I was up in the mountains a few weekends ago. One of those lovely weekends with good friends and their friends where you feel warm and cozy and can’t imagine being anywhere else or doing anything but talking and laughing and eating and drinking till you run out of things to say. Which is never.
“So what do you do?” asks this Australian expat sitting to my left at the dinner table. “I teach at Keio University,” I say. “Teach what?” “Well, I teach a course in ethics, and …”
“An American teaching ethics; now there’s a concept!”
Like I said, I love it when I’m in the bosom of my world of friends and their friends. I’ve lived among expats in Japan and elsewhere for over three decades now and they are a major part of my world.
I had never met this man before. I didn’t know him from a tree, but when he insulted me (or my country – I couldn’t be sure which) everybody burst out laughing. Including me. One of those loud healthy laughs that make you feel the stress is leaving your body like the air out of a balloon.
Without any introduction or apology, this Aussie comes out with an insult with stunning confidence. Well placed, it turns out, because the entire dinner party was comprised of people who share my view that having at Americans who even suggest a right to talk about morality is like shooting fish in a barrel.
This is hardly news. It’s now echoed everywhere. A recent Thomas Friedman column (IHT 6/21) summed up my Australian copain’s views – “the longing for an America that exports hope, not fear, and that is an example of the best global practices and values, runs deep in the world. In fact, it is one reason that some people abroad are so angry with Bush – because they blame him for taking that America away from them.”
One of my students gave a presentation in class the other day on affirmative action as government policy in Singapore, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. “Not in the moral sense, as they use it in America,” he said, “but in the practical sense, as they use it in Asia.” What he meant was that he was debating the pros and cons of affirmative action not as a moral obligation on the parts of white Americans to pay a debt to the children of those they had wronged in the past, but a means of striking preemptively and taking the wind out of the sails of minorities before they could get too riled up. It was a keen difference, and most of the audience missed it. But he had been in my ethics class previously, so I called him on his choice of moral vs. practical.
Doing something for its practical effect and “leaving morality to others” is an idea with broadbased support among my students and colleagues. They think of morality in terms of sex and religion, and dismiss moral thinking as inappropriate in the political arena.
But practical reasoning, as Kant argued, does not stand in contrast to morality; it can be morality itself. Going against the grain of a tradition of individual-based rights to give a leg-up to members of minority groups isn’t just moral; it’s practical. If it works, it should lead to the development of talents otherwise squandered, and that should help us all. The “moral” reasoning has a “practical” side, in other words.
Similarly, granting special favors to minority groups so that they will not riot, as in the case of Singapore, may be done ostensibly for practical reasons, but it contains an egalitarian moral impulse.
America’s war in Iraq was not merely immoral, but impractical as well. The damage done to America’s moral standing in the world may come someday to have devastating practical disadvantages.
That’s why, although while all people of good will, including most Iraqis, are happy to be rid of Saddam Hussein, most people (including all but 6% of Iraqis, according to one poll I saw recently) think it was done by means both immoral and impractical. The impractical side involves coming to terms with a new world in which America is no longer a model democracy, and with the exception of its open economy in some cases, no longer an example very many people want to follow.
As I write, Guatemalans are remembering the overthrow of their elected government by the CIA fifty years ago. Like the Nicaraguans, they have not forgotten that while America speaks loudly of spreading democracy around the globe, its goals are more often precisely the opposite. According to one UC Berkeley professor, the opposition to America’s war in Iraq is as high as 90% in parts of Latin America. (IHT – Latin American legacy, July 9, p. 6). The coup in Guatemala turned back land reform and favored United Fruit, a company tied to Alan Dulles, director of the CIA and Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, both members of the Eisenhower Administration. The nefarious shenanigans of the current administration didn’t spring out of nothing. They come, like most decay, out of the rot of immoral and impractical government left too long to its own devices, with insufficient oversight by Americans whose love of democracy is more than sloganeering.
I came across something written in 1934 by the French socialist leader Jean Jaurès the other day. Faced with fascism on all sides, Jaurès saw three hopes for peace: the “international organization of the working class,” the “cooperation of industrial and financial capitalism across national frontiers,” and “Anglo-Saxon America.” “We only see their dollar-mindedness,” he wrote. “(but)…should Europe be foolish enough to divide and tear itself apart tomorrow, this great enlightened American idealism would shame it with its proposals for arbitration.” Germans and French at each other’s throats; America proposing peace. How times have changed.
The Americans currently running the show seem not all that concerned about how others see them. Power and influence these days seem to be derived from America’s ability to flatten any part of the world at will, not from being any kind of shining example of morality, practical or otherwise.
In my ethics seminar, after racing across the surface of the ethical codes of the world’s major religions, we turn to the Enlightenment, and Kant in particular, before moving on to more current issues of professional ethics. This semester I had one of those joyous moments that comes to teachers from time to time when your students switch roles on you. One of my ethics students has gone hog wild over Kant and is now sending me e-mails filled with fascination for what he is encountering in Kant.
“No state at war with another,” Kant writes, "shall permit such acts of warfare as must make mutual confidence impossible in time of future peace, such as the employment of assassins, of poisoners…. These are dishonorable stratagems. Some sort of confidence in the enemy’s frame of mind must remain even in the midst of war, because otherwise no peace could be concluded, and the conflict would degenerate into a war of extermination. For after all, war is only the regrettable instrument of asserting one’s right by force in the primitive state of nature (where there exists no court to decide in accordance with law)…. (S)uch hellish arts, because they are in themselves degrading, when once used, do not continue long within the limits of war but are continued in time of peace and thus completely frustrate the purpose of peace.”
Kant provided much of the enlightenment thought that went into the Geneva Convention and the ideals of democracy. Once, while the French were still struggling to get through the terror of their revolution, and establish principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, America was a step ahead of them in working toward government ruled by law.
Today, with lawyers explaining to us how rules against torture don’t apply if the president doesn’t want them to, how habeas corpus applies only when the bad guys are citizens, when illegal immigrants are sent to prisons thousands of miles from their homes to prevent their families from providing them with necessities, when a law is passed declaring that previous laws separating church and state must be broken three times instead of one before punishment is inflicted, so that one of the president’s primary constituencies can break the law with impunity, when we count our own dead but not the civilian casualties of a nation we invaded contrary to international law, America’s commitment to the rule of law and pride in its own decency is no longer capturing the world’s imagination.
A Japanese philosopher spoke out the other day. His comments caught my attention because he appeared to be among the few I’ve seen lately coming to America’s defense. Referring to the assertion made earlier in the day of an Iraqi prisoner humiliated by his American captors that he would have preferred to be killed than exposed to the sexual humiliation he endured, Shunsuke Tsurumi gave the event what seemed to me an interesting twist:
[The Iraqi prisoner’s] comment made me see the United States as being a far more redeemable nation than Japan. By releasing Iraqi detainees, the Americans knew they risked putting themselves in a compromising position because the Iraqis who were freed would undoubtedly reveal information damaging to the United States. Yet, prodded by public opinion, the U.S. government has begun setting them free.
When President George W. Bush likened his war to a crusade, I had to assume the United States was turning totalitarian. But its decision to release Iraqi prisoners signifies that some degree of democracy is still alive in that nation. (IHT/Asahi: June 17,2004)
Later in this article, Tsurumi makes comparisons between America’s democratic spirit and Japan’s. You may remember the Japanese hostage situation a few months ago, when most Japanese followed the media and marched lockstep behind the government to label the three young people as fools who embarrassed the nation. Tsurumi found this attitude deeply disturbing.
Where did he look for guidance?
Even though America's moral bankruptcy is deep, I still believe the United States will come to its senses sooner than Japan.
I hope you’re right, Mr. T.
Oiso,
July 9, 2004
Friday, July 9, 2004
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Any takers?
Imagine your family sitting around the dinner table every night talking of world events. The topics run from corruption in government and the nation’s leading corporations, to SARS and AIDS, to the war in Iraq. Now suppose one of the children at this table says to you, "You old people, all you do is complain about how messed up the world is; none of you does anything about it!" And then suppose a few days later this child comes to you and announces, "I can’t stand just watching this misery. I’m going to Iraq to
try to do some good."
What is your response? "Go with my blessing!"? "Over my dead body!"? "Let George do it!"?
If you are Japanese, this is not an idle question these days.
When the first three hostages returned to Tokyo on Sunday, they faced signs saying, "You got what you deserved!" "You have disgraced the nation!" "Japan’s shame!"
The other day I took this debate into one of my classrooms and asked for written comments. Let me share a couple of them with you.
– they ignored the worries of the government and their family members. Life
does not belong (only) to the person who has it, but (to others as well).
– they should give some thought to what they have done.
– they went there (for their own reasons), not to benefit the country.
– they should have been more prepared, should have thought of the impact
– they were careless and gave the Japanese government trouble.
– Did Imai (the 18-year-old who went to protest the use of depleted uranium weapons) honestly believe he could do a scientific investigation on this issue without knowledge of science? He doesn’t even speak English!
– I think when a person takes a risk, and especially when the problem could involve the nation, they must think about the effects or impact they have.
I have selected only the criticism here and I need to point out that there was also some support for the efforts of the hostages, and distinctions drawn between the the initial three and the two journalists who were captured later. But in almost every case even those who were slow to blame suggested the five ought to be made to foot the bill for their rescue.
Norimitsu Onishi, the New York Times writer, put the story in a Japanese cultural context. "To the angry Japanese," he writes, "the three had acted selfishly." He was referring to Nahoko Takato, who started her own organization at age 34 to work with street children, Soichiro Koriyama, a 32-year-old freelance photographer, and Noriaki Imai, the 18-year-old kid upset over the use of depleted uranium munitions. But the two journalists, both in their 30s, have been caught up in similar criticism.
Onishi hints at the ancient Confucist sense of order where everyone knows his place, and the Japanese adaptation of that notion of virtue which emphasizes blind loyalty and a desire to view authority with a sense of gratitude for favors received. I’ve pushed this analysis a bit; Onishi simply refers to a "sin" of defying "okami" – "that which is higher."
One has to be careful not to fall into the trap of reducing an entire complex modern civilization to the values of only a segment of their numbers. I haven’t forgotten the diversity of responses from my students. And while it is still true that the "deru kugi" (the "nail that sticks up) gets hammered down perhaps more readily here than in a lot of places, the Japanese are not likely to go marching off to Manchuria simply because their
government tells them to, or line up to fly planes into battleships anymore. True, the Aum cult managed to get well-educated men and women to do unspeakable things because of this kind of loyalty but so did Jim Jones in Guyana. Mostly, Japanese are still reeling from this evidence of blind loyalty to a leader. Nobody believes Japanese are a nation of lemmings.
Still, this condemnation of the young idealists who ventured beyond the pale is troubling. This time it’s not a wacko cult leader demanding loyalty; it’s government.
Maybe they were careless. Do their families really deserve hate mail?
Maybe their timing was lousy. Should they really be forced to come up with $6000 for airfare home?
The Asahi Shimbun, perhaps Japan’s best government watchdog, had ten reporters in Iraq. It sent them all to Kuwait just as things got tough. That left nobody to report on the activities of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces, currently defending themselves (if you can get your mind around that one) in Iraq. No accountability whatsoever for taxpayer money. Condemnation flows because three individuals cost some money for their
rescue. Yet troops hiding behind fortress walls (so I’m told AD how would I know for sure?) get a blank check for the duration. This is somebody’s idea of a democracy?
As I see it, the chill effect is going to be devastating to Japanese democracy in the long run. What are the chances now that a new generation of kids will go off to troubled areas of the world when the going gets rough? Having a knife at their throats was apparently the most stressful moment the hostages had ever experienced, says the Times writer. Until they got home, that is, turned on the television and saw the condemnation of their countrymen. They and their families are now afraid to show their faces.
"Reckless!" says the Environment Minister of Japan. Quite a different response from Colin Powell’s. This man, who one assumes fell on the sword of his principles and best judgment to remain influential in the Bush war machine, called the shots differently. "If nobody was willing to take a risk," he observed, "We would never move forward."
If this is what a nation does to its young idealists, makes them afraid to show their faces, maybe they ought to emigrate.
Any takers?
Oiso
April 24, 2004
try to do some good."
What is your response? "Go with my blessing!"? "Over my dead body!"? "Let George do it!"?
If you are Japanese, this is not an idle question these days.
When the first three hostages returned to Tokyo on Sunday, they faced signs saying, "You got what you deserved!" "You have disgraced the nation!" "Japan’s shame!"
The other day I took this debate into one of my classrooms and asked for written comments. Let me share a couple of them with you.
– they ignored the worries of the government and their family members. Life
does not belong (only) to the person who has it, but (to others as well).
– they should give some thought to what they have done.
– they went there (for their own reasons), not to benefit the country.
– they should have been more prepared, should have thought of the impact
– they were careless and gave the Japanese government trouble.
– Did Imai (the 18-year-old who went to protest the use of depleted uranium weapons) honestly believe he could do a scientific investigation on this issue without knowledge of science? He doesn’t even speak English!
– I think when a person takes a risk, and especially when the problem could involve the nation, they must think about the effects or impact they have.
I have selected only the criticism here and I need to point out that there was also some support for the efforts of the hostages, and distinctions drawn between the the initial three and the two journalists who were captured later. But in almost every case even those who were slow to blame suggested the five ought to be made to foot the bill for their rescue.
Norimitsu Onishi, the New York Times writer, put the story in a Japanese cultural context. "To the angry Japanese," he writes, "the three had acted selfishly." He was referring to Nahoko Takato, who started her own organization at age 34 to work with street children, Soichiro Koriyama, a 32-year-old freelance photographer, and Noriaki Imai, the 18-year-old kid upset over the use of depleted uranium munitions. But the two journalists, both in their 30s, have been caught up in similar criticism.
Onishi hints at the ancient Confucist sense of order where everyone knows his place, and the Japanese adaptation of that notion of virtue which emphasizes blind loyalty and a desire to view authority with a sense of gratitude for favors received. I’ve pushed this analysis a bit; Onishi simply refers to a "sin" of defying "okami" – "that which is higher."
One has to be careful not to fall into the trap of reducing an entire complex modern civilization to the values of only a segment of their numbers. I haven’t forgotten the diversity of responses from my students. And while it is still true that the "deru kugi" (the "nail that sticks up) gets hammered down perhaps more readily here than in a lot of places, the Japanese are not likely to go marching off to Manchuria simply because their
government tells them to, or line up to fly planes into battleships anymore. True, the Aum cult managed to get well-educated men and women to do unspeakable things because of this kind of loyalty but so did Jim Jones in Guyana. Mostly, Japanese are still reeling from this evidence of blind loyalty to a leader. Nobody believes Japanese are a nation of lemmings.
Still, this condemnation of the young idealists who ventured beyond the pale is troubling. This time it’s not a wacko cult leader demanding loyalty; it’s government.
Maybe they were careless. Do their families really deserve hate mail?
Maybe their timing was lousy. Should they really be forced to come up with $6000 for airfare home?
The Asahi Shimbun, perhaps Japan’s best government watchdog, had ten reporters in Iraq. It sent them all to Kuwait just as things got tough. That left nobody to report on the activities of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces, currently defending themselves (if you can get your mind around that one) in Iraq. No accountability whatsoever for taxpayer money. Condemnation flows because three individuals cost some money for their
rescue. Yet troops hiding behind fortress walls (so I’m told AD how would I know for sure?) get a blank check for the duration. This is somebody’s idea of a democracy?
As I see it, the chill effect is going to be devastating to Japanese democracy in the long run. What are the chances now that a new generation of kids will go off to troubled areas of the world when the going gets rough? Having a knife at their throats was apparently the most stressful moment the hostages had ever experienced, says the Times writer. Until they got home, that is, turned on the television and saw the condemnation of their countrymen. They and their families are now afraid to show their faces.
"Reckless!" says the Environment Minister of Japan. Quite a different response from Colin Powell’s. This man, who one assumes fell on the sword of his principles and best judgment to remain influential in the Bush war machine, called the shots differently. "If nobody was willing to take a risk," he observed, "We would never move forward."
If this is what a nation does to its young idealists, makes them afraid to show their faces, maybe they ought to emigrate.
WANTED. Country interested in receiving young idealists with energy and enthusiasm, a willingness to take risks, a desire to help children, to gather accurate information, to resist war and to protect the environment. Must be willing to allow for the possibility of mistakes.
Any takers?
Oiso
April 24, 2004
Thursday, February 26, 2004
A Response to Mary Ann Glendon
“Why can’t we all just get along?” Sounds like such a reasonable question. “Why can’t we be civil?” “Why can’t we just sit down and give each other the benefit of the doubt?” “Why can’t we just put ourselves in the other’s shoes?”
Yes, yes yes. All questions that should be answered with a rousing, “Right on!”
And then you look a little closer and you realize some conflicts simply don’t lend themselves to the assumption of an even playing field. Do we ask Jews to sit down with Nazis? Slaves to sit down with slaveholders? Abused children to sit down with their abusers and assume an attitude of “simple difference of opinion?” There are times when you simply can’t work with the assumption of an even playing field.
Susan B. Anthony was harshly criticized when she once gave precedence to the suffragette movement over the freeing of slaves. Alice Walker was criticized similarly for The Color Purple because her complaint against black men allegedly weakened unity in the black civil rights movement. (You may remember her response: “You tell your story and I’ll tell mine.”) In both cases, these women’s dedication to the rights of women dictated their single-mindedness and left them vulnerable to charges of unreasonableness. Few not feeling the heel of the boot can understand the depth of their convictions.
Sometimes you reason. Other times you shout. Deciding when to do each of these is part of the art of life. On June 27, 1969, people took to the streets in the Stonewall Riots. Because they did, today, people can afford to be more “reasonable.” It’s costing us a lot in stomach lining, but it’s working. Barney Frank asked fellow gays to bite the bullet and give up pushing for gay marriage in the last election, knowing Americans were not ready for it and Republicans were squeezing political victory out of the prejudice. Most gays did shut up for a while, but resentments that come of such compromise with one’s sense of rights only fester and come out stronger at a later date. I disagreed with Barney Frank, but I do still wonder if his ability to think longterm made that the best strategy for the moment. For one thing, the lessening of confrontation seems to be allowing things like Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to do the work of taking the edge off of American homophobia, and – who knows? – possibly advance the cause of gay civil rights even faster than shouting would have.
It’s still an uphill climb. Recently, the Catholic Church’s injunction against gay adoptions brought home the fact the battle is far from over. NARTH, the organization dedicated to the proposition homosexuality is a mental disorder, has on its website, reference to a letter by Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law School advocate of “family values.” Unreasonable organizations like NARTH get to look reasonable when they have a Harvard lawyer they can cite to their advantage. She provides the patina of credibility to what is nothing more than a catholic ideological stance in a legal wolf’s clothing.
Let me show you what I mean. Here is one of Glendon’s articles, in italics, with my commentary. It’s lengthy, but bear with me. Her issues have to be responded to.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--President Bush's endorsement of a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage should be welcomed by all Americans who are concerned about equality and preserving democratic decision-making. "After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience," he explained, "a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization."
It’s not a few judges and local authorities. It’s a sea change in the way homosexuality is viewed. You make it sound as if they were somehow usurping the right of the world not to change. You’re missing the larger social context. Besides, if you think this “most fundamental institution” called marriage has not changed over time, you might try reading a little history of marriage and the family.
Those judges are here in Massachusetts, of course, where the state is cutting back on programs to aid the elderly, the disabled, and children in poor families. Yet a four-judge majority has ruled in favor of special benefits for a group of relatively affluent households, most of which have two earners and are not raising children. What same-sex marriage advocates have tried to present as a civil rights issue is really a bid for special preferences of the type our society gives to married couples for the very good reason that most of them are raising or have raised children. Now, in the wake of the Massachusetts case, local officials in other parts of the nation have begun to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples in defiance of state law.
What does cutting back on other social programs have to do with it? You are attacking one have-not community by making it seem the source of another have-not’s problems. Good legal defence, possibly, but not decent scholarship, and not very big in the integrity department. “Relatively affluent households” may characterize the gay people who have had the resources to take their case to court, but it does not characterize all gay people. Calling these people seeking justice unworthy because they have more money than the state’s poor is astonishingly dirty pool. Would you call any Jew’s demand for justice and fair play unwarranted because some Jews are wealthy?
A common initial reaction to these local measures has been: "Why should I care whether same-sex couples can get married?" "How will that affect me or my family?" "Why not just live and let live?" But as people began to take stock of the implications of granting special treatment to one group of citizens, the need for a federal marriage amendment has become increasingly clear. As President Bush said yesterday, "The voice of the people must be heard."
Of course the voice of the people must be heard. Just make sure you’ve got the voice of the people in their reasoned moments, and not when they are driven by fear and ignorance, and not when they are misrepresented by a political manipulator. As for this “special treatment to one group of citizens” bit, you’re not referring to catholics and evangelicals who want their religious rights to outweigh a claim for civil rights, are you? Take the beam out of your eye, madam!
Indeed, the American people should have the opportunity to deliberate the economic and social costs of this radical social experiment. Astonishingly, in the media coverage of this issue, next to nothing has been said about what this new special preference would cost the rest of society in terms of taxes and insurance premiums.
Economic costs? Radical social experiment? No more radical than giving women the right to vote was radical, than freeing the slaves was radical. Justice is radical only when a society is fundamentally unjust. And the economic costs? A lawyer is suggesting we should give up equity because it costs money?
The Canadian government, which is considering same-sex marriage legislation, has just realized that retroactive social-security survivor benefits alone would cost its taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. There is a real problem of distributive justice here. How can one justify treating same-sex households like married couples when such benefits are denied to all the people in our society who are caring for elderly or disabled relatives whom they cannot claim as family members for tax or insurance purposes? Shouldn't citizens have a chance to vote on whether they want to give homosexual unions, most of which are childless, the same benefits that society gives to married couples, most of whom have raised or are raising children?
Here again your logic is dirty. You are asking that one justice be delayed or denied because another is not in force. Do we close down good schools because we have bad schools? Do we stop ticketing any speeders because we can’t catch all speeders?
Aid to families with children is an issue which should be dealt with separately from whether their parents are gay or straight. Why are you making this argument now? Why did you not argue that married couples without children should be penalized earlier?
If these social experiments go forward, moreover, the rights of children will be impaired. Same-sex marriage will constitute a public, official endorsement of the following extraordinary claims made by the Massachusetts judges in the Goodridge case: that marriage is mainly an arrangement for the benefit of adults; that children do not need both a mother and a father; and that alternative family forms are just as good as a husband and wife raising kids together. It would be tragic if, just when the country is beginning to take stock of the havoc those erroneous ideas have already wrought in the lives of American children, we should now freeze them into constitutional law. That philosophy of marriage, moreover, is what our children and grandchildren will be taught in school. They will be required to discuss marriage in those terms. Ordinary words like husband and wife will be replaced by partner and spouse. In marriage-preparation and sex-education classes, children will have to be taught about homosexual sex. Parents who complain will be branded as homophobes and their children will suffer.
You’ve reached a bunch of very erroneous conclusions. There is no reason that marriage should be limited to those with children. Men and women past the childbearing years put their lives together all the time. Should they not be able to file joint tax returns because they don't have children? What of the thousands of gay people who were married to opposite sex partners previously and have children of their own? Your assumption that children in gay families are handicapped because they don’t have a male and a female parent overlooks the millions of people raised successfully in homes that do not fit this pattern, as well as the countless numbers of children who have suffered bad parenting in homes that do.
You are upset that children will be taught about homosexual sex. Good Lord, would you really want to withhold such basic knowledge from young people? Your prejudice is right up there on the surface! And are you “branded” as a progressive when you seek positive change? Are you “branded” as a conservative when you resist change? Sometimes a spade is actually a spade. And sometimes chairmen are replaced by chairpersons.
Religious freedom, too, is at stake. As much as one may wish to live and let live, the experience in other countries reveals that once these arrangements become law, there will be no live-and-let-live policy for those who differ. Gay-marriage proponents use the language of openness, tolerance and diversity, yet one foreseeable effect of their success will be to usher in an era of intolerance and discrimination the likes of which we have rarely seen before. Every person and every religion that disagrees will be labeled as bigoted and openly discriminated against. The ax will fall most heavily on religious persons and groups that don't go along. Religious institutions will be hit with lawsuits if they refuse to compromise their principles.
Your fear is that the time may have come when the injustices visited on gays by people citing scripture and religious authority may be turned back on you and you may get a taste of your own medicine. Isn't the real issue here a respect for diversity? Nobody is asking you to become a homosexual, only to go your own way, marry the partner of your choice and give your fellow Americans who are gay the same right. There should there be no live-and-let-live policy for racism, sexism and other limitations on human rights in a civil society. Your religious freedom is not curtailed by extending civil rights to gays; only your right to assign rights to yourself that you withhold from others. Your right to religion gives you freedom to think and to worship and to speak out, not to use religion as a club. You may, if you wish, worship a God who prohibits miscegenation. You may not use public funds in a public arena to keep black kids out of your school out of fear they may marry your daughter. Your use of “religion” is self-serving and harmful to others who do not share your religious beliefs.
Finally, there is the flagrant disregard shown by judges and local officials for the rights of citizens to have a say in setting the conditions under which we live, work and raise our children. Many Americans--however they feel about same-sex marriage--are rightly alarmed that local officials are defying state law, and that four judges in one state took it upon themselves to make the kind of decision that our Constitution says belongs to us, the people, and to our elected representatives. As one State House wag in Massachusetts put it, "We used to have government of the people, by the people and for the people, now we're getting government by four people!"
The sea change of attitudes toward homosexuality has been evolving over decades. It will not be decided by a single act or a single branch of government. Blacks won their rights in the courts; gays sometimes do also. To suggest that a work in progress is an abuse of power is to trivialize the complexity of the system of checks and balances.
Whether one is for, against or undecided about same-sex marriage, a decision this important ought to be made in the ordinary democratic way¬–through full public deliberation in the light of day, not by four people behind closed doors. That deliberation can and must be conducted, as President Bush stated, "in a manner worthy of our country–without bitterness or anger."
At last, something we can agree upon.
Ms. Glendon is Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard.
Her article is available at: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004735
Yes, yes yes. All questions that should be answered with a rousing, “Right on!”
And then you look a little closer and you realize some conflicts simply don’t lend themselves to the assumption of an even playing field. Do we ask Jews to sit down with Nazis? Slaves to sit down with slaveholders? Abused children to sit down with their abusers and assume an attitude of “simple difference of opinion?” There are times when you simply can’t work with the assumption of an even playing field.
Susan B. Anthony was harshly criticized when she once gave precedence to the suffragette movement over the freeing of slaves. Alice Walker was criticized similarly for The Color Purple because her complaint against black men allegedly weakened unity in the black civil rights movement. (You may remember her response: “You tell your story and I’ll tell mine.”) In both cases, these women’s dedication to the rights of women dictated their single-mindedness and left them vulnerable to charges of unreasonableness. Few not feeling the heel of the boot can understand the depth of their convictions.
Sometimes you reason. Other times you shout. Deciding when to do each of these is part of the art of life. On June 27, 1969, people took to the streets in the Stonewall Riots. Because they did, today, people can afford to be more “reasonable.” It’s costing us a lot in stomach lining, but it’s working. Barney Frank asked fellow gays to bite the bullet and give up pushing for gay marriage in the last election, knowing Americans were not ready for it and Republicans were squeezing political victory out of the prejudice. Most gays did shut up for a while, but resentments that come of such compromise with one’s sense of rights only fester and come out stronger at a later date. I disagreed with Barney Frank, but I do still wonder if his ability to think longterm made that the best strategy for the moment. For one thing, the lessening of confrontation seems to be allowing things like Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to do the work of taking the edge off of American homophobia, and – who knows? – possibly advance the cause of gay civil rights even faster than shouting would have.
It’s still an uphill climb. Recently, the Catholic Church’s injunction against gay adoptions brought home the fact the battle is far from over. NARTH, the organization dedicated to the proposition homosexuality is a mental disorder, has on its website, reference to a letter by Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law School advocate of “family values.” Unreasonable organizations like NARTH get to look reasonable when they have a Harvard lawyer they can cite to their advantage. She provides the patina of credibility to what is nothing more than a catholic ideological stance in a legal wolf’s clothing.
Let me show you what I mean. Here is one of Glendon’s articles, in italics, with my commentary. It’s lengthy, but bear with me. Her issues have to be responded to.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--President Bush's endorsement of a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage should be welcomed by all Americans who are concerned about equality and preserving democratic decision-making. "After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience," he explained, "a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization."
It’s not a few judges and local authorities. It’s a sea change in the way homosexuality is viewed. You make it sound as if they were somehow usurping the right of the world not to change. You’re missing the larger social context. Besides, if you think this “most fundamental institution” called marriage has not changed over time, you might try reading a little history of marriage and the family.
Those judges are here in Massachusetts, of course, where the state is cutting back on programs to aid the elderly, the disabled, and children in poor families. Yet a four-judge majority has ruled in favor of special benefits for a group of relatively affluent households, most of which have two earners and are not raising children. What same-sex marriage advocates have tried to present as a civil rights issue is really a bid for special preferences of the type our society gives to married couples for the very good reason that most of them are raising or have raised children. Now, in the wake of the Massachusetts case, local officials in other parts of the nation have begun to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples in defiance of state law.
What does cutting back on other social programs have to do with it? You are attacking one have-not community by making it seem the source of another have-not’s problems. Good legal defence, possibly, but not decent scholarship, and not very big in the integrity department. “Relatively affluent households” may characterize the gay people who have had the resources to take their case to court, but it does not characterize all gay people. Calling these people seeking justice unworthy because they have more money than the state’s poor is astonishingly dirty pool. Would you call any Jew’s demand for justice and fair play unwarranted because some Jews are wealthy?
A common initial reaction to these local measures has been: "Why should I care whether same-sex couples can get married?" "How will that affect me or my family?" "Why not just live and let live?" But as people began to take stock of the implications of granting special treatment to one group of citizens, the need for a federal marriage amendment has become increasingly clear. As President Bush said yesterday, "The voice of the people must be heard."
Of course the voice of the people must be heard. Just make sure you’ve got the voice of the people in their reasoned moments, and not when they are driven by fear and ignorance, and not when they are misrepresented by a political manipulator. As for this “special treatment to one group of citizens” bit, you’re not referring to catholics and evangelicals who want their religious rights to outweigh a claim for civil rights, are you? Take the beam out of your eye, madam!
Indeed, the American people should have the opportunity to deliberate the economic and social costs of this radical social experiment. Astonishingly, in the media coverage of this issue, next to nothing has been said about what this new special preference would cost the rest of society in terms of taxes and insurance premiums.
Economic costs? Radical social experiment? No more radical than giving women the right to vote was radical, than freeing the slaves was radical. Justice is radical only when a society is fundamentally unjust. And the economic costs? A lawyer is suggesting we should give up equity because it costs money?
The Canadian government, which is considering same-sex marriage legislation, has just realized that retroactive social-security survivor benefits alone would cost its taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. There is a real problem of distributive justice here. How can one justify treating same-sex households like married couples when such benefits are denied to all the people in our society who are caring for elderly or disabled relatives whom they cannot claim as family members for tax or insurance purposes? Shouldn't citizens have a chance to vote on whether they want to give homosexual unions, most of which are childless, the same benefits that society gives to married couples, most of whom have raised or are raising children?
Here again your logic is dirty. You are asking that one justice be delayed or denied because another is not in force. Do we close down good schools because we have bad schools? Do we stop ticketing any speeders because we can’t catch all speeders?
Aid to families with children is an issue which should be dealt with separately from whether their parents are gay or straight. Why are you making this argument now? Why did you not argue that married couples without children should be penalized earlier?
If these social experiments go forward, moreover, the rights of children will be impaired. Same-sex marriage will constitute a public, official endorsement of the following extraordinary claims made by the Massachusetts judges in the Goodridge case: that marriage is mainly an arrangement for the benefit of adults; that children do not need both a mother and a father; and that alternative family forms are just as good as a husband and wife raising kids together. It would be tragic if, just when the country is beginning to take stock of the havoc those erroneous ideas have already wrought in the lives of American children, we should now freeze them into constitutional law. That philosophy of marriage, moreover, is what our children and grandchildren will be taught in school. They will be required to discuss marriage in those terms. Ordinary words like husband and wife will be replaced by partner and spouse. In marriage-preparation and sex-education classes, children will have to be taught about homosexual sex. Parents who complain will be branded as homophobes and their children will suffer.
You’ve reached a bunch of very erroneous conclusions. There is no reason that marriage should be limited to those with children. Men and women past the childbearing years put their lives together all the time. Should they not be able to file joint tax returns because they don't have children? What of the thousands of gay people who were married to opposite sex partners previously and have children of their own? Your assumption that children in gay families are handicapped because they don’t have a male and a female parent overlooks the millions of people raised successfully in homes that do not fit this pattern, as well as the countless numbers of children who have suffered bad parenting in homes that do.
You are upset that children will be taught about homosexual sex. Good Lord, would you really want to withhold such basic knowledge from young people? Your prejudice is right up there on the surface! And are you “branded” as a progressive when you seek positive change? Are you “branded” as a conservative when you resist change? Sometimes a spade is actually a spade. And sometimes chairmen are replaced by chairpersons.
Religious freedom, too, is at stake. As much as one may wish to live and let live, the experience in other countries reveals that once these arrangements become law, there will be no live-and-let-live policy for those who differ. Gay-marriage proponents use the language of openness, tolerance and diversity, yet one foreseeable effect of their success will be to usher in an era of intolerance and discrimination the likes of which we have rarely seen before. Every person and every religion that disagrees will be labeled as bigoted and openly discriminated against. The ax will fall most heavily on religious persons and groups that don't go along. Religious institutions will be hit with lawsuits if they refuse to compromise their principles.
Your fear is that the time may have come when the injustices visited on gays by people citing scripture and religious authority may be turned back on you and you may get a taste of your own medicine. Isn't the real issue here a respect for diversity? Nobody is asking you to become a homosexual, only to go your own way, marry the partner of your choice and give your fellow Americans who are gay the same right. There should there be no live-and-let-live policy for racism, sexism and other limitations on human rights in a civil society. Your religious freedom is not curtailed by extending civil rights to gays; only your right to assign rights to yourself that you withhold from others. Your right to religion gives you freedom to think and to worship and to speak out, not to use religion as a club. You may, if you wish, worship a God who prohibits miscegenation. You may not use public funds in a public arena to keep black kids out of your school out of fear they may marry your daughter. Your use of “religion” is self-serving and harmful to others who do not share your religious beliefs.
Finally, there is the flagrant disregard shown by judges and local officials for the rights of citizens to have a say in setting the conditions under which we live, work and raise our children. Many Americans--however they feel about same-sex marriage--are rightly alarmed that local officials are defying state law, and that four judges in one state took it upon themselves to make the kind of decision that our Constitution says belongs to us, the people, and to our elected representatives. As one State House wag in Massachusetts put it, "We used to have government of the people, by the people and for the people, now we're getting government by four people!"
The sea change of attitudes toward homosexuality has been evolving over decades. It will not be decided by a single act or a single branch of government. Blacks won their rights in the courts; gays sometimes do also. To suggest that a work in progress is an abuse of power is to trivialize the complexity of the system of checks and balances.
Whether one is for, against or undecided about same-sex marriage, a decision this important ought to be made in the ordinary democratic way¬–through full public deliberation in the light of day, not by four people behind closed doors. That deliberation can and must be conducted, as President Bush stated, "in a manner worthy of our country–without bitterness or anger."
At last, something we can agree upon.
Ms. Glendon is Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard.
Her article is available at: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004735
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