The White Peril 白禍

There isn't a chance in the world that anyone reading this site doesn't also check Samizdata frequently, but for those who haven't seen it, there's a great post up about what has become one of my least favorite subjects. While I'm watching Columbo and trying to decide whether lunch will be broiled chicken with way too much pan gravy or chicken paprikash (sp.? I've only heard my Polish-American great aunts say it) with way too much sour cream, I'll add just a few comments to what David Carr wrote.

He's talking about British, not American, law; but I think that what he says about the relationships among custom, law, and behavior applies States-side, also. In my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes the gay marriage proponents have made is insisting on limiting to homosexual couples the extensions of benefits. Domestic partner benefits, hospital visitation rights, and the use of enduring power of attorney are certainly issues that affect our relationships; however, we aren't the only unmarried people who may need to think about them. If two relatives or lifelong friends want to take responsibility for each other's welfare and are willing to do so officially and exclusively...well, why shouldn't they be able to, using much the same argument we use in favor of benefits for gays? Some people have crazy next-of-kin whom they can't trust when wide awake, much less while comatose. Others have simply formed bonds in their adult lives with people who would more respect their wishes than their blood relatives. As long as the content of the contract is clear, why not push to bundle these things into the kind of civil union in which who sleeps in which bed isn't an issue?

When this point is raised by critics, those arguing for gay marriage say that if anyone and everyone can randomly assign a domestic partner at will, things will get so chaotic that no one will be able to keep track of who gets what (more chaotic than our current era of no-fault divorce and no-father childrearing?). Or they bring up love and commitment, which I hadn't been aware was impossible between distant cousins sharing a non-romantic household.

I understand the emotional issue here. When people ask why gay couples should qualify for benefits that roommates don't, many of them--not all, but many--are not-so-slyly taking the opportunity to dismiss our relationships as meaningless. That's nasty, and it hurts, but it doesn't mean they don't have a policy point.

Or a point about human nature. I believe that most of those on our team sincerely don't want to force people to approve of our relationships in the sense of going out of their way to be congratulatory--that they just don't want us to be prevented from providing for each other when we most need it. But forcing people to bracket together recognition of, say, hospital visitation rights and gay partnerships moves the issue into muddy territory in which even good-hearted people will feel as if they're being shaken down for sympathy. That's neither a logical nor emotionally astute way to get people on your side.

Ten minutes ago, I was in a great mood, I swear.

I know I need to stop sniping at Andrew Sullivan. An obscure person who keeps ragging in public on a prominent person is inviting accusations of envy. He wouldn't know me if he fell over me in the street. I'm being petty. I suck.

Having acknowledged that, I will humbly receive the permission of my dozen readers to say, I don't think I can keep reading him much longer. I really don't. One of his posts from today (your time over there...as in, it's tomorrow here, but still today for you...oh, whatever) contains this one-two punch of ninnyism that made me want to scream:

HE SAID IT! The Washington Blade has found a reference by the president to the word "gay." He said the phrase "gay marriage" in Pennsylvania, referring to someone else's question. He knows that gay people exist! Now if he could only apply to adjective to actual human beings. But it's a start. And don't give me the pablum abhout not treating people as members of a group. Today, at the Urban League, Bush asked: "Is it a good thing for the African-American community to be represented mainly by one political party? Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat Party truly served the African-American people?" That's the difference between a group of people you respect and want to win over and a group of people you marginalize for political gain.

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: "Your blog links to an inaccurate statement in a Fox report which claims that wives should be subservient to their husbands, when the word Judge Holmes used was subordinate. Subservient implies obsequiousness or servility while subordinate implies submitting to the authority of another (which can arguably be considered a sign of strength). You use the incorrect word in your blog." The strength to be subordinate! And this comes from a religious tradition that began with a man who defied almost every social convention of his time and treated women - even single women - as his equals; who never married and broke up the families and marriages of his disciples; who told his own parents as a teenager that they had no final control over him; and whose best friends were a single woman and a single man who is described in the Gospels as resting his head on Jesus' breast in an act of profound intimacy. How you get the subordination of women and the persecution of homosexuals from all that is beyond me.

This is what one of our most literate, urbane, even-handed, generous-minded advocates is reduced to? Wagging his tail at the mention of the word gay, once, by the President? I mean, all right, to an extent I get it. Bush probably is dodging the issue as much as he can, and of course he's probably doing so for the sake of political expediency. We are not--no surprise here--the constituency he needs to court most urgently.

If the President really thinks homosexuals should be as free to live our private lives and make private contracts as everyone else, but that marriage shouldn't be redefined just to make us happy, and that as a Christian he can't approve of that aspect of our lives, I wish he'd just flat-out say it. I know all the reasons it's not a good idea for him as a politician up for election, but I, for one, would be grateful. Yeah, he'd give some people on both sides of the argument fits of apoplexy, but they'd be well-earned fits of apoplexy.

In fact, Andrew Sullivan, 2004 version, would be having the biggest fit of all, because apparently the US government is the arbiter of our dignity as citizens (yes, I'm going off on this again--feel free to go read Instapundit if you're sick of hearing about it), and anything but approval, using the g word, with concrete examples, affronts it. You have to wonder what exactly would satisfy people who think like this. We're 3% of the population, so does that mean we need to be mentioned in 3% of Bush's speeches? Or should we constitute 3% of the individuals he refers to by name? Does "relationships between people of the same gender" count for, say, 0.375 times as many points as the actual use of "gay"? And how is anyone supposed to live a full, rich, satisfying life but still have time to obsess over these things?

I doubt President Bush cares any more than Andrew Sullivan what Sean Kinsell, actual gay human being and voter, thinks. But for the record, there are two important entities I think he should consider while on the job:

(1) The United States, in which I include its citizens, infrastructure, territory, and interests
(2) Well-connected industries that are getting clobbered by the competition, and the identity-politicking PAC's that imitate them in the seeking of entitlements

President Bush, it's your sworn duty to do everything you can to protect one of the above. But only one. Do it, already.

NO, THE OTHER ONE!

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As for the second entry, Andrew Sullivan is entitled to reconcile his Christian faith with his sexuality however he likes...in his own life. If in public he's going to make cockamamie-ass equivalences between "a single man who is described in the Gospels as resting his head on Jesus' breast in an act of profound intimacy" and homosexuality, he needs to be answered, lest people think all of us open homosexuals are that obtuse.

I have no idea what happens chez Sullivan, but I can assure you that in this household, sex involves more than the resting of one partner's head on the other's chest, honeychile. Conversely, I have friends from college who, when we're all gathered for someone's wedding and catching up or talking politics, think nothing of leaning on me while I play absently with their hair; but I know they'd be confused and repelled if I ever actually came on to them. For that matter, straight men in most places outside America are permitted more physical contact with each other, but that doesn't make them homosexual, or even gay-friendly.

All of this is my characteristically roundabout way of saying, any dope knows that matey intimacy (however the local culture defines it) is different from having sex. And while Andrew Sullivan's not a dope, he's an incredibly smart person with an increasingly bad case of tunnel vision. He's been so honest about his sexuality and his HIV status, given the political circles he moves in, that I still haven't reached the point at which I can just write him off. But lately, for the first time, I've felt as if I'm getting there. And there's no other commentator who's as all-around good, in the sense of being an advocate for gays without excluding other political and social issues, as he used to be. It's sad.

[Added at 16:00: Spoons wonders whether Sullivan is implying that he thinks Jesus was a homosexual. I don't think that was the point, actually. He seems to be more saying that Jesus hung out in a merry, tolerant bunch of bohemians that included independent women and companionable piles of male buddies, and that therefore we can deduce that he was, you know, mellow about alternative lifestyles and stuff. It's still malarkey.]

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On a not-entirely-unrelated note: Agenda Bender's been up for two years. Tom's one of those people who can post two lines of tossed-off pervy humor and make me giggle for the rest of the day; though he hasn't written many lately, he can also do those rants that look as if they're about to careen out of control any second but never do (a talent I manifestly lack; see this site, passim). And he's been just incredibly kind to me. I have no idea whether he checks in here, but just in case: Happy 2nd...well, I won't use the word and spoil your Google joy, but the entire staff of the former East Asia office sends regards.

Stephen Miller at the Independent Gay Forum links to this article in the Windy City Times by Bob Roehr. Miller quotes this segment:

Most Democrats harped on the fact that, gasp, the Republicans were playing politics with the issue; all the while promoting their own set of political priorities. There was not a lot of defense of the gay community�one of its most loyal constituencies in terms of votes, workers, and dollars�which may signal a rocky future for that relationship.

A rocky future? Doubt it. I never cease to be amazed at how guys who have been out urban gay men for ten or twenty years longer than I have, who know how to deal socially with the entire range from trade to f**k buddy to boyfriend material without getting the shaft worked over taken for a ride duped, can fail to understand the why-buy-the-cow-when-you-can-get-the-milk-for-free principle in the political arena. The lesbians I know are mostly the same way...in terms of politics, I mean. Everyone wants to do something politically, and that means supporting the Democratic Party come hell or high water. It's understandable why people feel that way, but it's hard to keep from bitchslapping them when the DNC takes their votes for granted. You get what you pay (and pay and pay and pay) for, after all.

Tangential note: It's possible that some of the Dems in Congress were, in saying that they believe in the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, simply telling the truth, exotic as such conduct may sound among national politicians during an election year. Their set of positions on the broad range of gay-related issues might serve as a better measure of whether they're being hypocritical or craven or whatever.

Virginia Postrel points to an expansive article by Bruce Bawer, which gives side-by-side reviews of a half-dozen books written by American and European authors about the US and its role in the world. It starts to be a bit of a slog toward the end, but it's great stuff, all of it. The first book he filets is by one Mark Hertsgaard, whose excerpts read like Amritas's Kevin Kusoyama, only more cartoonishly leftist. Here's Bawer's response to a spiel I've heard more times than Carter's has pills (the first sentence is his summary of Hertsgaard's argument, not his own opinion):

America, in short, is a mess�a cultural wasteland, an economic nightmare, a political abomination, an international misfit, outlaw, parasite, and pariah. If Americans don�t know this already, it is, in Hertsgaard�s view, precisely because they are Americans: �Foreigners,� he proposes, �can see things about America that natives cannot. . . . Americans can learn from their perceptions, if we choose to.� What he fails to acknowledge, however, is that most foreigners never set foot in the United States, and that the things they think they know about it are consequently based not on first-hand experience but on school textbooks, books by people like Michael Moore, movies about spies and gangsters, �Ricki Lake,� �C.S.I.,� and, above all, the daily news reports in their own national media. What, one must therefore ask, are their media telling them? What aren�t they telling them? And what are the agendas of those doing the telling? Such questions, crucial to a study of the kind Hertsgaard pretends to be making, are never asked here. Citing a South African restaurateur�s assertion that non-Americans �have an advantage over [Americans], because we know everything about you and you know nothing about us,� Hertsgaard tells us that this is a good point, but it�s not: non-Americans are always saying this to Americans, but when you poke around a bit, you almost invariably discover that what they �know� about America is very wide of the mark.

Honey, the stories I could tell! Lectures about how oppressive America is are especially comical coming from gay men visiting Tokyo from countries where homosexuality is illegal. (And I can't count how many times such guys have broken off in the middle of fulminating about America's spiritual emptiness to shriek, "I love this song! Don't you love this song?" when some Britney video came on over the bar.)

Later, Bawer cites a book by Jedediah Purdy, who has a more sensible approach to assessing how foreigners view us and what it means:

Plainly, Purdy has no delusion that the foundations of anti-Americanism are noble; and he finds it ridiculous to speak of an �imperial America.� Yet he can still see why even highly Americanized foreigners refer to the U.S. as an empire. Why? Because as they struggle to learn and speak English and to find a comfortable meeting place between America�s culture and their own, these foreigners are acutely aware that Americans don�t have to make a comparable effort. English is our language; American culture, our culture. It is our exemption from this otherwise global burden of adaptation, Purdy suggests, that makes us seem �imperial.�

I would only add that it really is true that Americans abroad--which is the only place foreigners who don't come to America will meet us--are frequently not on their best behavior. That's not unique to us, of course. Everyone feels unrestricted by the usual rules when away from home. But in combination with our political and cultural dominance, bad behavior from Americans feels like an extra affront to a lot of foreigners.

Added after the strongest earthquake we've had in weeks: Amritas noticed the Kevin Kusoyama remark above, so I'd just like to point out that I think the Professor's job is secure. Being a good writer and empathetic person, Amritas has managed, in creating him, to give Kusoyama a multi-dimensional personality. He annoys you the way a real person would.

Hertsgaard, however, writes like a computer-generated composite of the last ten years of Mother Jones and The Nation (and yes, I still read them frequently enough to feel qualified to make such a slam). Here's the excerpt that dumbfounded me most:

Our foreign policy is often arrogant and cruel and threatens to �blow back� against us in terrible ways. Our consumerist definition of prosperity is killing us, and perhaps the planet. Our democracy is an embarrassment to the word, a den of entrenched bureaucrats and legal bribery. Our media are a disgrace to the hallowed concept of freedom of the press. Our precious civil liberties are under siege, our economy is dividing us into rich and poor, our signature cultural activities are shopping and watching television. To top it off, our business and political elites are insisting that our model should also be the world�s model, through the glories of corporate-led globalization.

Actually, I guess he could be Pat Buchanan as easily as he could be the NPR commentator he actually is; those extremes met a long time ago. But anyway, what frustrates me about his type is that most of their policy criticisms have an important kernel of truth to them. I, too, am worried about our foreign policy, the creeping power of amoral and unaccountable bureaucrats, cronyism, and journalistic travesties--though probably not in the ways Hertsgaard has in mind.

The thing that's obscene is that he's saying these things in a book whose overall objective is to put America in the context of the rest of the world. I found myself staring at that "a den of entrenched bureaucrats and legal bribery" and wondering, Runaway bureaucracy and kickbacks? Dude, ever heard of France? Germany? Singapore? Japan? As Bawer says (he focuses more on the journalism and human rights angles than on political structures), Hertsgaard and so many of his fellow travelers have no sense of proportion. They can't articulate how the ability of the people to check excesses of government and corporate power varies from system to system, so even their accurate criticisms aren't very useful.

Added the next morning at 11-ish: Agenda Bender does a brief but deadly number on meaningless moves toward bureaucratic transparency and efficiency. He refers specifically to the Palestinians and the UN, but he could be talking about lots of countries in Europe and Asia, too.

LaShawn Barber graciously gave me permission to reproduce this e-mail, in response to a question of mine about her recent posts on the FMA:

I don't think homosexual "civil rights" and black civil rights are similar at all, in practical terms or otherwise. People who practice homosexuality do so because they choose to. They have the freedom to do so or not. Even if people believe they are "born" a certain way, the same still holds: you can choose not to sleep with men. Americans who choose to do so are still Americans protected by our Constitution. No one can infringe on your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness without the basic protections afforded you.

White homosexuals walked through the front doors of hotels and stores, sat wherever they wanted on buses and trains, and were not relegated to second class citizenship. To equate sexual behavior and lifestyle choices with the subjugation, degradation, human bondage of Americans of African decent is a dishonest attempt to manufacture emotion over a perceived "right." I can't choose not to be black; however, that lack of choice isn't what determines my basic rights; the Constitution does. And as I said (I repeat myself often), you already have rights guaranteed you under the Constitution. There is no "right" to be married.

In the message that brought the above tirade on, I probably wasn't clear enough on why I thought the "movements" are similar in "practical terms," but what I meant was restricted to how our publicly recognized representatives relate to their constituencies. Which is to say, when Barney Frank shows up on television, a lot of us glance up from making dinner and mutter, "For Pete's sake, girl, shut up!" And my understanding is that a lot of black people react similarly when they hear Maxine Waters's talking head. For that matter--to make sure we hit as many lefty sacred cows as possible--my mother practically put her fist through the picture tube whenever Gloria Steinem showed up on the nightly news when I was little. The people who say they represent the interests of "minorities" of whatever stripe do not always know, or even care, what people at the grass-roots level think and experience. That was all I was saying.

The issues surrounding gay rights and black rights are not the same, as Ms. Barber articulates. There are particular points at which they intersect, sure, but they cannot be equated overall. I hesitate to link Classical Values again, lest its proprieter think I'm stalking him, or something, but he mirrors my thoughts exactly with this:

Putting aside the states' rights and tariff issues for the sake of this discussion, the modern idea that human beings should not be property was on a collision course with the institution of slavery. Something had to give, but the moral high ground claimed by each side simply would not allow it. To me, it's simple logic that the abolition of slavery destroyed what had previously been private property. Rather than wage war over the idea, wouldn't it have been more sensible to pay slaveholders to free their slaves, declare slavery over and spare the nation the war?

Slavery was abolished by constitutional amendment, but not until after the war.

Inflammatory as it is, can the idea of same sex marriage be as noxious as slavery? Some people think so, but I doubt there are enough of them to start another Civil War. But the analogy is problematic, because marriage cannot normally be said to be as coercive as slavery. (Although I have expressed reservations that it might become involuntary.) Remember that in the case of slavery, it was abolition of slavery that was seen as invasive; slavery was the status quo. Here, the status quo is opposite sex marriage only, so the analogous question becomes whether or not allowing same sex marriage amounts to abolition of marriage. I don't see how it does, because no one would lose the right to marry.

Clearly, a significant number of people feel that their marriages will be weakened if same sex marriage is allowed. I have not yet seen a logically convincing argument as to how this might happen, and, despite my reservations about same sex marriage, I don't understand the "dilution" argument, much less the "destruction" one. It strikes me as based largely on emotion.

Yet the other side's position is also quite emotional. A piece of paper and a definitional change (neither of which are needed for two people to live together, share or bequeath property, care for or visit each other in hospitals, or even in many cases to obtain insurance benefits) does not strike me as going to the heart of citizenship in the same way as voting, free speech, the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, to bear arms, to sit on juries, etc. Maybe I just don't care about marriage as much as the people who yell and scream, but the institution strikes me as primarily a legal way to protect children in cases where parents break up. Perhaps it would be more fair to allow marriage only as a child protection institution; childless couples would be legally regarded only as domestic partners and subject to whatever partnership laws existed in a state.

In any case, I am in favor of states' rights, and for what it's worth, I remain implacably opposed to the apparently doomed Federal Marriage Amendment.

I'm not fond of the "states' rights" phrasing, but otherwise, I concur. My parents have been together since before I was born, and they didn't move out of the house my brother and I grew up in until I was out of college and he was 18--and even then, they moved to a place three miles down the road so they'd have more room to entertain. My childhood was the very picture of stability, and I don't think I'm incapable of seeing the value of marriage.

But I just don't get worked up over the fact that it doesn't include a relationship such as mine. I say this as someone who lives abroad on a work visa that has to be renewed every few years, conducts his relationship in a foreign language, and can't bring his partner back to the States as a spouse. I am not unaware of the dangers inherent in my own circumstances, and I'd love if they could be legislated away. Sometimes I'm scared when I think about them. But at the same time, I know I'm one of the freest people in history: I chose to live here. And I decided three years ago, without coercion, that taking care of Atsushi was my job from then on. The rest flows from there.

The most articulate and reasonable gay rights advocates have done a great job of teasing out the meanings and mechanics of marriage in contemporary America. Their conclusions about the weight it bears in signaling the assumption of adult responsibility are correct. But one cannot, from there, summarily argue that marriage rights must be bestowed on homosexuals; the possibility that the way marriage is currently delineated is, itself, flawed must be addressed first. There's a difference between saying that the government should treat us with dignity, as responsible citizens in full possession of our faculties, and saying that the government can confer dignity on us. Until we get that straight, this whole conversation will be useless.

The expected is happening to the FMA. Obviously, I'm glad as someone who doesn't think the Constitution should be amended lightly, and relieved as a gay man.

However, some days I hope I'll never hear the words gay and marriage in the same sentence again. I still care about our having the legal means to provide for those we've chosen to spend our lives with, and I still care about equal treatment. But I don't see what is productive about this particular argument at this point. The marriage-or-bust mentality can't distinguish between a dignified life and a life supplemented by tax breaks and other entitlements. It treats compromises (such as civil unions and domestic partner benefits) as unacceptable, even in the short term. The debate has become more picky and detailed and, at the same time, more coarse. At least this round is more or less over, for now. There's still time for people to learn to listen to each other. Yeah, I know, not likely. But I live in hope.

* To be subsequently retitled "Kylie Minogues."

Asymmetrical Information, in the process of debating gay marriage, points to a post of Myria's that's few months old and, like most of what she writes, good. Her main point (later in the post) is about the Presidential election and people who would vote for John Wayne Gacy if it meant defeating Bush, but she leads up to it by talking about other issues:

To my way of thinking only an idiot, or an immature child, defines their sexuality by what sex they don�t like. One should define one�s sexuality by who one is attracted to, not who one is not attracted to.

Well, I think that's true if you have to choose what's most important to focus on in living your life. But it's also true that marking off what we're not is a necessary part of figuring out what we are. It's one of the reasons that the obsession with eradicating "homophobia" is so pointless. Men are fascinated and daunted by women, and if straight boys are going to mature into decent straight men, there's a way in which they have to flow away from other boys and towards girls. There's a complex filigree of hormones and social structures involved, but the trajectory is fairly obvious. It shouldn't be that hard to distinguish between people with a genuinely unhealthy fixation on homosexuality and people who are just put off by it because they're heterosexual.

Of course, if you're defining yourself exclusively by opposition, then there's no difference--which as Myria says is one of the reasons that some disaffected teenagers declare they're gay when they just mean they're confused and want to distance themselves from the people they think are trying to run their lives. It's also why, when you meet people who really are gay but have never developed beyond the not-hetero part, they always give you the eerie feeling that you're talking to a fourteen-year-old.