Left-wing blogs across the country began targeting Sessions as “racially insensitive” when his promotion was public earlier this week. The attacks cite a pair of comments that Sessions is alleged to have made more than 20 years ago which were less-than-polite.Whether or not Sessions said those things, as Graham points out, the nomination of a Supreme Court justice needs to be about the nominee and not a liberal red herring.
You could look them up, Scoopy. It's not hard. TPM has the entire Sessions confirmation hearing transcript.
Another New England state legalizes marriage equality by a majority vote of both houses. The Old Confederacy & Buffalo Commons' financially- emasculated Toby finally pulled back the curtain and revealed the truth:
“Our party platform articulates our opposition to gay marriage and civil unions, positions shared by many Americans. I believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman and strongly disagree with Maine’s decision to legalize gay marriage.”
If the black illegitimacy rate were not nearly three times the rate of whites’, I would have few qualms about gay marriage. Or if someone can guarantee that widespread gay marriage would not further erode the expectation among blacks that marriage is the proper context for raising children, I would also not worry. But no one can make that guarantee.
Why might it further depress the black marriage rate? There is a logical reason and a visceral reason. First, it sends the signal that marriage is simply about numbers: it is an institution that binds two (for the moment) people who are in love. It erases completely the significance that marriage is THE context in which the children of biological parents should be raised. And there are undoubtedly many other subtle meanings and effects of gay marriage that we cannot even imagine at the moment—which institutional shift is something that conservatives should be most attuned to.
As for the visceral reason: It is no secret that resistance to homosexuality is highest among the black population (though probably other ethnic minorities are close contenders). I fear that it will be harder than usual to persuade black men of the obligation to marry the mother of their children if the inevitable media saturation coverage associates marriage with homosexuals. Is the availability of homosexual marriage a valid reason to shun the institution? No, but that doesn’t make the reaction any less likely.
What are the chances that gay marriage would further doom marriage among blacks? I don’t know. Again, if someone can persuade me that the chances are zero, then I would be much more sanguine. But anything more than zero, I am reluctant to risk.
Is it fair to those gays who want to marry that their desires should be thwarted for the sake of black boys? Maybe not. And as has been pointed out many times before, it is exclusively heterosexuals who have eroded the institution of marriage through easy divorce, increasing rates of single-parenting, “blended” families, and co-habitation. But just because marriage is already in bad shape, for reasons wholly unrelated to gay marriage, doesn’t mean that gay marriage won’t weaken it further.
Black failure is at present a greater social problem in my view than whether gays who already have the right of civil unions have the right to marry as well. For similar reasons, I have always been appalled at the campaign by gay rights groups to shut down inner city Boy Scout organizations if they don’t toe the line on gay rights. A Scout troop may be the only hope that a black 11-year-old in Brooklyn has to learn self-discipline and deferred gratification. That black kid’s life chances are a lot bleaker than any gay white Eagle scout leader.
I agree with Andrew and David Hume that gay marriage is inevitable, given the clout of the gay lobby and the power of the modern non-discrimination principle. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t have consequences beyond what we can possibly foretell and which conservatives should be attuned to.
Interesting, MacDonald's comment about the Boy Scouts. Waldo's an Eagle Scout, too. A former troop leader and Explorer Post advisor. He understood the difference between civic duties and personal life. Nary a complaint against him. But the BSA defined him as a bad moral example and, rather than waste time and money in court, Waldo simply retired from a 25 year career in Scouting.
The BSA has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the LDS Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, and litigation against the BSA has simply sought court validation of the act that if a state or municipality has a bar to discrimination based on sexual orientation, it can't give preferred treatment, at taxpayer expense, to a group that goes to court at the drop of a hat to bar gay Scouts and leaders from membership. The data BSA fights so hard to keep secret shows the vast majority of Scout leaders who abuse Scouts in their charge are straight and married. But we digress...
Meanwhile, Anaconda's imginary friend Mande Wilkes sees the week's legislative activity as a big lesbian liplock, and tries to argue if the GOP will just put the sort of homophobia FITS News regularly espouses aside and takes up the ways of fiscal righteousness, order will be restored to the universe. As usual, you don't see Anaconda actually commenting on how such developments resonate in South Carolina. It's just a curiosity. Move along people, nothing to see in this state.
Suckers.
Maybe Heather"s joking. Maybe this is all just a con.
ReplyDeleteLike: "What are the chances that eating rutabagas would further doom my dog's poor house-training habits? I don’t know. Again, if someone can persuade me that the chances are zero, then I would be much more sanguine. But anything more than zero, I am reluctant to risk."