Greg Sargent looks at the real story of widespread compliance with the Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage

The great Mike Luckovich drew this glorious cartoon back when legalized same-sex marriage came to Massachusetts. As marriage equality gradually (but, in the grand scheme of things, remarkably rapidly) became the law of the land, homophobes surely continue to wish desperately that same-sex couples would "act a little scarier."

"Given that the ruling happened only a couple of months ago, things are going exceedingly smoothly. This shows that clerks are following the law, whether or not they support the freedom to marry, and irrespective of their religious beliefs."

-- Marc Solomon, national campaign director for Freedom
to Marry, to washingtonpost.com’s Greg Sargent

by Ken

Today we have another demonstration of why I love Greg Sargent, whose Plum Line has been functioning happily for ages now on washingtonpost.com. Look all around today and, understandably, you’ll see coverage of a story that Greg synopsized thusly in a post this afternoon:

Kim Davis, the elected clerk in Kentucky’s Rowan County, refused this morning to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples, just hours after the Supreme Court had turned down her request to be excused from issuing them on religious grounds. Asked on whose authority she was turning the couples away, she replied: "Under God’s authority."

The Kentucky standoff is a dramatic story whose resolution is very much up in the air, and it suggests that in some pockets, at least, resistance to the Supreme Court’s declaration of a Constitutional right to marry may continue.

However, the head on Greg’s post is "A Kentucky clerk is turning away gay couples. But she’s a real rarity." And mostly it’s this last part that his post is about. "If anything," he writes, "the more important story here is how little of this sort of resistance we’re seeing, which suggests that the continuing cultural shift on gay rights is only continuing -- and is swamping whatever backlash has greeted the ruling."

Now that, friends, is a story, and I wonder how many people are focusing on it. This is, as I said, an excellent demonstration of why I love Greg Sargent.

For his story, Greg turned to the organization Freedom to Marry, which has been in the thick of the movement to legalize same-sex marriage, and not surprisingly is keeping a watchful eye on developments. Freedom to Marry, it turns out, "has been closely tracking implementation of the gay marriage ruling in counties across the country," and, Greg says, "provided me with a rundown of the state of play," based on "direct calls to the clerks themselves, as well as on reports from organizers on the ground":

In Alabama, there are 67 counties. 54 counties are issuing licenses to everyone.

In Kentucky, there are 120 counties. 118 counties are issuing to everyone.

In Tennessee, there are 95 counties. All are issuing licenses.

In Mississippi, there 82 counties. All are issuing licenses.

There are 64 parishes in Louisiana. All are issuing licenses.

In Georgia, there are 159 counties. All are issuing licenses.

In Texas, there are 254 counties. All are issuing licenses.

Now that’s a story!

Now it’s time for facts and some context for them. Greg is a great lover of facts, and he's terrific at context.

Before the Supreme Court ruling, there were 14 states in which gay and lesbian people could not get married. (Thirteen of those had laws against it, while Alabama wasn’t complying with a lower court ruling making gay marriage legal.) Of these 14 states, seven -- the ones concentrated in the south -- are listed above. In the remaining states -- North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan and Ohio -- Freedom to Marry says any and all problems have been resolved.

And so in the seven southern states where the backlash might have been expected to be fiercest, only one -- Alabama -- still has multiple counties that are holding out. One other -- Kentucky -- has only two remaining counties holding out. One of those counties in Kentucky is the one drawing all the attention today. In the other one, no gay couples have tried to get licenses, Freedom to Marry tells me. All the rest are issuing licenses, the group says.

Finally, Greg reports some crucial points of his conversation with Freedom to Marry's national campaign director, Marc Solomon, beginning with the quote I've put atop this post. (I'll give you a second to take another look at it.)

"It’s true that Alabama remains a trouble spot," Greg writes.

But Solomon notes that the counties still holding out are "not the major population centers," which "just shows how silly the whole thing is." He adds: "this is a very small temporary blip that will take care of itself."

Meanwhile, some polls have shown solid majority approval of the Supreme Court ruling, while other polls suggest support for marriage equality is holding steady in the wake of the decision. And conspicuously few Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates are mounting any kind of serious call for continued resistance.

Says Solomon: "I’m expecting that support will hold and even increase as people see what this means -- that this really is about committed couples who are getting married."

Now that's a story well covered. And just another day at the office for Greg Sargent.

I SHOULD PROBABLY PUT IN A WORD HERE --

for Greg's Plum Line colleague Paul Waldman, whose ability to provide clear-headed explanations of complex political subjects I've drawn on repeatedly in this space.

And while we're on the subject(s), when it comes both to what we might call the Digbyan ability to discern the real story lying behind -- or above or below -- the popularly bruited one and to the ability to make complex subjects intelligible to nonspecialist readers, notably in technical areas like climate change, there aren't many practitioners who can match our Gaius Publius, which I can say because it was my opinion long before he started writing with us here at DWT. (What I didn't know before was how much fun he would be to have as a colleague!)

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz Still Tolerates Ugly Homophobia Inside Her "Big Tent"... Blue Dog Dan Lipinski

It isn't just Republicans who embrace anti-gay fanaticism-- Lipinski and Wasserman Schultz

In theory a "big tent" political party is just fine-- and the Democratic big tent is way better than the ever-shrinking ideological GOP pup tent. But you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. I'm sure if some vile DINO started espousing enslaving blacks or putting Jews in concentration camps, even Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Schultz would want to kick them out of the big tent. But what about horrible Blue Dog Dan Lipinski, a creepy-crawly pseudo-Democrat from the southwest Chicago Bungalow Belt? He represents a D+5 district that Obama won with 58% in 2008 and 56% in 2012, and ProgressivePunch rates him as an F. In the current session his crucial vote score is an abysmal 49.33.

None of this seems to faze the Democrats. What, then, about his ugly GOP-like homophobia? Lipinski backs GOP sociopath Tim Hueskamp's call for a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality for the LGBT community. The only other Democrats who had voting records as anti-gay as Lipinski's were fellow Blue Dogs Nick Rahall (WV), who was defeated in 2014, and Mike McIntyre, who was forced to retire or face certain defeat the same year.

Lipinski filled out a questionnaire from the Illinois Family Institute in which he avowed that he backs Hueslkamp's anti-gay constitutional amendment and every other anti-gay measure Democrats now routinely reject.

The two-page voting guide indicates the position of various candidates in the Illinois 3rd congressional district on issues important to social conservatives. Like his then-Republican opponent Sharon Brannigan, Lipinski indicated he supports H.J.Res 51.

The measure, introduced by Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas), was a U.S. constitutional amendment pending before Congress and that would have restricted marriage to one man, one woman regardless of action by the federal judiciary.

Additionally, the questionnaire indicates Lipinski opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act; supports a measure that would have prohibited the U.S. Justice Department from undermining the Defense of Marriage Act; and backs a controversial conscience clause in major defense spending legislation seen to enable anti-LGBT harassment of service members.

In terms of non-LGBT issues, the questionnaire also indicates Lipinski’s opposition to Obamacare and support for various measures that would restrict abortion rights.

...The Illinois congressman, a Roman Catholic, has a history of anti-LGBT votes as a U.S. House member. During his first term in Congress, he voted “present” in 2006 when a U.S. constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage came to the House floor. In the subsequent Congress after Democrats took control, Lipinski in 2007 voted against a version of ENDA on the House floor.

In the current Congress, Lipinski is the only Democratic co-sponsor of the First Amendment Defense Act, which seeks to “protect” opponents of same-sex marriage from government action, but is seen to enable anti-LGBT discrimination. When an amendment came to the House floor seeking to prohibit spending on transportation or housing and urban development contractors without LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination policies, Lipinski was the only Democrat to vote “present.”

Lipinski has no primary challenger this year, at least not so far. That's in no small part due to the undeserved support he gets from the Democratic Party Establishment. Hopefully when Wasserman Schultz is kicked out of her DNC chair, that will change.

On the first full day of the era of constitutionally sanctioned same-sex marriage . . .

Awwwwww!

by Ken

Up above, that's Brian Brown, co-founder and since 2010 president of the National Organization for Marriage, bawling his putrid guts out in response to yesterday's Supreme Court ruling that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Normally I wouldn't make fun of a person in such a state, but in this case the loathsome bully not only asked for it, he screeched, brayed, threatened and terrorized for it, by presuming to force other people to abide by the views of this wretched wreck of humanity.

Brian Brown worked hard to make himself a monster, and when a monster weeps, well, it's not necessarily an occasion for sorrow.

A point I meant to make in my already-bulging survey yesterday of the Supreme Court decision is that, while the public outcry would no doubt be even screechier than the response to the decision announced Thursday giving the thumbs-up to Affordable Care Act subsidies, the outcriers -- pretty much the same people, after all -- must surely have been better prepared for the marriage decision.

It's not that the Court's constitutional blessing on same-sex marriage was a sure thing. As I indicated last night, I myself was surprised by the ruling. But everyone has to have known that the time was coming. That with or without constitutional protection, same-sex marriage was here to stay, and the American public was increasingly okay with it. I suppose that the intensity of the furor relates precisely to the general awareness of the holders-on that they have been fighting a losing war.

With specific regard to the so-called National Organization for Marriage, if those misfits and lowlifes had the slightest concern for the health of the social unit of the family, they might have devote some attention to figuring out what contributes to healthy outcomes in the family unit and what doesn't. But of course there were already right-wing organizations devoted to making an unholy mess of that, so if these pathetic lowlifes were going to have an outlet for their misery, a way of dragging their sorry-ass carcasses into the spotlight, well, there was an opening in marriage.

Now we have to start with the basic reality that none of the troglodytes who ritually swear allegiance to "traditional marriage" have the slightest inkling what the history of marriage is, and thus what might or might not be traditional. Everything they think they know about it is gleaned from tin-tongued preachermen, from the local snakehandler on up to the loftiest crossdresser in Rome. And they never bothered to try to explain how allowing same-sex couples, people who cared enough for the institution of marriage to want to participate in it, threatens "traditional" marriages.

They didn't try because they wouldn't have been able to do it -- as they demonstrated on rare occasions when they were forced to. The only threat to "traditional" marriage is the sniveling, pathetic human incompetence of the people who are force-marched into it. Really, it should hardly come as a surprise that the crowning achievement of "traditional" marriage is as a toxic breeding ground for sociopathology. Given that it's an institution that has been taken hostage by sociopaths -- what else would you expect?


MEANWHILE IN THE REAL WORLD --

I don't think this item requires additional comment, beyond the obvious fact that the joy of the newly empowered newlyweds happens also to be good for business, which makes it about as American as you can get.

Seafood Restaurant BKB Offers Free Dinner To Gay Newlyweds

By Shaye Weaver | June 26, 2015 7:14pm


BKB is offering free dinner, like this lobster roll, to newlyweds who were married between June 26 and July 3.

UPPER EAST SIDE — In celebration of the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriages nationnwide, seafood restaurant BKB is offering free dinners to couples who tie the knot between June 26 and July 3.

"I felt pumped this morning and thought about what I could possibly do to pay homage to this great turn in the U.S.," said Adam Miller, who co-owns the restaurant at 321 E. 73rd St.

Two appetizers, two entrees and a round of drinks will be included in the meal. The menu includes short ribs, crab cakes, Montauk Pearl oysters, lobster rolls and BKB's burger.

Newlyweds should book their reservations on OpenTable, include "#LoveWins" in their notes and bring in a photo from the wedding with a timestamp or copy of the dated marriage license to be eligible. The reservation can be valid for a future date.

Miller said he's thinking about hosting a wedding at the restaurant on East 73rd Street and its East Hampton outpost within the next few weeks. He said he would like couples to "pitch their case" as to why they would want to have their wedding there.

"It would be a love story we want to be a part of," he said.

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Justice Ginsburg argues that justices claiming to uphold the eternal definition of marriage don't know what they're talking about

by Ken

When I went yesterday with the Washington Post team's account of the Supreme Court's oral arguments on the cases it's hearing regarding same-sex marriage, I kept meaning to check ThinkProgress to see what legal eagle Ian Millhiser had to say about the proceedings. For general coverage I think we did OK, but now I'm happy to say that we can turn to Ian M for his particular take.

It turns out that he has taken particular note of a comment by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in response to some usual blithering from the Court's biggest blowhard-jackass, Nino Scalia. (There may be dumber justices. "Sammy the Hammer" Alito, for an instance. And the Hammer may be as vicious as Justice Nino. But he's nowhere near as overbearingly loud.) Here's Ian:

During Tuesday’s marriage equality arguments in the Supreme Court, several of the Court’s conservative members suggested that same-sex couples should not be given equal marriage rights because these couples have not enjoyed those rights for most of the past. As Justice Antonin Scalia summed up this argument, “for millennia, not a single society” supported marriage equality, and that somehow exempted same-sex couples from the Constitution’s promise of equal protection of the law.

Not long after her conservative colleagues raised this argument, however, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained exactly why marriage was long understood to be incompatible with homosexuality in just five sentences:

[Same-sex couples] wouldn’t be asking for this relief if the law of marriage was what it was a millennium ago. I mean, it wasn’t possible. Same-sex unions would not have opted into the pattern of marriage, which was a relationship, a dominant and a subordinate relationship. Yes, it was marriage between a man and a woman, but the man decided where the couple would be domiciled; it was her obligation to follow him.

There was a change in the institution of marriage to make it egalitarian when it wasn’t egalitarian. And same-sex unions wouldn’t — wouldn’t fit into what marriage was once.

It was a blunt reminder, or an attempt at a blunt reminder (subtlety is so wasted on many of Justice Ginsburg's fellow justices that even hammerlike bluntness may come across as filigreed nuance) that justices who imagine they're defending an eternal and unchanging definition of marriage are full of doody, because until surprisingly recently a concept as simple-sounding as "a man and a woman" not only wasn't simple but in fact from a legal standpoint meant something not at all like what the doody-strewers think.

Here's Ian again:

Justice Ginsburg’s point was that, until surprisingly recently, the legal institution of marriage was defined in terms of gender roles. According to Sir William Blackstone, an eighteenth century English jurist whose works are still frequently cited today to explain the common law principles we inherited from our former colonial rulers, “[t]he very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband; under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs everything.” As late as 1887, fully one third of the states did not permit women to control their earnings. And married women could not even withhold consent to sex with their husband until shockingly recently.

Under the common law, “by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given herself up in this kind unto her husband,” and this consent was something “she cannot retract.” The first successful prosecution in the United States of a husband who raped his wife did not occur until the late 1970s.

So American marriage law, and the English law that it was derived from, presumed that the wife was both financially and sexual subservient to the husband. In a world where marriage is defined as a union between a dominant man and a submissive woman, each fulfilling unique gender roles, the case for marriage discrimination is clear. How can both the dominant male role and the submissive female role be carried out in a marital union if the union does not include one man and one woman? This, according to Justice Ginsburg, is why marriage was understood to exclude same-sex couples for so many centuries.

But marriage is no longer bound to antiquated gender roles. And when those gender roles are removed, the case for marriage discrimination breaks down.

IAN'S TAKE YESTERDAY, BY THE WAY . . .

. . . was: "The Lawyer Defending Discrimination In The Supreme Court May Have Just Talked Himself Out Of Victory." He pointed out that lawyer John Bursch, when he took the podium, focused on the argument that "When you change the definition of marriage, that has consequences," and when pressed on those consequences trotted out an argument that was used in Sammy the Hammer's dissent in United States vs. Windsor, that the Court majority was siding with, as Ian put it, "a 'traditional' view" of marriage" which sees it "as an 'exclusively opposite-sex institution and as one inextricably linked to procreation and biological kinship' " over "a 'consent-based' view 'that primarily defines marriage as the solemnization of mutual commitment -- marked by strong emotional attachment and sexual attraction - between two persons."

The problem? In Windsor, "Only one other justice, however, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined this part of Alito’s dissent."

As Bursch pressed this view, he was challenged by Justice Kennedy -- whose position is generally considered crucial to the outcome of the present bundle of cases -- and in Ian's view "Bursch's response to Kennedy's concerns was a disaster." You can read more in the post at the above link.

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It's "Slow Anthony" Kennedy Day at the Supreme Court gay-marriage jamboree

WaPo caption: "Joe, left, and Frank Capley-Alfano in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. The couple, from Oakland, Calif., have been together for 15 years and were married in 2008."

by Ken

OMG, "Obergefell v. Hodges"? This is the designation for the agglomeration of cases bundled into the great Supreme Court same-sex-marriage test case, which we're going to have to cite unto, well, eternity? Oy! Is this maybe the justices' subtle way of discouraging us from talking about the case unot, you know, eternity?

Today, of course, was the day of the long-awaited oral arguments on the cases coming up from the appeals courts bearing on same-sex marriage. For present purposes I'm going to assume that you're up to date on the issues and the legal fault lines on the High Court (if not, there's a pretty good rundown of the history and politics of the issue in the Washington Post Barnes-Barbash piece we're going to be looking at in a moment), and that what you want to know is what the justices had to say and what it may tell us about the eventual decision that's expected in June.

Supreme Court shows split in hearing on historic in gay-marriage cases

By Robert Barnes and Fred Barbash
April 28 at 2:20 PM

Supreme Court justices broke along familiar ideological lines Tuesday as they considered whether same-sex couples enjoy a constitutional right to marry, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in a familiar role as the apparent decider in a landmark gay-rights case.

Kennedy asked tough questions of both sides. But it has worked out well in the past for gay rights supporters when Kennedy has been cast in the role of decider. He has written each of the court’s major rulings on the subject, including the 2013 decision striking down part of the federal law that refused to recognize same-sex marriage.

Look deep in his eyes . . .

And it will be debated between now and when the court renders its decision at the end of June which view will win out: Kennedy’s interest in protecting states’ rights or his sympathy for gay couples facing discrimination.

Why should nine unelected justices change the definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman when that concept has existed for “millennia?” Kennedy asked attorney Mary L. Bonauto, who is representing gay couples in the case.

On the other end, he questioned John Bursch, representing Michigan and other states with same-sex marriage bans, about their procreation-centered view of marriage. Why do same-sex couples not deserve the “same ennoblement” of their relationships that others receive? he asked.

But toward the end of the argument, Kennedy’s words sounded more like those of the opinions he has written.

“Same­-sex couples say, of course, we understand the nobility and the sacredness of the marriage,” Kennedy told Bursch. “We know we can’t procreate, but we want the other attributes of it in order to show that we, too, have a dignity that can be fulfilled.”

The solemn, hushed nature of the proceeding was shattered by a protester who shouted that the Bible teaches that those who engage in homosexuality will “burn in hell for eternity.” He could be heard shouting for minutes even after security dragged him from the courtroom.

Proponents of same-sex marriage were first at the podium as they challenged laws from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. The justices are considering two questions: whether the Constitution requires states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and whether states must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states where they are legal.

Bonauto argued that limiting marriage to a man and a woman deprives gay and lesbian couples of this valued right. To deny it leaves them with a “stain of unworthiness,” she said.

Bonauto received a boost from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who pointed out that legal views of marriage have changed to make them more “egalitarian.”

But Bonauto faced repeated questions about the historical nature of marriage as a bond between genders — which Justice Stephen G. Breyer described as “the law everywhere for thousands of years.”

“Suddenly,” Breyer said, “you want nine people outside the ballot box to require states to change [this].”

For the most part, however, it was the conservative justices with the sharpest questioning for Bonauto.

When she said the institution of marriage would not be harmed by gay couples being allowed in, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. stopped her.

“You’re not seeking to join the institution, you’re seeking to change the institution,” he said.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked if the definition of marriage was simply a commitment between loving consenting adults, how could a state withhold that from siblings, or two women and two men who decided to marry.

Justice Antonin Scalia said that if the decisions on marriage continue to be made democratically by the states, those states could make religious accommodations that would not be possible if there was a decision that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right.

Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., arguing for the same-sex couples on behalf of the Obama administration, said many of the arguments were also made before the court in 1967 struck down state prohibitions on interracial marriage.

Withholding marriage from same-sex couples repeats the same discrimination, he said. “I don’t know why we’d want to repeat that history,” he continued.

The liberal justices repeatedly pressed Bursch about why opening marriage to same-sex couples would damage the states’ interests, which he defined as encouraging mothers and fathers to stay together to raise any children they might have.

“Nobody’s taking that away,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Heterosexual couples would have “the very same incentive to marry,” said Justice Ginsburg.

But Bursch said the states only had to prove that their reasons for limiting marriage to a man and a woman are “not so irrational that it’s unconstitutional.”

Roberts asked a question that neither side had pressed. If a woman wants to marry a man, she can. If a man wants to marry a man, he can’t. Why isn’t that sex discrimination? he wondered.

Roberts dominated the second argument, about whether states could be forced to recognize marriages performed in states where they were legal.

The question would be moot if the court declares a constitutional right, but the second argument lent force to the idea that it might be the chief justice’s preferred path, and could perhaps win a wider majority.

If states are forced to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, Roberts suggested, it would be “only a matter of time” before same-sex marriage settled in as a national norm. It would effectively allow “one state” or a minority of states to “set policy for the nation.”

At the same time, the Roberts line of questioning suggested he did not view that possibility with great alarm, at least as an alternative to a court decision holding that all states must permit same-sex marriages within their borders.

Isn’t it “quite rare for a state not to recognize” a marriage performed elsewhere? he asked.

He pointed out that recognizing a marriage performed elsewhere is “pretty straightforward” compared to a state allowing such marriages under its own law, suggesting it was not as much of an imposition.

Getting married “is one thing,” he said. But wasn’t allowing a marriage to exist that has been performed elsewhere just a matter of “applying domestic relations law,” he asked.

It may turn out, of course, that whatever decision isn't reached by "Slow Anthony" Kennedy being The Decider between two evenly arrayed Blocs of Four, but you never know -- and we certainly won't know until we know where Slow Anthony draws his lines on the various aspects of the case. Meanwhile, we've got Chief Justice Roberts asking questions, like the one about the applicability of sex discrimination to the question of same-sex constitutional rights, that suggest he may be looking for some sort of legal and constitutional loop-the-loop, perhaps one that would grant some at least of what the country seems ready to accept in terms of legalized same-sex marriage without the justices' actually having to declare that people have a constitutional right to it.

I'm assuming that Justice Clarence Thomas gave no indication of his thought process on the subject. But if there's anyone who doesn't have an excellent idea of how that process will play out, you must be new to this.

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Oh no! Has Indiana's reputation for "Hoosier hospitality" been tarnished?

Great Moments in Hoosier History: Americans learned the meaning of Hoosier tolerance when America's Foremost Hoosier, Vice President Dan Quayle, publicly jumped ugly on 12-year-old New Jersey schoolkid William Figueroa for spelling "potato" correctly.


"I just don't like that they say we're intolerant. Because that's not who we are."

-- Martinsville (Indiana) bakery owner Michelle Crafton,
quoted by the NYT's Richard Fausset in "Indiana
Residents Rue Damage to State's Welcoming Reputation"

by Ken

Well, boo-hoo, Michelle.

Here's the opening of Richard Fausset's NYT report from the Hoosier State, "Indiana Residents Rue Damage to State's Welcoming Reputation":

MARTINSVILLE, Ind. — Michelle Crafton, the owner of a tiny bakery in this struggling town 30 miles south of Indianapolis, is not sure what she would do if asked to cater a same-sex wedding.

Ms. Crafton, 42, is a churchgoing Christian who believes homosexuality is a sin. But she also has a gay cousin — “I’ve loved him ever since he was a kid,” she said — and if she did say no to a gay couple, she would struggle over a polite way to tell them.

As the debate over a law promoted as defending religious freedom but criticized as anti-gay convulsed Indiana last week, Ms. Crafton might be excused for also being unclear about whether it would give her the legal right to refuse such service. She and other supporters of the law had hoped that it would.

But on Thursday, after an outcry from business leaders, Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican, signed a revised version clarifying that the law could not be used to justify discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

If Ms. Crafton was sure of one thing, it was that all of the national attention had given Indiana a black eye.

“I just don’t like that they say we’re intolerant,” she said Thursday from behind a counter stocked with pastel Easter cookies and red velvet cupcakes. “Because that’s not who we are.”

Ah, well, thanks for clearing that up, Michelle! Okay, well, she has a bit more clarifying to offer:

Ms. Crafton said she supported gay couples’ right to have their relationships recognized under the law. And despite her religious reservations, she said she might cater a same-sex wedding if she felt comfortable with the couple.

“It comes down to the people,” she said.

She said she would never turn away gay customers who walked into her store, unless they were excessively rude. But that, she said, applied to everyone.

There you go: It comes down to the people. As long as they aren't "excessively rude," they can darned well spend their money in Michelle's store. Tell me that isn't welcoming! This must be what's meant by "Hoosier hospitality."

Then there's Pentecostal Christian café owner Ryan Colwell, 41, also in Martinsville, who huddled with his pastor "to work out a plan if he was ever asked to cater a same-sex wedding, which he feels his faith precludes him from condoning." You'll be thrilled to learn that they worked it out:

“I would cater a gay wedding,” he said, but only if he could drop the food off “and leave, and not have to stay and observe.”

Why any same-sex couple would want to have a proud homo-hater present, or for that matter to avail themselves of his services, escapes me, but I guess it's a matter of principle. And our Ryan isn't shy about his principles.

Mr. Colwell said he also supported the original version of the law because he thought it would give business owners the right to deny services if delivering them offended their religious sensibilities. The revisions disappointed him.

“To me, it’s almost repealing the law without repealing it,” he said. “It hurts me to know that if I take a stand on an issue based on my religious convictions, that I’m labeled as a discriminator, and I’m just not.”

Okay, if I'm getting this right, Ryan resents being labeled a discriminator when it's merely his chosen religion that's the discriminator. And people say Hoosiers aren't welcoming.


And, oh yes, here's a ringing retort in case there was any lingering question about the "intent" of Indiana's as-written God Says We Gotta Hate Them Homos Act.

Okay, we have time for maybe one more such story, and this one comes from Cody Button, 22, who started his high school's first LGBT group "after he was criticized by faculty for kissing a boy in the hallway." He's torn by the Hate Them Homos Act. "It makes me feel for Indiana, all the businesses that are backing out," he says.

But he also said he understood why business owners might want the legal system to protect them if they refused to serve gay customers on religious grounds. He noted that a friend’s father, who runs an environmental remediation company, faced a similar situation recently when asked to do a job for a satanic church.

I wonder whether thinking that being gay is just like being a satanist ever came up in Cory's high school LGBT group.

To be sure, reporter Fausset found other voices. He doesn't seem to have actually found journalist Stephanie Dolan, but he did read her piece "Are there more than bigots in Indiana" in NUVO, "Indy's alternative voice."

“ ‘Hoosier hospitality’ has been a phrase that I’ve heard my whole life,” Stephanie Dolan, a journalist, wrote recently in NUVO Newsweekly, an Indianapolis alternative paper. “It’s hokey and it’s corny, and — if you’re easily annoyed like me — it’s a bit off-putting in its sappiness. But there was never any mistaking its sincerity.”

“Now?” she added. “I can only think of that phrase ironically.”

I guess there was no need to actually talk to Stephanie, except maybe to find out her age, which alas goes unreported. Apparently the NYT doesn't feel obliged to report the age of people who merely write stuff.

In addition, reporter Fausset finds, "The perception that the law had created an unwelcoming atmosphere was shared by a number of business-oriented conservatives." Godliness, it would appear, may stop at the cash register. Score one for Hoosier hospitality.

Reporter Fausset found more dissenting voices in Indianapolis, "the more diverse and gay-friendly capital," where "many said the law had always struck them as the height of rudeness" and "some characterized it as a solution in search of a problem." Would you be surprised to learn that one of those voices spoke with an accent?

Enza Papalia, 69, a native of Italy who immigrated to the United States in 1963, laid into Mr. Pence on Thursday afternoon from behind the counter at J. Papalia Tailoring, a renowned Indianapolis shop established by her husband.

“What is he trying to prove?” she said in a voice still redolent of her native land. “What’s the point? Is anything good going to come out of this?”

TO ALL THOSE HOOSIERS WHO FRET ABOUT
THE TARNISH TO THEIR STATE'S REPUTATION --

In closing, I offer consolation in the form of two pairs of words:

(1) What reputation?

(2) Dan Quayle.

Do the hospitable Hoosiers not remember having gifted the country with a man of whom it can be said, without fear of contradiction: Gosh darn it, he was vice president of the U.S.A. While hospitable Hoosiers dream about the imagined slur on Hoosier hospitality, many non-Hoosiers have nightmares about the ensuing hordes of crypto-Quayles who have worked so hard to drag the standard of competence and decency ever lower. You know, like far, far right-wing pandering hate-monger Gov. Mikey Pants.

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Yet Another Republican Claims to Speak for God

By Noah

In a move that would make Mike Huckabee and any number of republican nutballs proud, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has just banned judges in his state from issuing same-sex marriage licenses.

Judge Moore, if you remember, is the infamous gay-bashing judge who, back in 2002, refused to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama state courthouse, invoking the usual “We are a Christian Nation” clause that apparently only exists in the Republican or FOX "News" version of the United States Constitution. He even defied a court order on the matter and was removed from his position.

In 2012, the brilliant voters of Alabama gave Moore his job back, and the chief justice has, since then, upped his ante and even called for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage for the entire country. Doth Moore protest too much?

If I wanted to be snarky (who, me?), I could say something about the very concept of putting "Alabama" and "justice" so close together. Certainly, in the annals of Alabama’s proud history -- well, let’s just say the word "justice" often doesn’t apply. So, can it be at all surprising that Moore, an official elected by Alabama voters, has issued his ban?

In the recent past, Moore has also stated, at a local Teabagger convention, no less, that President Obama’s support of civil rights for gay people, allowing gay people to serve openly in our military, and his presidential proclamation for a “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Month” back in June 2010 have all “elevated immorality to a new level.”

Moore’s order also bans the recognition of any same-sex marriages. Which has now set up a constitutional crisis between the federal government and the government of Alabama. Moore isn’t the first Alabama official to invoke state’s rights and stand in front of the doorway to justice and civil rights. Clearly, he is channeling Gov, George Wallace, a 1960s bigot from back in the day before bigoted Southern Democrats became republicans. Perhaps it’s still 50-plus years ago in Alabama.

So here you have it: yet another republican wackjob claiming to speak for God. Just look at this freak, standing there in this picture with his hand on the Ten Commandments.

Try as I may, I just can’t remember anything about a “Thou shall not marry a person of your sex” commandment. Maybe that one was on that third tablet that Moses dropped when he came down from the mount.

Even Jesus never spoke about homosexuality, but, hey, this is the great Judge Roy Moore we’re talking about, and he surely must know better than Jesus!

My personal advice to to the people of Alabama, and republicans in general, would be that maybe they should look into something more useful: like banning same-family marriage. Just sayin’.

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Buffoon Watch: Steve King's Greatest Hits

He can't be for real, can he? Alas, all too real.

by Noah

There are two Steve Kings of at least some renown in our society. One is Stephen King, the world-famous writer of horror. The other is Rep. Steven King of Iowa. He is a monster for real.

Rep. Steven King has a special talent for articulating what the Republican Party stands for. That talent has led to his prominence in the party. Tim Moran, a former Iowa GOP State Central Committee member thinks King should run for senator, saying the Republican Party might find it ". . . refreshing to have Steve King at the top of a ticket to drive the message and definition of the party."


KING OF BUFFOON-O-RAMA

This past weekend Representative King was the cohost of the so-called Iowa Freedom Summit, aka Buffoon-o-Rama 2015, designed to kick off the 2016 Republican presidential primary season. Most of the usual suspects were there, including "The Donald" and his hair Sarah Palin with her special talent for speaking complete gibberish,  and neo-fascist Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Mittens Romney and John Ellis "Jeb" Bush chose not to attend, presumably to try to convince us that they are not as buffoonish as the other participants.

But King was in his self-proclaimed glory, acting as a combination ten-ring master of ceremonies and smarmy game show host. He even made sure to have his name emblazoned on the front of the podium as if it was the seal of the president of the United States. If you read the following selections from King's ever-expanding list of greatest hits, you will see that when it comes to heading up a confab of buffoons, Representative Steve is at the top of his class and a perfect choice. The following is just a small, but I think representative, sample of Steven King's Greatest Hits. There is so much more, and no doubt there will be so much more to come.


1. ON ANIMAL CRUELTY

Do you like dogfighting and cockfighting? If you are of the Michael Vick persuasion and enjoy throwing animals in a pit and watching the blood squirt, Representative King is your man! He has led the fights in Congress to block legislation that would crack down on such barbarism. During discussions of the 2012 farm bill, it was King who led the fight against an amendment that would make it a crime for an adult to attend or to bring a child to a dogfight or cockfight. In 2007 he had opposed House bill H.R.137, which made it a felony to transport animals or cockfighting implements across state lines for the purpose of fighting.

King is one of the few lawmakers of either party who opposed including pets in disaster planning. He also voted against the 111th Congress's H.R.80, a bill written to prohibit interstate and foreign commerce in primates for the pet trade.

There's a whole lot more where this type of thing came from, but you get the picture. Basically, if something protects an animal somewhere, Representative King is against it, even more so than some members of his own party.


2. ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

In 2003, Sioux City (Iowa) Judge Jeffrey Neary granted two lesbians a divorce. King's response was:

Unicorns, leprechauns, gay marriages in Iowa; these are all things you will never find because they just don't exist. But perhaps Judge Neary would grant divorces to unicorns and leprechauns too.

Same-sex marriage became legal in Iowa six years later, in 2009. Like his party, Representative King is a man of no vision.



3. ON IMMIGRATION

King is clearly his party's leader on anti-immigration matters. One of his most famous statements about immigration -- and there are many of them -- is what is known as "the cantaloupe comment." Referring to immigrant children coming across our borders, he said:

For every one who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.

King has also compared Mexican immigrants, documented and undocumented alike, to dogs:

You want a good bird dog? You want one that's going to be aggressive? [P]ick the one that's the friskiest . . . not the one that's over there sleeping in the corner. . .&nbsp. You get the pick of the litter.

We already know about what Representative King thinks of dogs. I suspect such a man would like to set up "Mexican fighting pits" that would be just like cockfights and dogfights. Maybe they'll have that at the 2016 Republican Convention and Hatefest.


4. ON GLOBAL WARMING

King has called climate change " more of a religion than a science."  He has repeatedly demonstrated his contempt for science and his complete lack of understanding of the issue. He is not even smarter than a fifth grader. Perhaps his arrogance about the subject is best pointed out by this quote: "I spent a lot of my life cold. It felt pretty good to get warmed up."



5. ON CONTRACEPTION

King is a key player in the Republican anti-contraception movement. He has made a lot of noise objecting to the idea that Obamacare could cover birth control for women as a free preventive service without a copay. Says he:

Well, if you applied that preventative medicine universally, what you end up with is you've prevented a generation. Preventing babies from being born is not medicine. That's not constructive to our culture and our civilization. If we let our birth rate get down below replacement rate, we're a dying civilization.

This statement is a classic example of an extremist using extremist thinking. Dying civilization? Hardly. As it is now, the U.S. population is 312 million people, and it's on course to reach 439 million by 2050. To turn that pace into a dying civilization would require a staggering amount of contraception use, an amount way, way beyond what the Obamacare provision would realistically lead to.

As far as I'm concerned, the best solution to the population problem, at least in this country, would be for Republicans to immediately stop procreating. It would solve a lot of other problems too!


FOR FURTHER READING --

As I indicated, the above barely scratches the surface of Representative King and what a perfect one-person embodiment of the Republican Party philosophy he is. You can click on the DWT "Steve King" label below for some of our favorites. Then here are a couple of suggestions for further reading:

• "Steve King: Gays Wouldn't Face Discrimination If They Didn't 'Wear Their Sexuality On Their Sleeve'" (HuffPost Politics, December 2010)

and especially:

• "Right-Wing Demands Obama Fire Kevin Jennings for Helping Gay Teens Not Kill Themselves" (Julie Farby, HuffPost Politics, March 2010, updated May 2011)


SCHEDULE NOTE: Next post at 7pm PT/10pm ET

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Alan Grayson's Very Special Christmas Present For His LGBT Constituents

Members of Congress have no executive authority-- not in DC and not in their own districts or states. But that has never stopped Alan Grayson. Right after he was elected to the House he went on a crusade against the foreclosure-industrial complex cheating Central Florida homeowners out of their homes. Since working closely with the chief justice of the Orange and Osceola counties judiciary, foreclosure were cut in half for Grayson's constituents-- a lot more than most congressmen every accomplish for the people they represent.

Well, he's done it again. After the U.S. Supreme refused to stop a lower court’s decision that Florida’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. marriage equality was set to come into its own across the Sunshine State. Except for one thing, homophobic Republicans that pretty much control the state. Gay-hating Attorney General Pam Bondi went ballistic and warned Florida county clerks that if they go ahead and issue marriage licenses to same sex couples it could subject them to prosecution. Grayson immediately got to work with the Osceola County Commission, which passed a resolution allowing their Clerk's offices to open at Midnight on January 6th to began issuing licenses to LGBT couples. He and County Commissioner County Commissioner Cheryl Grieb sent a letter to Orange-Osceola State Attorney Jeff Ashton to confirm that local Clerks of the 11th Circuit Court will not be prosecuted for issuing the marriage licenses. "A Florida court has ruled that refusing to issue such licenses is a denial of the equal protection clause to same-sex couples," they wrote. "Taxpayer money would have to be used, and wasted, in defeating such efforts."

Tuesday, Ashton conceded the battle is over-- at least in Central Florida-- and that LGBT couples can indeed get married in the Orlando area and that clerks will not be prosecuted, despite Bondi's threats. Orlando Weekly:

Grayson, our congressman who actually loves the gays, joined with Osceola County Commissioner Cheryl Grieb in turning up the heat on Orange-Osceola State Attorney Jeff Ashton on the issue of pressing charges against clerks issuing licenses to same sex couples. Ashton, you see, is characteristically playing the issue safe and down the middle. Yesterday he issued a statement via spokeswoman saying: "The State Attorney does not announce in advance which cases he will prosecute. If he receives a complaint, that complaint will be investigated and evaluated, as other complaints are, and a charging decision will be made at the appropriate time."

Humbug.

Grayson and Grieb contend that this is all a violation of the Federal Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, because that's exactly what the U.S. Supreme Court said last year.

Ashton promptly informed the Clerks of Courts in Orange and Osceola counties Tuesday that his office will not prosecute them for issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples when the ban is lifted on January 6th. Grayson was jubilant: "I’m happy that the State Attorney is joining me in upholding one of our most fundamental American principles: that we are all equal in the eyes of the law, no matter what you look like, no matter where you are from, and no matter whom you love."

Merry Christmas!

On same-sex marriage, the other appeals-court "shoe" finally drops

by Ken

Obviously the decision handed down this afternoon by a panel of the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, overturning lower-court rulings that had struck down same-sex marriage bans in Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky, wasn't influenced by the election but was presumably withheld until today to prevent it from influencing the election.

Still, it seems to me to focus some attention on a factor that seems to me to account for Tuesday's strong rightward tilt. I'm going to venture that part of it -- in some miasmatic soup of cause and efffect or perhaps just lurking malaise -- is gut-level pushback in the culture wars, against all that stuff that "they" are getting away with. I think this may play a larger role than we've allowed in the political wars to come in the final years of the Obama administration, and in the 2016 election.

The thing to remember, before we get to the actual Sixth Circuit ruling, is that until now all of the rulings handed down on same-sex marriage handed down by federal Circuit Courts of Appeal -- the level immediately below the Supreme Court -- have been against legal bans. Which was crucial to the Supreme Court's on-the-surface puzzling decision at the start of its current term to let stand without comment the Circuit Court rulings under appeal to it. (See my October 6 post , "Which of the Supreme Court's thug-justices finked out on God's own homo-haters?")

Cautious commentators were careful to note at the time that simply letting those rulings stand may have seemed like the same thing as upholding them, but wasn't at all. Practically speaking, it meant that the High Court still had a clear shot at the subject if and when four justices could agree to hear a future case.

And this was made possible by the fact that as of then there were no contradictory rulings among the circuit courts which might have required Supreme Court adjudication. It was also pointed out by cautious commentators that this situation would change as soon as even one circuit weighed in on the other side.

Now, as the Washington Post's Robert Barnes reported late this afternoon:

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld same-sex marriage bans in four states Thursday afternoon, creating a split among the nation’s appeals courts that almost surely means the Supreme Court must take up the issue of whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.

The panel ruled 2 to 1 that while gay marriage is almost inevitable, in the words of U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, it should be settled through the democratic process and not the judiciary. The decision overturned rulings in Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky, and makes the 6th Circuit the first appeals court to uphold state bans since the Supreme Court in 2013 struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

One thing that was puzzling about the Court's decision last month not to accept any of the same-sex marriage cases on offer to it was the position of the four far-right thug-justices. Clearly this is an issue on which they couldn't count on their steady swing-thug "Slow Anthony" Kennedy to join their party, but it only takes four justices to add a case to the docket. Did this mean that one or more among Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito had thrown in the towel on the issue?

Or were they perhaps holding off in the hope that a more favorable day would yet come -- meaning at least having one circuit-court ruling to hang a constitutional hands-off on the issue, perhaps a personnel change on the Court, perhaps even a change in the cultural climate.

Well, now they've got the Sixth Circuit panel's 2-1 ruling. (No, 2-1 doesn't seem like the healthiest margin for major transformations in federal law. But now that so much law is made by circuit-court panels, it's pretty much the way our law is made.) Robert Barnes reports:

Sutton, writing for himself and Judge Deborah L. Cook, said that the challengers had not made the case for “constitutionalizing the definition of marriage and for removing the issue from the place it has been since the founding: in the hands of state voters.”

Judge Margaret Craig Daughtry dissented. “If we in the judiciary do not have the authority, and indeed the responsibility, to right fundamental wrongs left excused by a majority of the electorate, our whole intricate, constitutional system of checks and balances, as well as the oaths to which we swore, prove to be nothing but shams.

It's worth considering too that the rulings overturned today were made by judges who thought they were interpreting the Supreme Court's thinking in striking down the portion of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that provided cover for same-sex marriage bans, which seemed confirmed by the High Court's declining of all those cases for this term. Now there's a contrary ruling on the table at the circuit-court level.

Plus, much as I hate to make it appear that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is on death watch, if she -- or one of her non-thug colleagues -- does need to be replaced during the remainder of the Obama administration, can we imagine what sort of replacement we might get if he or she has to pass muster with, for example, Sen. Rafael "Ted from Alberta" Cruz?

And come 2017, who knows?

It doesn't seem likely that any of the thug-justices are going anywhere anytime soon.

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Don't be so sure that Pope Francis lost this round of squabbling with the bishops

The pope at the now-concluded Vatican synod on the family.

by Ken

On Friday I poked around the pushback being felt within and without the special synod of bishops gathered in the Vatican to ponder family issues. The synod seems clearly an initiative of Pope Francis to see where the boys in the hierarchi he inherited are standing on his initiatives to imbue Catholic family values with some measure of humanity.

By then the vocal and power-grubbing coterie of scumbag bishops had already begun watering down the draft document circulated on Monday, and the power-grubbers in the hierarchy as well as their power-grubbing movers in the laity were flexing their backward-looking muscles. On Saturday the final document that was released fell a heckuva lot short of that the Holy Father had in mind.

As the Washington Post's Michelle Boorstein reported:

A major meeting Pope Francis convened to help the Catholic Church improve its outreach to diverse modern families ended Saturday with a summary paper that removed earlier, revolutionary language that cited the value of same-sex and divorced families.

Critics of the pope were celebrating Saturday, with conservative Catholics cheering the reaffirmation that God prefers the traditional family.

The two-week meeting in Rome hadn’t been expected to result in changes to traditional doctrine, but the rare sight of cardinals from around the world debating matters such as whether same-sex couples can be called “partners” floored many Catholics. More liberal Catholics said Saturday that it was a victory for the church to even have such conversations, though many expressed disappointment with the paper.

This doesn't sound so bad.

But then we get:

“The language of compromise was eviscerated from Monday’s summary,” said Patrick Hornbeck, chair of theology at Fordham University, a Catholic institution. “The bishops who were more prophetic and progressive have found themselves drowned out by a chorus of hesitation and concern.”

Saturday’s summary reflected deep divisions in the world’s largest Christian church as it tries to reconnect with 21st-century families while sticking to its doctrine. Traditional bishops had spoken publicly and angrily in the past few days against the more open language in Monday’s draft document, saying it was a dangerous betrayal and potentially heretical. Some said the church could eventually be headed for division.

And even this is down-the-middle treatment that's a good deal more generous to the old pope than a lot of the noise being heard from the Catholic right-wing war parties, who seem positively exultant at kneecappping the puling pontiff.

Except that may not be what happened. It was, after all, the pope who pressed the synod to a swift conclusion, denying the bishops the opportunity to stall, obfuscate, and stultify, and it was the pope who insisted that in the interest of transparency, vote totals be released for every section of the proposed document, whether voted up or down -- and bear in mind that a two-thirds vote was required for adoption.

As Michelle Boorstein reports:

The Vatican on Saturday released the vote tallies for each section of the report, and [the international traditionalist conglomeration] Voice of the Family noted that the most contentious sections — encouraging a more welcoming attitude toward families who don’t conform to orthodox norms — weren’t overwhelmingly defeated.

“The voting numbers reveal that most Synod Fathers remain open to proposals contrary to Catholic teaching,” the statement said. “There has been much talk about ‘welcoming’ and ‘accompanying’ people, but this is impossible without the clarity of the truth.”

And of course it's the Inquisitionaries who are in sole possession of "the truth," and the clarity thereof.

Of course individual votes weren't made public, but everyone who participated in the voting is now answerable for his vote. (Isn't it handy that we don't have to worry about inserting gender-inclusive formulations like "his or her vote"?) Now I can't claim to speak for the pope, but a few things seem fairly clear:

• The pope has a lot of power, but he really can't take the Church anywhere it doesn't want to go, and he can hardly be unaware that the hierarchy isn't exactly the most enlightened. After all, for almost 35 unbroken years, his vile predecessors, the fake-saintly autocrat John Paul II and his even more unspeakable henchman, Cardinal Ratguts, later Pope Cardinal Ratguts, exercised total and ruthless control over hierarchical promotions, meaning that the whole shebang is now made up with their dregs -- a combination of reactionary power-grubbers and self-promoting toadies. As our friend John Puma pointed out in a comment on my Friday post, that very day one of the bulwarks of Catholic reaction, Cardinal Raymond Burke, was squealing like a pig about having been forced out of his high-level Vatican post.

• It's going to be some time, though, before Francis can have any significant impact on the overall makeup of the hierachy, and he doesn't know how much time he has. He has to be aware of the example of his great predecessor John XXIII, who was elevated to the papacy with a mandate to die soon but didn't, and caused all manner of trouble. Eventually he did die, though, and while it took the traditionalists decades to move the theological clock back, eventually they managed it. Both Francis and his enemies know that time can be a powerful obstacle to any meaningful reform.

So maybe it's time for the current pope to shake things up, to get people talking, and to make sure those people are aware that other people are listening.


WELL WORTH A LOOK ON THIS SUBJECT --

is the take of the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart ("Pope Francis and gays will win by losing this round on synod draft"), which begins:

Headlines called it a “setback” for Pope Francis that the initial draft of the synod of bishops released last week that spoke of “welcoming homosexual persons” was silent on them in the final document. But I don’t see it that way at all. The pope let the genie out of the bottle. And, as we all know, it’s difficult to put him back in once released.

And Jonathan concludes:

I’m not saying the church or the pope will become a champion of LGBT rights. And I’m definitely not saying they are going to support marriage equality. What I am saying is that by talking about the humanity of gay and lesbian Catholics and worrying about their place in the church, Pope Francis is openly recognizing them as children of God. After centuries of demonization, that’s a revolutionary act that can’t be undone.

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The theological "gradualism" being talked about in the Vatican has nothing to do with (shudder) "political" change -- ha-ha!

With "The Company Way" update (see below)


"The Company Way": "Whoever the company fires, I will still be here." (That's Sammy Smith as mail-room chief Mr. Twimble and Bobby Morse as newly assigned mail-room flunky J. Pierrepont Finch, both holdovers from the 1961 Original Broadway Cast, in the 1967 film version of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, music and lyrics by Frank Loesser.) For more of "The Company Way," see the Update below.

by Ken

Let's say you're in charge of a big old church and you love the ancient dear but you've got the feeling that in some ways it's kind of stuck in, you know, the Dark Ages. Now you have a shot at doing something about it, and not that large a window. You have to know that one of your problems -- heck, probably your biggest problem -- is your large cohort of faithful insiders, for whom "the company way" is working just fine, thank you. After all, they're faithful insiders.

Okay, so maybe I'm not speaking entirely hypothetically, and have in mind the latest wrinkle in Pope Francis's apparent wish to shake his church out of its reflexively medieval ignorance and bigotry. That wrinkle is some indication of possible doctrinal "flex," not from the pope himself this time, but from what the Washington Post's Michelle Boorstein the other day, in "Church must show more compassion, respect for same-sex couples, Vatican document says," called "a top Vatican panel assisting Pope Francis." That panel, Synod 14, Boorstein wrote,

went further than the Church has gone before in affirming non-traditional relationships, saying Monday that the Church must “turn respectfully” to couples such as those who live together unmarried or are of the same-gender and “appreciate the positive values” those unions may have.

The comments blew away some longtime Vatican experts because they put the Catholic Church – the world’s largest – squarely in the middle of the mainstream public discussion about sexuality and marriage, rather than in one corner focused mostly on unchanging doctrine. What changes to doctrine or practice might follow from the suggestions, if any, weren’t at all clear.

The comments came in a document a small handful of clergy — including DC’s Archbishop Donald Wuerl — prepared to summarize what has happened during the first half of a two-week long “synod” Francis called in order to confront the Church’s most contentious issues. The document was the first real information the Vatican has released on what’s gone on in the rare high-level meeting of 190 top clergy, who are launching a deeper look at church teaching and practice around family issues. It’s meant to guide further talks for this week and in coming months.

"The document," Boorstein noted, "reaffirmed that traditional teachings are the 'ideal' but was remarkable to some in its openness and lack of emphasis on condemnation of untraditional relationships."

The Rev. James Martin, a Catholic writer with the Jesuit magazine America, wrote that the document was “stunning.”

“The Synod said that gay people have ‘gifts and talents to offer the Christian community.’ This is something that even a few years ago would have been unthinkable, from even the most open-minded of prelates–that is, a statement of outright praise for the contribution of gays and lesbians, with no caveat and no reflexive mention of sin,” Martin wrote. “That any church document would praise same-sex ‘partners’ in any way (and even use the word ‘partners’) is astonishing.”

On that, the document said “Without denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners.”

But Boorstein also quoted Fordham University Theology Department Chair Patrick Horbeck sounding a note of caution:

Some questions were asked here that have never been asked publicly by bishops: What good can we find in same-sex unions? In many ways for the first time in a long time the Catholic Church is saying it wants to ask really hard questions about how people truly live their lives. But the fact that the question is being asked doesn’t mean the answer will be what progressive and liberal Catholics want it to be . . .it would be a mistake to see this document as in any way definitive or significantly revolutionary.

Then came a press conference yesterday when, ThinkProgress's Jack Jenkins reported, "the Vatican reversed course."

[O]fficials announced the release of an edited English version of the report that alters passages that affirm gay people. For example, the new version changes the translation of the Italian phrase “Accogliere le persone omosessuali,” which was initially rendered in the English version as “to welcome homosexual persons,” a literal interpretation of the text. Although the original Italian document remains unchanged, Thursday’s revision edited the English version to read, “providing for homosexual persons,” a shift that Thomas Reese of the National Catholic Reporter said was “clearly … not an accurate translation.”

The new document includes other subtle alterations as well, although virtually all of the edits deal with the Catholic church’s position on homosexuality. Thursday’s version of the report, for instance, changed a phrase that previously referred to same-sex unions as “precious support in the life of the partners” to “valuable support in the life of these persons.”

The revisions appear to be an attempt by the Vatican — or at least English-speaking bishops — to control the media narrative surrounding the release of the original document. After various outlets and reporters heralded the inclusive stance of Monday’s document, conservative Catholics began publicly lambasting the report, with one South African Cardinal condemning some of its statements as “irredeemable.” Although there is speculation that Francis hinted at the release of the document during Mass on Monday morning, the Vatican quickly backtracked on Tuesday, explaining the report was a “working document” and saying that they did not want to give “the impression of a positive evaluation” of homosexuality, according to CNN.

Oops!

I don't think you have to be Kreskin to intuit that there's some fairly fierce political infighting going on inside church ranks, and American Catholics must be proud to know that their very own U.S. bishops are once again in the thick of the fight to keep the Church safely mired in the medieval muck.

Wait! Did I just say "political"? "Politics" inside the Church of Rome? What could I have been thinking of.

At least that's what a gentleman named David Cloutier, who we're told "is on the theology faculty at Mount St. Mary’s University and is the editor of the blog 'Catholic Moral Theology,' " is here to tell us, with an absolutely straight face, in a WaPo op-ed piece whose title asks and answers its own question: "Is the Vatican evolving on sex and marriage? Not the way politicians do." Normally I wouldn't go out of my way to make fun of a person's faith. (Usually you don't have to. It comes pre-made-fun-of.) But when the person mounts his high horse spinning bullshit into pseudo-moral and pseudo-philosophical jibber-jabber, well, sometimes you have to take the shot.

"In American politics," says our man, " 'evolution' has become the term of choice to describe shifting attitudes, especially toward same-sex marriage."

President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) are among those who have talked about their views evolving or having evolved.

At the Vatican this past week, “gradualism” was the term emphasized by the bishops and cardinals from around the world meeting to discuss issues of sexuality and family that have divided the church.

The bishops and cardinals didn’t use the term to describe a shift in their thinking. Rather, in the provisional report of the Synod on the Family, they invoked gradualism in recognition that even those who strive toward a moral ideal tend to fall short; for all of us, morality takes time and practice. They urged appreciation of the good in relationships that don’t meet the church ideal of monogamous, til-death-do-us-part marriage.

In accordance with the “law of gradualness,” unmarried couples living together might be encouraged to find deeper commitment in a relationship that has obvious value. Individuals who have remarried after divorce may perhaps be able to take Communion if, for example, the second marriage is stable and clearly benefits the children. Some of the church leadership talked about affirming long-term, committed same-sex relationships in the same way the Catholic Church affirms the virtue in other religious traditions. “One simply cannot say that a faithful homosexual relationship that has held for decades is nothing,” Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich elaborated to a reporter. . . .

Our David goes on, and on, but you can read that for yourself. Let's fast-forward to where he really puts his finger on it. "Clearly, something is happening within the church."

Church leaders and members, like the members of any other community, have been influenced by the experience of having friends, relatives and neighbors who are living admirable lives after divorce, or who are in committed, loving same-sex relationships. The pope and the bishops meeting in Rome are also acutely aware of increasing secularization and decreasing membership.

But this is not the same as what happens when individuals or societies “gradually” change their views on a given issue.

You see, "Unlike secular political movements, the church is not staking out positions on social issues with the goal of effecting — or blocking — legal or cultural change."

It does not see social change (however important) as an end in itself. Instead, the goal is to facilitate the encounter with God, in the person of Jesus and the community of the church. The deliberations of the synod make clear that Francis and many other bishops worry intensely that a focus on certain moral ideals, especially when they sound like a simple “no” to many people, constitutes a barrier to that fundamental spiritual encounter.

Thus, unlike secular advocacy of this or that stance on an issue, gradualism rests on the more important theological conviction that God is really at work in the world. . . .

At this distinction I imagine the all-Catholic bloc of thug-justices on the U.S. Supreme Court would nod sagely. They too would never engage in "secular advocacy of this or that stance on an issue." It just comes out looking this way -- the, er, "company way."

And you know how they're always portrayed as bad guys when they have to once again just say no when they have benighted appellants asking for what might be called "the comfort of a little extra personal freedom and liberation"?

You could say that, in highlighting gradualness, the synod is saying something very, very old, and not all that political: We are all sinners, and we must rely on God’s grace, not just our own resources. That’s not a gradual realization on the part of the church but something ancient. And it arises not out of a kind of laxism, but out of a recognition of how demanding and challenging Christianity is. I myself need gradualism whenever I read about loving enemies, forgiving people over and over, letting go of the illusory security and charm of possessions. How fortunate we would be if we applied gradualism toward high ideals of sustainable energy use, care for the poor and the immigrant, and sexual respect and discipline — all of which are vigorously proclaimed by the church. Instead, we often sacrifice such ambitious ideals, perhaps for the comfort of a little extra personal freedom and liberation.

The church wants much more than these private victories. God wants nothing less than love out of us. But God also knows: It takes a long time.

This actually sounds strikingly like the kind of gradualism one of the small band of remaining non-thug-justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was talking about not long ago when she spoke the virtues of, well, gradual change in the area of same-sex marriage as opposed to, say, the thunderbolt of Roe v. Wade on the issue of abortion. Of course Justice Ginsburg was talking about gradual change in law, not religion, and in any case not being, you know, Catholic, she probably wouldn't understand. Probably Justice Scalia or Alito could explain it to her.

And of course the suggestion that there might be politics in the inner workings of the Church, why, that must seem practically blasphemous -- assuming, that is, that you know nothing whatsoever about the inner workings of the Church. Some people would say that it's one of the most intensely and viciously political institutions on the planet. Perhaps Justices Scalia and Alito can explain it to them when they finish explaining to Justice Ginsburg.


UPDATE: "THE COMPANY WAY" REPRISED (WITH REPRISE)



As I mentioned up top, Sammy Smith (doubling Mr. Twinble and World Wide Wicket Company board chairman Wally Womper) and Bobby Morse (J. Pierrepont Finch) were in the Original Broadway Cast of How to Succeed. Here they are in 1961, along with the reprise of "The Company Way" sung by Ponty's new archrival, Bud Frump (the nephew of WWW president J. B. Biggley), played on Broadway by the one and only Charles Nelson Reilly.

"The Company Way": Mr. Twimble (Sammy Smith) and Ponty (Robert Morse)

"The Company Way" reprise: Bud Frump (Charles Nelson Reilly), Sammy Smith, and company

Original Broadway Cast recording, Elliot Lawrence, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded Oct. 22, 1961

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How nice to have a straight person point out that "marriage is for procreation" isn't just legal but religious BS

Sorry, Frank, that's just some silly old myth about love having anything to do with marriage. Now, Peg and Al Bundy, they were a bona fide married couple, because they were, of course, Married -- With Children. Of course, once they stopped procreating, however grateful the world would have reason to be, Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Paul Niemeyer probably would have had to blow the whistle on them. Not that Al would have objected.

"In contrast to 'traditional marriage,' [Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Paul] Niemeyer said, same-sex marriage ignores 'the inextricable, biological link between marriage and procreation' and 'prioritizes the emotions and sexual attractions of the two partners without any necessary link to reproduction.'

"Why does this upset me so? Well, you see, I got married two years ago, a few days shy of my 60th birthday."

-- Amanda Bennett, in a Washington Post opinion
piece, "What's love got to do with it?"

by Ken

Amanda Bennett, former executive editor for projects and investigations at Bloomberg News and now a freelance editor and writer, explains in her Washington Post opinion piece "What's love got to do with it?" that until now she has merely understood same-sex marriage as "a civil rights matter," though even viewing it in that light, "I grew more committed as I saw how the happiness of friends and family members depended on it."

This sounds exactly right to me, and entirely in line with the proposition with which she has opened her piece: "No one is as passionate about a cause as someone touched personally by it."

Sympathy for strangers with dread diseases is nothing like the angst you feel when a member of your family is sickened. You may pity victims of hurricanes, but there’s nothing like wandering your own submerged neighborhood to bring the devastation home.

And now the argument about same-sex marriage has struck home.

[U]ntil I read the dissenting opinion in the marriage-equality case decided last week in Richmond, I didn’t realize just how personal the issue could be. Because if the arguments of gay-marriage opponents ever succeed, my marriage will be toast.

The two-judge majority, you'll recall, ruled that same-sex couples can't be denied the right to marriage simply because they're same-sex rather couples than some other kind. However --

In his argument for those who would ban gay marriage, Judge Paul Niemeyer asserted that the kind of marriage protected by the freedoms in our Constitution isn’t the same as the one between gay people. Why not? Because same-sex couples can’t reproduce biologically (with each other, that is). In contrast to “traditional marriage,” Niemeyer said, same-sex marriage ignores “the inextricable, biological link between marriage and procreation” and “prioritizes the emotions and sexual attractions of the two partners without any necessary link to reproduction.”

As you already know if you read the portion of this quite I extracted for the top of this post, you already know that Amanda "got married two years ago, a few days shy of my 60th birthday." (Maazel tov, Amanda!) And she's here to tell us that, while she and her husband have "six lovely children" between them, procreation is emphatically not on the table this time around.

Which means, if Judge Niemeyer and the legions of other religious pea brains who argue from "the inextricable, biological link between marriage and procreation" are right, that Amanda and her husband are in trouble.

If, as Niemeyer says, the whole point of marriage is not the mere parenting of kids but actual biological reproduction, it is clear to me that he believes that my marriage is invalid. To opponents of gay marriage, marriage is all about breeding. Since my breeding days are over, it looks like, marriage-wise, I should be, too.

And it isn’t just Virginia. Kentucky used the same argument. So did Georgia. And Texas. This argument is surely going all the way to the Supreme Court.

Amanda is, of course, absolutely right to be worried if any legal jurisdiction accepts any legal relevance to the proposition that marriage is about procreation. If this is the case, then people who are not at the very least trying to procreate have no reason and indeed no right to be married. In fact, surely it can be said that they really aren't married. Could anything be more straightforwardly apparent?

[W]hat if Virginia’s argument eventually prevails and the pro-procreation forces manage to enshrine in law what I would call the Donald Trump effect. You know: serial 28-year-olds. Since, near as I can tell from searching the Web, the oldest man to father children did so — twice — after his 94th birthday, where will this all end?

Men, you, too, should beware. What if anyone who can’t procreate was barred from marrying? Some researchers have suggested that George Washington was infertile (owing to a bout of tuberculosis). What if The Father of Our Country himself had been forced to live in sin with Martha because he couldn’t be the father of anything else?

THE "DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE" HAS BEEN TAKEN
UP BY PEOPLE COLOSSALLY UNFIT FOR THE JOB

As far as I know, no church has taken action against religionists who marry without the intention to procreate or who then live as "married" while failing to try to procreate. Until they do so, it seems to me unforgivably unallowable for any judge to pretend that there is the slightest religious, let alone legal, significance to the "marriage is about procreation" crock. Any judge who does so should be obliged to preface his/her opinion by saying something like: "Call me a lying ignoramus scumbag, but I think that marriage --"

Once again, we have people "defending" marriage who are singularly and utterly unfit to do so. They may well be correct that the institution is in need of rehabilitation, but the place they should be looking is in the mirror. Unless you're either a total buttwipe or a feel-no-pain liar, it should occur to you that the place to look at what's wrong with marriage is goddamned married people. The first person who tried to lay it off on the homos should have been promptly snagged off by the men in white coats in their butterfy nets and strapped into the nearest loony bin.

The only question, as far as I can see, is what should be done about married people who claim to be trying to procreate but somehow aren't succeeding. When I've written about this previously, I've tended to thinking "soft" -- suggesting that they should be indulged, for a certain amount of time, at least. Now I'm not so sure.

First off, can such non-procreators prove that they're trying? I'm sorry to have to point that it isn't enough to say you are. Just consider a plotline on the TVLand sitcom Jennifer Falls, where Jennifer's loopy brother Wayne and his goofily tight-assed wife Stephanie are officially trying to get pregnant, except that Stephanie is still taking her birth-control pills. Is there any question that, under the "marriage is about procreation" doctrine, if the truth were known these two should be immediately declared unmarried -- and probably judged to have been living in sin the whole time they pretended to be married before they were trying to procreate.

Now you may argue that a TVLand sitcom shouldn't have any more standing in a U.S. court of law than, say, international law. But then, where does religious-cult crackpottery come off claiming standing in a U.S. court of law?

Which just leaves the case of couples who are honest-to-gosh trying to get pregnant and just aren't succeeding. Well, now I'm inclined to say, screw 'em! If marriage is about procreation, can we really give a free pass to people who are merely trying?

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