Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
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
Continue readingWhether 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
Continue readingTraditionally, 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
Continue readingAs 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
Continue readingIt’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
Continue readingThe 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
Continue readingA 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
Continue readingIt’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
Continue readingYesterday, 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
Continue readingContentions 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
Continue readingDo 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
Continue readingThis 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
Continue reading(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
Continue readingGay 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
Continue readingMarriage 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
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