copied the whole of that post because, well, I wanted you to see that this is where it goes, eventually: Gay people are like . . . frogs. I mean, I just don't know what to say to this; even if you buy his "diluted" special right argument, there is still no clear description of how that dilution comes anywhere near to "destruction." I cannot see how my marriage will be different or affected in any way at all by allowing gay marriage.

In this post, Lucas never describes what the "fundamental and destructive differences" are between homosexual and heterosexual couples--maybe he belives the two previously discussed posts cover that--but it is hard not to hear in his words the words of trial judge in the case that led to the Loving decision:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Destructive differences, indeed.