Record black turnout for Obama also helped push a morally conservative agenda in state referenda.
Distracted by the historic victory of Barack Obama which may usher in a new era of American politics, election watchers have mostly missed the devastating defeats which went hand in hand with that triumph. As Obama is ushered into office on a groundswell of support for change, there is a grim reminder that not all change is for the better.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Dave Nalle
Hunh? You don't need the 'general welfare' clause at all. You just need the first amendment.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"
What is a government sanctioned marriage but an establishment of religion under the authority of the state?
And it wasn't the founders who promoted government involvement in marriage. Most of those laws didn't hit the books until after the Civil War. In fact, one argument is that the states got into the marriage business so they could prevent miscegenation.
Dave
27 - Jonathan Scanlan
Uh.... this might be a little off topic, but Dave could you please take those embarassing maps off the front page?
28 - Cindy D
LOL
29 - Dan
Exit polls showed that black voters in California voted around 70% to ban gay marriage. I'm guessing Hispanics at about the same.
It's amusing to see pro gay marriage, white liberals assume that the "change" they've joined with immigrants and blacks to affect will include their right to marry.
Perhaps Obama will appoint a devout Muslim to the Supreme Court. There's some diversity for ya. Different perspectives and all that.
I wonder how someone like that might interpret "equal protection" in a "living" Constitution as it pertains to gay marriage.
Maybe the same way equal protection was interpreted regarding white men and affirmative action some 40 years ago?
30 - bliffle
Dave says:
"Government sanctioning of marriage is unconstitutional. It is a direct violation of the first amendment, because it is the establishment of a religious sacrement as a function of government. The government should register contracts between individuals like a civil union, but marriage should be reserved for churches."
How French of you.
31 - Doug Hunter
Nalle is right on in regards to marriage and government. Perfect solution, bigots can go to churches that won't do gay ceremonies and gays can go to those that will. One less wedge issue in the toolbag. Hell, get rid of gay marriage and race and we could move on to some real issues.
Also, I can see some logic in a preference of two parent households for the placement of adoptions, but an outright ban of single people seems way over the top. Two parents are probably better than one, but as someone pointed out above, either option is much preferred over having none.
32 - Lisa Solod Warren
I like the idea of separating civil unions and church marriages completely myself.... then homosexuals could have civil unions with all the rights entailed and church (or synagogue etc. marriages) would be just that, religious rites for that purpose, but everyone would have to sign the civil documents to get the appropriate rights. Makes sense to me, with the separation of church and state concept. And that way we could include ALL unions equally.
And that, Doug, would solve your two-parent household problem. I still believe, though, that any good home with any one good parent is preferable to a lifetime in an orphanage or a series of foster homes that keep changing.
33 - Jonathan Scanlan
"Perhaps Obama will appoint a devout Muslim to the Supreme Court. There's some diversity for ya. Different perspectives and all that."
Nah, what you guys need is your very own Michael Kirby to come along.
34 - Lisa Solod Warren
Oh, yeah, Jonathan, I wish us good luck with that:) (just read the bio). Ahhh, you Aussies. So, what have you heard about the big epic with Nicole and Hugh? Supposed to be any good?
35 - Jet
Yes, but once the fundamentalists get their way, they'll begin pushing for a tighter definition, stating that only Christian men may marry Christian women.
Anyone not married in a church will be defined as a civil union.
All other non-Christian religions are civil unions-which are the same as marriage... right?
36 - Jonathan Scanlan
I'm not banking on it Lisa... but that could be because I hate Australian books and movies that romanticise the bush. Something like 90% of us live in the cities, but somehow that isn't the sort of stuff that people buy.
37 - Baritone
To me, the idea of civil union as being separate from marriage seems a logical alternative. However, one problem is that most gays and lesbians also consider themselves to be christians. There are catholic g&ls, baptist g&ls, methodist g&ls, etc.
Personally, I don't understand why they want to belong to a church that disapproves of their lifestyle. Nevertheless, government should keep its nose out of people's lives in that regard.
As I've asked many times, why is it that so many fiscal and social right wingers rail on about government interfering with business, but have no qualms whatsoever about it snooping around in people's bedrooms?
B
38 - Dave Nalle
Baritone, most large cities have churches of multiple denominations which are willing to marry gay couples. Even gay catholics can go to a gay-friendly Episcopal/Anglican church and get married and hardly know the difference.
Dave
39 - Jet
Actually I consider myself a Presbyterian. Once you've grown up with a certain denomination it stays with you, regardless of how long it's been since you've set foot in a church.
In my case as the church rejected me, I began to build a relationship with God within myself instead of some building full of people.
With recent events, even that feeling is gone... probably forever...
...or at least until good Christian people stop using god and the bible as a justification to hate people they don't understand.
40 - Ruvy
You Americans amuse me with your puritanical attitudes on homosexuality. The problem is that Americans think that they are in the Promised Land, the City on a Hill, and so therefore they think they have to apply Leviticus as if Boston, Austin or Philly were all in Israel. Your exceptionalism stems from the same ideas that created the idea of "manifest destiny" - the concept that allowed you to murder off the Native Americans with such gleeful abandon.
Listen guys (and gals). The injunctions against homosexual behavior that Christians wave about with such anger in America apply to a specific people LIVING IN A SPECIFIC LAND. You are (for the most part) not that specific people, and you sure as hell do not live in that specific land.
I LIVE IN THAT SPECIFIC LAND, AND I'M ONE OF THAT SPECIFIC PEOPLE.
To be very blunt about it, Jews in Israel do not generally care who plays the skin flute or not. Particularly in the army. The bottom line here is that if you shoot straight, don't shit your pants and run away like a coward when the enemy comes, you're ok - atá b'séder. You want to make music playing the skin flute in the corner with some fuck-buddy - fine. Just so long as I'm not that fuck-buddy. That is how the vast majority of Israelis guys are. That's how I am, too. And believe it or not, this attitude applies to the guys with the knitted kippa, like me, more strongly than to the secular kids who pick up on the nuances of hatred prevalent in American culture that apply to homosexuals.
Let me concentrate on my friend from Texas. He is, like Baronius, a social conservative. He would regard the victories of these various initiatives discussed in Dave's article as victories indeed, both in the technical sense and the moral one. In terms of the army, he just doesn't get how the IDF works here. I explained to him what I just explained to you above. Maybe not in the exact same words, but you get the idea.
He's older than I, more like some of the er "elder statesmen" on this list, and he had trouble absorbing the idea that the bumptious Israeli attitude that makes so many Israelis seem terribly rude, the attitude of ma yikhpát li (best translated for full meaning as "I don't give a flying fuck") also allowed them to be extremely tolerant of the skin flute musicians among them.
IMHO, Dave, Lisa and Baritone are all on the right track in taking the various governments in America out of the marriage business. The economic benefits now afforded married couples, should be transferred to those who enter into civil unions, governnment-approved contracts for living together. Thus the vast amount of economic discrimination that gays suffer in the States would disappear - and the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman, sanctified by a religious ceremony, would remain.
It's not a "and everybody lived happily after" solution, but intelligent compromises never are.
41 - Dave Nalle
Jet, the good Christian people don't use the Bible to justify hate. And they do exist. They're deluded, but at least it's a pleasant and positive delusion.
Dave
42 - Jet
Unfortunately the "good" Christians aren't the most vocal nor the most noticed, nor are the ones that people feel must be plakated in order to stay in power.
43 - Jordan Richardson
The "good" any"things" or any"ones" are rarely the most vocal or the most noticed. The world gravitates towards bad news, the scoop, the "story," and the controversy.
44 - Lisa Solod Warren
#36 Yeh, Jonathan, Looked kinda Gone with the Windish Aussie style... swelling music, war, fire, love amidst the ruins. In the previews. I see what you mean, though:)
45 - Lisa Solod Warren
#37 B: I have never ever understood their fasciation with what goes on under everyone's sheets..... Maybe it's because so little goes on under theirs?
46 - Baritone
Dave,
I understand that there are a number of christian congregations which welcome gays and lesbians. But as Jet suggests, many g&ls grew up in particular churches and prefer to stay in them. Unfortunately, it often doesn't work out well for them.
B
47 - Baritone
Lisa,
RE: #20 - Thanks. I'm having it bronzed.
RE: #37 - It is rather problematic. All kinds of Freudian stuff going on with that.
B
48 - Glenn Contrarian
Dave -
Good post, and well said. I enjoy seeing the other side of the coinage.
Ruvy -
Yes, intelligent compromises are never 'happily lived ever after'...but those in America and around the world who are against civil rights for whichever group...are simply blind to the slow but irresistible tide of history.
Every group in history (except perhaps men as a whole) has at one point suffered violent discrimination, but look at the religions, the ethnic groups, the lifestyles that find more acceptance now than ever before.
The conservatives should have seen it in the 60's. They might have delayed change, but it was coming. Mao Tse Tung didn't see the capitalist winds kicking up...but Deng Xiaoping did, and now China is an economic powerhouse. Wife-burnings and prejudice against the 'untouchable' class in India are decreasing slowly, but inexorably.
Change is indeed a-coming all over the world...and the one factor that drives the change more than any other is education, whether that education is formal or whether it's a growing awareness of other countries and cultures that comes from the television or the internet.
The change has been happening slowly, so slowly for centuries, but with the advent of mass media and the internet, the change is accelerating. The only choice one has is to resist the change and be inundated by it...or to accept it, welcome the incoming tide and surf the waves on the way in.
A waking lithium flower,
Just about to bloom...
How does she so perfectly surf?
"Lithium Flower"
by Scott Matthew
49 - Mark Schannon
Ruvy,
Well said! Human beings are genetically xenophobic, a trait learned back in the caves when homogeneity (that can't be spelled right, LOL) was an essential survival tactic.
The problem here in America is that we're so geographically isolated. As a French friend once said to me, France is a very small country & it's natural for people to travel to other countries, learn other languages, and experience other cultures.
The same is true in most of the rest of the world. That doesn't mean there aren't bigots & fascists everywhere, but Americans tend to be more isolated and therefore more suspicious of those not like ourselves.
The good news is that we're trainable. President-elect Obama is proof of that.
First, begin to treat blacks as equals.
Second, treat women as equals.
Third, treat other minorities as equals.
Fourth, treat people with other behaviors as equals.
I figure we'll have it all worked out by, say, 2099, give or take a thousand years.
Sigh...
Curmudgeon-At-Large
In Jameson Veritas
50 - Dan
As I've already stated, gay marriage is a white liberal thing. The various minority groups white liberals have enlisted to help overturn traditional American conservatism, are less enthusiastic about gay civil rights than traditional Christians.
They certainly engage in homosexuality, as their rates for contracting AID's would attest, but they consider it deviant sexual conduct, and not the basis for normal relationships.
As we begin to accelerate diversity, I look for a coarsening of attitude toward white liberal notions of gay civil rights, as well as meritocracy and equal opportunity, since only equal outcome seems to be the essential goal for most minorities and minority newcomers who do not shed their prejudices with US citizenship.
51 - Matthew T. Sussman
"I figure we'll have it all worked out by, say, 2099, give or take a thousand years.
"
Actually by 2099 we will be debating whether or not artificial intelligence should be treated as equals.
52 - Cindy D
Blade Runner 2099.
53 - Dan
Or maybe artificial intelligence will be debating whether to treat us as equals.
54 - Baronius
Matt, I hope you're right. My bet is that by 2099, Congress will be debating whether illegitimate sons of Prince Regents possess divine wisdom.
55 - Dan
It's supposed to be about one degree warmer average temperature by then, so the heat may make everyone a little cranky.
56 - Jet
"They certainly engage in homosexuality, as their rates for contracting AID's would attest"
Just exactly how ignorant are you?
It's misinformarion like that, that spreads AIDS because idiots like you think you can only get it from gay sex.
57 - Dan
"It's misinformarion like that, that spreads AIDS because idiots like you think you can only get it from gay sex."
On the contrary, I think political correctness with regard to how AIDS is contracted has been far more destructive.
58 - Lisa Solod Warren
Dan: ????????????????
59 - Jordan "Boss" Richardson
As I've already stated, gay marriage is a white liberal thing.
Or an Indo-Canadian thing. Or an Afro-European thing. Or a thing thing.
On the contrary, I think political correctness with regard to how AIDS is contracted has been far more destructive.
Damn straight. Wear a fucking condom, political correctness!
60 - Dan
"Or an Indo-Canadian thing. Or an Afro-European thing. Or a thing thing."
Well yes, but as a voting initiative, it's a white liberal thing.
61 - Mark Schannon
Suss, artificial intelligence is probably impossible since we haven't even demonstrated that organic intelligence exists.
...only equal outcome seems to be the essential goal for most minorities and minority newcomers who do not shed their prejudices with US citizenship.
Dan, with all due respect, sir, you sound like a McPalin advertisement. You proffer typical conservative, xenophobic arguments without a scintilla of evidence. I'd argue, with just as little evidence but perhaps more exposure to those nasty newcomers that what they want is equal opportunities, not equal outcomes.
And what, is citizenship supposed to be some kind of magic wand that erases all signs of prejudice? If so, most real Americans should be required to apply for citizenship.
Isn't it about time we stop lumping large groups of people into neat little packages that list their oddities on the sides?
Two hundred years ago, blacks were considered unteachable and untrainable, except as slaves & servants. Anyone saying otherwise would have been considered a typical liberal out to destroy core American values. I guess Obama made it because he's half-white. Wonder how his white side is going to keep his wild, unmanageable black side under control? Gosh...it's gonna be fun to watch!
I'm tired of slogans. I'm tired of endless battles over the trivial (gay marriage...yawn) while real problems are ignored. I'm tired of political discourse that fits on the back of a matchbook or in a 30 second sound bite. I'm tired of blathering on and on and on...but then again, I'm the...
Curmudgeon-At-Large
In Jameson Veritas
62 - Dan
"Dan, with all due respect, sir, you sound like a McPalin advertisement. You proffer typical conservative, xenophobic arguments without a scintilla of evidence. I'd argue, with just as little evidence but perhaps more exposure to those nasty newcomers that what they want is equal opportunities, not equal outcomes."
The "scintilla of evidence" is in the exit poll results. "Nasty" newcomers is your adjective choice, I'm not judging. Equal outcome is the goal of "equal opportunity" schemes that assign preferential treatment by gender and race. It's very Orwellian.
"And what, is citizenship supposed to be some kind of magic wand that erases all signs of prejudice? "
My point is that it doesn't.
"Isn't it about time we stop lumping large groups of people into neat little packages that list their oddities on the sides?"
It is a mainstay of core conservative principle. Individualism is to group identity what conservative is to liberal.
"Two hundred years ago, blacks were considered unteachable and untrainable, except as slaves & servants."
There have been scholarly and talented blacks acknowledged even before then. Many blacks have also owned slaves and had servants. History is an interesting thing.
"I'm tired of endless battles over the trivial (gay marriage...yawn) while real problems are ignored."
I'm with you on that. But I think that the battles over trivial things are the result of a self indulgent, pampered society that doesn't have many real problems to worry about. Although that may be what is a "real" problem.
63 - Dave Nalle
Gay marriage is only trivial if you're not gay, just as abortion is trivial until you need one.
Dave
64 - Lisa Solod Warren
Civil Rights is never a "yawn" issue.
65 - Baritone
Remembering an "Onion" article written a couple of months after 9/11 stating (not a direct quote) that we should turn our attention away from the attacks and impending war and get back to our normal concern for meaningless crap.
B
66 - Jet
Editorial:
By Jet Gardner
The election of Barak Obama had an unanticipated side effect in California last Tuesday. Black voters turned out in droves and showed overwhelming support for Obama. While in the voting booth, they also displayed their opinions concerning a ban on gay marriage. While the White and Hispanic vote were fairly divided evenly regarding the state constitutional ban, the huge block of Black voters that turned out, heavily supported it by an estimated 70-75 percent. The irony in that is that the gays that also turned out in droves to support Obama were figuratively “kicked in the balls,” by the very people they’d voted support for, for decades in one Afro-American civil rights initiative after another.
As a gathering storm of resentment builds between blacks and gays over this perceived betrayal, so could trouble in California on several fronts. Gays in general have no children or spouses to support, which means a huge block of hundreds of millions of their disposable and mostly professional income is pumped into California’s economy every year in terms of purchases of homes, cars and personal and business income taxes.
Because the state is famously (or infamously as the case may be) known as gay-friendly, it is also known as the number one gay tourist destination, pumping even more millions of tourist dollars into the state’s economy annually. As gay community leaders gather to plan their next move, many are considering leaving California for the East coast, or even Canada where gay civil rights and marriage are legal and considered “matter of fact.”
There is also the matter of the Mormon Church pumping support for the anti-gay ban in the form of in excess of $20 million, both from the church itself and its out of state members. The resulting recent large protest marches in front of several of the LDS California headquarters have turned into near riots.
As a growing racial resentment builds between gays and their black former-allies, the only losers in this conflict may be the State of California and its powerful Democratic Party, in terms of political contributions, lost tourist revenues and income taxes. More and more gay professionals are talking about punishing their former safe haven by moving their culture and their businesses away to more friendly locations.
That could spell disaster for California economically and politically, to the point of it no longer being a forgone conclusion that the state would automatically fall into the Democrat’s column during national and presidential elections.
The above is my opinion
67 - Ruvy
In the 1960's when you and I were a lot younger, Jews went all over the southern states of the United States to fight for the civil rights of blacks. And they got richly repaid with scum like "hymietown" Jesse Jackson, Jeremiah Wright and whateverthefuckhisnameis Sharpton, a fuckin' Harlem hustler (let the s.o.b's sue - first I'll break the skull of the process server, and then I'll go after any other shit they send after me).
So, Jet, you are getting a nice taste of pleasant repayment from the black community. Now you know what many Jews felt like in the late 1960's - and why they were more than happy to join the Jewish Defense League, which taught them to take care of Jews first, and leave the other bleeding hearts to bleed over the rest of the fools.
Take a lesson from the results of the vote in California and learn from them.
68 - Jet
I don't need any lessons from you Ruvy. I lived though the Moral Majority and the "kill a queer for Christ" movement.
69 - Jet
I've been put in the hospital twice in my youth by baseball bat wielding "Fag Bashers", I've seen entire parking lots of cars with flattened tires and broken windshields at gay bars, I've gone to funerals of close friends who were beaten to death or pushed in front of cars and I've been to funerals of friends who were AIDS victims.
I've feared for my life because of who I am, just like you Ruvy. I've had my life repeatedly threatened for putting up the money to build a shelter for gay teenagers who'd been heartlessly thrown out of their homes by heartless parents just because they came out.
I've been shot at.
70 - Christopher Rose
Arch Conservative is having a compulsory holiday until 5 December, so his comments - and any responses to them - have been deleted.
71 - Jet
If only you could do that to Bush......
72 - Jet
I hope it's not a paid holiday?
73 - Lisa Solod Warren
Good Lord, Ruvy. Not all blacks hate Jews or vice versa. You are so damned bitter....
74 - Jet
"So, Jet, you are getting a nice taste of pleasant repayment from the black community"
I don't think it has anything to do with that other than religious fever.
I'm fighting with all of my being not to say anything racially insensetive (My grand father on my father's side was black) but damn it it's getting harder and harder not to.
75 - Jet
Re: #66, I will say though that California is in for a rude awakening. I've already heard rumors that Ellen may take her show to New York in protest