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Jew Helps Christian Bash Mormon Judge!

Goldy at Horse's Ass (the Friend of Abraham in our story) is currently helping carry the load at Jesus' General while the Christian Soldier has temporarily headed Onward. In a display of ecumenical good feelin's that would make Billy Graham proud, Corporal Goldstein has chosen to poke his crooked staff into the belly of Utah judge Walter Steed, who was recently dismissed for the minor but manly offense of having three wives. In Goldy's letter to Steed, however, his respect for Steed's studliness runneth over like a cup of chicken soup:

Any judge who can lay down the law at a home with three wives -- sisters no less -- is exactly the kind of judge America needs to reign in the scourge of petty drug offenses that threatens to tear asunder our nation's moral fiber. And any man who can satisfy three women in marital bliss, occasionally simultaneously, and in various divine positions, is a role model for us all. You Sir, are obviously a man of extraordinary strength and vigor, who surely hides beneath his judicial robes a monument to God's everlasting glory more solid and enduring than Justice Roy Moore's 3-foot-high, 5,300 pound granite tribute to the Ten Commandments.

That kind of high comedy is enough to get anyone rescued from a 40-year desert walkabout! As for the judge, Bob Dole is on Line 1...

--TJ

OR Civil Unions: Minnis Thwarts Again, on Cusp of Sine Die

Keeping you up to date on the latest from the Oregon Legislature on the attempt to pass a civil unions bill, it seems the effort is now completely dead for this session. Not because a bill was heard and voted on, of course, but because Speaker Karen Minnis simply won't let it happen--and she'll do whatever it takes to prevent it, including changing the rules.  After SB1000 had been gutted and stuffed, then buried in the budget committee, a new bill was introduced that restored civil unions language, in hopes that once assigned to committee, it could be pulled to the floor and debated.

So much for that idea:

What she did was strike down a 140-year old rule called a “withdrawal motion.” This rule is part of the checks and balances of power that are supposed to prevent one person from having absolute power over the House of Representatives, by allowing a majority of members to extract a bill from committee and bring it to the House floor for an up or down vote, even if the speaker doesn’t agree or the committee hasn’t approved the bill. She did that explicitly because she was afraid the House would do that with our new civil union/antidiscrimination bill—HB 3508--against her wishes.  Now she, and only she, has the power to decide what comes out of committee to the floor for a vote.

Uncool, clearly, but definitely not out of character.  GayRightsWatch has info on Minority Leader Merkley's animated dissent from the floor, and the resulting contretemps between he and Minnis.  BlueOregon raises a valid point for debate: is this just business as usual, and are the Democrats showing valid but potentially hypocritical outrage--or does reducing the power of legislative control down to one Representative's whim indicate a fundamental dysfunction in the proper dispensing of the people's business?

I'm personally a little torn. I think it's a transparent, cynical ploy created by Minnis to get her way on this, but it's hard to call something abuse that is properly moved and voted on, no matter how offensive it may be.  In the end, the responsibility for stopping such charlatan tactics rests with the voting members of the body, and beyond them the voters of the state. Is a civil unions bill a highly relevant, highly important topic of discussion for the Legislature to address? Absolutely. Is it a craven and repulsive move by the Speaker to thwart that discussion? You bet. But is it a smart or politically defensible move to undertake retaliatory measures to slow down the rest of the business, including the vitally important budget process? Is much of anything going to get done, practically speaking, with the session so close to an end? I doubt it.

The only real way to deal with this is to highlight who is doing what, and who is not doing what. File Gordon Smith under the latter, as BlueOregon points out in another salient post. He calmed the moderate GOP/independent vote in his last election by taking a very soft stance on gay rights, explicitly recommending that Measure 36 include the ability to take on civil unions afterwards. Where is his effort to make sure that happens? Governor Ted may have done all he can practically do (as I said above, holding up signatures on budget bills is not going to help anything at this point, and may in fact serve to create a negative around civil unions), but he is once again showing a well-deserved reputation as a milquetoast leader who often says the right thing but rarely backs it up with the force of his office.

So civil unions are dead for 2005. It's time to take stock, re-load, and use the off-session time to point out who is causing the dysfunction in Oregon's Legislature--not just on civil unions, but in terms of the way the entire body is (mis-)run.

--TJ

SB1000-related: New Civil Unions Bill Introduced

As long as I'm here, I should mention this: via GayRightsWatch, this press release from Rep. Mary Nolan (D-Portland) indicates that a new bill has been introduced at the very tail end of the legislative session, in an attempt to revive the civil unions bill language passed in the Senate, and to try to force a vote in the House. The prior bill, SB1000, was stripped and then hidden in the Budget committee by Speaker Minnis, in order to prevent a vote.

The new bill combines the SB1000 language with HB3508, the Republican "reciprocal benefits" bill that would have extended a few legal rights of partnerships to both gays and unmarried couples with personal stakes in each other (such as two sisters).  The hope is that by including such language, the bill's appeal will be favorably broadened. Stay tuned to GRW and Basic Rights Oregon for action info and updates. Now that the bill is up, giving your rep and Karen Minnis another call/email would be a good idea, too.

--TJ

SB1000: Minnis Maneuvers, Murders Marriage-like Mating

#58#

Certainly an eventful and quite possibly decisive day for SB1000, the Oregon Senate bill establishing same sex civil unions. As I indicated yesterday, the bill needed to be assigned to committee, and State and Federal Affairs was the likeliest. That's where it went today, one day before the deadline, at 11:30 AM and without notice. It spent all of a half hour in session, where it quickly had the inelegant "gut and stuff" procedure done upon it, excising civil unions and replacing them with what the Minnisites call "reciprocal benefits." That was voted on and passed out 3-2 party lines, to the budget committee. (My own rep, Greg MacPherson, was one of the nays. I love that guy.) For a little pre-switch background, the Eugene paper is able to make it very clear from the Office of the Speaker that the bill is dead, and it's because it's too much like marriage.

The Statesman-Journal is right on top of the story tonight; good for them, although it certainly was a big deal at the Capitol. By the time interest groups got the word that the bill had been placed, it was already out and locked down in budget, where it cannot come to the floor on a minority report. But here's what I think is possible (I'd like to get some of this answered by staff for Democratic leader Jeff Merkley tomorrow): in a long shot move, the Democrats and Republicans disaffected by Minnis' ethically precious maneuver could conceivably PASS the original House Bill on reciprocal benefits, passing it to the Senate sui generis of SB1000. The Senate could then do a gut and stuff on that one, putting civil rights back in, and send it back to the House. The House would then have to give it a floor vote for concurrence, if I understand correctly.

Obviously that will take some fairly courageous steps by not only Republicans in moderate areas but also Democrats in more conservative ones. And there may be maneuvers at Minnis' disposal to counter those moves, so we'll have to see what happens. But the issue, while not hitting the front pages so far, is building momentum. The O put the rally report inside today, too far inside apparently to make it into the online version. Man, does OregonLive suck. There was the Eugene piece this morning, and Salem's breaking news was an update of an earlier recap. Corvallis also printed a favorable letter this morning. Perhaps something from the Tribune tomorrow, although they may not have any bodies to write the story. To see some images from the rally, look at Bryan's, Lelo's, and HinesSight.

Perhaps most important of the day's postings was Merkley's statement later this afternoon, releasing an opinion from the Legislative Counsel. Merkley hits the highlights:

"Senate Bill 1000-A does not create a "marriage" by another name..."

"...Senate Bill 1000-A does not create a "same-sex marriage" under the guise of another name."

"In conclusing, we believe Senate Bill 1000-A is constitutional as written."

...but I think he misses the most salient point: Oregon's marriage ban is much like California's, and California has already decided the issue, finding that civil unions do not contravene the marriage ban. The precedent, in Counsel's opinion, is recent, clear, and highly applicable. This fundamentally undercuts Minnis' entire argument, and it remains to be seen how much sway that might have over simmering Republicans and seething Democrats. Thom Hartmann reports that hard and fast canvassing in her Wood Village district, plus multiple full page ads, are coming. But with only an apparently limited time to resolve it before session's end, the current outlook is dim. But perhaps, as Preemptive Carla so eloquently puts it, "perhaps someone will drop a house on her."*

--TJ

*obviously not in the literal sense, literal like the guy in the yarmulke at the corner of Broadway and Yamhill this evening, holding the sign saying "Get rid of Hamas, Islamic Jihad," etc.

 

 

Pushing SB1000 For a Vote

#58#

While Plamegate is certainly the most interesting issue of the day on a few fronts, it's a well-covered national story and certainly in the way of journalism I have nothing to add to the discussion. Closer to (my) home, there is an inverted Washington power play going on in Oregon during this legislative session, and things are perhaps coming to a head. After passage of the state Senate Bill 1000--which both outlaws discrimination by orientation and passes civil unions for same sex couples--the focus turned to the Republican-controlled House, which has behaved this session as if it ran Congress and the Executive, instead of being the minority institution in an otherwise Democratic landscape. House Leader Karen Minnis has refused to schedule the bill on what appears to be grounds that it would run afoul of the recently-passed Measure 36 (bumper title: One Man One Woman).

The news--simultaneously that the bill passed the Senate and would likely die there--made some national ripples. The National Gay/Lesbian Task Force gave solid props to Basic Rights Oregon (BRO), who spearheaded the legislative challenge of getting the Senate to pass the measure. Gays from Pittsburgh to St. Louis caught the word, and I link to the St. Louis one because it indicates congratulations from Log Cabin Republicans as well. Even Southern Voice covered it, in a more triumphalist "Thank Goodness Minnis Will Stop It" sort of tone, if I don't mistake the placement of a large picture of her to accompany the Buck Stops Here story. The Statesman-Journal takes a better hack at it. 

This type of maneuver is generally accorded to majority leadership in legislature, it seems, although most of the time it's done because the measure wouldn't pass anyway. According to Bryan at GayRightsWatch, however, Minnis may actually be holding out because it would pass--but would represent a defeat for "her people." And that's where I think this is more than run of the mill obstructionism.

First of all, it's a shameless reversal of all the mouthings from the right on Measure 36--it wouldn't affect civil unions, that's what the legislature is for, etc. Now all of a sudden the thing that people in support of 36 said was definitely NOT applicable, is now a subversion of 36's core purpose. There is a BRO offshoot site called subtly enough Track the Lies, which has a nice little flash movie to demonstrate this particular hypocrisy. (Hat tip to B!x on that one.)

Second, to say it thwarts the will of the people as expressed by 36 is absurd, since while Oregonians do indeed not favor the pure right of marriage, larger majorities tend to favor the establishment of civil unions. Besides the Senate, Governor Ted is on board, and can't figure out why nothing is moving (on anything) over at the Capitol.  Nike is taking the fairly courageous stand in favor of the bill.  So given that support, to refuse a vote is really what would be thwarting the will of the people.

As Track the Lies indicates at their page, a rally is scheduled for Wednesday the 20th in Salem at 6pm, with a hoped-for surprise guest. Until then, you can register your support for SB1000, focusing on the need to get the thing onto the floor at least on principle. You can contact the various media with a letter to the editor; they get printed more often than you think if they're cogent, brief, and timely. You can bug Air America to stay on this story, particularly Thom Hartmann,  who does a show out of Portland during morning drive.

More to come on this.

--TJ

Same-sex Marriage, in Fits and Starts

It's been a busy couple of months on the same-sex marriage front, especially here on the West Coast. All three states are in a strong minority to the rest of the country, in terms of the direction of their pending court cases and legislative efforts. But even on the left side of the U.S., the paths to progress are not smoothly cast.

Probably the most momentous recent development is the first-level declaration of California's same-sex ban as unconstitutional, announced a couple of weeks ago. The case is certainly not over, and it appears California will appeal itself as far as the Supreme Court before a final decision is rendered. However, like in NFL replays, upper courts will need to find convincing evidence of error before overturning the Superior judge--so it's always nice to start with the right ruling than to hope for successful appeal.

And so follows a parallel ruling just today that upholds the state's domestic partnerships law, which affords all of the state benefits to same-sex couples as for married couples, short of the term. I have to assume conflict with federal benefits means they wouldn't get those, but otherwise in California they're nearly equal, which renders the marriage ban both less ornery and less useful to begin with. It certainly must look like judicial activism against the will of the voter in California, but judges are uniquely and blessedly unrestrained by popular will--if they're good judges, that is. If it is activism, it's more of that damned Republican activism, since the judge is a Goobernor Pete appointee. He certainly sounds out of control in the weak defense of his position here:

[Kramer] said the state's ban on same-sex marriage violates "the basic human right to marry the person of one's choice," and has no rational justification.

Rejecting California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's argument that California is entitled to maintain the traditional definition of marriage, Kramer said the same explanation was offered for the state's ban on interracial marriage, which was struck down by the state Supreme Court in 1948.

The judge also rejected arguments by opponents of same-sex marriage that the current law promotes procreation and child-rearing by a husband and wife. "One does not have to be married in order to procreate, nor does one have to procreate in order to marry," Kramer said.

Pure raving lunacy, I tell you.

So that's a healthy step forward. Really, if California comes to validate same-sex marriage, that's a ball almost irreversibly set in motion towards national reciprocity. Not that a good half the states won't continue to ignore the idea of homo marriages; of course they will. But the die will have been cast. California is the United States of the states. It is the brash, brilliant, arrogant, beautiful, self-absorbed and rationalizing big brother to everyone else. The rest of the states hate the idea of California and Californians, but they like actual Californians, love visiting Disneyland and Hollywood, and voraciously consume Hollywood culture at home. Will and Grace/Queer Eye chic is part of the national cultural fabric now, from the Sierra to the Ozarks and on to the Blue Ridge. If California puts a big red-lipped stamp on gay marriage, the dominos will begin falling.

So a step forward in Cali; one stutter-step in Washington. The relatively meager bill to add orientation to the list of protected classes in discrimination suits was essentially defeated by a single vote--meaning two Democrats voted with a united Republican caucus. I have to say, that the Majority Leader wasn't able to maneuver this bill to the floor for an up or down vote is curious. Perhaps people who understand WA parliamentary procedure can fill me in as to how she lost control of her agenda.

In any case, while the legislative gap seems larger than either California or Oregon, it seems the social gap is about on par with Oregon's and better than California's, and in the judicial system they seem somewhat farther along than either state, given that they've already declared it unconstitutional (like Cali, not like Oregon), and they have no amendment calling it so (like Oregon but not Cali). Conceivably, Washington could arrive with legitimized marriage first, although from today's setback you'd never know it.

And what of Oregon? San Francisco's brief marriage orgy last year was bigger, and it was also first by a couple weeks, but it ended before Oregon's did, and thus for a short time Portland was the only place you could get married by the state in America. Since the passage of Measure 36 (artfully titled One Man One Woman), arguments have been presented in suit from same sex couples licensed during that period, and as B!x at Communique has reported more than once, some kind of decision seems imminent.

Finally, also today Kansas joined the ranks of the restrictively extreme in going for the marriage-unions exacta, calling the ix-nay on both to the tune of 70% approval. Let federalism ring!

Update 3pm 4/6--
BHB at Gay Rights Watch tells us the state of Connecticut may become the first state to approve civil unions without the help of judicial intervention. Both branches of the legislature are Democrat-controlled, and while the governor is Republican, she has previously given lip service to civil unions. Having MA and CT exercise reciprocity for their same-sex unions would be an ideal East coast situation---but I get ahead of myself. Keep an eye on the Nutmeg State!

--TJ

OR Gay Marriage: A Look Back, Courtesy of Torrid's World

In a previous Bush administration, I was the sole proprietor of a little blogslice known as Torrid's World.  It was a humble setup, and once football season came around, I lost much of my available time for blogging when I accepted a writing position with a fantasy sports website.

But I was up and running on March 3, 2004, when Multnomah County surprisingly threw open their courthouse doors and began ratifying same-sex marriages. I jumped on the story immediately, and was rewarded by a link the following morning from Atrios, which brought 600 page hits to a site that beforehand had seen no more than 42 in a single day.  Encouraged, I spent quite a bit of time compiling commentary and news on the subject, particularly from local sources.

It was my first real introduction to Portland Communique--and in retrospect, perhaps I should have simply left the clearinghouse function to B!x, who had more time and gumption than I.  But for about 24-48  hours, my humble site was quite possibly the best place on the Web to come for information about the happenings. 

There have been many stories in the local media about the anniversary; Willamette Week devoted this week's  cover and several articles to such reflection, including a gay "divorce."  There's even been a little bit of national rehash as a result of USANext's anti-AARP ad, which used an unauthorized Portland Tribune picture of Steven Hansen and Ricky Monet Prince XVII kissing in front of the county building before getting hitched. 

But instead of taking that angle, I'll let you browse the TW archives (here,  here,  and here  should cover most of it) in order to get a taste of what it was like a year ago, when so many eyes were focused on the lines of people waiting to enter a nondescript brick building in Southeast Portland and declare mutual fealty in pairs.

To those of you who made that declaration, I hope you're still together, and that you haven't lost faith in the power of love. For the rest of us, let's marvel at the fact that Oregon did not slide off into the Pacific, just because we temporarily sought to ratify that power.

PS--If you're a Mozilla user, these archives may not view properly. I apologize for that; Blogger required some tweaking that I was never able to accomplish. At the time, so few of us were Mozilla users; these days our hits run about 30% Mozilla. Bill, yer goin DOWN!

--TJ

Women: the Weaker Stronger Gender!

The unique nature of women has made the news multiple times this week. Or should I say, suppositions regarding their unique nature have popped up among people who certainly must know them best: elite, middle aged white guys.

First up is Harvard president Laurence Summers, who intimated at an academic conference that perhaps there could be a biological reason at least partially behind data showing males more prone to very high or very low scores in math and science. Summers defended himself in yesterday's NYT article, but I suspect the cheese has already leaked out of that burrito, and the results were unappetizing:

Nancy Hopkins, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who once led an investigation of sex discrimination there that led to changes in hiring and promotion, walked out midway through Dr. Summers's remarks.

"When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill," Dr. Hopkins said. "Let's not forget that people used to say that women couldn't drive an automobile."

I find the mixed metaphor somewhat amusing (does getting a stomachache keep you from breathing?), but you've gotta expect people to be a little senstitive to the idea that women are biologically less suited to an entirely intellectual endeavor. Summers tried to save himself by noting that men are taller than women, a defense that explains the NBA, but not so much the faculty at MIT.  On the other hand, if you can't throw out ideas for discussion at an academic conference, where can you? I think it's a pretty absurd proposition, but if that's so, then the truth will surely out sooner rather than later.

Next, Bobomeister David Brooks scurries around the margins of biological determinism, trying to appear thoughtful and sympathetic to Gallup survey results indicating 70% of childless women over 40 regret their "decision" to be childless. Not finding any reference to such a survey burbling about on the wires, I registered for a trial subscription at Gallup itself. If you want to do the same, seek out "Desire to Have Children Alive and Well in America" from August of 2003.  Using a search phrase of "women over 40 children" (no quotes) yielded only this one survey. There is a question asked of adults over 40 who do not have children: If you had to do it over again, how many children would you have, or would you not have any at all?

Let's assume that Brooks gets his 70% figure by subtracting the 24% who said "none," to get a roundable 66% who would have had children.  OK, fine--but there are three sizable problems with his conclusion:

1) The question was asked of men AND women, not just women.
2) The question was asked of just 90 respondents, with a resulting 11-point margin of error.  In my job as a statistical analyst, my advice to people who want to make serious judgements on popular opinion based on fewer than 100 responses is: DON'T.
3) I suppose it's plausibly fair to take this question and consider the desire to have children after not having had any "regret," but it's by no means a given. For example, a woman who finds herself unable to conceive (whether on her reproductive ability or her partner's)  may say she'd have children given the chance to do it over again...but regret not being ABLE to have kids, rather than regretting a DECISION to not have kids.

Now, Brooks does beg off the idea that all 70% are cursing the poor decision trees of their youth, but that doesn't keep him from leaping into the latest in a series of articles bemoaning the lack of babies in this country. I'll leave alone for now the "baby gap" argument from his Red Diaper Babies missive, but this appears to be another attempt to take dubious demographic trends, and apply them to contemporary political themes. Why do I say dubious? In the same survey Brooks appears to cite, Gallup declares that having children continues to be an overwhelming desire of Americans--to the tune of 96% of all adults (have them, want to have them, wish they had them).  So in that vein, worrying that we need to create financial incentives for young women to drop their careers so that we can have more babies is, how shall I put this, stupid. Unless of course, you're trying to convince people that if we don't become more pro-procreative, Social Security is bound for the dustbin of history. Jennifer Saba at Editor and Publisher takes her own shots at Brooks in this piece. Anyhow, I hope he didn't read of the Summers dustup, since he's likely to claim that as further evidence that career women should stop trying to be as outstanding as men, and just churn out the pups.

Finally,  Bill Thomas is a popular guy among liberals today for saying that the President's Social Security plans are likely DOA if presented as-theorized. But--hat tip Josh Marshall--Thomas has a different plan: cut benefits for women, because they live longer. That's not fair! Damn women! But why cut benefits? That's too politically risky. All we need to do is decide whether to redouble our efforts in the medical community to improve the well being of males ...or just start "harvesting" senior women until we reach the proper equilibrium. As Larry Summers might say, "Hey, sure it SOUNDS crazy and repugnant, but let's not dismiss the idea until we've done the research!"

--TJ