Bookworm Room

One of the things I’ve been watching is the trial attacking Prop. 8 in California.  As you know, in November 2008, California voters, by a solid majority, passed Prop. 8, which states affirmatively that, in California, marriage is between a man and a woman.  Two gay couples sued in federal court, alleging discriminatory intent.  To [...]

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A Mormon in Oakland who is seeking re-appointment to a city-run board is being turned away because he supported Prop. 8.  There’s no indication that he is homophobic.  Like me, he favors civil unions for gays, which would extend to them the full panoply of legal rights available under the law.  (I also favor civil [...]

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This is a portmanteau post, filled with interesting things I read today, some of which come in neatly matched sets.
Opening today’s San Francisco Moronicle, the first thing I saw was that an illegal teen’s arrest is causing a stir in San Francisco’s halls of power.  You see, San Francisco is a sanctuary city, and its [...]

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You remember Prop. 8, don’t you?  That was the successful California ballot initiative that said that, in America, marriage is between a man and a woman.  Immediately after November 4, gay rights activists sued.  So far, the courts are being helpful.  A court in the Northern District of California just ordered the Prop. 8 backers [...]

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Whether you are for or against gay marriage, Robert George issues a sound warning about the dangers that flow from letting the Supreme Court get its hands on the issue:
It would be disastrous for the justices to do so [rule against California's Prop. 8 and, by extension, make gay marriage the law of the land]. [...]

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Traditionally, in arguing cases to the court, there have been a very limited number of available types of legal authority:  cases, statutes, administrative rules, and law review articles (with the last being advisory only) have pretty much made up the universe of things the court needs to consider.  In this Age of Obama, though, there’s [...]

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As one of the weapons in its arsenal against Carrie Prejean, the attack media has dug up the fact that both her parents, during their obviously rancorous divorce, hurled charges at the other regarding homosexuality, and now another paper alleges that Prejean’s mother walked away from a lesbian affair.  No magazine has yet claimed that [...]

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Identity politics turns people into one dimensional characters, who must act out a set script.  If you’re black or Hispanic, you must be a Democrat, even if you oppose abortion, take a jaundiced view of gay marriage, and want school choice.  If you’re a woman, you must support equal pay for comparable work, even if [...]

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It’s been an incoherent day, one that never gave me the opportunity for contemplation and writing.  Instead, I’ve been bopping here and there, and dealing with one thing and another.  Nevertheless, I have been tracking the news, so I thought I’d just write up a mish-mash of thoughts about current issues and events.
Gaza
The top issue/event, [...]

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I think I’m processing history wrong, and I need your help filling in the gaps.
As you know, Obama invited Pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration (a much better choice, I might add, than Wright would have been).  Some in the gay community, however, are very upset, feeling that Warren’s support for [...]

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The New York Times today has a headline story that a group of conservative Episcopalian bishops is breaking away from the mainstream church because of objections to the church’s stand on gay marriage:
Conservatives disaffected from the Episcopal Church are expected to declare on Wednesday that they are founding their own rival Anglican province in North [...]

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A few months ago, the California Supreme Court overruled the will of the California voters and announced that gay marriage was a fundamental right.  The voters responded by changing the California Constitution to state that, in California, marriage is between one man and one woman.  As you know, if it were up to me, I’d [...]

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It’s time to end the post mortem and get moving, the only problem being that “getting moving” is proving to be as rancorous amongst conservatives as was the political cycle itself.  One of the schisms I’m seeing in my own blog is between pro-Life and pro- (or, at least, not anti-) abortion types.  That got [...]

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Yesterday, my dear, sweet European mother confided to me that she was pleased Obama won, because he speaks so much better than Bush.  This jived completely with a bumpersticker I just saw:  “At last, complete sentences will come from the White House” (or something like that).  I was struck again by the faith the Left [...]

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This is the second in my series of marriage posts.  My first draft, which was a failure, tried to trace the history of marriage, something that’s much better done by better informed people.  What I realized from that valiant, although pointless and time-wasting effort, is that what I’m really interested in is a religion’s interest [...]

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(This is the first in what I hope will be a series of very civil essays examining marriage.  Suek got me started with this idea based on a comment she wrote saying that, well, we need to figure out what marriage is all about.  Planned future essays will involve separating the religious aspect of marriage [...]

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Gay marriage has a warm, fuzzy feeling. Those who support it ask, who can be hurt by granting to gay couples the same rights we give to straight couples? As you know, while I have no trouble with same sex relationships between consenting adults, and favor granting civil benefits to gay couples, I [...]

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Marriage is not, and never has been, a personal right.  In Western society, it operates at two levels.  First, it functions at a religious level.  This is a deeply personal level, because in every religion, marriage is, or is equivalent to, a sacrament.  In America, you have the Constitutional right to be married in the [...]

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Dennis Prager has a good column discussing what will be, in his view, the ramifications of the California Supreme Court decision creating a new right out of thin air.  One of the points he makes is that, in the future, to avoid charges of discrimination, homosexual relationships will have to be promoted equally with [...]

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Cliff Thier talks about the far-reaching implications of the Court’s (and the government’s) “fundamental rights” language.
The WSJ’s editors take on the election ramifications of the decision — a bit of unexpected, and undeserved, good luck for Republicans in a terribly managed campaign season.
As was to be expected, National Review quickly put together a whole catalog [...]

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California joins Massachusetts.
I’ll be interested to read the decision when I get the chance.
As for me, let me reiterate my usual point. I am not categorically opposed to gay marriage. However, I think we’re rushing too fast to change human relationships that have been fixed across all human cultures for thousands of years: [...]

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I found the juxtaposition of this story and this story, both from today’s Chronicle, amusing.

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There’s fact, and there’s speculation. From the fact that he found some documents indicating that medieval men would enter into a formal contract to share bed, board and income, a “scholar” has extrapolated this into supporting the conclusion that the medieval world supported gay relationships:
For example, he found legal contracts from late medieval France [...]

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There’s been a lot of news lately about how the Left embraces radical Islam, on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend (or, at least, my useful tool). You can see this sordid embrace at work in Daniel Pipe’s debate with London Mayor Ken Livingston, and you can see it [...]

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I think traditional marriage, which often includes children, is the glue that holds a stable society together. Married couples, especially those with or planning to have children, have an enormous incentive to hold jobs, save money, create safe communities, look to the future politically, and to crave non-revolutionary continuity when it comes to social [...]

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