Quotulatiousness

May 14, 2013

In other Minnesota news, same-sex marriage becomes legal today

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:57

Jacob Sullum notes that Minnesota becomes the twelfth state to legalize same-sex marriage today:

Today Minnesota, where voters last fall rejected a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, becomes the 12th state to give homosexual unions the same legal status as heterosexual unions. The state legislature approved the bill yesterday, and Gov. Mark Dayton plans to sign it this evening. Minnesota is the third state to legalize gay marriage in the last 10 days, following Rhode Island on May 2 and Delaware on May 7. The nine other states are Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, where legal recognition of gay marriage was approved by the legislature or by voters, plus Connecticut, Iowa, and Massachusetts, where courts required the change.

May 6, 2013

Vikings release punter Chris Kluwe

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:37

Another case of not a surprise, but still a disappointment. Chris Kluwe has been released by the Minnesota Vikings after they drafted a punter in the fifth round of the April draft.

ESPN’s Kevin Seifert ponders whether Kluwe’s outspoken character and public support of gay marriage and other causes played the prime role in the decision:

Here’s the key question to consider after the Minnesota Vikings made it official Monday and released punter Chris Kluwe: Would Kluwe be an ex-Viking today if he had never campaigned for gay rights, Hall of Fame candidacies and other issues?

My informed guess: Probably.

So what impact did Kluwe’s public advocacy play in the Vikings’ decision? It moved the odds from “probably” to “certainty,” erasing any equity his eight-career with the franchise might otherwise have built.

I know that explanation won’t satisfy those of you who are convinced the Vikings targeted Kluwe because he took on a politically and socially sensitive issue. It’s easy to see this move, contextualize it with the Baltimore Ravens’ release of special-teams ace Brendon Ayanbadejo, and suspect an agenda against NFL players who get involved in the gay rights issue.

I just don’t think it’s that simple. When viewed through the bigger picture of NFL business, and in the context of the Vikings’ personnel approach over the past 16 months, you realize that Kluwe’s off-field life was at best the final shove at the end of the plank.

With last season’s kicker drama as the Vikings drafted “The Blair Walsh Project” and then quickly cut Ryan Longwell, and Kluwe’s exit, one has to wonder if Cullen Loeffler’s time as the team’s long-snapper is also coming to a close (it doesn’t help that he had a bad season in 2012).

March 26, 2013

QotD: “[T]he sexual revolution is over … and the forces of bourgeois repression have won”

Filed under: History, Law, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:20

At this point, it’s just a matter of time. In some sense, the sexual revolution is over … and the forces of bourgeois repression have won.

That’s right, I said it: this is a landmark victory for the forces of staid, bourgeois sexual morality. Once gays can marry, they’ll be expected to marry. And to buy sensible, boring cars that are good for car seats. I believe we’re witnessing the high water mark for “People should be able to do whatever they want, and it’s none of my business.” You thought the fifties were conformist? Wait until all those fabulous “confirmed bachelors” and maiden schoolteachers are expected to ditch their cute little one-bedrooms and join the rest of America in whining about crab grass, HOA restrictions, and the outrageous fees that schools want to charge for overnight soccer trips.

I know, it feels like we’re riding an exciting wave away from the moral dark ages and into the bright, judgement free future. But moral history is not a long road down which we’re all marching; it’s more like a track. Maybe you change lanes a bit, but you generally end up back where you started. Sometimes you’re on the licentious, “anything goes” portion near the bleachers, and sometimes you’re on the straight-and-narrow prudish bit in front of the press box. Most of the time you’re in between. But you’re still going in circles. Victorian morality was an overreaction to the rather freewheeling period which proceeded it, which was itself an overreaction to Oliver Cromwell’s puritanism.

Megan McArdle, “Why Gay Marriage Will Win, and Sexual Freedom Will Lose”, The Daily Beast, 2013-03-26

March 22, 2013

Nick Gillespie on Libertarianism

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:24

Katy Bachelder interviews Reason‘s Nick Gillespie:

What do you see as the primary policy goal of libertarianism?

Things that move us toward decentralization of power. The way I used to talk about it when Windows was still a dominant operating system is that the way a computer operates, what you want is an operating system that allows as many different apps to run at the same time without crashing the system. That’s what classical liberalism really does.

How do you think libertarianism as a third party helps achieve those goals?

I’m not particularly interested in electoral politics. Where I think public choice economics is hugely important is what it asks is not simply what the rhetoric of people is, but what are the outcome of their actions. In that way, it gets to what actually matters as opposed to people sprinkling magic words. It’s amazing how much slack people will give if you say the right words as you’re repressing them.

Libertarianism is a pre-political attitude. It can inform you if you’re in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party or the Libertarian Party. It can express itself in a lot of different ways, like through Jimmy Carter, who is the great deregulator of the American economy, not Ronald Reagan. He deregulated interstate railroads, trucking, airlines. That all happened under Jimmy Carter and he was abetted in it by people like Milton Friedman. Libertarianism is an impulse, not a set of beads on a string.

[. . .]

Hillary Clinton just endorsed gay marriage. What do you think is the future for that issue?

I think gay marriage is over as an issue. When you look at public opinion polls about gay issues, the moral approbation toward the issue has faded. The larger questions are: what is the connection between the state and individual choices? It’s as big of a deal as it is because the state is involved in bestowing certain benefits such as tax incentives. I think what we’re starting to see is that if you want to live in a society that is truly pluralistic and tolerant, and that doesn’t mean everyone agrees every lifestyle is morally valid, but just tolerant, then we have to start shrinking the scope and the size of the state. The state should recognize all people as equal.

December 18, 2012

P.J. O’Rourke on marijuana and same-sex marriage

Filed under: Humour, Law, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:37

December 12, 2012

Do Republicans believe in federalism?

Filed under: Government, Law, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:34

Jacob Sullum on the rising tide of liberalization at the state level — gay marriage and marijuana legalization — and whether the Republicans will support federalism in these cases:

Nationwide support for marijuana legalization, like nationwide support for gay marriage, has increased dramatically, although not quite as swiftly, rising from 12 percent in a 1969 Gallup poll to a record 50 percent last year. While support for legalization dipped a bit during the anti-pot backlash of the Just Say No era, it began rising again in the 1990s. Public Policy Polling recently put it at 58 percent, the highest level ever recorded.

[. . .]

Just as an individual’s attitude toward gay people depends to a large extent on how many he knows (or, more to the point, realizes he knows), his attitude toward pot smokers (in particular, his opinion about whether they should be treated like criminals) is apt to be influenced by his personal experience with them. Americans younger than 65, even if they have never smoked pot, probably know people who have, and that kind of firsthand knowledge provides an important reality check on the government’s anti-pot propaganda.

Another clear pattern in both of these areas: Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to oppose legalizing gay marriage and marijuana. Yet Republicans are also more likely to oppose federal interference with state policy choices. In light of DOMA’s disregard for state marriage laws and the Obama administration’s threats to prevent Colorado and Washington from allowing marijuana sales, now is put-up-or-shut-up time for the GOP’s avowed federalists.

November 7, 2012

Reason.tv: The Wildly Unpopular Status Quo Is Ratified!

Filed under: Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:41

“After four years of a crappy economy, bipartisan dissatisfaction with bailout economics, and populous revolts on the right and the left, we are seeing basically the exact same government we had on November 6th,” says Reason magazine Editor in Chief Matt Welch. “The status quo, which has never been less popular, has just been ratified.”

And yet, says Welch, big wins on marijuana legalization and gay marriage give limited government types a lot to be happy about.

Update: Jacob Sullum on the victories for both same-sex marriage and marijuana normalization:

Tonight was a good night for gay marriage as well as marijuana. Voters approved ballot measures legalizing same-sex marriage in three states by similar margins: 53 to 47 in Maine, 52 to 48 in Maryland and Washington. In Minnesota an initiative that would amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage is tied right now, with 75 percent of precincts reporting [was defeated 51-48].

This is the first time gay marriage has been legalized by popular vote. In the six other states where it is legal (Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont), the policy was enacted by the legislature or compelled by a court decision. By contrast, most of the state laws allowing medical use of marijuana — another one of which passed tonight in Massachusetts — have been enacted by voters. (Colorado and Washington both had such laws before broadening the policy to include recreational use.)

October 22, 2012

The “unbridgeable gap” of Gerald Caplan

Filed under: Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:45

In the National Post, Jonathan Kay pokes fun at Globe and Mail columnist Gerald Caplan:

… the plucky Caplan is still at it. And his theories remain ambitious and apocalyptic. Over the weekend, for instance, he grandly declared that Canada “is no longer a united county.”

“Why? Because an “unbridgeable gap” has opened up between “extremists” and people who are “level-headed.” Caplan suggests the former category is composed of Canada’s equivalent of “The Tea Party, the Koch brothers [and] the National Rifle Association.” The latter category, meanwhile, is composed of people who think like Gerald Caplan.

A few paragraph later, Caplan tells us that “Many Canadians believe the Harper government has shattered the historic mould. Harperland is a place many Canadians do not recognize as theirs. Mr. Harper seems not to share many traditional Canadian cultural values.”

Values like what, precisely? I wondered. Universal health care? The welfare state? Equalization? Bilingualism? Gay marriage? The land of unregulated abortion?

None of those have changed.

Or maybe Caplanites feel alienated in a country without a Wheat Board and a long-gun registry. But that’s like saying you don’t “recognize” your house since your wife rearranged the tupperware drawer.

September 22, 2012

“I can no longer shock [conservatives] when I tell them I’m gay – but I can shock gay people when I tell them I’m Conservative”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

Of all the political changes you might have expected to see in Canada, having Stephen Harper’s Conservatives become pro-LGBT must be one of the least likely:

A mere seven years ago, the Tories were famously the opponents of same sex marriage. Now, the Harper Conservatives freely push gay rights abroad and even host an annual gathering of gay Tories. While they remain the favourite punching bag for Canadian LGBT activists, have the Harper Tories become unlikely warriors for gay rights?

“I can no longer shock people in the conservative movement when I tell them I’m gay – but I can shock gay people when I tell them I’m Conservative,” said Fred Litwin, and former vice-president of the Ottawa Centre Conservatives.

In June, Mr. Litwin was one of the organizers of the Fabulous Blue Tent Party, a gathering of approximately 800 gay Conservatives at Ottawa’s Westin Hotel that went until 3 a.m.

[. . .]

“It’s no secret that the Conservative Party hasn’t always been the biggest champion of gay rights, but public pressure, and quite frankly, society evolving has changed their views,” said Jamie Ellerton, an openly gay former staffer for Mr. Kenney.

“The Conservative Party, like the rest of society, has moved to be more supportive of gay rights in recent years, and I see that trend continuing,” he said.

[. . .]

After the 2011 suicide of gay Ottawa teen Jamie Hubley, Mr. Baird told the House that homophobia has no place in Canadian schools, and then appeared with other Tory MPs in a video for the “It Gets Better Project,” an online campaign looking to curb the disproportionately high suicide rates among LGBT youth.

In June, members of the Tory caucus even came to the rescue of a transgendered rights bill put forward by NDP MP Randall Garrison. Promising to protect transgender people under the Canadian Human Rights Act and make anti-transgender violence a hate crime, the bill passed second reading thanks to the support of 15 Conservative MPs, including Jim Flaherty and Lisa Raitt.

August 11, 2012

Kidnapping children to “save them” from gay parents

Filed under: Politics, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:19

Words sometimes fail me, as when I first heard of this notion some religious nutbars are pushing to set up a 21st century underground railroad to “rescue” children from gay and lesbian parents:

As has been widely reported, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association asserted in a tweet Wednesday that “we need an Underground Railroad to deliver innocent children from same-sex households.” Lest anyone imagine he was speaking merely in metaphor, a second tweet from him linked to a Chicago Tribune story about the impending trial of a Mennonite clergyman “charged with aiding and abetting the kidnapping of Isabella Miller-Jenkins, now 10,” who was spirited out of the country so as to evade court orders mandating visitation with Janet Jenkins, who had helped raise Isabella as part of a same-sex couple. Fischer’s summary: “Head of Underground Railroad to deliver innocent children from same-sex households goes on trial.”

Fischer and his American Family Association, it should be noted, are clownish figures whose extremism is a turn-off even to many true believers on the social right. (It can nonetheless be interesting to observe who deems them respectable enough to associate with; for example, the Values Voter Summit, which draws major political figures like Eric Cantor, Jim DeMint, and Ted Cruz, considers Fischer a suitable speaker and AFA a suitable prominent sponsor.) Anyway, Fischer thrives on outraged publicity from his adversaries, so enough about him. What’s worth rather more attention (and provides some insight into the mounting campaign against gay parenting from some quarters) are the two articles he tweeted.

If you’re not familiar with the epic Miller-Jenkins custody-kidnapping case, it’s worth catching up by way of The New York Times‘ account the other day. (Jenkins’ lawyers at GLAD have posted many of the documents, and I’ve been covering it off and on for years at my Overlawyered blog.) While nothing short of tragic for the individuals involved (the little girl is now growing up in a strange country and for many years has not seen Janet Jenkins, who helped raise her), I concluded a few years ago that its greatest significance as a social turning point was in revealing the new willingness of many in organized religious conservatism, “even the lawyers among them, to applaud and defend the defiance of court orders.” Since then, important sections of the social right have evolved further toward a position on lawbreaking more often historically associated with those well to their left.

August 7, 2012

Chick-fil-A and the same-sex marriage debate

Filed under: Business, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:31

Sean Collins at sp!ked:

As welcome as it was to see many stand up for free speech, the focus on First Amendment rights missed the bigger picture. While making principled references to Voltaire, these critical liberals were still using the Chick-fil-A issue to expand the definition of what it means to be ‘homophobic’, so that it now includes the mere utterance of support for traditional marriage. It is noteworthy that Chick-fil-A does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation — it has gay employees and it serves gay customers. A franchisee in Chicago has held fundraisers for gay and lesbian groups.

Advocates for same-sex marriage want expressions of support for traditional marriage to be considered beyond the pale and unworthy of debate. It is amazing how fast this issue is moving. Three months ago, Obama was against same-sex marriage — is anyone who espouses that view today now anti-gay and ‘repugnant’? Obama launched his political career in Chicago — was he out of line with ‘Chicago’s values’ until his conversion to the gay-marriage cause 90 days ago? Same-sex marriage has been voted down in all 31 states where it was on the ballot, including in California — are these states filled with ‘bigoted and homophobic’ people?

Millions of Americans, including many CEOs, do not agree with same-sex marriage. But it is clear that Chick-fil-A’s CEO has been singled out because his restaurant chain fits a Culture War stereotype held by many coastal liberals: a Southern-based establishment led by Christians and frequented by ‘backward’ people. It is revealing how pro-gay marriage protesters took the opportunity to condemn Chick-fil-A customers for committing another of today’s sins — being obese. As the New York Times reported, some protesters held signs with ‘warnings that those chicken sandwiches contain a lot of fat and cholesterol’. Dan Turner of the Los Angeles Times helpfully pointed out that ‘a fairly typical meal — a deluxe chicken sandwich with medium waffle fries, a medium Coke and a fudge brownie — contains about enough calories and fat to support a Tunisian village for a week’. The ease with which commentators went from attacking a certain group of people for their beliefs on marriage to attacking them for their eating habits told us a great deal about the elitism that is fuelling the gay-marriage issue.

August 5, 2012

Tolerance Is Different From Approval

Filed under: Business, Food, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

In his Forbes column, Tim Worstall explains his puzzlement over the ongoing Chick-Fil-A uproar in the US and why tolerance is not the same as approval:

As to the basic point about gay marriage I can only offer my personal opinion: all for it. On the grounds that everyone’s going to understand the miserableness of us middle aged heteros a great deal better after 20 odd years of societally enforced monogamy. Slightly more seriously gay marriage or not gay marriage has little to do with a business column.

What does have to do with a business column is that this whole idea of a market means that we don’t have to care about the personal beliefs of either those who supply us or whom we supply. It’s the very impersonality of market exchange that means that it just doesn’t matter a darn what anyone’s sexual (or indeed any other) preference is. We get to care only about whether it’s a good chicken sandwich or whether the customer has enough money for one.

[. . .]

The other point that occurs to me is that we seem to be separating tolerance from approval in a way that some in the US are not.

Just as background, in the country I live in, Portugal, there is as far as a legal marriage ceremony goes, only civil marriage. Any two consenting adults, in whatever mixture of genders and sexes makes sense to those two individuals, can be married by the State. Religion doesn’t even get a look in.

If you do want a religious marriage, according to the rites of a church, then off you go after your civil marriage and have one. That marriage will be limited by whatever that church decides the limitations upon marriage are. It has no legal effect at all.

At which point everyone tolerates gay marriage but no one demands approval of it. For the two are different. Tolerance being the necessary requirement for a free and liberal society: that you get to do what you want to do as long as everyone else is also given the same freedom to follow their path from cradle to grave. Approval is something else again. I, to take a very trivial example, certainly tolerate the existence of Simon Cowell and his shows but that doesn’t mean that anyone can demand that I approve of them.

July 19, 2012

Walter Olson: more red flags in the Regnerus study

Filed under: Health, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:00

Some studies provide results that challenge common beliefs and understandings. Others reinforce them. But some studies are designed from the desired results backwards. The Regnerus study on gay parents’ influence on their children appears to be one of the latter. Walter Olson points out that even in its own terms, the study shows something different from what it is intended to:

By now almost everyone has had a whack at the recent Mark Regnerus (University of Texas) study claiming that young adults who report having a gay parent score worse on a range of life-success indicators than children from intact biological families. According to the study, these kids as young adults have lower educational attainment, are arrested more often, and have more trouble in their own relationships, among other problems. Critics have pointed out that the story is mostly one of collapsed heterosexual families, not “same-sex parenting”: The great majority of the kids were born to male-female couples, most of the presumedly gay dads and many of the moms didn’t get custody of their kids after their relationships dissolved, and few of the kids were actually raised through long periods by gay couples. LGBT advocates point out that sociologist Mark Regnerus accepted $695,000 from the anti-gay Witherspoon Institute to carry out the study.

But many critics have missed one of Regnerus’ most unexpected findings, one that may illuminate his study’s shortcomings. Specifically, and feeding into pretty much all the other problems, the study diagnoses children of gay parents as having a huge problem with poverty. Here’s Regnerus:

    Sixty-nine (69) percent of LMs [respondents with lesbian mothers] and 57% of GFs [those with gay fathers] reported that their family received public assistance at some point while growing up, compared with 17% of IBFs [those with intact two-parent biological families]; 38% of LMs said they are currently receiving some form of public assistance, compared with 10% of IBFs. Just under half of all IBFs reported being employed full-time at present, compared with 26% of LMs.

Those are big gaps. And of course they’re much at odds with the affluent image of gay families presented in both pro- and anti-gay-parenting literature as well as Modern Family-style popular entertainment. What do they signify?

Probably the biggest single reason is the one cited at the outset: This is mostly a survey of what happens when heterosexual families crack up. (Interestingly, if a married couple stayed together, they were counted as an “IBF,” no matter whether one or both partners pursued same-sex liaisons.) Decades of data indicate that children of family breakup do worse than children whose parents stay together, on many variables related to adult success. One reason, though not the only reason, is that they grow up significantly poorer.

February 25, 2012

Reason.tv: Banning drugs, banning same-sex marriage, and banning fun

Filed under: Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:04

February 15, 2012

Justin Trudeau: soft separatist

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

Josée Legault is busily trying to walk back her scoop, as she claims now that the information being presented in English is distorted and a false characterization of what Justin Trudeau actually said. Colby Cosh isn’t convinced:

Legault goes on to gripe about the “honesty” of this characterization. In fact, it is perfectly honest and in perfect concord with what Trudeau said, and Legault was correct to recognize it as news in the first place, even if she does not now like the result (perhaps because she has lost ownership of the scoop).

Justin Trudeau did say he was willing to contemplate separation under real-world circumstances. “One day, who knows?” is more or less exactly what he told the interviewer. This is a legitimate surprise. And while I believe that a forty-year-old man is entitled to his own opinions — not that any Quebecois baby boomer can stand to think of Justin as a person entering the era of back pain and prostate problems — the contrast with his father’s extreme anti-sovereigntist position really is worth remarking upon, if only because Justin’s surname is the source of much of his influence.

[. . .]

And yet, as sane and worthy of imitation as he seems in these respects, does anybody recognize the “Canada of Stephen Harper” Trudeau ranted against so excitingly today in front of a scrum in Centre Block? Harper’s party has not only accepted the legal fact of same-sex marriage, but has promised to shore it up against the disrepair in which the prior Liberal regime left it. The pro-life agitators in the Conservative caucus are a few barely-detectable grains of pepper amidst a kilogram of salt; on the whole, they are little more numerous and noisy than the pro-lifers in the pre-2011 Liberal caucus (who were, in one of history’s petty ironies, disproportionately victims of Conservative gains in non-metro Ontario).

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