For Conservatives, There Will Never be a Right Way to Change the Status Quo
In the unfortunately timed post Erik mentioned last week calling out Obama for being incoherent on same-sex marriage, Ross Douthat made a familiar claim:
The first reason is that while the increase in public support for same-sex marriage over the last two decades has been astonishingly swift, it has not been irreversible. Instead, sudden bursts of legal momentum – mostly driven by judicial rulings, from Massachusetts to Iowa – have often prompted temporary backlashes. In Gallup’s polling, support for same-sex marriage rose from 35 percent to 42 percent between 1999 and 2004, but then dropped back to 37 percent; it rose to 46 percent just before Obama’s 2008 victory, but then dropped back to 40 percent a year later. Today’s 50 percent support likewise represents a slight drop-off from the high of 53 percent in the survey Gallup conducted last year.
This pattern suggests that Americans grow more resistant to same-sex marriage the more they feel that it’s being imposed upon them by an unelected judicial elite, and grow more supportive the more it seems to be gaining ground organically.
First of all, the very modest and temporary “backlash” to some judicial rulings doesn’t prove what Douthat does, because there’s no meaningful comparison with cases where legislatures have granted marriage equality, a less typical and more recent phenomenon. The fact that the Maine initiative he later discusses was passed in response to action by elected legislators makes it quite clear that opposition to same-sex marriage is driven by substantive, not procedural, concerns. Opponents of same-sex marriage have never acquiesced to legislative-driven changes.
But the even bigger problem is that the big picture of the polls he cites completely repudiates the judicial backlash thesis. After nearly a decade of largely litigation-driven gains by proponents of same-sex marriage same-sex marriage has become much more popular. If that’s the bad effects of favorable judicial rulings, I hope we see more of them. And the fact that president has endorsed marriage equality at the outset of what figures to be a very tough re-election fights just draws a line under that. This concern trolling from the side that knows very well that it’s losing the medium-term war is about as unconvincing as it gets.
But, then, I don’t really need to refute Douthat’s thesis when he’s generous enough to do it for me:
A president is not an unelected judge, but a public flip-flop on the issue by the nation’s chief executive might feel like yet another elite attempt to pre-empt a debate that appears to be moving toward a resolution, but hasn’t quite been settled yet.
So, in other words, when elected officials back same-sex marriage they’re also “elites” trying to force same-sex marriage on an unwilling public (and changing your mind, unlike continuing to favor marriage discrimination, is presumptively illegitimate “flip-flopping” — a neat trick.) For Douthat, like most opponents of same-sex marriage, citing procedural objections is just an opportunistic shell game. No matter how same-sex marriage is liberalized, to opponents it will never be done in the right way. And arguments that opposition to marriage equality is driven by principled hostility to “judicial activism” are increasingly farcical in light of the Republican campaign to strike down the centerpiece domestic initiative of the Obama administration based on weak, ad hoc constitutional arguments almost nobody was advancing in 2008.
Being on the right side of the the ‘arc of the moral universe as it bends toward justice’ shouldn’t necessarily be considered an act of political courage.
But Ross, that “public flip-flop on the issue by the nation’s chief executive might feel like yet another elite attempt to pre-empt a debate that appears to be moving toward a resolution…,” its one act more act of courage than Mitt will ever do in his whole “elitist-of-the-elite” life.
So, stfu Ross.
Instead, tell us some more stories about women who didn’t want to f*ck you.
There must be thousands of those.
Remember, you already told us the story about the ONE who did…
In her defense, she was drunk when she made the offer….
And his origin story wasn’t done yet then. So it’s very much the difference between someone making a pass at the young Walter Kovacs as he toiled at the university laundry (where by “toil” I mean “smugly yet diffidently envisioned being the next William F. Buckley”) and someone making a pass now at Rorshach as he envisions breaking limbs and shattering all will to resistance in the name of the Prince of Peace.
Its beyond irritating to see conservatives treat gay marriage as a public discussion that needs to be resolved with policy implemented before the issue is “solved”.
How about an ecumenical council, or a papal bull? Or would that turn out to be just another example of an elite attempt to preempt a debate and ram something (who knows what) down the throats of poor innocent Catholics like Ross?
When it’s not Ross’s right that’s being denied, it’s a “debate.”
I recall a lively debate in the 1960s about letting black people vote. A shame that LBJ publicly flip-flopped.
I was thinking along those lines too.
“Tide goes in, tide goes out. Can’t explain that.”
I like the denunciations of “elites” in Douthat’s piece. Of course, a graduate of Hamden Hall and Harvard who writes for the New York Times is not himself an elite. “Elite” is a term for troublesome types who have a problem with institutionalized discrimination and fail to be understanding of the bigotry of non-elites.
The common denominator when it comes to same-sex marriage or the ACA is that these are bills formulated, passed, and signed by Democratic legislators and executives. The GOP does not accept the legal, political, and moral legitimacy of the Democratic Party (and hasn’t for two decades now), so nullifying or reversing such legislation by whatever means necessary is perfectly acceptable.
Obama did not “flip flop” except to the extent that his position changed when he no longer was some obscure local legislator.
On the big stage, in his biography, he said he was against same sex marriage, but believed in the “living word” of the Bible and was open to change. As he said in his interview, he was for civil unions in part because “marriage” had a special meaning for society that as a whole did not apply it to same sex couples. But, he felt they still deserved the equal benefits of civil unions. Society’s already somewhat artificial line drawing here is changing.
It is “evolving” and Obama has accepted that it is time to be for SSM. Douthat’s failure to understand this is not unique but along with everything else underlines why someone else should be discussing religious matters at the NYT.
Umm, Scott: don’t you mean “enacted” here? In which case, you’re quite right: When SSM has been brought in via court rulings, opponents have fulminated about “judicial activism”; when enacted by legislatures, the bigot lobby has been the first to rush to the courts to overturn it: when all else fails, they suddenly discover the virtues of “citizen initiatives” – and when the first one of those fails, they will no doubt be hysterically trotting out the good old “religious freedom” whine to justify marriage discrimination.
It’s almost always framed as a “moral” issue: opposition can’t be rationalized, it must be taken as a given.
In California, the judicial ruling occurred because the governor (Ahnold) held up the legislative bills because he wanted the judicial ruling as political cover. Then the Mormons produced and funded Prop. 8 in violation of the tax laws prohibiting it from participating in politics.
This sort of thing has always pissed me off, because I do consider myself someone who takes procedural legitimacy very seriously. The Bush years really instilled in me a belief that things out to be done in the prescribed way at the prescribed times, because everywhere I turned I saw conservatives taking sledgehammers to every procedure, institution, and mechanism that wasn’t serving whatever their particular needs were at the moment.
And then idiots like Douthat come along and completely discredit the entire idea of procedural legitimacy by deploying it in the most hacktackular way possible.
Having said that, though, it isn’t all that surprising. Modern political debate tends to be centered on illegitimizing your opposition, rather than simply saying that they’re wrong. Proving that someone is wrong can be really goddamn hard and tends to be somewhat subjective in a lot of cases; it seems to be seen as a weak option, especially since it might also mean your opponent isn’t the embodiment of evil, just mistaken.
Illegitimizing your opposition, though? Strong option. You avoid having to have the real debate AND you thrust them beyond the bounds of acceptable political debate. It’s a win-win.
I cannot believe that the New York Times pays him money and publishes his writing. I also can’t believe that, despite that fact, the New York Times remains infinitely superior to the Washington Post. And both remain superior to the vast majority of television news and radio. It’s a bleak, bleak media landscape.
The most interesting thing about the gallop poll while 50% of people support gay marriage, 37% of people don’t think homosexuality should be legal at all. So 3 out of 4 gay marriage opponents aren’t against gay marriage per se, they are against gay people existing.
The sensible centrists for civil unions but not marriages or same-sex marriages through the legislature but not the courts could have their annual conference in a phone booth.
[...] by the federal government on the states. This also seems reasonable; I respectfully disagree with Scott Lemieux’s take on this matter. Let’s say it’s safe to assume that in whatever fashion gay [...]
Don’t worry Don. It may take a while, but history has a way of making reactionary bigoted idiots look like reactionary bigoted idiots.
You’ll eventually get your due.
Unfortunately it won’t be the appropriate comeuppance where you or your spouse suffer mightily because of withheld civil rights, but at least someday it will be commonly held that you are a stupid, stupid man.
Welp, just in time to reply to nothingness.
Thanks! I love having a little swipe file I can reference any time I’m stuck for ideas ….Although… I have to admit most of the time my brain is on overdrive. Lol
Keep telling yourself that, Jenny, and you might even start to believe it. Gay marriage is coming to a community near you sooner than you think. As usual, you are on the losing side of history.
I love that you’re ragging on a hater, but I don’t get the “Jenny” joke. Background please?
I love that you’re ragging on a hater, but I don’t get the “Jenny” joke. Background please?
Our troll also posts under the name “Jennifer Steele.” And “Guy Noir” and “Honorable Bob”, and several others.
Just one of the names the troll has cycled through I think.