Remembering the Real Hillary Clinton

Often earlier this year, during the Democratic primaries, I would pinch myself and say, "what is it about Hillary Clinton that I now like so much?"

Indeed, I got so excited by her indelible fighting spirit, I got to calling her "Hillary Clinton Maximus Decimus Meridius," for just like Russell Crowe's Roman general, she simply wouldn't die.

Hillary's in the news again, of course, with all the speculation on her potential appointment as secretary of state (which would be a disaster, in my opinion, not for U.S. foreign policy, but for Hillary's moral legacy).

Noemie Emery, in any case, zooms in on why we love her, why we love Hillary Clinton, even though her history indeed represents all that conservatives claim to loathe. The grudging respect emerged after Barack Obama had become the Democratic frontrunner, and Hillary's inevitability was long forgotten. That's when Americans saw Hillary as a gladiator refusing to go down:

After March 4, she suddenly seemed to look and sound different: She began to seem real. The shrillness was gone, and so was The Cackle, and so were the forced southern accents that once caused so many so much merriment. Hillary!--whoever that was--never really cohered as a character; her previous poses--the Perfect Wife, the Aggrieved Wife, the Empress-in-Waiting--were all unconvincing, but in her new role--the scrapper, forced to the wall, and hanging in there with ferocious and grim resolution--she is suddenly all of a piece. Along with her inner JFK, she has channeled her inner Robert F. Kennedy (going back to the days when he was still "ruthless"), along with her inner Margaret Thatcher--"No time to go wobbly"--along with echoes of the John McCain who clawed his way out of the grave only last winter, and the George W. Bush who just as tenaciously saved his Iraq policy--and maybe Iraq itself--from the Democrats in Congress last year.

It is no accident that it was just at this juncture that she began to rouse outrage in parts of what once was her base. It is a truism that liberals think people are formed by exterior forces around them and are helpless before them, while conservatives think individuals make their own destiny. Liberals love victims and want them to stay helpless, so they can help them, with government programs; while conservatives love those who refuse to be victims, and get up off the canvas and fight. Hillary may still be a nanny-state type in some of her policies, but in her own life she seems more and more of a Social Darwinian, refusing to lose, and insisting on shaping her destiny. If the fittest survive, she intends to be one of them. This takes her part of the way towards a private conversion. She is acting like one of our own.

If this weren't enough to make right-wing hearts flutter, Hillary has another brand-new advantage: She is hated on all the right fronts. The snots and the snark-mongers now all despise her, along with the trendies, the glitzies; the food, drama, and lifestyle critics, the beautiful people (and those who would join them), the Style sections of all the big papers; the slick magazines; the above-it-all pundits, who have looked down for years on the Republicans and on the poor fools who elect them, and now sneer even harder at her. The New York Times is having hysterics about her. At the New Republic, Jonathan Chait (who inspired the word "Chaitred" for his pioneer work on Bush hatred) has transferred his loathing of the 43rd president intact and still shining to her. "She should now go gentle into the political night," he advised in January. "Go Already!" he repeated in March, when she had failed to act on his suggestion. "No Really, You Should Go," he said in April after she won Pennsylvania, which made her even less likely to take his advice. "Now that loathing seems a lot less irrational," he wrote of the right wing's prior distaste for both the Clintons. "We just really wish they'd go away."

And what caused this display of intense irritation? She's running a right-wing campaign. She's running the classic Republican race against her opponent, running on toughness and use-of-force issues, the campaign that the elder George Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, that the younger George Bush waged in 2000 and then again against John Kerry, and that Ronald Reagan--"The Bear in the Forest"--ran against Jimmy Carter and Walter F. Mondale. And she's doing it with much the same symbols.

"Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11," the New York Times has been whining. "A Clinton television ad, torn right from Karl Rove's playbook, evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war, and 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden . . . declaring in an interview with ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president," she would wipe the aggressor off the face of the earth. "Clinton is saying almost exactly the same things about Obama that McCain is," Chait lamented: "He's inexperienced, lacking in substance," unprepared to stand up to the world. She has said her opponent is ill-prepared to answer the phone, should it ring in the White House at three in the morning. Her ads are like the ones McCain would be running in her place, and they'll doubtless show up in McCain's ads should Obama defeat her. She has said that while she and McCain are both prepared to be president, Obama is not. They act, he makes speeches. They take heat, while he tends to wilt or to faint in the kitchen. He may even throw like a girl.

And better--or worse--she is becoming a social conservative, a feminist form of George Bush. Against an opponent who shops for arugula, hangs out with ex-Weathermen, and says rural residents cling to guns and to God in unenlightened despair at their circumstances, she has rushed to the defense of religion and firearms, while knocking back shots of Crown Royal and beer. Her harsh, football-playing Republican father (the villain of the piece, against whom she rebelled in earlier takes on her story) has become a role model, a working class hero, whose name she evokes with great reverence. Any day now, she'll start talking Texan, and cutting the brush out in Chappaqua or at her posh mansion on Embassy Row.

In the right-wing conspiracy, this adaptation has not gone unobserved. "Hillary has shown a Nixonian resilience and she's morphing into Scoop Jackson," runs one post on National Review's blog, The Corner:

She's entering the culture war as a general. All of this has made her a far more formidable general election candidate. She's fighting the left and she's capturing the center. She's denounced MoveOn.org. She's become the Lieberman of the Democratic Party. The left hates her and treats her like Lieberman. . . . Obama is distancing himself from Wright and Hillary is getting in touch with O'Reilly. The culture war has come to the Democratic Party.

She might run to the right of McCain, if she makes it to the general election, and get the votes of rebellious conservatives. Or she, Lieberman, and McCain could form a pro-war coalition, with all of them running to pick up the phone when it rings in the small hours. The New York Times and the rest of the left would go crazy. Respect can't get stranger than that.

I can't add much to that, except to say, once again, Noemie Emery's shown herself to be among the very best of those writing on politics and culture today.

Attorney General Nominee Eric Holder

While there have been indications that Barack Obama has moved to the center since his nomination last june, and upon winning the general election this month, the National Review indicates that Obama's nomination of Eric Holder for attorney general demonstrates where the ideological fulcrum will be in the next Justice Department, and in American law:

Holder was the Clinton administration’s last deputy attorney general, succeeding Jamie Gorelick in 1997 under Janet Reno. That appointment marked the final elevation in a series of Clinton-era promotions that punctuate his résumé. Holder’s rise, like Obama’s own, is of symbolic significance, as he now has been nominated to be the nation’s first black attorney general. Symbolism, however, cannot camouflage the fact that Holder is a conventional, check-the-boxes creature of the Left.

He is convinced justice in America needs to be “established” rather than enforced; he’s excited about hate crimes and enthusiastic about the constitutionally dubious Violence Against Women Act; he’s a supporter of affirmative action and a practitioner of the statistical voodoo that makes it possible to burden police departments with accusations of racial profiling and the states with charges of racially skewed death-penalty enforcement; he’s more likely to be animated by a touchy-feely Reno-esque agenda than traditional enforcement against crimes; he’s in favor of ending the detentions of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay and favors income redistribution to address the supposed root causes of crime.

In any other time, Holder would simply be an uninspired choice. But these are not ordinary times — we face a serious, persistent threat from Islamist terrorists. At the same time, Democrats have expressed outrage over both the alleged politicization of the Justice Department and the reckless disregard of its storied traditions. For these times, it is difficult to imagine a worse choice for AG than Eric Holder.

There's more at the link.

Holder's nomination is bad enough, but we haven't seen the end of the leftward lurch (just wait, for example, until word goes out on who'll head the EPA ... change is on the way!).

Don't Waste Hillary at the State Department

I haven't posted on all of the rumors that Hillary Clinton will become secretary of state in the Barack Obama administration.

I don't like the idea, frankly. David Broder explains my reservations perfectly:

It may be moot and it certainly is presumptuous, but I would be less than honest with readers if I did not say what I believe: Making Hillary Rodham Clinton the secretary of state in Barack Obama's administration would be a mistake.

I do not doubt that she could do the job -- and do it well. I have been a fan of the former first lady's since I covered her efforts for health-care reform 15 years ago. What I saw in the recent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination was convincing evidence of her physical stamina and moral courage, and of her capacity to improve her own performance at every step of the process. I admired her readiness to endorse and campaign hard for Obama after her own candidacy fell short.

Equally, I admire Obama's readiness to reach out to former rivals and enlist their help in the governing enterprise he is launching. His serious discussions with Clinton, John McCain and Bill Richardson, among others, are testaments to his sincerity in wanting to move beyond the partisanship and personal differences that too often poison the atmosphere in Washington.

What, then, is the problem? Clinton is the wrong person for that job in this administration. It's not the best use of her talents, and it's certainly not the best fit for this new president.

Unfortunately, Broder marred his piece with a slam on the Iraq war ... which is no surprise since the Beltway establishment attaced the war as a "disaster" from the get go.

But Hillary Clinton was right in authorizing the deployment in 2002, and perhaps by staying away from the Obama cabinet, she can return to a more realistic view of American foreign policy, not driven by electoral pressures from the Democratic party's defeatist base.

A Cancer on the Democratic Party

One bright side to John McCain's loss this month is that Michael Goldfarb, who left the Weekly Standard to join the campaign as a media spokesman, is back at the magazine hashing out some penetrating analysis.

Goldfarb provides the best explanation to the left's Lieberman derangement yet. There's a cancer metastasizing at the base:

What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

This is precisely what the Democratic party achieved with Barack Obama’s historic victory on November 4. The Democrats increased their majorities in both the House and Senate while eliminating anything even resembling a functioning opposition. Those Republicans that survived the massacre are exhausted, scattered and foraging for scraps. It was a bloodbath, and one that should have satiated the blood lust of even the most committed Democratic partisans. Yet some Democrats can’t seem to accept a complete and total victory -- they want to round up the wounded and execute them. Joe Lieberman’s name is at the top of their list ....

The Democratic party and the left won a stunning victory in this election, and while they should be savoring it (and most are) a few are busy trying to settle old scores. It’s pathetic, but it’s also cause for some optimism: these people are a cancer on the Democratic party that even a landslide victory couldn't cure.

Unfortunately, the nihilist left is a cancer on American life altogether.

Recall Specter Hangs Over California Supreme Court

Last Saturday, I argued that the case of Rose Elizabeth Bird, the late Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, who was rejected at the polls in 1986, should be the model for today's Yes on 8 proponents contemplating political options in the event that the Ronald George court decides to strike down the November 4th ballot measure.

It turns out, as the Los Angeles Times reports, that the state high court is fully aware of the possibility of an electoral backlash should a majority on the bench overturn the wishes of a majority of the state's voters:

Six months ago, California's highest court discarded its reputation for caution and ended the state's ban on same-sex marriage.

Now the moderately conservative state Supreme Court is being asked to take an even riskier step -- to overturn the November voter initiative that reinstated the gay-marriage ban and possibly provoke a voter revolt that could eject one or more of the justices from the bench.

The court is under intense pressure from all sides. Its first response to the challenges may come today, when the justices meet privately in a weekly conference to decide which cases to accept for review.

Legal scholars say case law does not give the court a clear path for overturning the voter-approved measure. The state high court -- six Republicans and one moderate Democrat -- generally defers to the will of the people. Only twice has the court rejected initiatives on the legal grounds cited by opponents of Proposition 8.

Despite the uncertainties, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said publicly that he expects and hopes that the state high court will reject Proposition 8.

Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, whose office must defend it, opposed the measure, and 44 legislators have called on the court to overturn it.

Civil rights groups, churches and local governments have filed six lawsuits asking the court to declare the measure an illegal constitutional revision. Letters also have poured into the court pleading for urgent action, and anti-Proposition 8 rallies have attracted large crowds statewide.

At the same time, opponents of gay marriage have warned that they will work to oust any justice who votes against Proposition 8, a threat particularly palpable in a year when voters in other states have booted six state high court justices after campaigns by special interest groups.

"It is a time of lots of crocodiles in the bathtub," said Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, who has followed the court for decades. "Their oath requires them to ignore these kinds of political threats. But the threat of having to face a contested election is a significant one."

Uelmen used a metaphor coined by the late California Supreme Court Justice Otto Kaus, a Democrat who served on the court with Chief Justice Rose Bird before voters removed her and two justices over their opposition to the death penalty.

Kaus later said that as hard as he tried to decide cases impartially, he was never sure whether the threat of a recall election was influencing his votes.

"It was like finding a crocodile in your bathtub when you go to shave in the morning," Kaus said. "You know it's there, and you try not to think about it, but it's hard to think about much else while you're shaving."

The folks at Firedoglake aren't too thrilled about it, calling backers of a likely recall campaign "the forces behind inequality" and a bunch of "crazy supporters."

There's a bitter irony here for the leftist progressive "H8ers": California's true progressive reformer, Governor Hiram Johnson, in 1911, empowered the voters of the state with the initiative, the referendum, and the recall. He also established non-partisan elections for judicial officials, which was the mechanism that removed Chief Justice Bird in 1986 after she refused to permit capital punishment in the state.

Now, of course, today's so-called "progressives" (neo-Stalinists, actually) reject the most important political reforms in California history, since they allow popular majorities to go over the heads of the currupt and inefficient elected officials, as well as members of the judiciary, to direct public policy themselves.

The will of the voters will prevail on this issue. The same-sex marriage activists need to try again at the ballot box after a few election cycles have passed. If the demographics are really trending toward the gay agenda of radical secularism, these folks should have nothing to worry about.

David Frum's Rethinking

Here's an excerpt from David Frum's response to the New York Times piece yesterday on the decline of respect at the National Review:

I have been engaged in some intense rethinking of my own conservatism. My fundamental political principles remain the same as ever: free markets, American leadership in the world, and intense attachment to inherited moral and cultural traditions. Yet I cannot be blind to the evidence that we have seen free markets produce some damaging and dangerous results in recent years. Or that the foreign policy I supported has not yielded the success I would have wished to see. Or that traditions must evolve if they are to endure. There are new principes too that must be included in a majority conservatism: environmental protection as a core value and an unwavering insistence upon competence and integrity in government.

I appreciate this statement on America's "leadership in the world."

That commitment will be restrained, unfortunately, if American leadership is compromised on the altar of the left's ideological doctrine of environmental globalism.

This idea of a "commitment to moral and cultural traditions" is good, but how much must they "evolve" if they are to endure?

We're seeing enough evolution right now with the coming of Barack Obama, whose positions on the issues seem to be "evolving" in a way that's not so great for moral and cultural traditions.

Other than that, great.

Frum will be intitiating a group blog on conservative politics sometime around the time of the inauguration (we'll see how "conservative" that turns out, yo, Peggy Noonan!).

Petition to Governor Schwarzenegger

I just got this petition notification from the folks at the Yes on 8 campaign:

Meridian Magazine / Family Leader

Proposition 8: Governor Schwarzenegger Respect the Voter's Will

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,

Since election day, you have made comments urging the California Supreme Court to overturn the citizens' will in passing Proposition 8 in California defining marriage as between a man and a woman. This was passed after a rigorous election process by a healthy margin of 52% to 48%.

You have recommended that the state Supreme Court declare the initiative unconstitutional and said, "The important thing now is to resolve this issue." The election passing Proposition 8 did resolve the issue, according to the most basic tenet of our free society, which is based on the "consent of the governed" ....

To try to overturn an election is an insult to voters and undermines the democratic process. As governor, it is your responsibility to support and defend the California constitution, which now reads that marriage is between a man and a woman and the foundation processes of our country that are based on "consent of the governed."

We urge you to:

* Publically accept the results of the ballot initiative as the will of the people

* Publically recant any suggestions that the California Supreme Court should overturn the voice of a free and fair election.

* Condemn the recent assaults upon the First Amendment rights of supporters of Proposition 8. We echo what the Protect Marriage coalition has said, "Amidst all this lawlessness, harassment, trampling of civil rights and now domestic terrorism, one thing stands out: the deafening silence of our elected officials. Not a single elected leader has spoken out against what is happening." We look to you to speak out against those who would silence free speech by targeting donors, disrupting church services and vandalizing property.

Sincerely,

Your Name & Address Here ...

I think this is a good start to a grassroots accountability campaign directed at the goverment of the State of California.

Attorney General Edmund G. Brown, Jr., announced today that his office will ask the California Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of Proposition 8. Brown will represent the state, but Yes on 8 backers don't trust the A.G. to defend their position adequately before the Court.

The Attorney General's contact page is here. Make your voice heard.

Progressives Outraged at Senate Vote on Lieberman

Joseph Lieberman will retain his chairmanship of the Senate's Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee - and boy are the netroots hordes up in the air about it!

Here's Jane Hamsher, who once attacked Lieberman in blackface:

No matter what Joe Lieberman does, the people who are protecting him hate you much more than they hate him.

Well, hmm, thanks Jane! And, really, who can blame them?

The Politico has more:

The progressive netroots is expressing outrage Tuesday over the 42-12 Democratic Senate caucus vote allowing Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to remain chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

“I think we’ve now learned that Joe Lieberman is the smartest politician in D.C. He knew Democrats were spineless capitulators who would cave at the merest threat,” Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas wrote in a post on the site. “He’s probably having a great laugh about it just about now.”

“It appears as though four in five Democrats in the United States Senate are content with their committee leadership including a member who actively campaigned not only for the Republican Presidential nominee but also Republican Senators up for reelection this fall,” MyDD blogger Jonathan Singer chimed in. “I knew the Senate was a collegial place... I just didn't know it was this collegial.”

Talking Point Memo’s Joshua Marshall, meanwhile, ran the mocking headline “Breaking: Lieberman expelled from Pilates class in Senate gym” on his site.

Frustrated by the seeming inaction from party leaders, some have already begun gathering pledges to donate and work for whatever Democrat runs against Lieberman when his Senate term is up in 2012.

“The race starts now ... whoever runs against Joe Lieberman,” reads the pledge being circulated by FireDogLake’s Jane Hamsher. “Sign-up to pledge your support in Connecticut's 2012 Senate race against Joe Lieberman. By signing on today, you promise to give money, volunteer, make calls from a distance, and help defeat Joe Lieberman in any way you can.”

Another site, laughatlieberman.com, is organizing prank phone calls to the senator’s office. The site, which was launched today and has been featured on the Huffington Post and elsewhere, urges people to post a video on YouTube of themselves calling Lieberman’s office and laughing at whoever answers the phone until they hang up.

Lieberman has long been a target of the liberal netroots, which played a critical fundraising role in his loss to Ned Lamont in the 2006 Democratic primary. But Lieberman became a true pariah of the online left for serving not only as an ally of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, but also as one of his top surrogates.

The 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee lit into now President-elect Barack Obama repeatedly on the campaign trail, calling the Democrat inexperienced, untested and even seeming to question his patriotism.

Standing next to McCain during an August campaign stop in York, Pennsylvania, Lieberman said the election was a choice “between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put his country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate that has not.”

The left wants a complete excommunication of Lieberman. They aleady tried with the 2006 Lamont challenge to Lieberman's seat, and now failing in pressuring the Democratic leadership to punish the apostate, they're already gearing up for a new round. Don't be surprised if blackface comes back in style.

Gay is the New Black?

I've spoken already on the gay marriage movement's false equivalence between same-sex marriage and the historical struggle for black civil rights.

But I wanted to share Dennis Prager's new piece, "Is Gay the New Black?":

"Gay is the new black" is one of the mottos of the movement to redefine marriage to include two people of the same sex.

The likening of the movement for same-sex marriage to the black civil rights struggle is a primary argument of pro same-sex marriage groups. This comparison is a major part of the moral appeal of redefining marriage: Just as there were those who once believed that blacks and whites should not be allowed to be married, the argument goes, there are today equally bigoted individuals who believe that men should not be allowed to marry men and women should not be allowed to marry women.

It is worth noting that the people least impressed with the comparison of the gay struggle to redefine marriage with the black struggle for racial equality are blacks. They voted overwhelmingly for California's Proposition 8 which amends the California Constitution to define marriage as being the union of a man and a woman.

One reason given is that blacks tend to be socially conservative. But another, less verbalized, reason may well be that blacks find the comparison demeaning and insulting. As well they should.

One has to either be ignorant of segregation laws and the routine humiliations experienced by blacks during the era of Jim Crow, or one has to be callous to black suffering, to equate that to a person not being allowed to marry a person of the same sex. They are not in the same moral universe.

There is in fact no comparison between the situation of gays in America in 2008 and the situation of most black Americans prior to the civil rights era. Gays are fully accepted, and as a group happen to constitute one of the wealthiest in American life. Moreover, not being allowed to marry a person of the same sex is not anti-gay; it is pro-marriage as every civilization has defined it. The fact is that states like California already grant people who wish to live and love a member of the same sex virtually every right that marriage bestows except the word "married."

A certain number of gay men will feel better if they can call their partner "husband" and some lesbians will enjoy calling their partner "wife," but society as a whole is not benefitted by such a redefinition of those words. Society as a whole does not benefit by removing, as California did, the words "bride" and "groom" from marriage licenses and substituting "Partner A" and "Partner B."

But hoping that the more radical gays and straights of the gay rights movement will ask "what benefits society?" before "what makes some gays feel better?" is useless.

And so, the movement appropriates the symbols and rhetoric of the black civil rights struggle when that struggle and the movement to redefine marriage have next to nothing in common. How can a seriously moral individual compare forcing a black bus rider to sit in the back of a bus or to give up his seat to a white who demands it, or prohibiting a black human being from drinking from the same water fountain or eating at the same lunch counter as a white human being, or being denied the right to vote, or being prohibited from attending a school with whites, let alone being periodically lynched, to either the general gay condition today or specifically to being given the "right" to redefine marriage for society?

There's more at the link.

I was thinking along the same lines as Prager this morning, when reading Anna Quindlen's touchy-feely (and vapid) essay on Loving v. Virginia and same-sex marriage at Newsweek.

The left's spouts an anything-goes mentality and plays fast-and-loose with history and constitutional law (for example, here).

See also my earlier piece, "Gay Marriage is Not a Civil Right."

Obama Backs Comprehensive Gay Rights Agenda

Via Protein Wisdom and Right Wing Sparkle, it turns out that Barack Obama, during the campaign, discounted LGBT issues on the official website prior to the election, but now the president-elect has a full gay-rights page up declaring fealty to the same gay marriage ayatollahs who are now conducting post-Proposition 8 Stalinist show trials, intimidating blacks with the "n-word," and smearing Mormons as the new Nazis.

Here's this from a homosexual rights blog:

A few weeks ago I was getting dozens of emails about President-elect Barack Obama's Change.gov website and its lack of any mention of the words 'gay' or 'lesbian'. That has now changed, and the site, which echoes Obama's campaign positions, features a civil rights agenda for LGBT Americans more comprehensive than anything we've seen from an incoming president. There is no doubt, however, that demands for marriage equality from the masses will only grow stronger, and at a certain point the leader of this nation will need to take the proper route and stand behind equality in action and name for all Americans.

In other words, Obama's gay rights agenda does not include a plank on the promotion of gay marriage, so we'll harass his administration with intimidation and mayhem until he toes the line to our extremist agenda.

Folks can quibble with the significance of Obama's proposed gay agenda (which includes repealing "don't ask, don't tell," a surprisingly bad idea politically, considering the ghosts of the Clinton White House now haunting the presidential transition), but what's important in the context of the current gay marriage protests is Obama's pledge to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 (DOMA).

The DOMA says that the federal government will not recogize same-sex marriages as coequal to traditional marriages, and it holds that states need not recognize same-sex marriages that have been lawfully authorized by legislatures of other states.

Should the Obama administration repeal DOMA, the gay marriage movement will become legitimized under a creeping federalism of No on H8 intolerance, as more and more states recognize same-sex weddings across the nation - that is, an Obama administration will give the green light to the destruction of this country's traditionalism by legitimizing claims to homosexual marriage equality.

This would be a huge step toward consolidating a national religion of secular humanism at the federal level of American government and politics. Indeed, this is exactly the outcome demanded by radical same-sex activists. We will see a new national polity built on an ideology of cultural relativism, no longer that great shining City on a Hill, but just one more run-of-the-mill postmaterialist industrial state with an anything-goes program of amoralism nationalism.

Here again, are the stake before us the the nation's future.

See also, "Gay Marriage is Not a Civil Right."

The Gay War on Religion

Andrew Sullivan has gone off his rocking chair again this morning. I will quote in full without linking (to observe the general delinking policy on the right):

I strongly support civility in this struggle. Religious services and practices should be scrupulously respected. But when a church, like the Mormon church, makes a concerted effort to enter the public square and strip a small minority of basic civil rights, it is simply preposterous for them then to argue that the Mormon church cannot be criticized and protested because they are a religion. I have never done anything - nor would I do anything - to impede or restrict the civil rights of Mormons. I respect their right to freedom of conscience and religion. In fact, it is one of my strongest convictions. But when they use their money and power to target my family, to break it up, to demean it and marginalize it, to strip me and my husband of our civil rights, then they have started a war. And I am not a pacifist.

I do not intend in any way to remove a single right from Mormons. I do intend to protest their imposition of their own religious dogma - that marriage is always between a man and a woman and it is eternal and will be replicated in heaven by the couple physically present - on civil rights protections vested in a civil constitution.

I should add that I dated a Mormon man for a few months a while back. What he told me about the LDS church's psychological warfare on their gay members, the brutality and viciousness and intolerance with which they attack and hound and police the gay children of Mormon families, would make anyone shudder.

They hounded my ex for having HIV and for being gay. They followed him secretly, outed him to his family and persecuted him for his illness. When he was diagnosed with HIV at Brigham Young, he had to run out of the college clinic to escape those who wanted to sequester and punish him. He died a few years ago. Most of his Mormon family didn't show up for his funeral. You want me to love these people? Let me say it's my Christian duty to try.

The Mormons are not unique in this persecution of their own gay folk. My own church has recently capitulated to bigotry in its own hiring practices, even as the Vatican is run by so many psychologically scarred gay men. But the Mormons are particularly vicious homophobes. Gay people are rendered invisible, their personhood erased in this church. The cruelty the Mormon church inflicts on its gay members is matched only by the Mormons' centuries-long demonization and hatred of black people. That African-Americans would seek common cause with a church that only recently still believed they were the product of Satan shows how profound homophobia can be. But this shared hatred can be exploited by the Hewitts and Romneys of this world. And what we have just witnessed is a trial run for much larger ambitions.

If we don't resist this now, we will not be able to resist it later.

Sullivan sees himself as some kind of elder statesman of the gay movement, writing from his nasty little perch at the Atlantic, a magazine whose reputation he's working steadily to destroy.

What he's good at is taking anecdotal experience and distributing those examples as not only honest truth, but as representative of some kind of hegemonic anti-gay bigotry.

But as the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday:

...the Mormon Church has a more tolerant stance on homosexuality than some evangelical groups. The church has pointedly declined to state that homosexuality is a choice. And it has cautioned against programs that purport to "cure" same-sex attraction, even though Mormon theology holds that marriage is a divine relationship between men and women that continues into the afterlife.

What we're seeing with gay activists is a campaign of anti-religious recrimination. It's a secular jihad against those of traditional values who are exercising their legitimate constitutional rights to influence the political process. Interesting, not only are leftists willing to resort to intimidation and violence against Mormons, they are generally igornant of church affairs as well.

One of the most common, and frankly stupid, arguments of the protesters is that since Mormons faced bigotry in their past, they should abandon their beliefs on the sanctity of divine heterosexual union in favor of homosexual license.

Ron Chusid really sums up how daft this meme is:

While they legally are calling for marriage to be between a man and a woman in California, many are perfectly willing to accept that marriage can be between a man and a woman, and a woman, and a woman, and even some under-aged girls in Utah. A group which has had their religious views of marriage limited by law would hopefully be above using the law to impose their religious views upon others.

The Mormon Church repudiated the practice of plural wives in an 1890 manifesto. I talk with many Mormon students in my classroom discussions on freedom of religion and in 9 years of teaching college I've never heard a single student defend the practice. Polygamy exists as a fringe cult movement and is not sanctioned by any official Mormon institution. Today, the Church in Utah has been experiencing some of its greatest public acceptance in history, following the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002, and the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney.

No, leftist gay actiivists hope to destroy the moral basis for traditionalists, to enact a civil religion of their own choosing.

That's what this is all about, as I've said before: a new culture war has erupted across America, one that is likely to define who we are as people in the 21st century.

Racist Backlash to Obama?

Barack Obama won the presidency with 52.5 percent of the electorate, and 43 percent of white Americans voted for the Democratic ticket. With 130 million people voting, we're looking at somewhere near 60 million white voters who pulled the lever for Obama.

The Bradley effect, one of the election's biggest racial-scare scenarios threatening an Obama defeat, turned out to be largely a myth, and Obama won conservative states in the Old South, such as Florida and North Carolina, and the border state of Virginia as well. The entire demographic map of the U.S. electorate was bursting blue on November 5th, with the exception of a small band of conservative blocs in the Deep South, like Arkansas and Lousiana.

More than any other event since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Obama's successful pursuit of the White House signals that the nation has indeed overcome. There are challenges that remain, but 2008 demonstrates to an astonishing degree the country's yearning to transcend the racial divisions that have marred our history.

Yet, with the news of a couple of hundred post-election racial incidents and security threats to the president-elect, the radical leftosphere is up in arms tonight about the "racist backlash to Obama's presidency."

Matt Stoller jumps on the example of a few unreconstructed hillbillies to tar the entire GOP establishment as a bunch of Bull Connor-wannabes:

The GOP is going to ... futz around for awhile [following its crushing defeat] with the fake moderate versus conservative argument and then eventually find a way to tap into the newly emergent overt racism. It may happen in 2010, and it's impossible to predict whether the issues will be framed around 'law and order' as the millions of unemployed young people inevitably do what young people do when they are bored and disempowered in a recession, or some sort of stabbed in the back narrative around Iraq or Afghanistan, or some new set of issues focused on the fallout from this very scary financial crisis. Whatever happens the party will reorganize on the internet and that's going to seem really cool and innovative and counter-intuitive except that it will be perfectly normal for a political party to reorganize using a culture's mainstream medium for organizing, which is the internet. The right already did it once, with Drudge and the Free Republic in the 1990s.

Stoller's up there was Daily Kos as a weather vane on thinking among the progressive contingents, and for all their chest thumping victory-dances, it's surely a tender, flickering flame of triumph we see when the left holds onto its obligation to tired, dog-whistle attack politics just two weeks after the election.

The extreme right wing has been repudiated, not just in American politics, but in the mainstream GOP today. It's pretty pathetic, actually, but if the nihilist left thinks that some infinitesimal fringe of crackpots represents the Republican establishment, maybe the GOP's road back from the political wilderness won't be so long in coming after all.

National Review Sees Decline in Respectability

Here's an interesting piece on the decline of the high-minded ethic at National Review:

In a span of 252 days, the National Review lost two Buckleys — one to death, another to resignation — and an election.

Now, thanks to the coarsening effect of the Internet on political discourse, the magazine may have lost something else: its reputation as the cradle for conservative intellectuals and home for erudite and well-mannered debate prized by its founder, the late William F. Buckley Jr.

In the general conservative blogosphere and in The Corner, National Review’s popular blog, the tenor of debate — particularly as it related to the fitness of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska to be vice president — devolved into open nastiness during the campaign season, laying bare debates among conservatives that in a pre-Internet age may have been kept behind closed doors.

National Review, as the most pedigreed voice of conservatives, has often been tainted — unfairly and by association, some argue — by the tone of blogs, reader comments and e-mail messages. “Bill was always very concerned about having a high-minded and thoughtful discourse,” Rich Lowry, the magazine’s editor, said. “If you read the magazine, that’s what it was and that’s what it is.”

In October came the resignation of Mr. Buckley’s son, the writer and satirist Christopher Buckley, after he endorsed Barack Obama for president. He did so on Tina Brown’s blog, The Daily Beast, to avoid any backlash on The Corner.

Now David Frum, a prominent conservative writer who enmeshed himself in a minor dustup during the campaign by turning negative on Governor Palin, is leaving, too. In an interview, he said he planned to leave the magazine, where he writes a popular blog, to strike out on his own on the Web.

“The answers to the Republican dilemma are not obvious and we need a vibrant discussion,” he said. “I think a little more distance can help everybody do a better job of keeping their temper.”

Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor at National Review and probably has a bigger store of institutional knowledge than anyone, having written his first article, in 1970. “I think the tone of what we do, I’m certainly proud of,” he said. “You can’t be responsible for the world.”

The magazine faces the twin challenges of re-energizing the conservative movement while trying to stay relevant itself amid a shifting media landscape that is challenging the authority of all old-line media institutions.

“There’s a lot of thinking to be done,” said Mr. Lowry, in the magazine’s mostly empty New York offices two days after Mr. Obama won the presidency. Nearly all the staff was getting ready to go to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for a postelection fund-raising cruise in which readers, editors and guest speakers mix for a week of conservative conversation, but Mr. Lowry stayed behind to put out the new issue.

“We’ve always had rigorous internal debates,” he said. “But the advent of the blogosphere and e-mail and the rest of it have made it easier to blast out their impassioned instant reactions.

I have to be honest: National Review's not my favorite source of conservative opinion (and neither is David Frum, with all due respect). As a neoconservative, I'd much rather read Commentary or the Weekly Standard.

Still, I don't think any policy journal in today's day-and-age can escape the impact of the Internet to structure of debate across the mass media and punditocracy. For Rich Lowry and Richard Brookhiser to try to hermetically seal the turbulence at the Corner from what's happening with the flagship publication is folly.

Just look at the Atlantic, for example. I've always enjoyed reading that magazine, given its engaging topics and the high-quality writing.

But I can never look at the publication the same way now that the brand has been demon-stained by Andrew Sullivan (and previously, Matthew Yglesias). Indeed, I can't imagine why Ross Douthat continues to work there as long as Sullivan's the marquee blogger headlining their web presence. What a disaster in terms respectability on that side of the media world.

There's more on this topic at Memeorandum.

Gay Extremists Attack Christian Group in San Francisco

California's cultural confrontation over gay marriage escalated Friday night in San Francisco's Castro District, as a group Christian missionaries were attacked by a homosexual mob.

KTVU has the story:

In San Francisco's Castro District, people on both sides of the same-sex marriage controversy confronted each other on Friday night, as police tried to keep the peace. Proposition 8 passed in a close vote and eliminated the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Members of the gay community said that almost every Friday night, a Christian group meets at the corner of Castro and 18th Streets. They try to convert gays and lesbians into a straight lifestyle.

This Friday night, the message didn't go over well. Some gays and lesbians reacted by trying to chase the group out of the Castro.

"Their rights were respected," said Joe Schmitz, an opponent of Prop 8. "They got a chance to go ahead and pray on the sidewalk and I had the opportunity to express my freedom of speech which is telling them to get out of my neighborhood."

San Francisco Police officers in riot gear formed a line and escorted the religious group into a van to safely get them out of the area.

Members of the gay community insisted that their reaction to the Christian group was spontaneous. "It was not an organized thing. We're tired of it. It's not religious. It's not a racial thing. It's about hate. We're trying to send a message across the world that we're standing up and we don't want this to go on anymore," said Adam Quintero.

This is exactly the kind escalation I've been predicting in my commentaries on the Yes on 8 protests. The activist backlash will be marked by increasing belligerence, until otherise sympathetic heterosexual communities say, "enough is enough ... you people are freaking Stalinists!"

Gay marriage bloggers are noticing, for example, this guy:

I'm really worried about where this is heading. Somebody is going to get killed and we're all going to lose. I'm pissed, we're all f**king pissed, but this is going to a bad place. And I say that knowing that if I had been in the Castro on Friday night, I probably would have been right there in it. We've got the moral upper hand in this fight and every day more and more people see that. Be we have GOT to keep these things peaceful. Yell, fuck yeah, YELL. But don't touch. Don't hit. Don't throw. Please.

Pam Spaulding's also warning about the increasing mob rule of the movement, which is funny, because her blog is one of the biggest instigators of the unrest.

Stop the H8 = NKVD

The Economist notes that "the backlash against Prop. 8 is bigger than almost any American suspected."

Not quite: I've been blogging the gay marriage backlash to Proposition 8 since election day, because, frankly, folks really need to cut through all the rainbow feel-goodism and to see the radicalism of this movement for what's it's worth.

The Los Angeles Times reports this morning on how the protests are affecting the Mormon Church (apparently the left's campaign of intimidation has indeed taken a toll).

But to really get a sense of Stop the H8's chilling intolerance, check out Diana West's post on El Coyote Restaurant's Marjorie Christoffersen, who gave $100 to the Yes on 8 campaign:

The mainstream media have so far failed to get across the intensity of the ordeal that supporters of Prop 8 may now be subject to - something I realized on coming across this extraordinary blog account of a meeting at the legendary restaurant El Coyote in Hollywood, not far from where I grew up in Laurel Canyon. The meeting was between the elderly Mormon owner, who donated $100 to support Prop 8, and Prop 8 opponents, who are threatening a boycott, and it is as soul-grinding as something out of Soviet show trial history....

The tall, frail Christoffersen stood in the center of the group. She appeared to be shaking during her prepared remarks which lasted about 3 minutes. Two young female family members flanked her to prevent her from fainting, according to a restaurant employee. At several points during her speech, Christoffersen simply became too emotional to continue.

Christoffersen later fled town for fear of her life.

The Economist suggests that the No on H8 campaign may affect the willingness of people to support defense of marriage initiatives in the future, a deeply authortarian outcome resulting from the Stalinist tactics of gay-marriage NKVD-style apparatchiks.

Gay Rights Activists: Black Voters Are Dumb

We know one of the biggest initial controversies surrounding the Yes on 8 vote in California was the gay activist backlash against black voters, who turned out 70 percent in favor of the initiative.

At some of the first protest demonstrations, black passers-by - and even black gay marriage activists - were verbally assaulted with the "n-word." Jasmyne Cannick, a black-lesbian civil rights activist, even argued that an affluent white gay constituency, in pushing its same-sex marriage agenda, couldn't care less about the economic dislocation and lingering (and real) racial discrimination against inner-city African Americans.

Well, the hits keep coming: It turns out that Kathryn Kolbert, president of People for the American way, in an essay deceptively entitled, "Blaming Black Voters for Prop 8 Loss is Wrong and Destructive," identified black focus group participants as dumb, as they couldn't "sort out" the difference between civil unions and religious marriage:

People For the American Way Foundation conducted focus groups among African American churchgoers in California in September. Among men and women, and among younger and older groups, we found strong opposition to discrimination against LGBT people in employment and housing. And we found widespread support for legal protections for committed couples. Among all groups there was generally a live-and-let-live attitude toward gay people in their communities and congregations, and a recognition that couples deserve some basic legal protections. People For the American Way Foundation produced and ran three radio ads designed to tap that instinct for fairness and encouraging African Americans to oppose anti-gay discrimination.

But our focus groups also showed us that marriage equality faces a higher hurdle. Many people in our focus groups had difficulty sorting out the difference between civil marriage and marriage as a religious institution. Even some of the most eloquent opponents of discrimination argued that marriage was somehow different because they saw it as an inherently religious act that God had designed to be between a man and a woman [bold italics added].

You know, maybe we should give Kolbert some credit?

Perhaps this is simply a misstatement. She can't possibly mean that blacks are, well, thick!

They just don't, in the immortal words of Al Campanis, have the "necessities" to discern the difference between civil and religious institutions, and that ends up making them, well, bigots. I mean, for Kolbert, it couldn't possibly be that blacks, because of their deep spiritual upbringing in the values of the traditional African American church, might believe - as a matter of faith - that homosexual marriage is an abomination in the eyes of God.

Nope, they must be just stupid: Apparently, blacks simply can't reason through abstract or spiritural notions, such that, for example, we must "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God’s."

Nope, we have to get these people the civil religion of progressive totalitarianism, which obliterates moral distinctions in the agenda of decimating the soul!

One would think that the gay rights backlash against the black voting constituency would be enough of an insult in itself. Yet, on top of that, we see one of the country's most prominent equal opportunity interest groups essentially consigning these black focus-group participants to the back of the bus of intellectual capacity.

This whole Proposition 8 aftermath has been unsettling. But the demonizing condescension to people of faith - and of all colors - really takes the cake.

The GOP and the Latino Vote

Robert Stacy McCain minces no words with regard to the "archictect" of the GOP's presidential victories in 2000 and 2004: "To Hell With Karl Rove."

Why send Rove to the fiery depths? The "architect" says the GOP needs to get right with Latino voters. Here's Robert's reply to Rove's suggestion that we need comprehensive immigration reform:

Transparent pandering on the wrong side of an issue is not a politically viable strategy for Republicans, since liberal Democrats can always outpander the GOP. If a majority Hispanic voters are not supporting the Republican Party, the reasons have more to do with socioeconomic factors than with a monomaniacal support for amnesty among Hispanics. If the only way to get more Hispanic votes is to endorse subversive policies, then the GOP ought to be happy with the support of whatever minority of Hispanic voters oppose subversion.

Rove doesn't specifically mention amnesty in the passages Robert cites, although just to mention the word "comprehensive" must throw base-conservatives into fits.

Beyond that, Robert's addtional comments border on stereotypical ignorance of Latinos.

As I point out in my essay today at Pajamas Media, at least 20 percent of Latino voters are traditional conservatives with deep religious affiliations. The GOP blows off this constituency at its peril, and that's not even in the context of immigration issues.

But note the interesting point raised by Duncan Currie in his piece, "Hispanic Panic":

Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American Republican from the Miami area, puts it bluntly: "We have a very, very serious problem." He is referring to the GOP's lack of support among Hispanics, which could derail the party's future presidential hopes.

In a September 2007 Washington Post column, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson noted that "a substantial shift of Hispanic voters toward the Democrats" in five states - Florida, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico - "could make the national political map unwinnable for Republicans." All five of those states went for George W. Bush in 2004, and all but Arizona went for Barack Obama in 2008. Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi of Bendixen & Associates, which specializes in Hispanic public opinion, says that "the Hispanic vote played a crucial role, if not the determinant role" in helping Obama carry Florida, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.

The numbers in Florida were especially striking. According to the exit polls, Bush won Florida Hispanics by 12 percentage points (56-44) in 2004, while John McCain lost Florida Hispanics by 15 percentage points (57-42) in 2008. In other words, between 2004 and 2008, the Hispanic presidential vote in Florida swung by 27 percentage points.

What explains that? Among other things, a decline in the relative strength of the Cuban vote, which remains heavily Republican. An increasingly large share of Florida's Hispanic population is made up of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Colombians, -Venezuelans, Argentines, and other non-Cubans. Indeed, according to Bendixen & Associates, non-Cubans now account for a majority of Latino voters in the Sunshine State. (Just 20 years ago, says Amandi, Cubans represented around 90 percent of Florida's Hispanic voters.) It appears that Obama also did noticeably better among Florida Cubans than John Kerry did four years ago, thanks to the younger generation of Cuban Americans, though McCain still received a huge majority of the Cuban vote.

What about Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico? In each of these states, Latinos made up a significantly bigger portion of the electorate in 2008 than they did in 2004. The Pew Hispanic Center reports that the increase was 5 percentage points in Colorado, 5 percentage points in Nevada, and 9 percentage points in New Mexico. In 2008, Latinos accounted for 13 percent of the electorate in Colorado, 15 percent in Nevada, and 41 percent in New Mexico.

According to the exit polls, Obama ran 16 percentage points ahead of Kerry among Nevada Hispanics and 13 percentage points ahead of Kerry among New Mexico Hispanics. In Colorado, Obama actually ran 7 percentage points behind Kerry among Hispanics, but he still won 61 percent of the Latino vote and ran 8 percentage points ahead of Kerry among white voters.

Even in McCain's home state of Arizona, Obama won Hispanics by 15 percentage points (56-41). In Texas, Obama won Hispanics by 28 percentage points (63-35). James Gimpel, an immigration expert at the University of Maryland, predicts that Arizona and even Texas will soon become "blue" states thanks to their large and rapidly growing Hispanic populations. (In 2008, Hispanics were 16 percent of the electorate in Arizona and 20 percent of the electorate in Texas.)

There's more at the link.

Nationally, 67 percent of Latino voters turned out for the Democratic ticket on November 4th.

Frankly, no one was talking about immigration in 2008. It was all economy, all the time. Once Wall Street crashed, the GOP's strengths on character and national security went down the drainpipes. Thus, a good number of Latinos shifted to the Democrats this year on the basis of cyclical, even ephemeral, issues (not the least of which was the ethereal campaign of "The One"), and it's simply not good politics to write off the fastest growing demographic in American politics.

I'll certainly have more on this topic going forward.

In the meantime, the Politco's got a new piece up on the Latino vote, "GOP Back to Square One With Hispanics."

Cases in Lieberman Derangement

The Democratic leadership is on the verge of stripping Senator Joseph Lieberman of his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. There's a big uproar on this around the leftosphere today, focusing on Senator Byron Dorgan's interview this morning on Fox News Sunday, where the North Dakota Democrat denounced his Senate colleague.

Next to President Bush and John McCain, Lieberman's probably the most reviled member of the hated BushCo pro-war cabal in Washington.

Check the links for yourself, here.

I just thought this would be a good time to share this reaction to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's cartoon of Lieberman above:

Mike Luckovich’s cartoon showing the Democratic donkey with a knife driven into its back by Sen. Joe Lieberman may be the most disgusting and perverse I have seen from his pen... I could remind Luckovich it was Lieberman’s own party (the Democrats) who abandoned him for supporting the war in Iraq and ran a picked rival against him in the primary.

Lieberman “betrayed” them by winning the general election and returning to his Senate seat. Once there, he has caucused and voted with the Democrats and has not transferred his allegiance to the Republican Party (where he would be more than welcome). Apparently, for Luckovich, dissent from the Democratic Party line and holding to one’s principles constitute “a knife in the back.”

RON BUTLER

Powder Springs

Lieberman's situation is one more example of the left's jihad against any and all remants of conservative power in America?

Recall Barack Obama's call for transcending partisanship? Here's a good opportunity for Democrats to make good on the theme, although I'm not holding my breath.

Hope, Change, and the Legitimation of Terrorism

Via Allahpundit, here's Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn discussing the global implications of the election of Barack Obama to the presidency:

While the video's from a Democracy Now! telecast, Ayers appeared on Good Morning America earlier this week to promote the updated version of his 2001 memoir, "Fugitive Days."

Ron Radosh suggests that Ayers scored a major coup by simply securing an interview on a nationally-broadcast news program:

Speaking in a soft and calm voice, viewers could not help but wonder how this seemingly rational, calm and soft-spoken man could have been accused of terrorism. Indeed, Ayers painted himself as a valiant and militant anti-war activist who joined thousands of other Americans in protesting an unjust war. When asked about his own group’s terrorism, he tried to turn the tables by reiterating that the United States had been engaged in a war of terror against the citizens of Vietnam, killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process of waging the fight. Thus, without answering the question of whether he had indeed engaged in terrorism, Ayers laid the moral culpability for terror on the United States, which he obviously believes has still not answered for its own war crimes.

But be sure to watch the video - it's creepy to see these two unrepentent terrorists (but now capitalist hustlers) riff on how Obama's victory signaled an end to the "politics of fear."

Please tell that to the everday American families who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001.

Gay Marriage Protesters Strain Concept of Equality

Same-sex marriage protests were held nationwide yesterday.

This picture showing demonstrators in Los Angeles illustrates the intellectual bankruptcy of the movement. There simply isn't much analytical substance to the claim that gays are forced to sit at the "back of the bus," which is the attempt by the gay rights movement to capture the moral legitimacy of America's historic black freedom struggle from themselves.

It's a pitiful effort, however, since gays enjoy full civil rights under the law today, and even black Americans see the homosexual push to coopt the African American legacy as an affront (as we saw with the 70 percent of black Californians voting Yes on 8).

Jeff Jacoby has more:

The civil rights once denied to black Americans included the right to register as a voter, the right to cast a ballot, the right to use numerous public facilities, the right to get a fair hearing in court, the right to send their children to an integrated public school, and the right to equal opportunity in housing and employment. Have gay people been denied any of these rights? Have they been forced to sit in the back of buses? Confined to segregated neighborhoods? Barred from serving on juries? Subjected to systematic economic exploitation?

Plainly, declining to change the timeless definition of marriage deprives no one of "the civil rights once denied" to blacks, and it is an absurdity to claim otherwise. It is also a poisonous slur: For if opposing same-sex marriage is like opposing civil rights, then voters who backed Proposition 8 are no better than racists, the moral equivalent of those who turned the fire hoses on blacks in Birmingham in 1963 ....

If black voters overwhelmingly reject the claim that marriage amendments like Proposition 8 are nothing more than bigotry-fueled assaults on civil rights, perhaps it is because they know only too well what real bigotry looks like. Perhaps it is because they resent the assertion that adhering to the ageless meaning of marriage is tantamount to supporting the pervasive humiliation and cruelty of Jim Crow. Perhaps it is because they are not impressed by strident condemnations of "intolerance" and "hate" by people who traffic in rank anti-Mormon hatemongering.

Or perhaps it is because they understand that a fundamental gulf separates the civil rights movement from the demand for same-sex marriage. One was a fight for genuine equality, for the right of black Americans to live on the same terms, and under the same restrictions, as whites. The other is a demand to change the terms on which marriage has always been available by giving it a meaning it has never before had. That isn't civil rights - and playing the race card doesn't change that fact.

What we will continue to see, frankly, is more of the in-your-face authoritarianism that's been the norm so far.

What's somewhat depressing, of course, is that we've seen few political leaders in California speak out in defense of the majority's vote on November 4.

Since when did it become shameful to live in a system that governs on the basis of majority rule?

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times