News for February 24

A Compromise on Gay Marriage?

An op-ed in the New York Times by guest contributors David Blankenhorn and  Jonathan Rauch suggested a compromise on the issue of same-sex marriage:

It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.

Bloggers and journalists covering the religion beat are taking a look at the op-ed’s proposal, asking whether Blankenhorn and Rauch have hit upon a true middle-of-the-road conclusion, and wondering whether the time is right to move forward to implement the suggestion, or if it’s just a matter of time before growing U.S. favor for same-sex marriage/union will resolve the matter. Links include:

RNS Blog |  “Would it work? Probably. Will it ever see the light of day in Congress, and live to survive an onslaught from conservative groups? I’m more skeptical.”

The Huffington Post |  “If this is the great compromise, then gay marriage should be on the short term agenda in Federal politics. The U.S. would just be following in the footsteps of many other developed countries in the world. Gay marriage advocates have never been interested in forcibly quashing the churches and organizations that feel compelled to oppose homosexuality. We are in support of the free exercise of religion and the freedom of speech.”

The American Scene |  “My proposed alternative – repeal DoMA, pass a law clarifying how religious institutions are exempt from certain anti-discrimination laws, and let the courts sort out the rest – doesn’t single out gays, Federalize marriage law, coerce the states, or usurp the proper role of the courts. It also, incidentally, avoids the potential problem of non-recognition of same-sex marriages performed abroad – since the proposed law specifically limits recognition to unions formalized in states with specific protections for religious institutions, and Congress has no power to coerce foreign legislatures – which I’m sure was not something the authors were aiming for.”

Religion Dispatches |  “I have no proof to back this up, but it simply feels like my life, along with the lives of all the other LGBT statistics, are the most polled about. It seems every other week another poll comes out asking real live people about our theoretical lives. Honestly, I’m sick of it. Stop asking others about my life. Start asking me about my life. Start asking gay and lesbian people about the reality of their lives.”

dotCommonweal |  “One wonders — given the public opinion data showing very strong support for gay rights, generally, among people under 30 — if this will be a hot issue at all 20 years from now. In this sense the contrast with abortion — 36 years after Roe v. Wade – is striking.”

They Aren’t Dogs, in those Slums  |  Informed Comment

Directors Danny Boyle’s and Loveleen Tandan’s “Slumdog Millionaire” swept the Oscars this year, in a remarkable sign of globalization. The creative team behind the film was largely British (Tandan began as a casting director and the screenplay was by Simon Beaufoy). But it was based on an Indian novel (Vikas Swarup’s Q & A), set in India with Indian actors, and deployed the cinematic techniques of Bollywood, the massive Indian film industry based in Bombay (a city that Indian television news anchors now call Mumbai but almost no one else does).  Globalization is implicit in the story from every direction. Author Swarup is an Indian diplomat as well as novelist, and has had postings in Turkey, the US, Britain and Ethiopia, and he is now Indian High Commissioner in Praetoria, South Africa. So the story springs from the mind of an inveterate expatriate who knows Ankara and Washington as well as Delhi.

• Related link: A Hollow Message of Social Justice  |  AlterNet
• Related link: No, I Don’t Know the Girl from Slumdog!  |  The Daily Beast

The New Co-op Capitalism  |  The Daily Beast

We are now at a most critical juncture, when leaders in business, in government, in society have a choice to make: to embrace the Co-op agenda, with its calls for multilateralism, and global institutions to protect our environment and our citizens. This agenda has a renewed idea of government as an institution whose primary allegiance is to humanity as a whole, however rich or able. And it has a renewed idea of business as a force for innovation and improving the state of the world, which needs reining in where the pursuit of profit conflicts with society’s interests, and helping out when the short-term finances for innovating for our future are not there. Or instead we could choose a very different path: the path of naked self-interest, the path of dog-eat-dog, in which reward is decoupled from responsibility.

How to Respond to Requests to Debate Creationists  |  Pharyngula

A professor at the University of Vermont, Nicholas Gotelli, got an invitation to debate one of the clowns at the Discovery Institute. … You’ll enjoy Dr Gotelli’s response:

“Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren’t members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.”

Mad, Maddening America, the Wisest of All  |  Andrew Sullivan @The Times (U.K)

You live with the worst because you yearn for the best, because the worst in its turn seems somehow to evoke the best. From the civil war came Abraham Lincoln; from the Great Depression came FranklinD Roosevelt; from segregation came Martin Luther King; and from George Bush came Barack Obama. America may indeed drive us up the wall, but it also retains a wondrous capacity to evoke the mountain top and what lies beyond.