The title of this post is lifted from Rick Garnett's post earlier today. Yes, a majority currently opposes opening up "marriage" to same-sex couples. But a majority currently *supports* creating civil unions for same-sex couples: According to a 2007 Pew Research Center survey, a bare majority Americans (55%) opposes, and a significant minority (36%) supports, recognizing same-sex marriage. However, a bare majority of Americans (54%) supports, and a large minority (42%) opposes, civil unions for same-sex couples, according to a 2006 Pew survey.
I found the following passages in Frank Rich's column, to which Rick referred in his post, particularly interesting (especially the part about the Mormon governor of Utah):
On the right, the restrained response [to developments in Iowa dnd Vermont] was striking. Fox barely
mentioned the subject; its rising-star demagogue, Glenn Beck, while
still dismissing same-sex marriage, went so far as
to “celebrate what happened in Vermont” because “instead of the courts
making a decision, the people did.” Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the
self-help media star once notorious for portraying homosexuality as “a biological error” and a gateway to pedophilia, told CNN’s Larry King that she now views
committed gay relationships as “a beautiful thing and a healthy thing.”
In The New York Post, the invariably witty and invariably conservative
writer Kyle Smith demolished
a Maggie Gallagher screed published in National Review and wondered
whether her errant arguments against gay equality were “something else
in disguise.”
More startling still was the abrupt about-face of the Rev. Rick Warren, the hugely popular megachurch leader whose endorsement last year
of Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, had roiled his
appearance at the Obama inaugural. Warren also dropped in on Larry King
to declare
that he had “never” been and “never will be” an “anti-gay-marriage
activist.” This was an unmistakable slap at the National Organization
for Marriage, which lavished far more money on Proposition 8 than even James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.
As the polls attest, the majority of Americans who support civil unions
for gay couples has been steadily growing. Younger voters are fine with
marriage. Generational changeover will seal the deal. Crunching all the numbers, the poll maven Nate Silver sees same-sex marriage achieving majority support “at some point in the 2010s.”
As the case against equal rights for gay families gets harder and
harder to argue on any nonreligious or legal grounds, no wonder so many
conservatives are dropping the cause. And if Fox News and Rick Warren
won’t lead the charge on same-sex marriage, who on the national stage
will take their place? The only enthusiastic contenders seem to be Republicans
contemplating presidential runs in 2012. As Rich Tafel, the former
president of the gay Log Cabin Republicans, pointed out to me last
week, what Iowa giveth to the Democrats, Iowa taketh away from his own
party. As the first stop in the primary process, the Iowa caucuses
provided a crucial boost to Barack Obama’s victorious and inclusive
Democratic campaign in 2008. But on the G.O.P. side, the caucuses tilt
toward the exclusionary hard right.
[T]he McCain-Palin 2008 campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, ... on Friday urged his party to join him in endorsing same-sex marriage. Another is Jon Huntsman Jr., the governor of Utah, who in February endorsed civil unions
for gay couples, a position seemingly indistinguishable from Obama’s.
Huntsman is not some left-coast Hollywood Republican. He’s a Mormon
presiding over what Gallup ranks as the reddest state in the country.
“We must embrace all citizens as equals,” Huntsman told me in an
interview last week. “I’ve always stood tall on this.” Has he been hurt
by his position? Not remotely. “A lot of people gave the issue more
scrutiny after it became the topic of the week,” he said, and started
to see it “in human terms.” Letters, calls, polls and conversations
with voters around the state all confirmed to him that opinion has
“shifted quite substantially” toward his point of view. Huntsman’s
approval rating now stands at 84 percent.
I went to mass today at St. Patrick's Cathedral. New York's new archbishop, Timothy Dolan, presided. Wow! What an engaging, warm, and inspiring person. A wonderful (providentially so?) face for the American bishops, and for American Catholics generally.
As if to underscore Rob's point in this post, the ever-irenic (not) Frank Rich went off today. Much of the column was devoted to tinfoil-hattery about Prof. Robert George and Princeton's James Madison Program. (I was -- I confess! -- speaking on Friday at a conference on religious liberty co-sponsored by the Program. I don't *feel* like a bigot. . . .) He also trotted out the tired charge that to worry about judicial overreach is to set oneself against Brown v. Board of Ed. (I imagine our own Michael Perry would -- as would, I am confident, if he could, that scourge of judicial overreach, Abraham Lincoln -- argue otherwise!).
Now, that said, I suspect that Rich is right, and that the movement toward same-sex marriage will continue, notwithstanding the current opposition of most people. I do wonder, though, whether it will continue in a way that respects religious liberty. (Should it?) Rich's column does not provide much reason for optimism. Stay tuned.
Re Michael S.'s reminder of the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing: while visiting them last spring, Michael and his wife, Maria, took me to visit the site. Many things about the visit moved me, but one of most powerful parts of the experience for me was the American Elm tree standing on the plaza, called the "Survivor Tree" becuase it remarkably continues to grow despite its proximity to so much that was destroyed in the bombing. During this Easter season, it stands as a wonderful reminder of resurrection. I talk a bit about the symbolism of the tree in a reflection I posted here.
Over 26 million people have now viewed the youtube video of Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream" on the show "Britain's Got Talent. Catholic News Service reports:
The audience snickered and the judges of "Britain's Got Talent" either rolled their eyes or allowed their blank expressions to betray their bemused skepticism as the awkward-looking middle-aged woman told them she wanted to be as famous as the popular British actress and singer Elaine Paige.
Then Susan Boyle began to sing, and they were spellbound and shocked by the beauty of her voice and rose to their feet in applause.
But Father Basil Clark, who watched the show on television at his home in Broxburn, Scotland, was not surprised.
He has seen the situation unfold many times before, having regularly accompanied Boyle, 47, on the annual Legion of Mary pilgrimage to the Marian shrine in Knock, Ireland.
"When I watched the judges' faces it reminded me of what I was like when I first saw Susan singing -- absolutely blown away by the quality of the singing and by that fantastic voice," said Father Clark, dean of West Lothian, the district that covers Boyle's home village of Blackburn.
For the rest of the story, click on the link above. For the video click here.
UPDATE: James Martin, S.J. writes (click here for the full post) on America's blog:
The way we see Susan Boyle is very nearly the way God sees us: worthwhile, special, talented, unique, beautiful. The world generally looks askance at people like Susan Boyle, if it sees them at all. Without classic good looks, without work, without a spouse, living in a small town, people like Susan Boyle may not seem particularly "important." But God sees the real person, and understands the value of each individual's gifts: rich or poor, young or old, single or married, matron or movie star, lucky or unlucky in life. God knows us. And loves us.
"Everybody is somebody" said Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan at his installation Mass in New York City yesterday. That's another reason why the judges smile and the audience explodes in applause.
Because they recognized a basic truth planted deep within them by God: Susan Boyle is somebody.
Today is the kick-off event for the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law. The presentations this morning focused on the Japanese internment, the initial Supreme Court decisions, and the later coram nobis decisions (nearly the entire legal team was present). Speakers this afternoon will focus on the role of academics in advocacy for justice more generally. The entire event was framed by Seattle University School of Law Dean Kellye Testy in the context of the obligations to love and do justice in Catholic tradition. Please follow the link below for more information.
WASHINGTON — The Obama Administration
announced Friday that it planned to lift some — but not all — of the
financing restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research in place during the Bush administration, a move that will please many but not all scientists.
The proposed guideline, which the administration plans to finalize
by July 7, would allow research only on stem cells derived from surplus
embryos at fertility clinics. Federal financing could still not be used
to support the creation of embryos solely for the purposes of research
or embryos created by therapeutic cloning.
Such restrictions, some scientists believe, could limit research
into the creation of genetically matched organs for transplantation.
And in an odd twist, the guideline’s requirements that donors be told
what might happen to their embryos during research may make ineligible
for future federal financing some of the older stem cell lines that
President Bush had approved.
Consider the position of Gene Outka, Dwight Professor of Philosophy and Christian Ethics at Yale University. Outka "take[s] conception and all that it alone makes possible as the point at which one should ascribe a judgment of irreducible value" and opposes the creation of embryos for use in stem cell research. But Outka would permit the use of "excess" embryos, i.e., embryos left over after infertility treatments have been completed. See Gene Outka, "The Ethics of Human Stem Cell Research," in Brent Waters & Ronald Cole-Turner, eds., God and the Embryo: Religious Voices on Stem Cell and Cloning 29 (2003). (The quoted language is on p. 55.)
