In Case You Missed This Part...

"We will restore science to its rightful place..."
President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address

Not just a pro-science sentiment, but a recognition that things have been not quite right on that front.

I watched. I was a mess. The day after the election, I was walking around the Lincoln Park neighborhood in Chicago, feeling crushed by the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Everyone around me was ebullient. I wasn't and I felt like it showed. I wondered if people thought I was a McCain supporter. Ugh. Today, I'm happy to be able to join in the celebratory mood.

A Smile for Friday

Cobban at Lopaka Lounge has the funniest take on the election that I have yet seen. Go check it out- I guarantee it will put a smile on your face (possibly not if you were a strong McCain supporter).

Fashion Statement

I'm very happy to be wearing one of these right now. Voting was interesting this morning.

Typical election day: I am usually out the door at 5:30, so I hang out at home until about five till six, then dash over to the polling place. I arrive at 6 on the dot, walk up to the election volunteers, show my ID and vote. I'm out the door by 6:05. Typically I'm the first voter in my precinct. For presidential elections I've been behind as many as two other people.

This year: Hearing stories of long lines during early voting, Leon and I get to the polling place at 5:45. The line already stretches around the building. We file into the building about 10 minutes after queuing up. I have to wait to vote. I'm not complaining, it's just something I've never had to do before. I roll out of the polling place by 6:35. Not at all bad considering the waits that others have had. Still, it's unlike anything I've seen before, and I've voted in this precinct in every election since 1988.

Gobama!!!

What We Are Fighting Against

It's been a rough morning in blogland. A bunch of folks are posting stuff that is elevating my blood pressure. The worst, via Andrew Sullivan

"When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you," - Ben Stein.

I do hope that Mr. Stein and his relatives aren't taking any of their doctors' advice about their health care. After all, that's just evil, immoral scientists telling them what to do, and we all know where that leads. This isn't a potitical blog. I have talked about politics very infrequently here. But the assault from the right wing these days on reason and science cannot go unanswered. Mr. Stein, and his recent movie exemplify the lengths that those folks will go in distorting the truth lying in order to further their own agenda. It's easy to make accusations that somebody is lying. In Stein's case, the accusation has quite a bit of evidence supporting it however. Avoid at all costs Mr. Stein's miserable movie Expelled. If you must see it, at least check out the evidence about the profound untruths he is propagating at the webside Expelled Exposed.

Loving vs. Virginia Anniversary

This week marked the 40th anniversary of an important Supreme Court decision. Loving vs. Virginia was the landmark case that struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the US and allowed inter-racial couples to marry in all 50 states. Now, 40 years later, the country is involved in a similar discussion about same-sex marriage. Mildred Loving, one of the plaintiffs in the case, has prepared a beautiful piece in response to the anniversary. It's too eloquent not to share in its entirety.

Loving for All

By Mildred Loving*

Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007,
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement

When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn't to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.

We didn't get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn't allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn't that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the "crime" of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: ""Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our love.

Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn't have to fight alone. Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men," a "basic civil right."

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God's plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Hat Tip: Ed Brayton

WWWD?

I've not posted much that's political on my blog before, but this was just too good not to pass along. (Hat tip to Bug Girl).

Hair of the Five-legged Dog

Yesterday, I posted a rememberance of my first meeting with Leon, exactly 25 years ago. In celebration, and as a musing on one result of sharing a quarter century of life with someone, I today reprint an essay that I wrote several years ago. It was written shortly after the publication of the book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, and is a response to a sermon that I accidentally discoverd as a result of the book.


One of the marvels of the Internet is the opportunity that it opens for serendipitous discovery. The recent suggestions that Abraham Lincoln might have been gay piqued my interest. Wanting to learn more, I ran a Google search using the search terms "Abraham Linclon" +homosexual. Among the numerous "hits" involving my intended subject was one entitled Five-Legged Dogs, Abraham Lincoln & Same-Sex Marriage. The link connected me to the text of a sermon given by Fr. Phil Bloom of Seattle and posted on his web site Simple Catholicism. The reference to Honest Abe had nothing to do with speculations about the Great Emancipator’s sexual orientation, but rather referred to an anecdote that Bloom attributed to him:

Abraham Lincoln posed this question: "How many legs does a dog have?" The reply of course was four.

Lincoln asked, "If we call the tail a leg, then how many legs does a dog have?" The reply: Five.

"No," Lincoln said, "Just because you call a tail a leg doesn’t make it so."

The anecdote was intended to convey an analogous concept regarding same sex marriage: just because you call it marriage doesn’t make it so.

On the surface, Fr. Bloom appears, from a Catholic perspective, neither radical, nor unorthodox in his treatment of the subject (though his- admittedly unrelated- maunderings on evolution suggest tendency to venture beyond the mainstream of church teaching on some issues). Indeed, some of his statements on the subject verge on the conciliatory:

…few people would want to limit legal arrangements [between same-sex couples] (inheritance, hospital visitation, etc.)…

Surface appearances can be deceptive, however. Within the framework of Catholic teaching, marriage is by definition a sacred relationship between one man and one woman. Fair enough- the Catholic Church is free to define its sacraments according to its own revelation. Unfortunately, Fr. Bloom is not content to let it stand at that.

Part of the problem is entirely predictable. As a non-religious person, I object to the fact that people like Fr. Bloom wish to have their religious definitions of marriage codified into the law of the land for Catholic and non-Catholic, Christian and non-Christian, religious and secular alike. This, however, is old stuff. My real objection to Fr. Bloom’s sermon arises when he mischaracterises same-sex couples in a manner that both trivializes their relationships insultingly and causes him to fall victim to the same logical flaw that he accuses proponents of same-sex marriage of committing. He does so be relegating same-sex couples to the status of "friends."

I am referring to the attempt to take the friendship between two men or two women and call it "marriage." Now, to celebrate friendship is obviously a good thing…

…However, there is a problem if we try to put friendship on the same legal level as marriage…

…They not only want to call their friendship "marriage," but to force you and me to do the same.

Pointedly, at no point in the sermon does Bloom use the term "couple" in discussing same sex relationships. His only reference to love is to decry "the ersoion of the chaste love of freindship" by same-sex couples. That’s right, not only are gay couples merely friends, if they are sexually active together they are friends in a manner that erodes love (mechanism unspecified).

The problem is particularly insidious because to argue against it can be construed as arguing against friendship as a component of marriage. Clearly, strong couples, both heterosexual and same-sex, appropriately recognize the important role that friendship plays in their unions. My argument here is not that my husband is not my friend- far from it- but that the word friend is, in and of itself, grossly inadequate to describe who we are to one another.

After reading the sermon, I mentioned it to my husband. We pondered the ways in which friendship is an inadequate descriptor for our love. In some ways, the question is challenging. Many of the differences between our marriage and friendship are differences of degree rather than of kind. For example, when we have had the occasion to make difficult career choices in order to stay together geographically we have expressed something deeper than what is found in a typical friendship. Yet that decision resides on the same continuum as decisions to accept minor inconvieniences and make small sacrifices for the benefit of other people who matter to us.

Perhaps the main difference in kind between our love and friendship is one of exclusivity. Over the past twenty-odd years, our lives together have become intertwined on numerous levels: emotionally, financially, spiritually, sexually and socially. There is simply no room for another friend of this magnitude in my life. We can be confident that our love will always be there, in part because we share it with no one else. Part of the joy of our life together is that in the continual ebb and flow of our existance as individuals we become one who is greater than the sum of both of us. Sound familiar?

One enlightening tool that can be brought to bear on the "are we just friends?" question is the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) devised by psychologists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe in 1967. A sort of emotional Richter scale, the SRRS describes the relative impacts that major- and not so major- life events elicit. Death of a spouse rates highest on the scale at 100. Near the low end, going on vacation gets a 13. The top three items on the list all involve ending marriages: death of a spouse, divorce, and separation from a spouse. Death of a close friend ranks 17th- behind deaths of family members, but also behind things like getting fired, business readjustment, and sexual difficulties. The scale is a helpful tool for analyzing the question at hand.

Loss of Leon, my husband, would be the one single most significant, heartbreaking, and traumatic event of my life- because it would be like losing part of myself. Without a doubt, it ranks ahead of loss and death involving other close family members- as painful as those would be (and have been). Would it rank 100, the equivalent of the loss of a presumably heterosexual spouse? Such a question can never be answered in detail. My guess is that people experience as much variation in the emotional impact of the loss of an opposite-sex spouse as they do to the loss of a same-sex spouse. I seriously doubt that any heterosexual individual could answer the same question in detail. What is clear is that loss of Leon would occupy the exact same position where the SRSS places loss of a spouse - right at the top.

Just as calling the dog’s tail a fifth leg doesn’t make it so, calling committed couples simply friends doesn’t make it so either. The SRRS readily distinguishes the love of a spouse from the love of friends. Unlike Fr. Bloom’s sermon, this comparative approach appropriately reflects the depth of love and commitment shared by couples of all persuasions, a love that people like Fr. Bloom try to deny through the language of diminution. To distinguish friendship from the love of a spouse does no disservice to the love of friends. To conflate them does a severe disservice to marriage- same sex or otherwise. And to base the civil law of the land on this conflation will bring untold suffering to the countless committed and loving families that just happen to include same-sex couples.