States Rights = bigotry (?!)

Sen. Mike Gravel, who is apparently seeking the Democratic Nomination for president in 2008 (excuse me while I try to remember exactly who Mike Gravel is . . .), is not happy that Hillary Clinton deferred to states rights in defining "marriage," though she strongly supports equality of benefits (incidentally, though Hills' stance mirrors my position, this one issue is not enough to make me even consider supporting her in anything other than retirement). You can see a video of the statements to which Gravel refers at the bottom of this page.

Mike Gravel states, in part:

By drawing upon the language of states rights, Hillary embraces the tradition of John Calhoun and the defenders of slavery along with Strom Thurmond and the segregationists. Throughout our nation's history, every time national public opinion turns against oppression, opponents of progress use states rights to present themselves as defenders of liberty in the face of federal power.

States rights has always been the last refuge of the bigots. Now Hillary has given rhetorical cover to the homophobes. If she wins the Democratic nomination, opponents of gay marriage will cite her statement to justify their opposition to national marriage equality over the next decade.

Now I much beg Senator Gravel's pardon, but it seems a little dangerous to put all our eggs in the Federal basket. Why, isn't DOMA federal legislation? Didn't the FMA start in federal government (and admittedly die there)? Or the Federal Estate Tax that will hit gay couples quite significantly once it is reinstated? Has the Senator from Alaska noticed that at least 16 states plus the District of Columbia have workplace protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation while ENDA continues to languish in a Democrat controlled Congress?

OH wait, I get what Gravel's doing: he's trying to get attention by using a relatively insignificant issue to compare the front-runner in his race to a defender of slavery. And we trust people like this with our government?

PS, I NEVER thought I would be defending Hills on this blog. That Sen. Gravel made me do that is the most irritating thing of all.

Coming out update

today I had an IM conversation with Matt at Debriefing the Boys and we discussed my progress with coming out (sorry to treat you like a coming out coach, Matt--I hope you don't mind).

Where I am:

I have been out all summer. I was out at work (I rather expect I will return to the same firm after graduation--assuming I get an offer. I find out next week!). It really was great to learn to get comfortable with myself. I think that was an important step. Had I not taken it, I am certain I would be seriously considering staying in the closet for ages.

I have been able to date some, as well as just have fun. A lot has become clear to me this summer. For instance, I always hated kissing, until I started kissing guys. Now I actually really like it--a bit too much perhaps given my inability to remain appropriate after a drink or two. I suppose that means I actually am gay.

Where I need to be:

I really need to start thinking seriously about telling my family. So far, I have trying to build up to them, but Matt suggested it might be easier to go the other way: family first then friends. Otherwise i have worse worry for longer (let's face it, most of us are more concerned about how our family reacts than our friends, however close they may be).

Now, I have decided to wait about a year. Before you get too concerned that I am still stalling, let me tell you why. A year from now I will have graduated and finished taking the bar. I will have made, at least in my own mind, the transition into bona fide adulthood. As an adult I should be honest with my parents about who I am. But at the same time I will be in a position to take care of myself, should it come to that ( I don't expect it to, but it just seems prudent to have this option).

Further, assuming I get the job I hope to, I will be working rather long hours over 500 miles from where they live. That will give them a sort of buffer of time and space to deal with it on their own terms (and honestly, it will give me some means to forget about the discomfort my sexuality will cause them while they do deal with it).

Finally, it will give me time to prepare how to do it. Should I tell my sister first, or my parents first? I'll probably do it while they are visiting me here rather than at their home. I feel like I need to read up more. Perhaps plan out exactly the things I want to say. This is not the kind of thing I think I should jump into cavalierly. It wouldn't be fair to them.

PS: I regularly re-link to it, but once again I want to go over Nick's Mom's advice. She's awesome.

Conflicted

I have stated before that I am behind the War on Terror (though I still think it's a stupid and misleading name). Like any American I am angered by plots against my country, countrymen and allies. But I think we gays have an extra stake in the game. I truly believe there is no more dangerous religious movement to homosexuals than that of radical, intolerant, fundamentalist Islam. Christianists may not want us to have families or jobs, but their policies pale in comparison to the hostility of fundamentalist Islam towards gays.

Nonetheless, I still get bothered by the encroachment on civil liberties in the name of security. I'd like to expand on the old saying about liberty and security. What liberty (excluding religious or existential "liberation") is there in death, or fear of death. But then what good is life without liberty? It's not either/or, its a balancing act (law professors LOVE balancing things). The problem is I keep going back and forth on how to balance them.

I'm pretty well comfortable with allowing my government to protect me from foreign threats, but when does protection become oppressive? Honestly I'm not all that concerned about feds listening in on international calls, but I am troubled by increasing executive power--especially in the name of something so ill-defined as a War on Terror (It might as well be called a War on Sadness, or a War on Aerial Strikes). But if these measures help save the lives of Americans, could they be worth it? How do we keep security from infringing liberty without making ourselves vulnerable? I don't have answers here, only questions (how annoying, right?). Your thoughts?

Well, that was fun

I got back safe and sound. I went to visit my friend Karen (whom you may remember from here, or here-Sean by the way is out of the country). Some highlights:

I woke up the first morning not in Karen's apartment like I should have, but instead in the hallway on the floor above.

I learned that I will make out for a drink. Sometimes for less. (I'm a little embarrassed about that one).

I saw some great theater.

I had one of the best steaks in living memory.

I got to meet Karen's friend Kim. She lives in a charming porno district.

I spent more money than I care to think about.

On the plane trip back I read Harry Potter 7.

Good times, good times.

Slight Delay

I'll be traveling this weekend. Although I'll probably have internet access, I cannot promise that I'll find the time or effort to post while I am away.

Since I am neither as famous as nor have the vast readership of Andrew Sullivan, I have not attempted to get substitute bloggers for when I am away.

You have a couple of options for the next few days:

First, you could turn off your computer and go interact with real people.

I'm sure there's some housework you need to get to.

Why not start learning a foreign language? Arabic is in high demand (unless you are gay).

Finally, you can always check out the links on the right (in particular, this one).


Now, to finish things off, I am going to embed a few movies that I found rather amusing. It's a two parter about how to know if we are ready for marriage. So before you run up to MA, you might want to give this a watch:

Why I'm Not Buying Free Health Care, Part 2

(About damn time, huh?)

Okay, so it's easy to dispel the Moore favored single-payer system:
Assume that the government is now paying for same total amount of health care--however, because health care consumers experience no out of pocket cost for additional health care (what economists call a zero marginal cost to the consumer), they will demand a quantity of health care greater than they demand now. Boom Shortages. Problem not solved.

You've still got rationing, except now it's done by government instead of insurance companies. You really think that will be better? A quick (if only) trip to the DMV should disabuse you of that notion. You may think it's tough arguing with insurance companies about coverage, but have you ever tried arguing with an administrative bureaucracy [IRS]? Think about how politics can get involved: "why are my good Christian tax dollars going to help treat that homosexual with the gay plague?" [The excellent politics point respectfully stolen from Kip Esquire].

Oh but we're not finished, let's look at the producer side: We all know that the incredible quality (not including access) of our health care comes from profit motivated innovation. An egalitarian single payer system is going to ruin that. People are not going to be able to pay more for better, so why make anything better? Certainly there are some who would like to cure diseases for the humanitarian good, but that research still costs money and that money is going to be harder to come by when investors looking for profit are no longer going to provide any of it.

Woe is us. What can we do? Well, some, try have their cake and eat it too, with a dual system. The free health care for everyone, but still allow people to pay for private health care if they want it (Paging John Edwards). That sounds nice at first blush: you solve the access problem, but you don't damage the profit motive for innovation! Except that you do.

Providing health care to everyone using tax dollars will mean providing health care to those who do not pay any taxes, as well as to those who don't pay enough taxes to cover their consumption of the government provided good. The free system is going to be strained from day one. Then there will be those who will use the free health care even though they could afford private (hey, it's free!) Of course there will be those super rich who will prefer paying the higher cost for private health care, because it will be a) better in quality (of course you are paying for it) and b) fewer other people will be using it, so there will be shorter lines! Problem here comes with b. Fewer people paying, means they will be paying more to retain the quality of the good. Otherwise the income from providing the private health care won't be enough to pay for the innovation that makes it better. So either the quality differential will evaporate or the price will keep going up.

Consider the following analogy: Education. We have free public schools as well as not free private schools. Most won't deny that the quality of private education is by and large better than what we find in public schools. However, the cost of private schools is prohibitively high for most, and is going up for those who can still afford it (still paging John Edwards). So we want to import this model into our health care? (One important difference: even private schools are non-profit. They don't need profit to provide higher quality education, but the quality of health care depends on innovation that needs to be paid for by profit, so I think the differences between public and private health care cost will be even starker than the difference in the education).

Now I am a big supporter of school choice. I truly believe that by letting the consumers direct where their educational dollars go, we will keep our super posh private schools affordable only to the elite; we will develop mid-range schools that are better than the bottom tier and are affordable to the middle class; as well as improve (eventually) the quality of schools for those who can only afford what the voucher is worth. I think this model might be the best choice for our health care problem, assuming we believe that the government should be subsidizing it (and it looks like more and more people believe that).

While we are at, PinkCare will make money paid beyond the health voucher tax deductible, return unused voucher dollars at the end of the year, and allow tax deferred IRA style Health Saving Accounts. I have full confidence that this will go a lot farther to fixing the problem than simply letting the government take over the whole operation.

Discuss!

2006 wasn't so bad after all

Does everyone remember how back in November of 1995 and again a month later the Air smelled sweeter, the birds sang louder, and according to some reports no one was ever sad? Of course, I'm talking about that glorious governmental shutdown due to budget disputes.

Why so glorious? Well, when the government doesn't operate, it's not oppressing me. or you. or anyone. (Okay okay, so "essential services" including the military and U.S. Marshals were in full force, and conceivably they could still have rounded us up and put us in concentration camps for being Jews, or homosexuals, or intellectuals, or Libertarians, or Star Trek fans. But ours isn't a country where I think we have to worry too much about the hard "German Style" oppression. We go more for the soft "French Style" oppression--a slow but steady increase of state power.)

A government shutdown is better than a congressional recess because, I think most people don't realize that while Congress is the great enabler, it is the administrative state that does the actual thumb twisting of the citizenry. That said, I'll take a stalemate over a one-party government any day of the week and twice on Sundays! (Besides, stalemate is the first step to shutdown). We aren't there yet, but if we're lucky it wont be long:

In the current era of divided government, Bush does the signing or the rejecting, confident so far that despite his poor approval ratings he has enough Republican support to avoid a veto override.

It's far from tidy, and not likely to get any prettier in September, with the president and Congress both pointing toward a spending showdown as well as a resumption of their struggle over Iraq.

I'm just giddy over the possibility of a spending showdown. They build character.

Meanwhile, though the farm and energy bills are in dire straits, the one thing the Dems can get through is an INCREASE IN THE EXECUTIVE'S POWER TO EAVESDROP ON INTERNATIONAL PHONE CALLS WITHOUT A WARRANT? I thought you all got elected on the "Bush is delusional and the war on terror is out of control" platform. So while you are too busy squabbling about mommy issues like CO2 Emissions and farm subsidies, you just rubber stamp another increase in executive power in the name of war. Democrats, your voters would like to have a couple words with you--the second word being "you."