Search Results from Flit(tm)
One of the recurring themes I've had on gay marriage is that we simply don't have a clue as to how it's going to affect things. Marriage is so fundamental to how we see society that we really haven't a...
Posted in Flit(tm) on May 16, 2006 02:26 PM
Of course nobody in the legislature saw this coming. Bill Dalrymple, 56, and best friend Bryan Pinn, 65, have decided to take the plunge and try out the new same-sex marriage legislation with a twist -- they're straight men. The...
Posted in Flit(tm) on August 8, 2005 10:11 PM
Evan Kirchhoff comments on the recent San Francisco ruling that conventional marriage fails both strict scrutiny and a rational basis test. Kirchhoff doesn't much get into the rational basis bit and that's a shame but he also misses the big...
Posted in Flit(tm) on March 18, 2005 01:31 PM
Orin Kerr reports that a NY trial judge has ruled gay marriage legal. The opinion is online (pdf). It's difficult to know where to begin but there doesn't seem to be any basis in this decision to defend marriage as...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 5, 2005 12:17 PM
Evan Kirchhoff notes that the polygamist chickens are coming home to roost in Canada. That's all well and good and something that I've long predicted here as well. Aside from Kirchhoff's glee at the recognition of polygamy (for which I...
Posted in Flit(tm) on January 23, 2005 03:58 PM
Robert Kuttner must be living in some alternate dimension. In his world There's a standard story about partisan gridlock: The American electorate is mostly middle of the road. The voters want the parties to work together and solve national problems....
Posted in Flit(tm) on January 14, 2005 01:45 PM
Jonathan Rauch misses the point of all those gay marriage referendums. He goes on and on about how courts should trim this or that, and how likely they are to succeed in shifting this referendum or that. The entire point...
Posted in Flit(tm) on December 28, 2004 11:24 AM
Kevin Drum is complaining that many of the 11 referendums banning gay marriage that passed this election did more than strictly ban the issuance of marriage licenses. He's only noticing this now and surmises that a lot of other people...
Posted in Flit(tm) on November 19, 2004 06:58 PM
One of the things that the observant muslims will note about the US election is the 11 states holding referendums and widely rejecting the idea of homosexual marriage recognized by the state. One of the staples of Islamist criticism of...
Posted in Flit(tm) on November 3, 2004 03:30 PM
Clayton Cramer's asking why Instapundit's characterizing Kerry's & Bush's positions on stem cells as the same. It's pretty obvious that he's baiting Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan's reading Kerry's position on gay marriage as it was meant to be read by homosexuals,...
Posted in Flit(tm) on October 16, 2004 01:01 AM
In reading this article on the whole debate kerfuffle over Kerry's using Mary Cheney as a political prop, the article and comments devote a significant amount of the discussion to whether homosexuality is genetic or it is a choice. Here's...
Posted in Flit(tm) on October 15, 2004 10:36 AM
Josh Chafetz asserts that H.R. 3313 IS NOT CONSTITUTIONAL (his capitalization). His reasoning is all well and good but it does seem to omit any sort of explanation of how US federal courts that are not the Supreme Court get...
Posted in Flit(tm) on July 24, 2004 06:26 PM
Via Outside the Beltway comes notice that the US Congress has been reduced to the use of blunt force instruments to restrain the judiciary. Clause 2 of Article 3, Section 2 of the US Constitution reads as follows: In all...
Posted in Flit(tm) on July 23, 2004 12:21 PM
Steven Den Beste's doing on his side (pro-gay marriage) what I was doing yesterday on my side (pro-traditional marriage) cleaning up weak arguments. This is something of a necessity, especially when you have allies who are fouling up your own...
Posted in Flit(tm) on July 19, 2004 10:02 AM
I just finished reading a piece in City Journal on the hazards of gay marriage. I agree with most of it yet find myself unconvinced by the sole backhanded compliment the author gives to the gay marriage movement, conceding that...
Posted in Flit(tm) on July 18, 2004 05:15 PM
Steven Den Beste has an interesting article up highlighting correspondance with Daryl a correspondent from Singapore. They speak to each other about law and order but it seems wrong somehow. To my eyes, the discussion is less about revolution and...
Posted in Flit(tm) on June 16, 2004 08:58 AM
Let me share a guilty secret. I have a grudging admiration for the utopian communists. They didn't really know what they were doing but they wanted to make things better. They tried their solutions out in the real world on...
Posted in Flit(tm) on May 23, 2004 07:57 AM
Clayton Cramer notes a pro-incestual marriage proposal in New Zealand. So far, New Zealand seems to be in no danger of running out and acting on the presentation but if you agree with the arguments regarding gay marriage, it's hard...
Posted in Flit(tm) on May 22, 2004 08:41 PM
The Iron Bloggers are debating gay marriage and it's not looking very good from a technical standpoint. The Chairman obviously is tilted pro-marriage (perhaps he hasn't been exposed to good arguments on the other side) and so the question framing...
Posted in Flit(tm) on May 17, 2004 01:49 PM
Matthew Yglesias is polling his readership as to whether he's been castrated. Apparently he's opened up his world a crack and found out that some people find american women quite disturbing in that they have devoted an extraordinary amount of...
Posted in Flit(tm) on March 25, 2004 05:46 PM
The two topics wouldn't normally seem to go together but they are related, in the sense that both topics relate to highly foundational subjects. By that I mean that both the Treaty of Westphalia and the institution of marriage imply...
Posted in Flit(tm) on March 23, 2004 11:04 AM
I think that Andrew Sullivan has something when he talks about the foolishness of making gay marriage the new demarcation line of what is permissible and what is not. But I don't really see gay marriage as the point at...
Posted in Flit(tm) on March 16, 2004 01:32 AM
Steven Den Beste just put up a conventional analysis of the relevant legal issues facing California's courts on the upcoming gay marriage cases. We deeply disagree on policy (and I won't go over that again) but he's got it mostly...
Posted in Flit(tm) on March 13, 2004 11:23 PM
I love talking to acculturated Romanians about politics. They show surprise at so many things that it really brings to life the exceptional nature of the US government. I was speaking to a romanian ethnic political science graduate student. She...
Posted in Flit(tm) on March 5, 2004 07:12 PM
In previous articles, I've mentioned that somewhere between 800 and a thousand laws are affected by marriage in the US. According to this GAO report in 1997 it seems that I've grossly undercounted. There are at least 1049 federal laws...
Posted in Flit(tm) on March 2, 2004 11:00 PM
In an illustration of how other groups against the privileged marriage position of heterosexual monogamy will try to latch on to any success in legalizing gay marriage, the single have ramped up their longstanding criticisms of marriage. The criticism of...
Posted in Flit(tm) on March 2, 2004 03:21 PM
I challenge anybody who advocates gay marriages to produce someone on either side of the issue who foresaw this: In another development related to the weddings, the Social Security Administration has told its offices nationwide not to accept marriage certificates...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 29, 2004 08:08 AM
A new article by Andrew Sullivan talks about the need to reduce government redistribution to improve tolerance of diversity. The goal, in the end, is to make "marriage becomes less explicitly religious as a social institution and more explicitly civil"...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 24, 2004 11:12 AM
It looks like California is belatedly realizing that a horrible precedent is being set in San Francisco and will be asking that the city obey the law. One of the things that really sends a shiver down my spine is...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 22, 2004 09:15 AM
Stanley Kurtz has a sad commentary on the legal somersaults that gay marriage advocates are going through to get their policy preferences installed by hook or by crook. The judge refused to issue an injunction because of an incredibly small...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 19, 2004 07:40 PM
Jonah Goldberg identifies why we'll be forced to keep at the gay marriage debate to resolution. In summary, it's the bad faith of the pro-gay marriage side. For every Andrew Sullivan who claims that gay marriage will just be for...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 19, 2004 11:42 AM
Evan Kirchhoff's latest response on the San Francisco gay marriage circus includes this gem: I don't find the "it's a mess" objection to be compelling, since it amounts to a generic objection to the federalist system as a whole. The...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 18, 2004 01:32 PM
Evan Kirchhoff's toed the line and the bell's rung. None of this Queensbury rules sissy stuff, this is going 'old style' so hold on to your hats folks, this may take awhile. [For the humor impaired, I'm not mad, and...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 17, 2004 08:23 PM
Thomas Sowell has a good column out on the importance of facts. Unfortunately, he also illustrates how facts can be twisted to produce horrible outcomes when they are abused by wrongheaded principles. It is not just a few readers but...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 17, 2004 04:04 PM
Andrew Sullivan is being a bit disingenuous when he claims that it's settled law that marriage is not federal. The entire phenomenon of gay marriage has been settled law for just as long and a few judges are in the...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 17, 2004 12:40 PM
Michael Friedman of Fried Man asks an eminently sensible question, what are the practical legal consequences of gay marriage? Some of the ideas he presents there I already had thought of but one surprised me, the idea of retroactive common...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 17, 2004 12:32 PM
Evan Kirchhoff's completely gone off the rails as he wonders what's wrong with City Hall issuing invalid marriage licenses. The power of the purse is the fundamental ability of the legislature to control the executive. The executive violates the law...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 17, 2004 12:05 PM
In my plowing through my RealClear Politics backlog, I see that Bill Maher has decided to open up his dim bulb on the subject of love and marriage and state intervention in same. I don't especially have a problem with...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 16, 2004 11:05 AM
John Kerry, among others, has signed a letter arguing against the passage of a constitutional amendment to the Massachusetts state constitution defining marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. Spinsanity is arguing that the AP unfairly labeled this...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 12, 2004 04:39 PM
In the US view of rights, a right is something that is recognized, not granted. The people are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Government may recognize them, support them, but if it oppresses them, the people have...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 5, 2004 03:40 PM
A logistics article in StrategyPage just reminded me of a phenomena that I've noticed quite a bit. Things that are taken for granted often change without us ever knowing it. In the article, it was the troop carrying capacity of...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 3, 2004 04:06 PM
Putting aside the main point for a second, an example Stanley Kurtz uses in his most recent gay marriage in Scandinavia article puzzles me. He refers to this article about pro-gay flags flying above two Norwegian parishes. From Kurtz's article,...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 2, 2004 09:17 PM
Prof Larry Ribstein has an interesting post laying out some of the basic questions on marriage. He phrases it in the context of the presidential race but these same questions could be asked of any of the partisans. It would...
Posted in Flit(tm) on February 2, 2004 03:28 PM
Stanley Kurtz has an excellent article on the history of gay marriage in the Scandinavian countries and the impending dissolution of the institution of marriage in Scandinavia. One thing that struck me is the utter failure of christianity to go...
Posted in Flit(tm) on January 26, 2004 11:58 AM
I was coming back from a client today and listened to the radio. WLS had a 'best of' Roe and Gary, my favorite pair of drive time idiot savants. They were going on about gay marriage and a caller was...
Posted in Flit(tm) on January 12, 2004 11:03 PM
In his continuing war against John Derbyshire, Andrew Sullivan demonstrates that he has become entirely humorless on the subject of marriage. Every now and again, the facade drops. Here's how John Derbyshire joked yesterday about marriage: ZSA ZSA'S GRASP OF...
Posted in Flit(tm) on January 11, 2004 03:03 PM
Andrew Sullivan get's it right when he condemns Britney Spears joke marriage. It's a travesty, a mockery of what should be a very serious commitment. Fortunately, even she figured it out and will be annulling her error right about now...
Posted in Flit(tm) on January 5, 2004 10:31 AM
I just came across an analysis of social science studies regarding homosexual parenting and it turns out they are of horrible quality. Poor hypothesis generation, bad sampling, no or inadequate control groups, statistical mal and mis feasance the list of...
Posted in Flit(tm) on December 31, 2003 01:17 PM
I know people who have great dogs, nice, friendly, really great personalities. They aren't allowed in stores, busses, or many other places. Growing up, I often saw other dogs in White Plains, NY who were allowed to do all those...
Posted in Flit(tm) on December 19, 2003 11:08 AM
National Review is running a guest column by Maggie Gallagher which is almost right on the issue of gay marriage when she says the following For me, the first, last and most important question about gay marriage is: Will it...
Posted in Flit(tm) on December 8, 2003 04:32 PM
Hat tip: Real Clear Politics Ann Coulter's all fire and brimstone about gay marriage (surprise, surprise). The problem is her solution. It's limp, as wimpy as the spines of those Republican judicial appointees who uphold Roe. She suggests that "The...
Posted in Flit(tm) on December 4, 2003 02:18 PM
I've taken a bit of a beating in comments over the idea that the polygamists would use gay marriage as precedent. It certainly didn't take long to be demonstrated right on that one. This particular appeal is likely to go...
Posted in Flit(tm) on December 2, 2003 01:27 PM
In his latest gay marriage broadside Andrew Sullivan invokes David Hume's essay against polygamy. He buries the lead though by omitting Hume's first paragraph. AS marriage is an engagement entered into by mutual consent, and has for its end the...
Posted in Flit(tm) on November 30, 2003 06:52 PM
I was going to let this essay 'cook' a bit more before I took it out of draft and published it but since Glenn Reynolds can't see why gay marriage threatens heterosexual marriage, I'll let fly early. In short, gay...
Posted in Flit(tm) on November 19, 2003 03:18 PM
It's a good day for the pro-gay marriage argument (link currently to the slip argument and when the final goes on the internet the link will change and this notice will be stripped). For those of us who believe that...
Posted in Flit(tm) on November 18, 2003 01:11 PM
The Canadian Liberal Party is barely holding things together on gay rights. It looks like gay marriage will be an election year issue though in hindsight Prime Minister Chretien will probably be thankful that gay marriage legislation isn't going to...
Posted in Flit(tm) on September 17, 2003 11:58 AM
The Boston Globe writes that Canada's gay marriage push is in trouble. It seems that there is a real backlash brewing and liberal MPs are starting to run scared. It seems that canadians are foregoing the usual 'blow off steam...
Posted in Flit(tm) on August 26, 2003 11:59 AM
I think that the gay marriage amendment people are wrong. But they're not wrong because they want to slap the US judiciary across the wrists. The problem is that they're too micro-focused on a cause of the day when they...
Posted in Flit(tm) on August 25, 2003 03:08 PM
The Orthodox Christian Church has very strict rules on the ritual of holy communion. Lengthy fasts and confession are required ahead of time (rules vary in detail by bishop as with any apostolic church). Once I read in a manual...
Posted in Flit(tm) on August 9, 2003 08:24 PM
Gay marriage can be examined on the procedural plane or on the substantive issues. SDB did both in his original article on Saturday but in the commentary is backing away and claiming that all this talk about how public licensure...
Posted in Flit(tm) on August 4, 2003 12:46 AM
On most issues I agree with Steven Den Beste but I have to part company with him on gay marriage both on substantive issues and on his coverage of the procedural mechanics. First the procedural quibbles. You can't really talk...
Posted in Flit(tm) on August 3, 2003 06:00 AM