February 29, 2004
The Economist Makes the Case for Gay Marriage
Some have sought to explain this action away simply as cynical politics . . . Yet to call for a constitutional amendment is such a difficult, drastic and draconian move that cynicism is too weak an explanation.
If you ever read The Economist - the UK's news and business publication written expressly for top business decision-makers and opinion leaders with a world-wide circulation of well over 800,000 - you know that it is NOT a big fan of George W.'s. I've read some pretty disgusted and scathing comments about Mr. Bush in The Economist before, but this week's cover story is dedicated to raking our president over the coals for proposing a constitutional amendment so unequal, intrusive and... well, unconstitutional that The Economist seems to be as appalled by and disapproving of Mr. Bush's views and actions on this subject as any other of his past actions that the American people have let slide but The Economist has called him on. With this kind of consistent negative press in such an influential and respected publication, it's not difficult to gauge just what other nations must think about our president and us. Oh, the shame... too bad GW can't feel any of it from up on his political power-high.
Comment on Matt Holohan's comment on this posting
Yes, O'Connor did list "preserving the traditional institution of marriage" as an example of a legitimate state interest and alluded to "other reasons... to promote the institute of marriage" the state could come up with in order to exclude homosexuals. However, it is interesting that she places "preserving the traditional institution" in opposition to "mere" "moral disapproval of same-sex relations", which Lawrence found to NOT be a legit state interest. O'Connor goes on to say that this is because "legal classifications must not be 'drawn for the purpose of disadvantaging the group burdened by the law.'" This seems to have the effect of diffusing any purely moral arguments for preserving the institution as-is that opponents of same-sex marriages could bring... and since the only marginally good arguments I've heard from them are purely moral, that could hurt them a lot. Furthermore, the fact that the amendment would be created specifically to deprive same-sex couples of a vast array of marital benefits and rights, it will definitely be a classification that is drawn specifically to disadvantage them in this area.
1) $paginate_current_page = 1; $paginate_sections = array( 0 , 1); $paginate_top_section = $paginate_sections[$paginate_current_page-1]+1; $paginate_bottom_section = $paginate_sections[$paginate_current_page]; } else { $paginate_top_section = 1; $paginate_bottom_section = 1; } $paginate_self = '&' . $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] . '&'; $paginate_self = preg_replace("/&page=[^&]*&/", "&", $paginate_self); $paginate_self = substr($paginate_self, 1, strlen($paginate_self) - 1); if($paginate_self == '&') $paginate_self = ''; else $paginate_self = htmlentities($paginate_self); $paginate_self = basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) . "?${paginate_self}page"; ?> Posted by Kristina at February 29, 2004 10:47 AM