I had thought that the Republican leadership was opposed to same-sex unions and same-sex parenting, but now I see that the truth of the matter is much less clear and much more complicated.
New York Times
December 7, 2006
Cheney Pregnancy Stirs Debate on Gay Rights
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 — Mary Cheney, a daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, is expecting a baby with her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, Mr. Cheney’s office said Wednesday.
Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney, said the vice president and his wife, Lynne Cheney,
were “looking forward with eager anticipation” to the baby’s birth,
which is expected this spring and will bring to six the number of
grandchildren the Cheneys have.
Mr. Cheney’s office would not provide details about how Mary Cheney
became pregnant or by whom, and Ms. Cheney did not respond to messages
left at her office and with her book publisher, Simon & Schuster.
The announcement of the pregnancy, which was first reported
Wednesday by The Washington Post, and Ms. Cheney’s future status as a
same-sex parent, prompted new debate over the administration’s
opposition to gay marriage.
Family Pride, a gay rights group, noted that Ms. Cheney’s home
state, Virginia, does not recognize same-sex civil unions or marriages.
“The news of Mary Cheney’s pregnancy exemplifies, once again, how
the best interests of children are denied when lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender citizens are treated unfairly and accorded different
and unequal rights and responsibilities than other parents,” said the
group’s executive director, Jennifer Chrisler.
Focus on the Family, a Christian group that has provided crucial
political support to President Bush, released a statement that
criticized child rearing by same-sex couples.
“Mary Cheney’s pregnancy raises the question of what’s best for
children,” said Carrie Gordon Earll, the group’s director of issues
analysis. “Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside of
the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean it’s the
best for the child.”
In 2004, Ms. Cheney worked on the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign,
which won in part because of the so-called values voters who were drawn
to the polls by ballot measures seeking to ban same-sex marriage.
Mr. Bush voiced strong approval that year for a constitutional
amendment banning same-sex marriage, as he did this year, too. While
gay rights groups called on Ms. Cheney to speak out against the
proposed ban in 2004, she remained silent.
But Ms. Cheney wrote in a book published this year that she had
considered resigning from the campaign after learning that Mr. Bush
would endorse the proposed amendment. She said that she decided to stay
because other important issues were at stake in the 2004 campaign.
As she promoted her book last spring, she said a federal ban on
same-sex marriage would “write discrimination into the Constitution.”
The vice president has hinted at disapproval of the proposed amendment.
Asked where he stood on the issue during a campaign stop in Iowa in
2004, Mr. Cheney said, “Freedom means freedom for everyone.”
Dana Perino, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush, said that Mr. Cheney had
recently told the president about the pregnancy and that “the president
said he was happy for him.” The Cheneys have five grandchildren by
their other daughter, Elizabeth.
Mary Cheney, 37, is a vice president at AOL; Ms. Poe, a former park ranger, is 45.
New York Times
December 7, 2006
Conservative Jews Allow Gay Rabbis and Unions
The highest legal body in
Conservative Judaism, the centrist movement in worldwide Jewry, voted
yesterday to allow the ordination of gay rabbis and the celebration of
same-sex commitment ceremonies.
The decision, which followed years of debate, was denounced by
traditionalists in the movement as an indication that Conservative
Judaism had abandoned its commitment to adhere to Jewish law, but
celebrated by others as a long-awaited move toward full equality for
gay people.
“We see this as a giant step forward,” said Sarah Freidson, a
rabbinical student and co-chairwoman of Keshet, a student group at the
Jewish Theological Seminary in New York that has been pushing for
change.
[To read the whole piece, click here.]
Thursday, December 7, 2006
[For an earlier post, click here.]
Sightings 12/7/06
Obama's Religious
Challenge
-- Jerome Eric Copulsky
[Jerome Eric Copulsky is Director and Assistant
Professor of Judaic Studies at Virginia Tech.]
Last Friday, Barack Obama, the
charismatic junior senator from Illinois and possible Democratic presidential
hopeful, made news by speaking at an AIDS conference at Rick Warren's Saddleback
Church, one of the flagships of contemporary evangelicalism. To an
audience of more than 2,000 evangelical leaders, the senator spoke movingly of
his experiences in Africa, and set forth his vision for AIDS prevention and care
in terms shaped decidedly by his Christian faith. Although Obama received
a standing ovation, his invitation to Saddleback was met with hostility by some
conservative Christians, who rebuked Warren for sharing his pulpit with a
supporter of abortion rights.
Senator Obama's appearance at one of the
most "mega" of American megachurches and his emphasis on his own religious
convictions is not surprising. Back in June, in a spirited address to
"Call to Renewal," a progressive faith-based movement, Obama testified to his
own conversion and faith. Complaining that for too long Democrats have
been uncomfortable with the conversation about religion, "fearful of offending
anyone" or "dismiss[ing] religion in the public square as inherently irrational
or intolerant," Obama called for progressives "to acknowledge the power of faith
in people's lives," and to "join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith
with our modern, pluralistic democracy."
Some Democrats hailed Obama's
eloquent display of his faith. Others sharply criticized the senator for
giving credence to Republican allegations that the Democrats are allergic to
religion, or condemned him for pandering to the prejudices of the religious
right, or claimed he was undermining the Democrats' commitment to secular
governance.
Such praise and condemnation do not get to the heart of
the matter. The question is not whether religious motivations are
considered licit in the public sphere. The question is: How does one use
religious arguments in the to-and-fro of democratic deliberation and policy
formation? And it is here that the senator powerfully illuminates the
Democrats', and liberalism's, religion problem.
After recognizing
the "crucial role" that the separation of church and state has played in
defending American democracy and fostering the vitality of religious practice,
Obama remarked, "Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate
their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It
requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason
.... Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims
based on a common reality."
Obama rehearses a classic modern liberal
stratagem to grapple with the persistence of competing "comprehensive theories"
or conceptions of "the good": All preferences must be "translated" into a
universal, rational idiom if they are to compete in the public square. The
invitation to take part in political life is extended to "the religiously
motivated," so long as they are willing and able to explain their particular
views in terms accessible to those who don't share their revelation or
insight. They may not have to "leave their religion at the door," but they
will have to bring a translator along with them.
This sort of
translation, however, is no easy feat. If one maintains that his religion
is universal, he may not see how his values are to be regarded as merely
"religion-specific." How do you translate into secular terms religious
truths that are not accessible to unassisted or unreformed human reason?
If faith has the transformative effect that Obama and others claim that it does,
wouldn't some reasons be opaque to those whose hearts have not yet been
turned? Who determines the "common reality" that we all share?
Indeed, the very notion of a "religiously neutral" common reality is subject to
serious contention.
While Obama rightly stresses the political virtue
of compromise, appealing to a shared rationality and the necessity of
compromises may alleviate, but will not solve, the problems that religion raises
for politics. Indeed, Obama's speech exposes the fundamental tension
between certain kinds of religious faith and a serious commitment to the untidy
practice and inevitable compromises of political life, particularly in an
increasingly pluralistic, liberal democracy.
Yet, Obama helps us remember
that the distinction that we need to be aware of is not between religious and
secular Americans, but between those who believe that political life will
require certain concessions and those who have contempt for Enlightenment
principles such as religious liberty upon which this nation is founded, who see
democratic procedures as only the means by which to impress their vision of the
common good on the rest of the country. This is a distinction between
different kinds of religious attitudes, which does not conform to a simple
distinction between religious conservatives and religious
liberals.
Democrats don't need to get more religion; they need to
learn more about it. They can present their positions in moral terms,
without feeling compelled to cite chapter and verse or make appeals to what
Jesus would do. They should know that being more comfortable employing
religious language or making public confessions of faith will not persuade those
who are already otherwise convinced. And they should recognize that,
despite their best efforts, they will still have to contend with their less
scrupulous opponents denouncing them as "godless."
Obama, whose
appearance before the evangelicals received both applause and fierce
condemnations, already knows this.
References:
Senator Obama's
"Call to Renewal" keynote address can be found here:
http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060628-call_to_renewal_keynote_address/index.html.
His remarks at the 2006 Global Summit on AIDS and the Church at the Saddleback
Church Campus can be found here:
http://obama.senate.gov/speech/061201-race_against_time_-_world_aids_day_speech/index.html.
----------
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
MOJ-friend Chris Eberle and I, along with Notre Dame philosophy prof Robert Audi and Arizona philosophy prof Gerald Gaus, will be discussing "Religious Commitment in Liberal Democracy" at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division) later this month. Details below (lifted from Larry Solum's Legal Theory Blog):
One of many programs at the APA Eastern Division that may be of interest:
Thursday Afternoon, December 28 Session III – 2:00-5:00 p.m.
III-A. Symposium: Religious Commitment in Liberal Democracy 2:00-5:00 p.m.
Chair: Robert Audi (University of Notre Dame)
Speakers:
Michael Perry (Emory University)
Gerald Gaus (University of Arizona)
Commentator: Chris Eberle (United States Naval Academy)
For the full program online, follow this link.
[From the Opinionator at nytimes.com:]
December 6, 2006, 11:53 am
It’s never too early for a blog endorsement. University of
California, Los Angeles, public policy professor Mark Kleiman, who
writes at The Reality-Based Community, pledges his support for Barack
Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential race. His reasoning: Obama’s well-received speech at Rick Warren’s megachurch. Kleiman writes:
I’m well known to be a Wesley Clark fan. If Clark runs in 2008, I
wouldn’t expect him to make the rookie mistakes that cost him so much
in 2004. And his national security cred would be a huge plus. Compared
to a Dukakis, a Gore, a Kerry, or a Hillary Clinton, he’s way more
culturally Red-compatible. But I can’t see him getting a standing
ovation at a conservative megachurch after talking about condoms. I’ve
heard him talk about the importance of faith, and I don’t doubt he’s
sincere. But he sounds like (I don’t say he is, but he sounds like)
someone who believes in religion. Obama, with the Bible in his
cadences, sounds like (I don’t say he is, but he sounds like) someone
who believes in God.
Kleiman also thinks secular Democrats need to focus more on their
preferred policies and less on their preferred theological positions.
He writes:
For all Obama’s excellent policy-wonkery, that sort of language, and
thinking, makes him far more strange to me than Wesley Clark is. But it
makes him far more familiar and far more comfortable to tens of
millions of people whose votes we need. As long as we elect a President
who shares my policy preferences (and has the personal integrity,
intelligence, judgment, energy, sense of humor, and intellectual
humility needed to do the job), I don’t much care whether we elect a
President who shares my metaphysics.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
I've justed posted a paper to SSRN explaining why, in my judgment, capital punishment violates the cruel and unusual punishments clause of the Constitution--and then explaining why the Supreme Court probably should not so rule.
Here's the abstract:
Whether a law (or other
policy) is unconstitutional is one question; whether the Supreme Court (in an
appropriate case) should rule that the law is unconstitutional is a different
question. Contemporary constitutional theorists are virtually unanimous in ignoring
the analytic space between the two questions. That a law is unconstitutional
does not entail that the Supreme Court should rule that the law is
unconstitutional. In this paper - a revised version of which will be my
contribution to a symposium issue of the Georgia Law Review honoring Professor
Milner Ball - I explain why we should conclude that capital punishment violates
the cruel and unusual punishments clause. (I am inclined to think that we are
all originalists now; in any event, my explanation presupposes an originalist
conception of constitutional interpretation - although, to be sure, *not*
Antonin Scalia's misconceived originalist conception of constitutional
interpretation.) I also explain, however, why the Supreme Court (probably)
should not rule that capital punishment is unconstitutional.
To download/read the paper, click here.
