Box Turtle Bulletin

AZ GOP Party Officials Resign Over Tea Party Threats

Former GOP legislative district chair Anthony Miller

More madness in the culture war. The Arizona Republic reports that Arizona Legislative District 20 Chairman Anthony Miller and several others in the Phoenix suburb of Ahwatukee have resigned their party posts hours after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s shooting over fears for their lives and their families’ safety:

Miller, a 43-year-old Ahwatukee Foothills resident and former campaign worker for U.S. Sen. John McCain, was re-elected to a second one-year term last month. He said constant verbal attacks after that election and Internet blog posts by some local members with Tea Party ties made him worry about his family’s safety.

In an e-mail sent a few hours after Saturday’s massacre in Tucson that killed six and injured 13, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Miller told state Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen he was quitting: “Today my wife of 20 yrs ask (sic) me do I think that my PCs (Precinct Committee members) will shoot at our home? So with this being said I am stepping down from LD20GOP Chairman…I will make a full statement on Monday.”

…The newly-elected Dist. 20 Republican secretary, Sophia Johnson of Ahwatukee, first vice chairman Roger Dickinson of Tempe and Jeff Kolb, the former district spokesman from Ahwatukee, also quit. “This singular focus on ‘getting’ Anthony (Miller) was one of the main reasons I chose to resign,” Kolb said in an e-mail to another party activist. Kolb confirmed the contents of the e-mail to the Republic.

…a series of accusatory e-mails was exchanged among party members. Some blasted Miller’s support of McCain, called him a “McCainiac with a penchant for violating the rules” and a “McCain hack.” … 

Miller said he hadn’t intended to resign, but changed his mind after Saturday’s shooting. “I love the Republican Party,” he said, “but I don’t want to take a bullet for anyone.

UK LGBT Advocate: “Christian Homophobes Should Not Be Criminalized”

The American First Amendment has been interpreted very broadly throughout much of the history of the United States. Courts have on occasion allowed a few limits to where free speech can be exercised (free speech zones during political conventions, exclusion zones around abortion clinics, etc.) but efforts to place limits on speech itself, regardless of how many people it offends, have been consistently struck down.

Such is not the case in Great Britain and many other western countries. Last April, British pastor was arrested and detained for standing on a street corner and preaching that homosexuality is a sin. He was charged with violating the Public Order Act by making “threatening, abusive or insulting” remarks to passersby. The case was dropped before it could go to trial, and the preacher received £7,000 in damages and an apology from the Chief Constable. UK LGBT advocate Peter Tatchell writes that the arrest should not have happened in the first place:

As a campaigner for gay rights, I disagree with Mr Mcalpine’s intolerant views. But as a defender of free speech, I endorse his right to express them. Indeed, I had offered to testify in his defence, had his case gone to court.

Freedom of speech is one of the hallmarks of a civilised society. Mr Mcalpine’s views were homophobic, but the fact that he was treated as a criminal for expressing them, shocked me. The officer who arrested him, although doubtless well-intentioned, interpreted the law in a harsh, authoritarian manner. Mr Mcalpine was not aggressive, threatening or intimidating. He did not incite violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) people; unlike some extremist Christians in Uganda and Nigeria.

Tatchell notes that the Public Order Act can lead to arbitrary applications:

Contrast his case with my experience. In 1994, the Islamist fundamentalist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) held a mass rally at Wembley Arena. Its members advocated killing gay people and ‘unchaste’ women. They heaped hatred and abuse on Jews and Hindus. Together with five of my colleagues from the gay rights group OutRage!, I staged a peaceful, lawful counter-protest. It was six of us against 6,000 of them. Some members of HT threatened: “We will track you down and kill you.”

Despite these criminal incitements to murder us, they were not arrested. We were. Our free speech was denied. We were charged under the Public Order Act. In contrast to Mr Mcalpine’s case, the police did not drop the charges and apologise, let alone compensate us. It took nearly two years of lengthy, costly legal battles for me to finally win an acquittal.

AZ Lawmakers Move to Limit Westboro Baptist Protests at Funerals

Soon after Saturday’s heinous massacre of six Tucsonans and the injuring of fourteen others including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Westboro Baptist’s Fred Phelps announced via video that the shooter, Jared Loughner, was appointed by Phelps’s god to do the evil deed and that the Westboro clan would protest the funerals. Arizona state Sen. Kirsten Sinema (D-Phoenix) swung into action:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed into law emergency legislation to head off picketing by a Topeka, Kan., church near the funeral service for a 9-year-old girl who was killed during Saturday’s shooting in Tucson. Unanimous votes by the House and Senate on Tuesday sent the bill to Brewer. It took effect immediately with her signature Tuesday night. The new law prohibits protests within 300 feet of a funeral or burial service.

…Arizona State Representative Kyrsten Sinema said when she heard of the plans, she got downright angry and decided to take action.  Sinema sponsored Senate Bill 1101 and got some help from fellow legislators.  “We patterned legislation after Ohio’s law which is constitutional, it’s been upheld in court, and I got permission from the speaker and the senate president to wave the rules,” Sinema said.

…”The bill requires them to be at least 300 feet away from the funeral from an hour before the funeral starts to an hour after it ends and that way people can grieve and love in peace,” Sinema said.

The bill passed the Arizona House and Senate in record time, and was signed into law at 3:00pm by Governor Brewer. The first funerals will take place on Thursday. The Boston-based Phelps-A-Thon has pledged to make a donation to Wingspan’s Anti-Violence Project of Southern Arizona for every funeral the Phelps clan protests. Wingspan is the LGBT community center for Tucson and southern Arizona. You can also donate directly to Wingspan here.

Meanwhile President Barack Obama has announced that he will speak at a community memorial service scheduled for tomorrow evening. The memorial begins at 6:00pm MST at the McKale Center on the University of Arizona campus.

Sen. Mark Kirk: Let’s “Agree To Be More Civil”

Newly elected Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) convened a townhall meeting yesterday evening in the aftermath of Saturday’s massacre, and called for toning down the rhetoric:

Kirk said it would serve the nation well to tone down the level of rhetoric being thrown about the political arena: to choose language that is “a little more genteel,” he said.

“This is an opportunity for us, not to agree, but agree to be more civil,” he said.

Not all of his constituents are on board. Peter LaBarbera, for example, expresses his regrets.

LCR: Keep DADT Appeal Alive

Even though “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’s” repeal has been signed into law, the Log Cabin Republicans have filed a brief with the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals asking the court to continue considering whether a lower court judge was right to strike down the ban. Pointless, you say?

“Despite what the government has led the American people to believe, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has not been repealed and will likely remain the law of the land until the end of 2011,” said Dan Woods, White & Case partner who is representing Log Cabin Republicans in Log Cabin Republicans vs United States of America.  “In the meantime, openly gay individuals are not free to enlist in our armed forces, current service members must continue to live a lie, and the government continues to investigate and discharge service members.  What’s more, the government is trying to delay the briefing and argument on its appeal from the judgment and injunction obtained by Log Cabin Republicans.  The government asked us to agree to the delay and we were willing to do so on one condition: that the government halt all pending investigations and discharges during the period of delay.  The government refused, and its attorneys said that investigations and discharges will continue.”

The actual repeal won’t occur until sixty days after the President, Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certify to Congress that everything is in place: all the training, policies changes, changes to the military code of conduct, and so forth. This is expected to take several months. If there is any good news there, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who was the most hard-over opponent of DADT’s repeal, now says that he’s ready to “make it work.”

Ugandan Opposition Leader Calls for Decriminalization

This is a rare bright spot:

Uganda’s top opposition leader on Monday said the country’s police have more pressing tasks than investigating homosexuality and suggested he would decriminalise the practice if elected.

“This is something that is done in the privacy of people’s rooms, between consenting adults,” said Kizza Besigye, who is challenging President Yoweri Museveni for the third time in a vote slated for February 18.

Besigye isn’t the first opposition politician denouncing the worst excesses of homophobia in that country. More than a year ago, BTB obtained a video showing Secretary General Chris Opoka of the Uganda Peoples Congress denouncing the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill. And last January, Olara A. Otunnu, who is running under the Uganda Peoples Congress banner, also announced his opposition to the bill.

Uganda’s supposedly electoral commision is made up of President Yoweri Museveni’s hand-picked commissioners as Museveni seeks to extend his rule to thirty years. Besigye’s position is more important in its symbolism than in any actual potential for change in Uganda’s laws. Meanwhile, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is expected to be taken up by Parliament during a lame-duck sesssion following the February 18 elections.

Think of the Birds!!!

Anti-gay activists put forward a dizzying array of arguments against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” But now that the old policy is on the way out the door, Cindy Jacobs of Generals International asked, in her torturous attempt at English, the question that nobody else thought to ask: What about the birds???

But the blackbirds fell to the ground in Beebe, Arkansas, well the Governor of Arkansas’ name is Beebe. And also, there was something put out of Arkansas called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by a former Governor, this was proposed, Bill Clinton. As so, could there be a connection between this passage [Hosea 4] and now that we’ve had the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell where people now legally in the United States have broken restraints with the Scripture because the Scripture says in Romans 1 that homosexuality is not allowed.

[Via Right Wing Watch]

The State of Our Union

A billboard in Tucson advertising Rush Limbaugh's radio program, festooned with a half-dozen simulated bullet holes for the "straight shooter."

A senior Republican senator, speaking anonymously in order to freely discuss the tragedy, told POLITICO that the Giffords shooting should be taken as a “cautionary tale” by Republicans. “There is a need for some reflection here – what is too far now?” said the senator. “What was too far when Oklahoma City happened is accepted now. There’s been a desensitizing. These town halls and cable TV and talk radio, everybody’s trying to outdo each other.”

The vast majority of tea party activists, this senator said, ought not be impugned. “They’re talking about things most mainstream Americans are talking about, like spending and debt,” the Republican said, before adding that politicians of all stripes need to emphasize in the coming days that “tone matters.”

“And the Republican Party in particular needs to reinforce that,” the senator said.

In case you missed it, that’s a senior Republican senator who had to remain anonymous so he or she could “freely discuss” this.

If It Can Happen Here, It Can Happen Anywhere

As my partner and I were out running errands this afternoon, I snapped this photo along I-10 just south of the Ina Road exit. If you go about three miles to the east from I-10 on Ina, you will encounter the fateful Safeway that is, as we speak, still roped off with police tape and crawling with investigators. The billboard is for Rush Limbaugh’s radio program on local Clear Channel KNST, and it appears on a Clear Channel billboard. Limbaugh’s “Straight Shooter” billboard is festooned with six or seven bullet holes. Given the political climate of the past few years — and especially after yesterday’s events — it’s a damning indictment of what so many on the far right find acceptable in political discourse.

I mean, really. What’s a few bullet holes anyway?

But as we were driving around town, we heard on the radio that the second person of interest turned out to be Jared Loughner’s taxicab driver. The driver accompanied Loughner into the Safeway while Loughner got change to pay the driver. He had nothing to do with the shooting. And with that, the most promising immediate link that may have tied the shooting to extremist right-wing rhetoric has vanished once again.

Let me emphasize: it’s not to say that there is no link. But if there is one, no evidence has been disclosed for it yet. So if someone wants to claim that there is one, they better come up with some sort of hard facts for it. So far, none has surfaced. And believe me, if it does, I will be among the most eager to put that evidence right here.

That’s because, setting aside whatever Loughner’s motivations may be, I firmly believe that because of the political climate exemplified by that billboard, we are living in extremely dangerous times. And whatever demonization taking place on the far left pales, in terms of  both the scope and the influence,  to the far greater demonization from the far right that is amplified daily on Fox News and Clear Channel. I believe that as strongly as I do that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.

Over the past two years, we have seen border militia members kill Arizona citizens. We’ve seen Arizona citizens demand that other Arizona citizens — whose ancestors have been here far longer than the suspicious newcomers — prove their innocence and right to walk down a street. We’ve seen a governor shrieking about completely imaginary headless bodies in the desert and a state government that has decided that poor Arizonans’ lives aren’t worth life-saving transplant surgeries. People who need a heart won’t find one here. We see a political climate where our president is not only accused of being un-American, but — against all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary — a non-American. We see a cultural climate where “real Americans” can build a house of worship wherever they please, but American Muslims can’t. We’ve seen hysteria over “death panels” coming to kill grandma.

And so, acting on that outrage, a Tennessee man shot up a church because he was angry at liberals, wierdos and homos, and someone in Maryland is mailing explosive packages addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. We’ve seen people carrying automatic weapons to rallies and congressional meet-and-greets (another man was arrested at a Giffords meeting last August when his concealed pistol fell to the floor). And we saw literal gun-sight targets drawn over congressional districts, including Rep. Giffords’s.

And so we shouldn’t we be surprised if some nutcase — and not a literal schizophrenic nutcase that Loughner appears to be — decides to take a weapon and perform his “patriotic duty.”

Based on what investigators have disclosed so far, that has not literally happened — yet. Authorities are investigating several angles, but so far what some see as ties to far-right fringe groups remain highly speculative at best. As of this evening it still appears more likely that Loughner was acting at the behest of his own demons rather than of those on the demonizing edges of the far right.  This could still change — being mentally ill does not preclude one from being influenced by extreme rhetoric, and may actually enhance the possibility for some — but right now the assertion that our poisonous political culture had anything to do with yesterday’s rampage is still very much unproven, but not extinguished. We may learn more about what was going through Loughner’s shattered mind in the days and months to come. But the more I learn about Loughner’s behavior, the more I’m convinced that he is suffering from the same mental illness that took my best friend in high school and two of my cousins. The symptoms are too specific and too familiar. (Update: I should add that I have no insight into the severity of Loughner’s condition. Being mentally ill with schizophrenia does not automatically make one criminally insane.)

Which means that this is an excellent opportunity for everyone to step back and reaffirm to ourselves and to each other that we are all fellow citizens and patriots of a pretty damn amazing country. If we don’t, I’m afraid — literally afraid — that we will soon fall into an abyss that we may not be able to crawl out of.

Given what we know today, I see no reason why those of us who consider ourselves progressives can’t concede that Palin, Limbaugh, and the others got lucky (if you can call it that) and that they probably aren’t responsible this time. Maybe we can even let them off the hook — IF they can agree that we all need to come together as Americans who all love our country equally, whether we’re on the left, the right or anywhere in between. Because we all need to acknowledge that none of us has a monopoly on loving America. None of us wants to see our nation destroyed. Maybe this can be an opportunity for everyone can drop their torches and pitchforks, and instead resolve to disperse the poisonous fumes that have very nearly ruined us as a people. I see no reason why the right shouldn’t be able to agree to that and change its behavior accordingly, just as I see no reason why the left needs to insist, with hardly a smidgen of proof, that a schizophrenic young man is somehow the far right’s creation. The energy expended pursuing those accusations can be better spent addressing the daunting needs of the severely mentally ill.

My hope is that somehow we can find a way to do that. My fear, though, is that we have already crossed the Rubicon and there is no turning back. And if it does turn out that Loughner’s shattered mind was nudged by either the right or the left, then all bets are truly off.

It Happened Here

My city is reeling this morning. Six dead, fourteen injured. Dorwan and Mavanell Stoddard, a retired couple in their seventies, were standing in line at Rep. Gabrielle Gifford’s meet-and-greet at a Northwest side Safeway when the shooting started. He’s dead; she was shot in the legs and is expected to recover, physically. Two more retirees, Phyllis Schneck, 79; and Dorothy Morris, 76; are also dead. Third-grader Christina-Taylor Green had recently been elected to student council at Mesa Verde Elementary and went to learn more about government. She, too, is dead. U.S. District Judge John Roll had just said hi when the shooting started. He’s dead. So is a Giffords aide, thirty-year-old Gabe Zimmerman, who was engaged to be married.

Thirteen others, besides Giffords, are wounded. Five, including Giffords, are in critical condition and five are in serious condition. The Red Cross put out a call for blood donations. The area in front of University Medical Center was the site of a candlelight vigil. The flickering flames struggled to remain visible in the glare of television cameras. The intersection of Ina and Oracle, Northwest Tucson’s busiest intersection and site of the shooting, is now open, but the shopping center itself remains sealed off.

Everyone says this sort of thing doesn’t happen here. People say that everywhere this sort of thing happens.

There’s more focus this morning on local media on Jared Loughner’s mental state. The picture that emerges from people who knew him confirms what I noticed yesterday; the man had struggled with serious mental problems. He had been expelled from Pima Community College, and barred from coming back unless he underwent psychological evaluation and obtained certification that he was not a threat to others. Obviously, he never obtained that certification.

There are a lot of blogs trying to pin this on tea party politics. I do believe that the rhetoric that animates the tea party and now infects Fox News and much of mainstream Republicanism is extremely dangerous and is quite capable of stoking violence like this. But the more we learn about Loughner, the more it appears that this hateful rhetoric had little influence on Loughner’s motive. None of his rambling writings reference conservative or tea party politics. Instead, he accuses the government of mind control and brainwashing by controlling grammar. As I wrote yesterday, he is clearly struggling to make sense of reality, a common problem with people with schizophrenia.

There is, however, a second person of interest. Police are looking for a 40- to 50- year old man who is believed to have been at that Safeway with Loughner. So that part of the story clearly isn’t a closed book. And it still doesn’t diminish what Pima County sheriff Clarence Dupnik said at yesterday’s news conference.

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

“It’s not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. And that’s the sad thing of what’s going on in America. Pretty soon, we’re not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office.

Whatever may or may not have motivate Loughner, I think Dupnic has it right: Arizona has become a “sort of the capital” for prejudice and bigotry. I have never seen a more rapid decline in the political climate anywhere. State politics here is turning resident against resident, citizen against citizen. Hours after Giffords’s health care vote, her office was vandalized. At a similar Giffords meet-and-greet last August, police carted away someone whose pistol had fallen out of his holster before he was able to approach Giffords. Private Minutemen militias kill American citizens near the border, and suspicious white powder shows up at Rep. Raul Grijalva’s office. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.

Yesterday, as my partner and I were leaving a Home Depot about a mile south of the shooting, we overheard a man on a cell phone telling someone to stay indoors because someone is shooting. We hadn’t heard anything and just assumed he was talking about something happening somewhere else. Things like that don’t happen here. But now we know it does. And unless we all examine our consciences, worse will happen, not by someone who is mentally ill but by someone who has his wits about him and is capable of doing even more harm.

Rep. Giffords’s Shooter’s YouTube Channel

Twenty-two year old Jared Lee Loughner was identified by police as Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s shooter. He is now in custody. From the looks of his YouTube channel, I believe he exhibits  the classic signs of schizophrenia.

Mental illness and a grievance. A deadly combination.

Update: Let me explain myself. I am not a mental health professional, but my best friend in high school succumbed to schizophrenia. I also have two cousins with the disorder, although I have not been in contact with them in decades. These videos, to me, look hauntingly familiar, as soon as I saw the first one. don’t think so. Look at some of the other videos. He uses the same kind of language and “grammar.” In effect, he thinks he’s inventing his own language and currency.

I know there are a lot of people tempted to indict the Tea Party. About an hour ago, I would have been first in line with the pitchfork and torches. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.  Yes, Loughner’s talk of language, currency, unconstitutional police actions — these are all topics that are favorites of tea-partiers, but the concepts that the tea party is pushing are utterly absent in Loughner’s videos. Instead, what clear to me is that he is trying to do what a lot of people with the most serious cases of schizophrenia are trying to do. He is trying to create some sort of ordered structure out of the chaotic shards of his perceptions. And failing. I’ve seen this too many times before.

Rep Gabrielle Giffords Shot In Tucson

This is shocking news. Barely one mile from where I am right now, Rep. Gabriel Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head at point-blank range while hosting a “Congress On Your Corner” meet and greet event at a Safeway supermarket. Early reports said that she was killed, but latest reports have her undergoing surgery at University Medical Center, the only Level I trauma center in Southern Arizona.

A victim being loaded onto a helicopter on Ina Rd. Oracle and Ina Roads, two major thorouughfares in northwest Tucson, are closed to traffic.

It is not clear right now whether the gunman is still at large or not. One report has it that the gunman, apparently in his mid-20’s, shot off 20 rounds with an automated weapon. Channel 13 is reporting that at least five people were killed, and six were injured.

Last March, her Tucson office was vandalized a few hours after the House vote overhauling the nation’s health care system, the authorities said.

Update: 1:41 MST: A suspect is in custody. He has not been identified. Nine people were brought to the hospital, including a child. All of them are in either serious or critical condition and are undergoing surgery.

Update: 1:47 MST: The Pima County sheriff’s office now says that six people have died and 18 were injured.

Update: 1:50 MST: Channel 4 spoke with Tucson City Manager Richard Miranda, who says that that Rep. Giffords is expected to pull through. This is a promising, if unconfirmed report.

Update: 1:53 MST: A press conference is scheduled for 2:00 at University Medical Center.

Update: 2:06 MST: The gunman, who still has not been identified, is said to be 22 years old and with  “limited law enforcement experience.” He walked up behind Giffords and started firing. He tried to escape on foot but was tackled and held until police arrived. Giffords had reportedly received numerous threats.

This may not have been the first attempt on Giffords’s life. Last August, protester showed up at another supermarket event was apprehended by police when a pistol he holstered slipped and fell to the floor. And then, there’s this:

During the fall campaign, Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, posted a controversial map on her Facebook page depicting spots where Democrats were running for re-election; those Democrats were noted by crosshairs symbols like those seen through the scope of a gun. Ms. Giffords was among those on Ms. Palin’s map.

Update: 2:13 MST: The Sheriff’s office says that the suspect used “a pistol with an extended magazine.” Sheriff deputies are currently executing multiple search warrants at multiple locations. They have not ruled out a second suspect.

Update: 2:15 MST: From the news conference at UMC:

Trauma surgeon Peter Rhee called the situation a catastrophe. He said UMC received 10 patients and one child who is dead. Five are in critical condition and five are in surgery, he said.

The congresswoman is in critical condition. Neurosurgeons have finished operating on her after she was shot through the head one time. Rhee is optimistic about her condition because she was able to follow commands.

Rep. Giffords is in intensive care.

Update: 2:19 MST: The suspect has been identified as 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner. Five are dead, including a nine-year-old child. Thirteen have been injured. In addition to the victims taken to UMC, four were also taken to St. Mary’s Hospital, three with gunshot wounds.

Update: 2:24 MST: The death toll now stands at six. Among the dead: a nine-year-old girl, an aide to Rep. Giffords, and U.S. District Judge John Roll.

Update: 3:29 MST: From UMC:

Rhee says 10 patients were delivered to UMC – of those, 1 young girl is dead, 5 people are critical condition and 5 people are in surgery. Rhee says the deceased girl was about 9 years old.

Update: 3:27 MST. Here is the shooter’s YouTube channel.

Four other videos here. This is looking more and more like a case of mental illness:

Mentally ill, and with a grievance:

An Imaginary Contradiction

The Economist, the world’s premiere news magazine, is having a debate on same-sex marriage between Maggie Gallagher (of NOM) and Evan Wolfson (of Freedom to Marry).

One of the key issues is the question “What is Marriage?” The Economist called in a “featured guest” to the debate, Susan Meld Shell, who wrote:

Jonathan Rauch, a highly regarded and eloquent supporter of gay marriage, defines marriage as, essentially, a legally enforced, long-term relationship of mutual aid and support between two sexual partners. Marriage, he says, “is putting one person ahead of all others”. “If marriage means anything at all,” according to Mr Rauch, it is knowing “that there is someone out there for whom you are always first in line.”

We can here leave aside how odd this definition will sound to any married couple with young children, partners whose first responsibility is not obviously spousal. The point to note is Mr Rauch’s telling claim that marriage, as he understands it, is primarily directed towards relieving adult anxiety about facing catastrophe alone—an “elemental fear of abandonment” (ie, that no one will be “there for me”) that may well express deeply felt human needs and longings, but has little or nothing to do with parenthood as such, the main conjugal concern of historically liberal thinkers like Locke.

This is a bit of a straw man — there’s nothing exclusively catastrophic in Jonathan Rauch’s view of marriage.  And I agree with Rauch, perhaps not in every word he uses, but in this general conception of marriage. Yet I also agree with Ms. Shell that when you have children, your life’s chief responsibility is to ensure their safety, health, and development.

I disagree with Ms. Shell in thinking this is a contradiction.  Follow me on this.  In its idealized form:

• Marriage means that when your health fails, you have a partner who is devoted to your care.
• Marriage means that when you are in dire emotional straits, you have a partner who will support and protect you.
• Marriage means that when you celebrate an achievement, you have a partner who feels that joy as if it’s their own.

AND…

• Marriage means that in your life’s chief responsibility, you have a partner who will work with you and give their all.

No. Contradiction. At. All.

There’s more.  Will (my partner) just came into the office, and he’s much more practical, much less theoretical, than I.  He pointed out that when parents neglect each other in favor of their children, the family breaks down and children lose the security of a stable home.

He was a lifeguard as a teen, and he recalled that you can’t count on being able to save lives without someone backing you up — that’s not a theoretical stretch, but a lesson learned through practice and experience.  It made me think of the instruction we get on planes: if the oxygen mask drops, put on your own before helping your kids.

So, yes, whether you examine it logically or practically, whether kids are in the picture or not, marriage at its best means you will always have that partner who will come to your aid and for whom you are not just willing but happy to save and celebrate when the occasion arises.

Courage overseer assigned to be Catholic anti-gay point man

Last week I predicted that change will be coming to the Catholic ex-gay group Courage, a change that will likely turn this support group into an anti-gay advocacy group using their own choices as “evidence” against the civil rights and equalities of their Protestant and non-Christian neighbors. Further witness to the likelihood of such change has come this week. (Catholic News Agency)

The new president of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, announced Jan. 5 that he appointed Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of Oakland, California as chairman of the conference’s Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage.

Both Dolan and Cordileone sit on something called the Body of Members, who “provide governance and impart ecclesial authority” to Courage.

Texas lesbians still divorced

Texans Angelique Naylor and Sabina Daly met and fell in love back around 2002. In 2004 they married in Massachusetts and soon after adopted a child. But things did not work out so last year Angelique and Sabina went their separate ways.

Separation being a difficult process, mediation failed the ladies leaving them desperate for final legal determination of their assets and parental rights. But they had a problem; although they married in Massachusetts, they were not residents of the state and could not divorce there.

So they thought they’d do the rational thing: ask the state that they lived in to put legal sanction on the terms of their division and enforce them. And, perhaps to everyone’s surprise, a Texas judge agreed, and their divorce was finalized on March 31, 2010.

But Greg Abbott, the state’s Attorney General, was having none of it. The constitution bans gay marriage and thus there can be no gay divorce he decreed.

Abbott had no empathy or even the slightest concern with the plight of the women who were in legal limbo. He was interested only in making his point, in fighting ‘the homosexual agenda’ and if he destroyed lives in the process that is of absolutely no concern to him whatsoever. (What a peculiar way of thinking, to be so opposed to some ‘social harm’ that you are willing to wreak havoc on your constituents – who are harming no one – in order to hold up your notion. The social good is subservient to getting your way. Can you imagine intervening to demand that these two women not be able to resolve their property issues because you don’t like gay couples?)

But even the Attorney General isn’t entitled to butt into every case he so desires. And the appellate court ruled that Abbott didn’t have jurisdiction to appeal the case because his assistants did not file a motion to intervene until after state District Judge Scott Jenkins orally granted the divorce.

So for now, the Angelique and Sabina are still divorced.