BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
e-mail delivery, click
here. To send
an e-mail to Dan Kennedy, click
here.
For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Monday, May 17, 2004
MARRIED, OFTEN WITH
CHILDREN. The biggest story in the country today is gay marriage,
and Massachusetts is the epicenter, as same-sex marriage becomes
legal here for the first time anywhere in the United States.
(Globe coverage here;
Herald coverage here.)
Not to focus on the negative, but I
feel compelled to reproduce the first few paragraphs of Howie Carr's
column in Sunday's Herald. Unlike his fellow columnist Joe
Fitzgerald, who at least appears to be a true
believer (sub. req.), I
find it hard to accept that the sneering Carr really cares one way or
the other. Yet this is how he began his hateful
little screed (sub. req.)
yesterday:
Gay marriage, another
mega-embarrassment for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but what
else is new? Imagine the circus this evening out on Mass. Ave. in
front of Cambridge City Hall - one shudders to think of what sort
of XXX-rated products the hawkers will be trying to peddle to
those who once were referred to in simpler times as "brides" and
"grooms."
"Hey, get your amyl nitrites
here. Poppers here, poppers!"
This is the liberal credo: If it
happens in Abu Ghraib prison, it's a war crime. If it happens at a
rest stop on I-495, it's true love.
Welcome to Massachusetts. The
Gay State. Sodom and Begorrah.
And everyone has to pretend that
this will be the end of it. You will be hounded by the PC Police
if you state the obvious, that if the perversion du jour is "gay
marriage," then tomorrow it will be polygamy, and the day after
tomorrow incest, and then the final frontier ...
bestiality.
Elisabeth Beardsley, Thomas
Caywood, Thea Singer, Marie Szaniszlo, Franci Richardson, and other
Herald reporters trying to cover gay marriage with the
seriousness it deserves must cringe when they see garbage like
this.
The Globe's
anti-gay-marriage columnist, Jeff Jacoby, complained
yesterday that "the media depiction of the same-sex marriage
controversy has been strikingly one-sided." No doubt I'm caught in my
own paradigm, but I can't help but think that that's because there is
a right and a wrong regarding gay marriage, and that the vast
majority of the media have sided with those who are right.
Jacoby continued:
Those of us who think this
week's revolution is a terrible mistake need to do a much better
job of explaining that the core question is not "Why shouldn't any
couple in love be able to marry?" but something more essential:
"What is marriage for?" We need to convey that the fundamental
purpose of marriage is to unite men and women so that any children
they may create or adopt will have a mom and a dad.
Marriage expresses a public
judgment that every child deserves a mom and a dad. Same-sex
marriage, by contrast, says that the sexual and emotional desires
of adults count for more than the needs of children. Which message
do we want the next generation to receive?
Well, marriage is for many things,
but I agree with Jacoby that child-rearing is by far the most
important. I would even agree that there are many advantages to
raising children within the context of a family headed by a mother
and a father - advantages that are difficult to replicate with two
mothers, or two fathers, or a single parent.
But this is theory. The reality is
that there are already same-sex couples and single parents raising
children, and that, in many cases, they are doing a far better job
than some traditional families. Children are raised by actual people,
not by theories about what constitutes the ideal. We ought to
recognize that. And today, at least in one state, we do.
RUMSFELD'S LAST WEEK?
Here
is the latest from Seymour Hersh, in the current New Yorker,
on a secret order signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that
may have led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. The most chilling
paragraph:
The government consultant
[a source of Hersh's] said that there may have been a
serious goal, in the beginning, behind the sexual humiliation and
the posed photographs. It was thought that some prisoners would do
anything - including spying on their associates - to avoid
dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends. The
government consultant said, "I was told that the purpose of the
photographs was to create an army of informants, people you could
insert back in the population." The idea was that they would be
motivated by fear of exposure, and gather information about
pending insurgency action, the consultant said. If so, it wasn't
effective; the insurgency continued to grow.
When you consider the incredible
damage that has been done to American interests by the abuses and
torture at Abu Ghraib - when you consider that terrorists executed
Nicholas Berg in retaliation (or at least used it as a convenient
excuse) - then, if this is true, Rumsfeld's resignation should be on
President Bush's desk by noon today.
Yeah, right.
posted at 9:29 AM |
0 comments
|
link
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
