Bookworm Room

I mentioned in an earlier post the interesting fact that, on my Facebook page, it is my straight friends, not my gay friends, who are the most enthusiastic supporters of gay marriage.  This is not to say that my gay friends are slacking in their support.  They just lack the enthusiasm.  For every one pro-gay [...]

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I’m not commenting on the merits of the decision, which I haven’t read, or on the merits of Prop. 8, which we’ve already hashed over at this blog.  I am commenting, however, on my utter lack of surprise with this ruling from the 9th Circuit, affirming the district court decision finding Prop. 8 unconstitutional.  Of [...]

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Cassie Jay is a young woman who makes unabashedly Leftist films.  Back, in 2010, she made a documentary called “Daddy I Do” that attacked abstinence-only education.  Even in liberal Marin, this movie caused a bit of a kerfuffle, as the local art cinema first agreed to show it, then backed off from that agreement, and [...]

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In the halcyon pre-Obama days, when Prop. 8 meant that gay marriage was a hot blogging issue, I argued that religion organizations, not the state, should be allowed to define what constitutes a “marriage,” with states confined to authorizing “civil unions.”  In that context, I commented upon the religious implications of the government mandating that [...]

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During the gay marriage debate, I mentioned to a lawyer friend of mine that gay marriage would inevitably set up a church versus state conflict if a church refused to marry a gay couple — especially the Catholic Church, which counts marriage amongst its sacraments.  My lawyer friend came back with what he thought was [...]

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The Indiana legislature is working on a bill to ban gay marriage.  On my “real me” facebook, several of my friends characterized this as an act motivated by hate:  “Stop the hate!”  “Boy, they really hate us.”  “Could they be more hateful?”  I found this formulation interesting, perhaps because semantics has been such a big [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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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Contentions blog has a short post about the Jewish vote for Obama.  I wrote a comment to that post, and share it with you here: American Jews aren’t really Jewish anymore.  With regard to Prop. 8′s success in California (preserving male/female marriage), I told a disappointed Jewish acquaintance, who was blaming “fanatic” Christians, that most [...]

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Do you think it’s coincidence that the Sunday before Prop. 8 formally goes before California voters, the SF Chron runs an article about a lesbian couple’s wedding that would be perfectly suitable for a saccharine Barbara Cartland romance?  I probably wouldn’t have noticed or cared about this little subliminal push for its readers to vote [...]

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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 do think [...]

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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 heterosexual [...]

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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 [...]

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