Know Your (Lack of) Rights

In staging a U.S. House hearing on the need to preserve religious freedom by giving employers the right to deny contraception and birth control coverage, and having an all-male panel of witnesses, the Republicans appear to have shot themselves in the feet. They appear to be wrecking their changes of electoral success in November, right?

Not so fast. The GOP may be driving moderates and most female voters away with their assault on women's rights, but they're energizing more Christian conservatives into showing up at the polls this fall and possibly making the difference in close congressional elections, as well as in the presidential election . . . where a few thousand or even a few hundred popular votes can swing a state's electoral college votes toward the Republicans. The strategy already seems to be working in the U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts, which has a large working-class Catholic population; woman of the people Elizabeth Warren seems to be in trouble in her bid to unseat incumbent Cosmo boy Scott Brown.

Oh yeah, the singling out of this particular aspect of the Affordable Care Act could attract independent and establishment Republican voters who don't care about contraceptive coverage but detest the health care law to come out and vote, because the law includes a government mandate for everyone to buy medical insurance. Such voters may see the contraceptive coverage requirement as a reminder of the idea of government intrusion into health care, not necessarily as a way to keep women down. They may vote Republican simply to get the law repealed.

Meanwhile, the Fat Man In the State House, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, vetoed a bill allowing gay marriage in the Garden State after both houses of the New Jersey legislature approved it with solid majorities. They just don't have enough votes to override it. This will help Christie shore up his bona fides with the national right-wing movement - look for lots of out-of-state money to pour into his campaign for re-election next year - and position him for a presidential run in 2016 or 2020.

Despite ample evidence that the majority of voters always reject by popular vote the extension of rights to others - in New Jersey itself, the all-male electorate voted down a referendum to grant women the vote in the state in 1915 - Christie prefers to have the gay marriage issue voted on by referendum. How many states have placed a referendum on gay marriage before the voters? 31. How many of these referenda have passed? Zero. Christie says he respects the intelligence and integrity of the voters to make the right decision on the issue. Why would they - they voted for him, didn't they?

The only people who should vote on civil rights are legislators. The Democrats in New Jersey have made it clear that they won't stand for a referendum on this issue, which would likely fail. They also plan to garner enough votes to override Christie's veto before the current legislative session ends in January 2014. Personally, I think gay marriage has a better chance of passing by referendum. :-(

The Land Ain't Got No Culture

Oh, Christ, are the culture wars starting up again?

The Obama administration has issued a directive stating that Catholic schools and hospitals have to provide coverage for contraceptives and birth control pills without co-pays in an effort to broaden health access for women. Republicans have jumped on this issue like vultures on a carcass signifying their opposition to force Catholic institutions to pay for medical practices they're philosophically opposed to, calling it an affront to religious freedom and an attack on the Catholic Church. Noted Republican Catholic lawmakers such as House Speaker John Boehner and U.S. Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Marco Rubio of Florida vow to support legislation to overturn Obama's directive. Meanwhile, noted Democratic lawmakers such U.S. Senators Charles Schumer of New York Barbara Boxer of California and Illinois congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, along with Judith Waxman and Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center, praised the administration's efforts for expanding coverage for women.

By the way, while there are many Gentiles who back the President as well, I narrowed my examples of individuals supporting this new policy to Jews for a reason. I have long suspected that contraception opponents are as anti-Semitic as they are misogynistic, because many women's health advocates tend to be Jewish.  And, whenever Catholics and evangelicals complain about assaults on their religious liberties and their anti-contraception, pro-life beliefs by the liberal elites, it's a slippery slope to blaming the "New York" or "Hollywood" elites, which are both code phrases to refer to Jews. Catholics and evangelicals say they're defending themselves against what they call the "secular Jewish assault" on their faith, without stopping to think how a people who spend a day in early autumn atoning for their sins are a secular people.

Whether or not conservative Christians see any stand in favor of reproductive rights as being redolent of Jewishness, their stand on denying women their right to control their own bias reeks of being elitist itself - a mostly male elite telling women of different religious and economic backgrounds how to run their lives, including the non-Catholic female employees of Catholic universities and hospitals who need this coverage. Republicans think they may have found the issue to swing enough votes - Catholic votes - their way to unseat Obama in November. It's all good and fine to say that many Catholics use birth control and don't automatically subscribe to church dogma, but there are many more Catholics disgusted enough by how the GOP has framed this issue - and by the way, 335,000 houses of worship have been exempted from this directive - to desert Obama and Democratic congressional candidates at the polls. Obama can count on the support of every critical thinker in America who recognizes the value of his decision. But as Adlai Stevenson II would have said, he needs a majority to get re-elected.

And even though a poll found that a majority of Catholics support contraception coverage, many of them may be uncomfortable with the government ordering Catholic institutions to provide it. More on that later.

Activists for women's health rights, though, are on a roll. They successfully forced the Susan G. Komen Race For the Cure foundation, a leading breast cancer awareness group, to reverse its decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood due to a congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood's alleged use of taxpayer funding for abortions, and Karen Handel, a senior Komen vice president and a failed Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, was forced to resign. Although Planned Parenthood has been assured continued funding to help poor women get breast examinations they can't get anywhere else, many women's health advocates are going to have a hard time trusting the Komen foundation again. But Komen's 180 is still a victory.

And, as all this was going on, the Washington state legislature just passed a bill legalizing gay marriage, which Governor Christine Gregoire supports, even as California's anti-gay marriage law has been struck down by federal appeals court - a decision that will soon be reviewed ultimately by the Supreme Court. The trend in favor of gay marriage has pleased at least one conservative - Rick Santorum, who now has a lot of momentum from anti-gay activists to propel his presidential campaign.

With Obama trying to defuse a politically charged health issue, and a new battle over gay rights having been joined, the culture wars are on again, and Americans are fighting over how this nation's culture should be defined. The joke's on them; we Americans have no culture to fight over. The closest we come to showing any culture is that annual ritual that takes place every February, where overpaid contestants battle it out in a public arena for supremacy and glory, where the winners are lauded and the losers are ridiculed, and with a hideous musical number midway through the show - for all the world to see on television. I am, of course, talking about the Oscars. :-D

Christie's Gambits

Chris Christie is suddenly looking very foolish. Faced with resurgent Democratic majorities in the New Jersey state legislature, the state's supersized governor is proposing a popular referendum on gay marriage to skirt the issue and keep it off his plate. See, if the New Jersey legislature passes a bill legalizing gay marriage, Christie will feel compelled to veto it to burnish his social conservative credentials for a possible future presidential run, and his veto could be overridden. So he's proposing that it be put to a popular vote, insisting that voters should have the final say on an issue that he says is better left to the people than to the politicians.

Since when did voters - who usually cast ballots out of self-interest, which is why politicians appeal to their self-interest in the first place - ever vote to expand the civil rights of others? New Jersey actually had the extension of suffrage to women on the ballot in 1915, and the all-male electorate soundly defeated it - a result invalidated by the Nineteenth Amendment five years later.

Speaking of self-interest, Christie only wants something put to a popular vote if he thinks it will benefit him. It's all about strategy. Certainly a public referendum on gay marriage will spare him the responsibility of taking a stand on the issue. But having an early Republican presidential primary in the state and opening up the possibility of his candidate, Mitt Romney, faring poorly - nope, can't have any of that. So Christie had the New Jersey presidential primary moved back to the first Tuesday following June 1, in tandem with the primary elections for state and local offices. Genius! Romney was expected to have clinched the Republican presidential nomination by April. So, by moving the presidential primary back to June, Christie could endorse Romney and ensure that he would win New Jersey . . . because by June, Romney was expected to have token or even non-existent opposition for the nomination. Also, Christie could enjoy the same position of a neutral politician when the primary occurred, because Romney would already be the last man standing and Christie would never worry about having to deliver the state to his candidate. He wouldn't have to do any heavy lifting in his own state . . . and Christie, from the looks of things, obviously hates lifting heavy things. It seemed so clever . . . until Newt Gingrich surged in South Carolina and turned Romney's lead in the polls leading up to the Florida primary to a dead heat, turning the whole race upside down.

More recently, Romney has bounced back, and now he's likely to win the Sunshine State's winner-take-all primary. But other battles - including the Nevada caucuses on February 4 - await Romney, and Gingrich doesn't look like he's going to quit the campaign even if he loses Florida. This race could go all the way to May . . . or even June.

Genius!

Gay Marriage In New York

After a lot of toil and false starts, the New York state legislature legalized gay marriage in the Empire State, and the bill now goes to Governor Andrew Cuomo for his signature.

I just have six words in response: Andrew Cuomo for President in 2016! :-D

A lot of work had to be done by gay rights activist groups to get the bill through a state Senate dominated by republicans, who tend to be as comfortable with gays marrying as they are comfortable living in black neighborhoods. Most of them wouldn't support it, but enough brave Republican souls crossed the line and voted their conscience. It's a huge victory for Cuomo, who's already enjoying record popularity for a first-year governor. True, New York is only the sixth state to legalize gay marriage (as well as the District of Columbia), but bear in mind that New York has a population equal to these other five states and Washington, D.C. put together, and it probably has a higher percentage of homosexuals within its borders. So this is a big deal.

In New Jersey, homosexuals will have to settle for civil unions for the time being. Governor Christie is a gay rights advocate like I'm a jet pilot. But, of course, many states haven't even gotten as far as civil unions.

Out of the Closet

It shocked a lot of people to learn that Ken Mehlman, the campaign for George Walker Bush's 2004 presidential bid and the subsequent chairman of the Republican National Committee, is gay. After all, it was Mehlman who was instrumental in rallying Republican voters around supporting laws to ban gay marriage as a method of getting them to the polls to give Bush a second presidential term.

Mehlman says he's really, really sorry for the divisiveness and bitterness he's caused among gays and that he wants to make amends, but no one is accepting his apology. It was because of a gay marriage ban on the ballot in Ohio that Bush won a second presidential term against Democratic presidential nomination over John Kerry. Without Ohio, there would have been no second Bush term, no guys on the Supreme Court named Alito or Roberts (and no Citizens United ruling), and no Brownie overseeing Katrina relief. But even more significant is that Mehlman betrayed his own conscience and his fellow gays in polarizing the nation, scapegoating gays as an enemy of a moral and just people, and making gays feel like second-class citizens.

This, by the way, is nothing new; gay Republicans have happily worked against their own interests to advance their profiles in the GOP. Some people might remember Terry Dolan, a closeted homosexual conservative activist who opposed gay rights and formed the National Conservative Political Action Committee, the group that helped the Republicans win control of the Senate in 1980 by getting veteran liberals like George McGovern, Gaylord Nelson, and Birch Bayh voted out of office in favor of dullards such as, respectively, James Abdnor, Robert Kasten, and Dan Quayle. Dolan's greatest legacy is the method Republicans now use to get people to contribute money. "[You try to] make them angry and stir up hostilities. The shriller you are, the easier it is to raise funds. That's the nature of the beast."

Dolan died of AIDS in 1986.

Ken Mehlman may have perpetrated Dolan's modus operandi, but his own legacy was using the gay marriage issue to get middle-class Americans to vote against their own economic interests. I may have said this before, but it's worth repeating. The choice was defined in 2004 as thus: Either you let gays register wedding presents at Bloomingdale's or compete against your own teenage children for a job at Wal-Mart. Guess which was chosen.

I'm sure Mehlman is seriously sorry for the hostility to minority rights he stirred up as a loyal Republican foot soldier. It's too bad he can't undo the damage now. That's why I have trouble accepting his apology.

I Can't! I Can't! I Can't!

By the power not vested in anyone by the state of New Jersey, no gay couple can be pronounced married. The New Jersey state Senate voted down a law that would have made New Jersey the sixth state to legalize gay marriage, and with the Assembly now a moot point and incoming governor and noted reckless driver Chris Christie opposing the idea, the fight is over. At least the legislative part is. But Steven Goldstein, a gay activist and gay rights advocate, has vowed to take the issue to the courts. Good for him. I wish him and his fellow activists well, and maybe this will lead to a happier ending for the issue.

The legal path is always tricky, though, because subverting a social issue that is normally decided in state legislatures can inflame passions on both sides of the issue even more - witness Roe v. Wade and the ongoing battle over abortion that caused. But since gay marriage, unlike abortion, has hardly been shown to have any detrimental effects on anyone, and since the arguments against it are redolent of the arguments made against interracial marriage back in the 1950s, it's just inexplicable that gay marriage can't gain acceptance so easily - not even in "intellectual" New York or "laid-back" California.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's "originalist" interpretation of constitutional text comes to mind here. Scalia's "originalist" philosophy says that if a protection or right isn't spelled out constitutionally, all you have to do is pass a law. Well, so much for that idea. But, on the other hand, neither the Constitution nor the New Jersey state constitution says anything about marriage being between a man and a woman. The gay rights movement may have an opening here as a result. The legal path may be fraught with danger, but it's probably the only path available right now - in New Jersey or anywhere else.

This is an issue that Democrats, controlling every branch of the state government, were expected to win on, but it was far from clear cut. True, the vote was mainly on party lines, but six Democrats voted with the majority - without them, there would have been no majority. And it's not a case of bigoted white middle-class conservatives versus a rainbow coalition involving everyone else; though the issue was touted as one of civil rights, Senator Ronald Rice (D-Essex), who is black, voted against it. A picture in today's Star-Ledger shows a black woman cheering the outcome in a room full of mostly white gay marriage supporters.

Some gay marriage opponents still support civil unions, legal in New Jersey but not offering the full benefits of marriage - the civil union law doesn't guarantee health benefits for same-sex partners, for example. One Republican state senator, a same-sex marriage opponent, has vowed to help amend the civil union law to strengthen it. But as long as same-sex partners are denied the right of full marriage - and can only be considered "kind of" married - that's just as insulting as pre-abolition standard of making a black slave equal to three-fifths of a person.

Story Updates

A few updates on stories I've commented on this week. . . .

Gay marriage appears to be in trouble in New Jersey. State Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex) postponed a vote in the legislature's upper house when it became apparent that the measure did not have enough votes to pass. He sent it to the Assembly, "I understand their desire to make sure this receives the thorough attention it deserves and therefore I have agreed to postpone tomorrow's vote until further notice."

In other words, don't hold your breath. The Assembly will consider it January 4, the first Monday of the new year. A new Assembly takes office on January 12.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Republicans object to an provision of the financial regulatory reform bill that passed the House yesterday. A $150 billion fund would be set up to pay for the dissolution of companies deemed too big to run the risk of failure, which the G.O.P. equated to a perpetual bailout fund. Despite eagerness among Senate Democrats to pass a financial reform bill, key differences between Senate and House proposals may make it difficult to get a bill to President Obama's desk any time soon.

Democracy inaction. :-O

Gay Marriage in the Garden State

With the clock ticking on outgoing governor Jon Corzine's term of office, the New Jersey state legislature is poised to vote on a bill legalizing gay marriage in the state and sending to Corzine for his signature before the state's incoming governor, noted reckless driver Chris Christie, takes over. Our redundantly named Republican governor-elect opposes the bill, so lawmakers who support gay marriage and their allies are working feverishly to get it passed. the bill is under debate in the state Senate.

The usual suspects were in Trenton speaking out on it - civil rights activists for it, religious groups largely against it. State senator Loretta Weinberg, a Bergen County Democrat and the losing candidate for the new lieutenant governor's office, spoke out passionately in favor of the legislation so that all New Jerseyans are free to live with the ones they love "in peace and security." It's not a partisan issue, either - Bill Baroni, a Republican state senator from Mercer County, also supports the bill. The Assembly has yet to act.

New Jersey already has come a longer way on the subject of gay marriage and civil unions than its neighbor, New York. The Empire State, despite its large gay population, defeated a gay marriage bill in the state Senate after it passed in the Assembly. (New York and New Jersey both call the lower houses of their legislatures the Assembly.) New Jersey - boring, suburban, "mainstream" New Jersey - is considered to be ahead of "progressive, intellectual" New York (not to mention "laid-back" California) in providing civil rights to gays. civil unions have been legal in the Garden State for a few years now.

I support gay marriage, even though I'm not gay and I'm not married. The question here is not just whether this state has the political will to legalize it but the expediency to do so. Corzine is in office for only another month, and the lame-duck legislative session is almost over.

Old-Time Religion

Ever wonder if the heads of evangelical conservatives are exploding internally?

After numerous character assassinations of Kansas abortionist Dr. George Tiller on Fox News, a lunatic decided to do more than assassinate his character. A gunman shot Dr. Tiller to death in church in Wichita this past weekend. Abortion rights activists were appalled, but anti-abortion groups were even more outraged, quickly distancing themselves from Scott Roeder, the accused murderer, saying that they do not believe in killing doctors to prove killing unborn babies is wrong, and that all human life should be respected.

Someone forgot to tell Tom Coburn.

Meanwhile, President Obama spoke at a mosque in Cairo yesterday extolling the virtues of Islam and admitting to American mistakes in the Middle East while singling out Muslim extremists such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda as blaspheming the religion. Republicans are going ballistic over the first part, claiming that the President has some nerve apologizing for the United States of America, a country committed to freedom and justice. Like the CIA-backed overthrow of the democratically elected prime minister of Iran in 1953 to put the Shah back on the throne.

And, even though religious conservatives scored a victory when the California state Supreme Court upheld the proposition passed in November banning gay marriage, six states have now legalized it. Also, the two lawyers who represented the opposing sides of the Bush-Gore electoral case in 2000 - David Boies and Ted Olson, respectively - announced their commitment to overturn the California ban.

"If you look into the eyes and hearts of people who are gay and talk to them about this issue, that reinforces in the most powerful way possible the fact that these individuals deserve to be treated equally," one of them said.

Boies? No, Olson, the Republican.

Boies concurred by saying, "I couldn't have said it better."

Olson is the former Solicitor General under George Walker Bush. So, we now have two former Bush Administration officials - the other being Dick Cheney - to come out of the closet as gay marriage supporters. We'll know the pro-gay marriage side is winning when Karl Rove does the same.

Or Dub the Shrub himself.

That old-time religion ain't what it used to be.

Loathing and Marriage

Dick Cheney has been appearing so much on television talk shows these days, people think he's considering a presidential run in 2012.

What would he run for, the excitement? With his heart? Why would he run, because of his excellent chances of winning? With a nineteen percent popularity rating?

And why would her suddenly endorse gay marriage, given the opposition to gay marriage among the Republican base? Since his daughter Mary is a lesbian, what stopped him from endorsing it in 2004? Oh, wait - Karl Rove.

Then again, the first caucus is in Iowa, and the first primary is in New Hampshire, both states as of today having legalized gay marriage. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch signed the bill making it legal in the Granite State today.

Nonetheless, we may have a pretty hard time accepting Cheney as an avuncular figure of trust, like Walter Cronkite.

Incidentally, this leaves Rhode Island - the place once described in the seventeenth century as a moral sewer by Massachusetts Puritans - as the only New England state not to allow gay marriage. Several attempts to change that have failed.

Meanwhile, putative presidential possibility Newt Gingrich says that maybe he was too strong in calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist. Oh - now he tells us!

Gay Marriage Progress

With hopes for gun control legislation stalled by the continuing fear of wrath of the National Rifle Association and the chance to do something about global warming in jeopardy of being torpedoed the ramblings of noted skinflint Newt Gingrich (who says it's too costly to do anything about) and noted scientific non-expert Michele Bachmann finding no problem with a little carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it's still refreshing to note that gay marriage is slowly gaining acceptance. Iowa's Supreme Court ruled that it's constitutional to ban gay marriages because it discriminates against gay couples. Meanwhile, Connecticut's Republican governor signed a bill allowing it in her state (even though it was already technically legal, while the Vermont legislature legalized it over the veto of its Republican governor.

This strange confluence of events is federalism in action. It's allowing the issue to play out in the states and it's slowly gaining acceptance in unlikely places like Iowa and being fought for tooth and nail in Vermont, but the momentum is clearly on the side of proponents of this important civil rights issue.

The sticking point remains, oddly enough, California, where the state's "laid-back" residents proved to be too uptight to allow it by vote despite the acceptance of gays in San Francisco and the movie industry and the support for gay marriage from Governor Schwarzenegger. At least California voters expressed their bigotry in a secret ballot; Miss California USA's objections were too blatantly public and downright foolish.