Redefining marriage?

Opponents of equal marriage rights are ever more desperate for arguments. A currently popular one holds that government should not use its coercive powers to redefine the word "marriage." Am I allowed to have multiple wives and concubines? Does a wife lose her legal identity upon marriage? No? Then it looks as though marriage has already been redefined. Also, it makes no sense to argue that while the word "marriage" is sacred, government has free rein to redefine the word "equal," as in "equal protection of the laws," however it sees fit.

In short, the only way to keep government from redefining marriage is to keep government from defining marriage at all. I believe that that course of action would be ideal, but, as I have said before, I do not want the perfect that is a long way off to be the enemy of the good that is coming to pass.

It's all gay men's fault (chapter 19,255)

The Huffington Post has published a column titled Gay Dudes, Can You Just Not?, decrying the use of the word "tranny" by gay men. Note the focus specifically on gay men. I wouldn't mind seeing radical feminists held to the same standard.

Note also this line:

But it's OK, folks, because they're gay dudes and are therefore untouchable by the LGB-centric media.

That's a fine thing to tell us in the context of showing us the exact opposite.

Richard Cohen continues the straw-man apocalypse.

In a column about Chris Christie and the Tea Party, Richard Cohen wrote,

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

(Emphasis added.) While I have done my fair share of criticizing social conservatives, I try not to say anything about them that is either so breathtakingly clueless or so breathtakingly mendacious.

Cohen has backpedaled:

The column is about Tea Party extremism and I was not expressing my views, I was expressing the views of what I think some people in the Tea Party held.

While the backpedaled version clearly differs from what he originally wrote, it is not much better. By expressing the views that he thinks that some people in the Tea Party hold, he serves his readers idle speculation with a side order of nutpicking.

Also, some progressives have misinterpreted the above-quoted passage of Cohen's column as expressing his own views, which it plainly does not, and have thereby changed the meaning by 180°. Some people appear to spend every waking moment looking for things by which to be offended, no matter what the facts are.

Is the Republican Party about to go under?

One of the major parties is about to go belly up at any moment now, and this has been the case at least since the seventies. After Carter's election, the talking heads predicted this fate for the Republican Party, and after Reagan's first election, they did the same for the Democratic Party. Now it's the GOP's turn again. By now, someone should have noticed the similarity to Rapture predictions.

Today's vocabulary word: period

period, n. asterisk: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period.