Debauchery

Read Frontline's site on Rockdale county, Georgia, where ``a syphilis outbreak in an affluent community reveals the hidden lives of troubled teenagers''.

Take a look at the Heritage Foundation's 2004 Report on Sex Education:

``On average, [Comprehensive sex-ed/abstinence-plus] curricula devote only 4.7 percent of their page content to the topic of abstinence and zero percent to healthy relationships and marriage. The primary focus of these curricula is on encouraging young people to use contraception. On average, comprehensive sex-ed curricula devote 28.6 percent of their page content to describing contraception and encouraging contraceptive use. Overall, comprehensive sex-ed curricula allocate six times more content to the goal of promoting contraception than to the goal of promoting abstinence. (See Table A and Chart A.)''

``Currently, the government spends at least $4.50 to promote teen contraceptive use for every $1.00 spent to promote teen abstinence.''

``Many comprehensive sex-ed curricula contain additional explicit and offensive material such as discussions of anal sex, homosexual role-playing, and language encouraging mutual masturbation and encouraging teens to watch erotic movies. Much material in "abstinence plus" curricula would be alarming to parents. For example, Be Proud! Be Responsible! instructs teachers to:

Invite [students] to brainstorm ways to increase spontaneity and the likelihood that they'll use condoms.... Examples:... Store condoms under mattress.... Eroticize condom use with partner.... Use condoms as a method of foreplay.... Think up a sexual fantasy using condoms.... Act sexy/sensual when putting the condom on.... Hide them on your body and ask your partner to find it.... Wrap them as a present and give them to your partner before a romantic dinner.... Tease each other manually while putting on the condom.

Similarly, Focus on Kids prompts teachers to:

State that there are other ways to be close to a person without having sexual intercourse. Ask youth to brainstorm ways to be close. The list may include...body massage, bathing together, masturbation, sensuous feeding, fantasizing, watching erotic movies, reading erotic books and magazines....

While the amount of such explicit and shocking material varies widely among the compre- hensive sex-ed curricula reviewed, all of the curricula contained at least some material that would be disturbing to many parents.''

from City Journal, 2005-Mar-8, by Edward Feser:

Alfred Kinsey: The American Lysenko

A biopic and a PBS documentary whitewash the life and record of this fraudulent pervert. | 8 March 2005

Alfred Kinsey is back in vogue. One of the fathers of the sexual revolution, he seemed for a time to have slipped into the margins of public memory, eclipsed by the more colorful avant-gardists of the flesh who succeeded him—Hugh Hefner, say, or even Larry Flynt. Yet those in the business of overthrowing taboos are, in their own way, as capable of honoring the past as any conservative, and it seems Kinsey’s spiritual children have deemed him overdue for the greatest of honors that liberals bestow upon their heroes: the Hollywood biopic. Kinsey’s admirers already regularly compare him to Darwin and Einstein. With Liam Neeson in the film’s starring role, we will doubtless soon be hearing that Kinsey was also a sexual Oskar Schindler, selflessly risking life and reputation to save us from evil Victorian forces.

A new PBS documentary on Kinsey also premiered this month. Both the film and the documentary present the standard liberal “dispassionate man of science versus the forces of prejudice” morality tale—or rather, fairy tale. True, they allow that Kinsey had his faults. But then, the “flawed giant” shtick has now become the customary method of damage control among liberal historians and filmmakers, desperate to restore luster to their tarnished idols. What’s obvious to anyone who examines Kinsey’s life and work dispassionately—indeed, obvious to anyone who watches the documentary itself and sifts the facts it reports from the breathless hagiography—isn’t conceded for a moment: that Kinsey was a fraud whose work did absolutely nothing to provide a genuinely scientific or rational justification for the revolution in morals he nevertheless helped foster.

The worthlessness of Kinsey’s method of carrying out “sex research” ought to have been evident from the start. It involved collecting a vast number of “sexual histories,” detailed accounts of the sex lives of various individuals, revealed to Kinsey and his associates in lengthy interviews. Kinsey would then arrange the data culled from the interviews in tables purporting to show how common various sexual behaviors were within the American population as a whole. The tables went public in Kinsey’s two famous volumes, on male and female sexuality respectively, which alleged that certain behaviors widely regarded as immoral or otherwise deviant—adultery, fornication, homosexual acts of various kinds, pederasty, and so on and on—were far more common than the common man thought (or wanted to think).

That this whole approach is statistically dubious should go without saying. (Some of Kinsey’s nervous financial backers said it anyway, but Kinsey wasn’t of a mind to listen.) People willing to recount the intimate details of their sex lives to perfect strangers are bound to be more likely to engage in other risqué activities. Any account of the sexual behavior of the population at large that rests on such a skewed sample will inevitably overstate the frequency of deviant behavior. But this is far from the end of the story, or of the problems that plague Kinsey’s method. Notoriously, he derived his “sexual histories” largely from persons on the fringes of society—prison inmates and the denizens of gay bars, the latter being in the 1940s and fifties much farther outside the mainstream of American life than they are now.

Then there’s Kinsey’s strange fascination with pedophiles, with the horrific data on the frequency of orgasms in infants and children he derived from interviewing child molesters blandly recorded in his volumes alongside the more ordinary perversions. One particularly monstrous pedophile, a man who had sexual relations with various of his family members and molested hundreds of children, kept regular contact with Kinsey and his associates. They assured him that they wouldn’t turn him in to the authorities, despite the fact that he continued to molest children throughout the time of their correspondence. Kinsey justified such aiding and abetting of criminality in the name of “science,” of course. Never mind that his technique was utterly contemptuous of the science of statistics. Kinsey could not have chosen a less representative sample of American society if he had intentionally set out to do so. (Ahem.)

All of this would be bad enough if Kinsey’s work merely sought to convey some unusual facts and figures. But of course, Kinsey took that work, and his admirers still take it, to have far greater significance. In their view, it amounts to nothing less than a refutation of traditional sexual morality. Kinsey had shown—or so he claimed—that adulterers, homosexuals, and pederasts were as common as rain. How could anyone ever again regard such behavior as abnormal?

This sort of non sequitur might have been forgivable had it come from one of Kinsey’s hapless undergraduates. It is inexcusable coming from the professor himself, or from his more academically inclined followers. Certainly the great sexual moralists of the Western tradition would have found Kinsey’s argument singularly unimpressive. Thomas Aquinas would have patiently explained to Dr. Kinsey and his acolytes that “normal,” as traditional moralists use that term, has nothing to do with frequency of occurrence and everything to do with the natural function of bodily organs and psychological inclinations. Augustine would have explained that if the use of these organs and inclinations in a manner contrary to their natural functions really were as common as Kinsey claimed, this would merely corroborate his thesis that original sin stains human nature, infecting it with concupiscence. Kant would have scratched his head in puzzlement at any suggestion that an appeal to widespread inclinations might justify behaviors that could only amount to the use of other human beings as means to one’s own carnal ends. And even Kinsey’s own mother could have advised him that “everyone does it” proves exactly nothing where morality is concerned.

But seriously to engage the opponents of the sexual revolution at the appropriate moral and philosophical level would be to reveal how contingent, how open to debate, are that revolution’s intellectual foundations. Far better for the revolutionaries, then, to maintain the simple-minded fiction that the revolution took merely another inevitable step in the long March of Science. That way the opponents of the revolution would appear the spiritual heirs of William Jennings Bryan, and everyone could get on with looking for Mr. Goodbar. To complete the picture, however, requires that someone play the role of Clarence Darrow, the cool and collected man of reason whose very sobriety will, by virtue of its contrast with the fevered ravings of the prudish Bryans of the world, bolster the case for sexual “liberation.” Cue Alfred Kinsey. The Neeson movie is, in its way, a remake of Inherit the Wind.

This dispassionate-man-of-reason myth might account for the reluctance of liberals to pay too much attention to just how “liberated” Kinsey was in his own personal life. Even the PBS documentary concedes how controversial Kinsey’s methods were, but it only vaguely alludes to the grislier details of the good doctor’s sexual habits. Some have argued that Kinsey may have been a pedophile himself, though that charge is controversial. He was certainly promiscuously bisexual. He cajoled his male staff members and their wives regularly to sleep with him and with each other, in an ongoing regime of wife-swapping and homosexual experimentation. He arranged for the filming of these antics, and those of any other volunteers he could find, producing a vast collection of pornography to aid him in his “research.”

His masochism knew no bounds. He had a lifelong habit of sticking toothbrushes into his urethra, bristle end first. He circumcised himself with a pocketknife in his bathtub. He liked to suspend himself by a rope tied around his testicles, an activity that once landed him in the hospital. He had pierced his own genitals in so many places that they wound up almost entirely perforated by the end of his life. One can understand why Neeson opted not to recreate all of these tender moments in the life of the “Second Darwin,” but such omissions mean that his performance achieved something less than verisimilitude.

That liberals would dismiss such disturbing details as irrelevant to an evaluation of Kinsey’s work only makes manifest their hypocrisy. If a conservative scholar happens to be religious, liberals reflexively take this to be sufficient reason to doubt the objectivity of his work. If he is white and writes about racial issues, or male and writes about women, they take for granted that he cannot be truly impartial. Such a scholar has an “agenda,” the liberal assures us, and for that reason, whatever he produces is suspect. And should the slightest weakness in his argumentation ever reveal itself, this is taken infallibly to demonstrate that his true concern really was, after all, the rationalization of prejudice rather than the disinterested pursuit of truth.

Yet Kinsey, we’re expected to believe, was never anything less than a scientist. Being personally as far outside the sexual mainstream as one could imagine, Kinsey had every incentive to rig his results in a way that would seem to justify sexual license. Many now acknowledge the serious flaws in his methods; many of his specific results have met with challenges. But none of this matters. He was, we hear again and again and again, right about all the essentials, a pioneer and a liberator, a Jonas Salk of the soul who has made us all healthier and happier.

In fact, Kinsey was nothing more than an American Lysenko, his work as ideologically driven and scientifically insignificant as that of the infamous Soviet hack, who scientifically “proved” that acquired characteristics could be inherited and thus that the commissars really could engineer a “New Man.” The only “beneficiaries” of Kinsey’s revolution, if that’s what they are, are people pretty much like him: oversexed men, now free to use other human beings as sexual playthings and then toss them aside like so much rubbish as they move on to the next conquest, unconstrained by any legal, financial, or moral obligations to the objects of their lust. Every unborn child scraped out of its mother’s womb, every AIDS patient wasting away in suffering, testifies to Kinsey’s true legacy. And among the living, it is those whom liberals claim to champion—the poor, especially fatherless black teenagers; unwed mothers; lonely women abandoned by husbands who’ve decided to trade down for something more Paris Hiltonish—who have perhaps suffered the most from Kinsey’s transvaluation of values.

from Reuters, 2010-Feb-2, by Anne Harding:

Abstinence-only program helps kids postpone sex

NEW YORK - Abstinence-only sex education can work -- if it's based on established strategies for helping young people change their attitudes about other types of risky behavior like smoking and drinking, new research shows.

African-American sixth- and seventh-graders who completed the eight-hour program, which involved a series of brief activities and games (and no lecturing), were one-third less likely to start having sex in the next two years compared to their peers who took part in a similar program that targeted health issues unrelated to sex.

"The evidence is solid, and it's new, because this has never been done before," says Dr. John B. Jemmott III of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who helped conduct the new study and design the intervention, along with his wife Dr. Loretta S Jemmott and their colleague Dr. Geoffrey T. Fong of the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

Despite the massive amounts of money the United States has poured into promoting abstinence-until-marriage programs, there have been only a handful of flawed studies investigating the effectiveness of such programs, the investigators note.

These federally supported programs -- initiated during the Clinton years at the behest of Congress -- follow a series of guidelines focusing on the importance of abstaining from sex until marriage, and underscoring the allegedly harmful physical and psychological effects of premarital sex and out-of-wedlock childbirth. "They're not based on an understanding of the motivation of children to have sex or to practice abstinence, and that's what this intervention was based on," John Jemmott said.

He and his colleagues designed their program using techniques proven to help adolescents avoid risky behaviors like cigarette smoking, drinking and drug use. Classes were conducted in groups of six to 12 children, with activities that included listing the pros and cons of abstinence versus the pros and cons of having sex. "This activity is in the context of a whole intervention that begins with a consideration of what are their goals and dreams for the future, where do they see themselves five years from now, where do they see themselves 10 years from now," Jemmott explained.

These and similar activities, he said, help young people realize on their own that abstinence is likely to be the better choice. Other activities included role-playing and games designed to help participants understand and resist peer pressure.

Jemmott and his team assigned 662 children to this program; an eight-hour "safer sex only" program designed to promote condom use; an eight- or 12-hour intervention combining both approaches; or a control group in which children underwent an eight-hour educational program on health issues unrelated to sex.

Among the 132 boys and girls who completed the abstinence-only program, about a third said they started having sex within the following 24 months, compared to half of the 129 control group participants. Around 20 percent of the abstinence-only group reported having sex during the past three months, compared to around 30 percent of the control group.

One criticism leveled at abstinence-until-marriage programs is that they discourage condom use and put kids at greater risk of sexually transmitted disease if they do decide to have sex, Jemmott said. But the current study found no evidence that the abstinence-only program had any effect on condom use. Students who participated in the comprehensive programs were slightly less likely than control group participants to report having multiple partners.

Getting young people to hold off on having sex can have major beneficial consequences down the road, Jemmott noted; it reduces their risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease and getting pregnant, while the older someone is when they do have sex for the first time, the more likely they will be to use contraceptives.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, February 2010.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Dec-18, by Peggy Noonan:

The Adam Lambert Problem
"Wrong track" poll numbers aren't just about the economy.

The news came in numbers and the numbers were fairly grim, all the grimmer for being unsurprising. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll reported this week that more than half of Americans, 55%, think America is on the wrong track, with only 33% saying it is going in the right direction. A stunning 66% say they're not confident that their children's lives will be better than their own (27% are).

It is another in a long trail of polls that show a clear if occasionally broken decline in American optimism. The poll was discussed on TV the other day, and everyone said those things everyone says: "People are afraid they'll lose their jobs or their houses." "It's health care. Every uninsured person feels they're one illness away from bankruptcy."

All too true. The economy has always had an impact on the general American mood, and the poll offered data to buttress the reader's assumption that economic concerns are driving pessimism. Fifty-one percent of those interviewed said they disapproved of the president's handling of the economy, versus 42% approving.

But something tells me this isn't all about money. It's possible, and I can't help but think likely, that the poll is also about other things, and maybe even primarily about other things.

Sure, Americans are worried about long-term debt and endless deficits. We're worried about taxes and the burden we're bequeathing to our children, and their children.

But we are concerned about other things, too, and there are often signs in various polls that those things may dwarf economic concerns. Americans are worried about the core and character of the American nation, and about our culture.

It is one thing to grouse that dreadful people who don't care about us control our economy, but another, and in a way more personal, thing to say that people who don't care about us control our culture. In 2009 this was perhaps most vividly expressed in the Adam Lambert Problem. More on that in a moment.

America is good at making practical compromises, and one of the compromises we've made in the area of arts and entertainment is captured in the words "We don't care what you do in New York." That was said to me years ago by a social conservative who was explaining that he and his friends don't wish to impose their cultural sensibilities on a city that is uninterested in them, and that the city, in turn, shouldn't impose its cultural sensibilities on them. He was speaking metaphorically; "New York" meant "wherever the cultural left happily lives."

For years now, without anyone declaring it or even noticing it, we've had a compromise on television. Do you want, or will you allow into your home, dramas and comedies that, however good or bad, are graphically violent, highly sexualized, or reflective of cultural messages that you believe may be destructive? Fine, get cable. Pay for it. Buy your premium package, it's your money, spend it as you like.

But the big broadcast networks are for everyone. They are free, they are available on every television set in the nation, and we watch them with our children. The whole family's watching. Higher, stricter standards must maintain.

This was behind the resentment at the Adam Lambert incident on ABC in November. The compromise was breached. It was a broadcast network, it was prime time, it was the American Music Awards featuring singers your 11-year-old wants to see, and your 8-year-old. And Mr. Lambert came on and—again, in front of your children, in the living room, in the middle of your peaceful evening—uncorked an act in which he, in the words of various news reports the next day, performed "faux oral sex" featuring "S&M play," "bondage gear," "same-sex makeouts" and "walking a man and woman around the stage on a leash."

People were offended, and they complained. Mr. Lambert seemed surprised and puzzled. With an idiot's logic that was nonetheless logic, he suggested he was the focus of bigotry: They let women act perverse on TV all the time, so why can't a gay man do it? Fifteen hundred callers didn't see it as he did and complained to ABC, which was negligent but in the end responsive: They changed the West Coast feed and apparently kept Mr. Lambert off "Good Morning America."

Mr. Lambert's act left viewers feeling not just offended but assaulted. Again, "we don't care what you do in New York," but don't include us in it, don't bring it into our homes. Our children are here.

I don't mean to make too much of it. In the great scheme of things a creepy musical act doesn't matter much. But increasingly people feel at the mercy of the Adam Lamberts, who of course view themselves, when criticized, as victims of prudery and closed-mindedness. America is not prudish or closed-minded, it is exhausted. It cannot be exaggerated, how much Americans feel besieged by the culture of their own country, and to what lengths they have to go to protect their children from it.

It's things like this, every bit as much as taxes and spending, that leave people feeling jarred and dismayed, and worried about the future of their country.

Truly, 2009 was a bad year for public behavior.

There were this year the party-crashing Salahis and their amoral assumption that their needs—fame and fortune, which are the same as Adam Lambert's—trump everyone else's. You want public order and security? We want a reality show. And there was their honest and very modern shock that people were criticizing them. "It's ruined our lives," Michaele Salahi told the Today show in a bid for sympathy. She and her husband in turn were reminiscent of the single woman who likes to have babies, and this year had eight, through in vitro fertilization, and apparently expected to win public praise.

All these things—plus Wall Street and Washington and the general sense that most of our great institutions have forgotten their essential mission—add up and produce a fear that the biggest deterioration in America isn't economic but something else, something more characterological.

I'd like to see a poll on this. Yes or no: Have we become a more vulgar country? Are we coarser than, say, 50 years ago? Do we talk more about sensitivity and treat others less sensitively? Do you think standards of public behavior are rising or falling? Is there something called the American Character, and do you think it has, the past half-century, improved or degenerated? If the latter, what are the implications of this? Do you sense, as you look around you, that each year we have less or more of the glue that holds a great nation together? Is there less courtesy in America now than when you were a child, or more? Bonus question: Is "Excuse me" a request or a command?

So much always roils us in America, and so much always will. But maybe as 2010 begins and the '00s recede, we should think more about the noneconomic issues that leave us uneasy, and that need our attention. Not everything in America comes down to money. Not everything ever did.

from the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary, 2010-Jan-14, by Stephen Moore:

ObamaCare vs. Marriage

Marriage is a revered institution in America but not apparently under the Congressional health care legislation, which contains steep "marriage penalty" taxes, i.e. tax burdens that only get heavier when a couple says, "I do."

Under the Senate bill, if family income rises above a certain level, couples lose benefits or have to pay higher taxes. That's an incentive for dual-income couples to skip the marriage ceremony altogether and continue to file as singles. For cohabitators, the savings could amount to thousands of dollars a year.

Take two low-wage workers who are considering marriage. In 2016, if each has an income $11,800, they would each have to pay $248 as singles for government-approved health insurance. Married, their joint income climbs to $23,600 and they would have to pay $1,109 -- a ding of more than $600 annually.

Middle-class workers could get hit even harder. According to the Congressional Budget Office, a single individual earning $35,400 -- three times the poverty rate -- would be obligated to pay $3,611 for mandatory health insurance. But two such individuals, if married, would lose their eligibility for government subsidies and their mandatory health insurance payments would rise to $13,100 -- a whopping $5,878 annual marriage penalty.

An analysis done by Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, finds that the Senate health bill "will cause the 7% of Americans who are eligible to receive the subsidy to pay more for health insurance just by getting married." Call it marital non-bliss.

"I've always argued," fumes former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, "that our tax code rewards vice and punishes virtue," with the marriage penalty being a typically perverse example. And ObamaCare would only make it worse.

from the Associated Press, 2010-Mar-10, by Shelia Byrd:

Miss. school prom off after lesbian's date request

JACKSON, Miss. — A northern Mississippi school district decided Wednesday not to host a high school prom after a lesbian student demanded she be able to attend with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.

The Itawamba County school district's policy requires that senior prom dates be of the opposite sex. The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi had given the district until Wednesday to change that policy and allow 18-year-old Constance McMillen to escort her girlfriend, who is also a student, to the dance on April 2.

Instead, the school board met and issued a statement announcing it wouldn't host the event at Itawamba County Agricultural High School in Fulton, "due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events."

The statement didn't mention McMillen or the ACLU. When asked by The Associated Press if McMillen's demand led to the cancellation, school board attorney Michele Floyd said she could only reference the statement.

"It is our hope that private citizens will organize an event for the juniors and seniors," district officials said in the statement. "However, at this time, we feel that it is in the best interest of the Itawamba County School District, after taking into consideration the education, safety and well being of our students."

The ACLU said a school policy banning same-sex prom dates violated McMillen's constitutional rights.

Kristy Bennett, legal director for the ACLU of Mississippi, said the district was trying to avoid the issue.

"But that doesn't take away their legal obligations to treat all the students fairly," Bennett said. "On Constance's behalf, this is unfair to her. All she's trying to do is assert her rights."

Bennett said she wouldn't allow McMillen to comment on Wednesday, saying "she's still trying to process" the district's actions. Calls to McMillen's cell phone went unanswered.

Itawamba County is a rural area of about 23,000 people in north Mississippi near the Alabama state line. It borders Pontotoc County, Miss., where more than a decade ago school officials were sued in federal court over their practice of student-led intercom prayer and Bible classes.

Anna Watson, a 17-year-old junior at the high school, was looking forward to the prom, especially since the town's only hotspot is the bowling alley, she said.

"I am a little bummed out about it. I guess it's a decision that had to be made. Either way someone was going to get disappointed — either Constance was or we were," Watson said. "I don't agree with homosexuality, but I can't change what another person thinks or does."

Other students are on McMillen's side.

McKenzie Chaney, 16, said she wasn't planning to attend the prom, but "it's kind of ridiculous that they can't let her wear the tuxedo and it all be over with."

A Feb. 5 memo to students laid out the criteria for bringing a date to the prom, and one requirement was that the person must be of the opposite sex.

The ACLU said McMillen approached school officials shortly before the memo went out because she knew same-sex dates had been banned in the past. The ACLU said district officials told McMillen she and her girlfriend wouldn't be allowed to arrive together, that she would not be allowed to wear a tuxedo, and that she and her girlfriend might be asked to leave if their presence made any other students "uncomfortable."

McMillen said she feared she would be thrown out of the prom because "we do live in the Bible Belt."

from the Associated Press via the New York Times, 2010-Jan-1:

Birth Mother Defies Order to Give Child to Ex-Partner

A woman at the center of a legal dispute with her former partner defied a court order to give up custody of her 7-year-old daughter on Friday, a lawyer said.

A judge in Vermont had ordered the woman, Lisa Miller, to turn over her daughter, Isabella, to Janet Jenkins at 1 p.m. at the home of Ms. Jenkins's parents in Falls Church, Va.

Ms. Miller did not show up with the girl, said Sarah Star, Ms. Jenkins's lawyer.

The Jenkins family called the police, and a detective is investigating, said Officer Tawny Wright, a Fairfax County police spokeswoman. For the time being, Officer Wright said, the case remains a civil matter.

Ms. Miller and Ms. Jenkins were joined in a civil union in Vermont in 2000. Isabella was born to Ms. Miller through artificial insemination in 2002. The couple broke up in 2003, and Ms. Miller moved to Virginia, renounced homosexuality and became an evangelical Christian.

When Judge William D. Cohen of Vermont Family Court dissolved the couple's civil union, he awarded custody to Ms. Miller but granted liberal visitation rights to Ms. Jenkins.

Judge Cohen awarded custody to Ms. Jenkins on Nov. 20 after finding Ms. Miller in contempt of court for denying Ms. Jenkins access to the girl.

The Supreme Courts of Virginia and Vermont ruled in favor of Ms. Jenkins on visitation rights, saying the case was the same as a custody dispute between a heterosexual couple. The case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which declined to hear arguments on it.

Ms. Miller's last known address is in Forest, Va. A telephone number listed for her at that address was unanswered Friday. Her lawyer, Mathew D. Staver, did not respond to a request through an assistant for comment.

from the Associated Press via the Manchester Union-Leader, 2009-Jan-1:

Gay marriage became legal at midnight in NH

Concord – Jubilant gay couples have rung in the New Year in New Hampshire with wedding vows to celebrate the state's new law legalizing same-sex marriage.

At midnight, New Hampshire joined Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and Iowa in allowing gay marriage.

About 15 couples braved the cold to exchange vows outside the New Hampshire State House in Concord. Others planned private ceremonies around the state.

The law grants no new rights to gays but eliminates the separate status for civil unions.

Couples already in civil unions have three options to convert their statuses to marriages. They can have marriage ceremonies, file marriage paperwork with their town clerks to convert their statuses during 2010 or wait until the unions are automatically converted in 2011.

from the Times of London, 2010-Mar-1, by Sophie Tedmanson:

5,200 Australians strip for art's sake

Sydney -- There were all shapes and sizes – the large and the small, the young and the old, and even a heavily pregnant woman who had re-scheduled the birth of her twins so she could take part.

But the one thing the 5,200-odd people who posed for the American artist Spencer Tunick at the Sydney Opera House earlier today had in common was that they were all totally naked.

Thousands had gathered just before dawn on Monday, a mild and overcast first day of autumn, to take part in the shoot by the renowned (and controversial) photographer at one of Australia’s most iconic landmarks. Titled Mardi Gras: The Base, the shoot was commissioned by Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival.

As the sun rose, Tunick instructed participants – many of who were clapping and cheering to support each other – to do a number of poses on the steps of the famous Sydney landmark, from standing up, lying down, and even embracing cheek to cheek, for over an hour.

"I want all couples to embrace and kiss, all friends to kiss and all strangers to do whatever they want," Tunick said as he directed the crowd.

Tunick’s art is so popular it seems participants will do anything to take part. Sydney couple Amanda and Chris Burke postponed the birth of their twins so they would not miss out on being in a Tunick photograph.

“As soon as we’ve had our picture, we will be running for a taxi,” Ms Burke told the Sun Herald newspaper in Sydney as she was photographed holding her enormously pregnant nude stomach. "We've always admired Spencer’s work so we’re willing to put anything on hold – including the birth of our twins.”

Many participants said they were surprised at how asexual the shoot was, despite the thousands of nude bodies congregating in one place, and others found it liberating.

Student, Art Rush, 19, said he thought it would be “all old people and nudists”, but was thrilled to participate. "I'll never get a chance to do this again, it's not worth being inhibited,'' Mr Rush said. "It doesn't feel sexual, it just feels tribal, a gathering of humanity.”

Steven Anglier, who wore a wig so he could stand out in the photo, agreed. "I thought it could be a bit awkward, but it's funny because when you're naked and everybody else is naked, you feel like you're dressed, because everybody looks the same," he said. "It's really a weird experience because you think there could be something sexual behind, but there's not."

Tunick, 43, says his work is not about exhibitionism or eroticism but instead reveals the vulnerability of life in a rough city landscape. However sometimes authorities have disagreed, particularly in the US, where Tunick has been arrested seven times.

Tunick has been documenting the nude figure in public through photography and video since 1992 and has hosted up to 100 installations involving thousands of naked people in countries around the world including the US, Britain, Brazil, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, France and Holland. His largest work to date involved 18,000 people posing in Mexico City in 2007.

The Opera House shoot was Tunick’s first installation in Sydney, but he has worked in Australia before, capturing 4,500 people posing nude in Melbourne in 2001.

Tunick said today’s installation “went well”. “I’m just so lucky to be able to work with so many naked gay, straight and transgender people,” he said.

from the Weekly Standard online, 2009-Oct-3, by Rachel Abrams:

This Is Not Your Father's School Safety

The Van Jones flameout was spectacular, but keep watching for the Kevin Jennings conflagration, which could be just as brilliant. Jennings's June appointment as Obama's school-safety czar was greeted by the vast right-wing conspiracy with some outrage, as members of its bullying anti-gay homophobic ranks who've been following his career for years turned up info on some sketchy aspects of his past. And it seems there's more back there than just the saga of youthful error -- when, as a 24-year-old closeted gay teacher he urged a teenaged student to be sure to use a condom when having sex with an older man -- that's been making the rounds and giving Media Matters the vapors for the last few days.

For instance, there's his encomium of Harry Hay [link is mine -AMPP Ed.], architect of the Mattachine Society (about which read here), fellow-traveler of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, and author, among other things, of this gob-smacking passage: “. . . if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world. And they would be welcoming this, and welcoming the opportunity for young gay kids to have the kind of experience that they would need.”

Jennings, addressing a conference of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, of which he was the founder and executive director, saluted Mr. Hay:

One of the people that's always inspired me is Harry Hay . . . . Everybody thought Harry Hay was crazy in 1948 . . . and they were right, he was crazy. . . . All of us who are thinking this way are crazy, because you know what? Sane people keep the world the same sh*tty old way it is now. It's the people who think, `No, I can envision a day when straight people say, `So what if you're promoting homosexuality?' . . . And think how much can change in one lifetime if in Harry Hay's one very short life, he saw change from not even one person willing to join him to a million people willing to travel to Washington to join him.

Actually, Harry Hay lived to the ripe old age of 90 -- and who knows how many scores of 14-year-old boys he managed to befriend along the way -- but who's counting? As I write, Jennings hasn't yet recanted his support for the life-long devotee of man-boy love, but there's always tomorrow.

I'll leave it to Jennings's enemies on the right to keep digging. I'm more interested in what constitutes his view of school safety. And it's with Queering Elementary Education -- a compendium of essays that markets itself this way: “Queering education means bracketing our simplest classroom activities in which we routinely equate sexual identities with sexual acts, privilege the heterosexual condition, and presume sexual destinies. Queer teachers are those who develop curriculum and pedagogy that afford every child dignity rooted in self-worth and esteem for others” -- that we come to the nub of it. “If we mean it when we make students pledge allegiance to a flag that promises `liberty and justice for all' at the start of each school day,” he writes in the forward, “then the choice is clear: we must address antigay bigotry, and we must do it as soon as students start going to school.”

Got that? School safety used to mean walk, don't run, in the halls. Always take a partner to the bathroom. Don't eat the paste. Don't put the crayons in your mouth. If they fall on the floor, pick them up, so Miss Caruso doesn't slip on one and hurt herself. Now it means “ending antigay bias in K-12 schools.” (And maybe that bathroom-partner thing, too.)

from the Washington Post, 2009-Mar-15, by Jose Antonio Vargas and Darryl Fears, with Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta contributing:

HIV/AIDS Rate in D.C. Hits 3%
Considered a 'Severe' Epidemic, Every Mode of Transmission Is Increasing, City Study Finds

At least 3 percent of District residents have HIV or AIDS, a total that far surpasses the 1 percent threshold that constitutes a "generalized and severe" epidemic, according to a report scheduled to be released by health officials tomorrow.

That translates into 2,984 residents per every 100,000 over the age of 12 -- or 15,120 -- according to the 2008 epidemiology report by the District's HIV/AIDS office.

"Our rates are higher than West Africa," said Shannon L. Hader, director of the District's HIV/AIDS Administration, who once led the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's work in Zimbabwe. "They're on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya."

"We have every mode of transmission" -- men having sex with men, heterosexual and injected drug use -- "going up, all on the rise, and we have to deal with them," Hader said.

In addition to the epidemiology report, the city is also releasing a study on heterosexual behavior tomorrow. That report, funded by the CDC, was conducted by the George Washington University School of Health and Health Services.

Among its findings: Almost half of those who had connections to the parts of the city with the highest AIDS prevalence and poverty rates said they had overlapping sexual partners within the past 12 months, three in five said they were aware of their own HIV status, and three in 10 said they had used a condom the last time they had sex.

Together, the reports offer a sobering assessment in a city that for years has stumbled in combating HIV and AIDS and is just beginning to regain its footing. A more accurate accounting of the crisis offers a chance to contain what is largely a preventable disease.

So urgent is the concern that the HIV/AIDS Administration took the relatively rare step of couching the city's infections in a percentage, harkening to 1992, when San Francisco, around the height of its epidemic, announced that 4 percent of its population was HIV positive. But the report also cautions that "we know that the true number of residents currently infected and living with HIV is certainly higher."

The District's report found a 22 percent increase in HIV and AIDS cases from the 12,428 reported at the end of 2006, touching every race and sex across population and neighborhoods, with an epidemic level in all but one of the eight wards. Black men, with an infection rate of nearly 7 percent, carry the weight of the disease, according to the report, which also underscores that the District's HIV and AIDS population is aging. Almost 1 in 10 residents between the ages of 40 and 49 has the virus.

The report notes that "this growing population will have significant implications on the District's health care system" as residents face chronic medical problems associated with aging and fighting a disease that compromises the immune system.

Men having sex with men has remained the disease's leading mode of transmission. Heterosexual transmission and injection drug use closely follow, the report says. Three percent of black women carry the virus, partly a result of the increase in heterosexual transmissions.

"This is very, very depressing news, especially considering HIV's profound impact on minority communities," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Health's program on infectious diseases. "And remember: The city's numbers are just based on people who've gotten tested."

Ron Simmons, who is black, gay and HIV positive, said he's not shocked by the study's findings. "You have a high incidence of HIV among African Americans, and a lot of African Americans live in the city," said Simmons, who is a member of a black gay support group. "D.C. also has a high number of gay men, and HIV is high among gay black men."

Charlene Cotton, a D.C. resident who got an HIV positive diagnosis five years ago, said breaking the taboo on discussing HIV is the key to moving forward. "You need to start at home and talk about it," Cotton said. "It's so hush-hush."

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said he is aware that some advocates have called on elected officials and others to more aggressively and publicly address the crisis. He praised the city's recent efforts, however, and expressed his frustration about the struggle ahead.

"In order to solve an issue as complex as HIV and AIDS, you have to step up," he said. "It's the mayor and certainly other elected officials. But it's also the community. You have this problem affecting us, and you tell people how serious it is and it literally goes in one ear and out the other."

David Catania (I-At Large), chairman of the D.C. Council's health committee, said that although the District's testing and monitoring have improved in the past two years, the AIDS office is still playing catch-up. The city was in the forefront of the crisis when it created the office in 1986, but it fell far behind. Hader took control in 2007. She is its 12th director and the third in five years.

"Frankly, there can be no excuse for the state of the HIV/AIDS Administration that I found in 2005," Catania said. "I cannot speak to why it was not a priority previously. For years prior to 2005, mayors and previous individuals allowed things to exist in an unacceptable way. And I do blame this government for part of the epidemic we're confronting."

Until recently, the District's AIDS office lacked a fully staffed surveillance unit to collect, analyze and distribute data. Inevitably, the office lost credibility, and although it has received millions in federal and local funds -- $95 million this year -- some care providers questioned whether resources were being properly allocated.

Critics also say congressional control over the District had restricted the AIDS office's ability to combat the virus among drug injection users by banning the use of local tax dollars for a needle exchange program. After almost a decade, the ban was lifted last year.

The study is the most precise count to date, according to the authors. The document is an update of a breakthrough 2007 report, which brought into clearer focus a picture of a city in the grip of a complex and "modern epidemic" that had traveled from a mostly gay population to the general one and disproportionately hit blacks.

For years, District HIV/AIDS workers depended on estimates that put the rate at 1 of 20 living with HIV and 1 of 50 living with AIDS.

The current study notes that its tracking occurred as the city made a switch from a code-based counting system to a name-based one. The surveillance unit interviewed medical providers to find unreported cases, pressed providers who did not consistently report to the administration and searched databases for unreported cases.

More than 4 percent of blacks in the city are known to have HIV, along with almost 2 percent of Latinos and 1.4 percent of whites. More than three-quarters -- 76 percent -- of the HIV infected are black, 70 percent are men and 70 percent are age 40 and older.

Heterosexual sex was the principal mode of transmission for blacks with the disease, 33 percent. Men having sex with men was the chief mode of transmission for white residents, 78 percent; and Latinos, 49 percent. Black women represent more than a quarter of HIV cases in the District, and most, about 58 percent, were infected through heterosexual sex. About a quarter of black women were infected through drug use.

The companion study, "Heterosexual Relationships and HIV in Washington, D.C.," is a detailed look at those whose social networks include individuals at high risk of infection and aims to analyze people's choices and actions before they set foot in a clinic or get HIV.

The 750-participant study targeted four areas in wards 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8 with both high rates of AIDS and poverty. Salaries of a majority of participants -- 60 percent -- were under $10,000 yearly; a similar percentage had never been married; and 43 percent were unemployed.

The survey's methodology -- interviewing those with connections to high-risk networks rather than those who exhibit high-risk behavior themselves -- highlights a shift in the direction by the CDC, which developed the survey protocol.

There is good news in the AIDS office's report: More people are getting HIV diagnoses early, while they are still healthy, as a result of a policy of routine testing implemented by the city in mid-2006. Publicly supported HIV testing expanded by 70 percent.

Walter Smith, executive director of the DC Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, praised the study but also lamented that it did not offer more current data on new infections. The report said that detailed information on new HIV cases is not included because the transition from the code-based tracking system to a name-based one takes five years to be mature, according to the CDC.

"I'm not criticizing them for that," he said. "But we've had more testing, more needle exchange programs. We don't have, at this moment, any understanding about what impact the new programs have had."

from the Associated Press, 2009-Mar-18, by Mike Stobbe:

US births break record; 40 pct. are out-of-wedlock

ATLANTA (AP) - More babies were born in the United States in 2007 than any year in the nation's history, topping the peak during the baby boom 50 years earlier, federal researchers reported Wednesday.

There is both good and bad news from the more than 4.3 million births:

• The U.S. population is more than replacing itself, a healthy trend.

• However, the teen birth rate was up for the second year in a row.

The birth rate rose slightly for women of all ages, and births to unwed mothers reached an all-time high of about 40 percent, continuing a trend begun years ago. More than three-quarters of these women were 20 or older.

For a variety of reasons, it's become more acceptable for women to have babies without a husband, said Duke University's S. Philip Morgan, a leading fertility researcher.

Even happy couples may be living together without getting married, experts say. And more women—especially those in their 30s and 40s—are choosing to have children despite their single status.

The new numbers indicate the nation is experiencing a baby boomlet with fertility rates higher in every racial group. On average, a U.S. woman has 2.1 babies in her lifetime. The highest fertility rates were among Hispanics.

But it's not clear the boomlet will last long. Some experts think birth rates are already declining because of the economic recession that began in late 2007.

"I expect they'll go back down. The lowest birth rates recorded in the United States occurred during the Great Depression—and that was before modern contraception," said Dr. Carol Hogue, an Emory University professor of maternal and child health.

The 2007 statistical snapshot reflected a relatively good economy coupled with cultural trends that promoted childbirth, she and others noted.

Meanwhile, U.S. abortions have been dropping to their lowest levels in decades, according to other reports. Some have attributed the abortion decline to better use of contraceptives, but other experts have wondered if the rise in births might indicate a failure in proper use of contraceptives. Some earlier studies have shown declining availability of abortions.

Cultural attitudes may be a more likely explanation. Morgan noted the pregnancy of Bristol Palin, the unmarried teen daughter of former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The young woman had a baby boy in December, and plans for a wedding with the father, Levi Johnston, were scrapped.

"She's the poster child for what you do when you get pregnant now," Morgan said.

Teen women tend to follow what their older sisters do, so perhaps it's not surprising that teen births are going up just like births to older women, said Sarah Brown, the chief executive for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

Indeed, it's harder to understand why teen births had been declining for about 15 years before the recent uptick, she said. It may have been due to a concentrated societal effort to reduce teen births in the 1990s that has waned in recent years, she said.

The statistics are based on a review of most 2007 birth certificates by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The numbers also showed:

• Cesarean section deliveries continue to rise, now accounting for almost a third of all births. Health officials say that rate is much higher than is medically necessary. About 34 percent of births to black women were by C-section, more than any other racial group. But geographically, the percentages were highest in Puerto Rico, at 49 percent, and New Jersey, at 38 percent.

• The pre-term birth rate, for infants delivered at less than 37 weeks of pregnancy, declined slightly. It had been generally increasing since the early 1980s. Experts said they aren't sure why it went down.

• Among the states, Utah continued to have the highest birth rate and Vermont the lowest.

CDC officials noted that despite the record number of births, this is nothing like what occurred in the 1950s, when a much smaller population of women were having nearly four children each, on average. That baby boom quickly transformed society, affecting everything from school construction to consumer culture.

Today, U.S. women are averaging 2.1 children each. That's the highest level it's been since the early 1970s, but is a relatively small increase from the rate it had hovered at for more than 10 years and is hardly transforming.

"It's the tiniest of baby booms," said Morgan in agreement. "This is not an earthquake; it's a slight tremor."

from New York Times, 2009-May-13, by Gardiner Harris:

Out-of-Wedlock Birthrates Are Soaring, U.S. Reports

WASHINGTON — Unmarried mothers gave birth to 4 out of every 10 babies born in the United States in 2007, a share that is increasing rapidly both here and abroad, according to government figures released Wednesday.

Before 1970, most unmarried mothers were teenagers. But in recent years the birthrate among unmarried women in their 20s and 30s has soared — rising 34 percent since 2002, for example, in women ages 30 to 34. In 2007, women in their 20s had 60 percent of all babies born out of wedlock, teenagers had 23 percent and women 30 and older had 17 percent.

Much of the increase in unmarried births has occurred among parents who are living together but are not married, cohabitation arrangements that tend to be less stable than marriages, studies show.

The pattern has been particularly pronounced among Hispanic women, climbing 20 percent from 2002 to 2006, the most recent year for which racial breakdowns are available. Eleven percent of unmarried Hispanic women had a baby in 2006, compared with 7 percent of unmarried black women and 3 percent of unmarried white women, according to government data drawn from birth certificates.

Titled “Changing Patterns of Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States,” the report was released by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Out-of-wedlock births are also rising in much of the industrialized world: in Iceland, 66 percent of children are born to unmarried mothers; in Sweden, the share is 55 percent. (In other societies, though, the phenomenon remains rare — just 2 percent in Japan, for example.)

But experts say the increases in the United States are of greater concern because couples in many other countries tend to be more stable and government support for children is often higher.

“In Sweden, you see very little variation in the outcome of children based on marital status. Everybody does fairly well,” said Wendy Manning, a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “In the U.S., there's much more disparity.”

Children born out of wedlock in the United States tend to have poorer health and educational outcomes than those born to married women, but that may be because unmarried mothers tend to share those problems.

Decades ago, pregnant women often married before giving birth. But the odds of separation and divorce in unions driven by pregnancy are relatively high. So when a woman gets pregnant, are children better off if their parents marry, cohabitate or do neither? That question is still unresolved, Dr. Manning said.

Some experts speculate that marriage or cohabitation cements financial and emotional bonds between children and fathers that survive divorce or separation, improving outcomes for children. But since familial instability is often damaging to children, they may be better off with mothers who never cohabitate or marry than with those who form unions that are later broken.

“There is no consensus on those questions,” Dr. Manning said.

In an enduring mystery, birthrates for unmarried women in the United States stabilized between 1995 and 2002 and declined among unmarried teenagers and black women. But after 2002, the overall birthrate among unmarried women resumed its steady climb. In 1940, just 3.8 percent of births were to unmarried women.

The District of Columbia and Mississippi had the highest rates of out-of-wedlock births in 2007: 59 percent and 54 percent, respectively. The lowest rate, 20 percent, was in Utah. In New York, the rate was 41 percent; in New Jersey, 34 percent; and in Connecticut, 35 percent. Sarah S. Brown, chief executive of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit advocacy group, said sex and pregnancy were handled far too cavalierly in the United States, where rates of unplanned pregnancies, births and abortions are far higher than those of other industrialized nations.

“These trends may meet the needs of young adults,” she said, “but it's far from clear that it's helpful for children.”

from the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web, 2009-Oct-1, by James Taranto:

Triskaidekaphile
Roman Polanski's victim was only 13. To some of his supporters, that's a mitigating factor.

While we were away, Roman Polanski--famous movie director, infamous sex offender and fugitive from justice--was arrested in Switzerland on a 1978 American warrant. Here's the background, from London's Guardian:

Polanski was 44 and already a twice-Oscar-nominated director in March 1977 when he had sex with . . . a 13-year-old model he had hired for a photoshoot, at Jack Nicholson's house in Los Angeles. He has argued that the sex was consensual, saying the girl was "not unresponsive," though [she] said he drugged her with painkillers and champagne before carrying out a "very scary" assault.

The director pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse in a deal with prosecutors that saw them drop charges of rape, drugging and sodomy, which could have carried a life sentence, but fled the country in February 1978 when it became apparent that he was likely to serve time in prison.

Virtually the entire entertainment industry, along with a few journalists, has gone to work making excuses for Polanski. Some of those excuses are quite shocking. One line of argument actually ends up treating the fact that the victim was only 13 as if it were a mitigating factor.

"I know it wasn't rape-rape," the Guardian quotes entertainer Whoopi Goldberg as saying. "It was something else but I don't believe it was rape-rape. He went to jail and when they let him out he was like, 'You know what, this guy's going to give me a hundred years in jail. I'm not staying.' So that's why he left." The Associated Press quotes Debra Tate, sister of Polanski's second wife, Sharon Tate, who "says Polanski did not forcibly have sex with the girl, calling it a 'consensual matter.' "

Again, the girl was 13, far below the age of consent. As a matter of law, it could not have been a "consensual matter." It is true that the use of force is not a necessary element of statutory rape, the crime to which Polanski pleaded guilty before fleeing the country to escape the consequences of his guilt. It does not follow from this, however, that the crime did not involve violence.

The victim's grand-jury testimony was unsealed a few years ago and posted on The Smoking Gun. Her description of the encounter is consistent with forcible rape, or "rape-rape" in Goldberg's ugly formulation. The victim testified that Polanski gave her champagne and methaqualone, a sedative popularly known as Quaaludes that was often used recreationally in the 1970s. She testified that despite being under the influence of these substances, she said "no" at each stage of the sexual encounter: when he kissed her, when he placed his mouth on her genitals (or, as she put it in a heartbreaking malapropism, when "he started performing cuddliness"), when he performed intercourse, and when he sodomized her.

This testimony is not tantamount to a conviction, but neither is a plea bargain an exoneration. Had Polanski been tried on the charge of forcible rape, he would have had the opportunity to mount a defense, and he might have convinced a jury that there was reasonable doubt of his guilt. On the other hand, he might have been convicted.

In a similar case involving an adult victim, the rape charge might have been plea-bargained down to assault or reckless endangerment--lesser but still violent crimes. Sex with a child is so grievously wrong that it is a crime even when it doesn't involve violence. It is a perversion of logic to minimize Polanski's crime merely because the victim was young enough that she could have been raped without force.

The other contender for most twisted Polanski defense comes from the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum, in a Web post titled "The Outrageous Arrest of Roman Polanski":

He can be blamed, it is true, for his original, panicky decision to flee. But for this decision I see mitigating circumstances, not least an understandable fear of irrational punishment. Polanski's mother died in Auschwitz. His father survived Mauthausen. He himself survived the Krakow ghetto, and later emigrated from communist Poland.

To cite the Holocaust as an excuse just seems obscene. Hitler has a lot to answer for, but all his crimes were committed long before 1977.

Applebaum raises another familiar pro-Polanski talking point:

The girl, now 45, has said more than once that she forgives him, that she can live with the memory, that she does not want him to be put back in court or in jail, and that a new trial will hurt her husband and children.

One can certainly sympathize with the victim's desire to be done with this--especially since some of Polanski's defenders are casting aspersions on her in order to make their man look less culpable. (Although her name has been made public, we've left it out of this item as a small, if futile, gesture of decency.) After Polanski is extradited, the judge should take the victim's views into account in pronouncing sentence. But America does not practice vigilante justice. Victims have the power neither to mete out punishment nor to grant clemency. Further, Polanski's flight from justice is a separate matter. If he is convicted, it is a crime against the state, not against any individual.

It must also be said that the victim's ordeal would have been over decades ago if Polanski had stayed to face his punishment. It would be unjust to reward him for prolonging her plight even if it is what she now says she wants.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Sep-18, p.W13, by Eric Felten:

Apology Not Accepted

The past couple of weeks have been a sorry spectacle. Serena Williams offered apologies for a vulgar and threatening tirade she had unleashed on a line judge at the U.S. Open. Rapper Kanye West delivered a stunned mea culpa for a stunt that misfired at a music awards show. And, of course, Rep. Joe Wilson, having interrupted Barack Obama with the short and ugly word, called the president to apologize for his rudeness.

Though Mr. Wilson publicly acknowledged his private apology, he was deemed insufficiently contrite by a majority of congressmen, who voted this week to express their disdain at his outburst. But would a more elaborate act of self-mortification really have been preferable? The gaudy parade of guilt, with all its meretricious remorse, has grown tiresome. It's time we eighty-sixed the carnival of contrition.

Perhaps the year's most flamboyant spectacle of regret was delivered by South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford after he was caught canoodling with his Argentine mistress. He apologized to his wife and children. As far as public displays go, that was more than plenty, but he wasn't even close to being done. He wept his way through an apology to his staff. "Good friends" also got an apologetic nod. And then, "let me throw one more apology out there," Gov. Sanford said, "and that is to people of faith across South Carolina, or for that matter across the nation."

And here we see the extraordinary self-regard that fuels the more expansive sort of apology. Mr. Sanford seemed to think that "people of faith" had some sort of stake in him, that his indiscretions could shake the nation's religious beliefs. Even in his moment of self-reproach the governor was impressed with his own importance. Humbling oneself isn't exactly the same thing as humility.

Long before Mr. Sanford came along, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (not junior, the justice, but his father, the doctor, novelist and poet) had the racket all figured out: "Apology is only egotism wrong side out," he wrote. "It is mighty presumptuous on your part to suppose your small failures of so much consequence that you must make a talk about them."

I count myself among those—a majority, I suspect—who couldn't care less about the niceties of protocol (or lack thereof) at the MTV Video Music Awards. And yet Kanye West treated me to an apology, going on "The Jay Leno Show" to make amends for his behavior. But why was Mr. West apologizing in the first place? Isn't the basic rap trope an attitude of arrogant disdain? That may explain why Mr. West stumbled so incoherently through his apology—the whole act was fundamentally inconsistent with his public persona. Right after the display of groveling, Mr. West tossed on the obligatory sunglasses and leather jacket to strut and glower across the stage. A strange juxtaposition that, though it isn't clear which of the poses is the more fraudulent.

Early colonial America was big on dealing with misbehavior through shame—the old scarlet-letter routine. And abasing oneself through the humiliation of making a public apology was a prime punishment. Publicly presented apologies were all the rage in 18th- and early 19th-century England, such as that of Richard Cousen of Lancaster, who in November 1806 went to see a play and, perhaps somewhat worse for drink, engaged in a little hooliganism. He got himself out of hot water by having a handbill printed up and distributed—an apology admitting that he had tossed a "certain Glass Bottle out of the Gallery of the Theatre of Ulverston, to the imminent Danger of the Audience and Performers." He assured readers of the handbill that he was "never again to be guilty of such offence." Self-flagellating statements filled the pages of rags such as the Daily Advertiser. But they eventually tailed off, according to Norma Landau's "Law, Crime and English Society," because prosecutors and aggrieved parties "had become cynical about the power of these declarations to effect change."

We've grown similarly cynical about the power of our own sort of public declarations to make any difference in the way people behave. I suspect that if anything is going to make Serena Williams think twice about screaming invective at a line judge, it will be the memory of losing match point on a penalty. The apology itself was a nothing-burger by contrast—a bit of text placed on her Web site (an electronic handbill) and a follow-up interview on ABC. Appearing on "Good Morning America," Ms. Williams got in a few sorrys but quickly turned to promoting her new book. She also speculated that the outrage at her outburst may itself have been invidious, a "gender-based" double standard that allows men to be abusive on the court but not women. Some contrition.

No doubt there are times that public apologies are not only warranted but wise. If a slander is spoken in public, it isn't enough that it be apologized for in private, because the damage of the slander continues until it is publicly retracted. But how many of us need or want apologies from public figures whose offenses may be in the public eye but don't involve us in any direct way? Do any of us feel as though we need a display of remorse from the likes of Mr. Wilson, Mr. West or Ms. Williams in order to feel that we've been made whole?

In one of his earlier short stories, "The Man Up-stairs," P.G. Wodehouse wrote that "It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them." Which sort of people are we?

from the Boston Globe online, 2009-Apr-17, by Sasha Issenberg:

Schmidt hears gay-wedding bells in GOP future

WASHINGTON -- Steve Schmidt, the Republican strategist who managed John McCain's presidential campaign, called upon his party today to move to Barack Obama's left by fully supporting gay marriage.

Such a position would not only fit conservative principles, he argued, but could help Republicans navigate a political situation he said "could get worse before it gets better." Most prominent Democrats, including Obama, support civil unions for gay couples but not marriage, while most elected Republicans, including McCain, are opposed to both.

"I'm confident American public opinion will continue to move on the question toward majority support, and sooner or later the Republican Party will catch up to it," Schmidt told a Washington gathering of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group fighting for influence within the party.

Schmidt mounted a tightly argued conservative defense of gay unions, celebrating marriage as a traditional institution forces responsibility on to individuals and stability on society. But he also defied a conservative assumption that social norms should be cherished as permanent. "We should understand that traditions do change over time in society," he said.

Schmidt said he respected religious disagreement with a redefinition of marriage and was open to the prospect of some sort of compromise that would allow religious organizations to be exempt from recognizing same-sex unions. But, he said, church doctrine should not be cited as grounds to maintain the position as a platform plank. "If you put public-policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party," he said.

It was among the first public appearances that Schmidt, a California consultant who has advised George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger but no longer works in partisan politics, has made since the election. He said that McCain's candidacy faced large structural challenges from its outset due to in national demographic shifts, but that the campaign's mission became "insurmountable" after September's financial collapse.

"Movement towards a center-left political realignment" is afoot, according to Schmidt. "Our coalition is shrinking, and losing ground with the segments of the population that are growing," he said, pointing towards the growing support Democrats have found among Hispanics, the young, and voters in most parts of the country outside the Deep South.

Schmidt, who continues to speak to McCain daily, said that Republicans -- who have long had a natural hierarchy and instinct towards primogeniture -- would be well-served by their current lack of direction.

"I think Republicans ought to embrace this 'Lord of the Flies' period, where there's no leader," Schmidt told reporters after his speech. "There needs to be an opportunity for new leaders to emerge."

from the Morning Sentinel of Maine, 2009-May-7, by Susan M. Cover:

Baldacci signs gay-marriage bill

AUGUSTA -- Gov. John Baldacci on Wednesday signed a bill to allow gay marriage in Maine, breaking weeks of silence on the issue with a decision that elicited cheers of joy from gay activists.

Carla Hopkins, of Mount Vernon, and her partner, Victoria Eleftheriou, delivered a letter to Baldacci just hours before the bill landed on his desk.

"We are elated," Hopkins said as she stood just outside the governor's office. "It's indescribable how proud of this state we are right now."

Baldacci's signature came about an hour after the Maine Senate took final action on the bill, passing it 21-13.

After he signed the bill, Baldacci, a Democrat, allowed members of the media into his office to announce his decision.

"In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions," he said. "I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage."

Maine is the fifth state in the country to allow gay marriage, although the law in Maine will not be in effect until mid-September. Iowa, Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts already allow gay and lesbian couples to get married.

Baldacci's signature came just two weeks after more than 3,000 people attended a public hearing at the Augusta Civic Center. Less than a week later, a majority of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee supported the bill, sending it forward for House and Senate action.

All along, Baldacci's stance on the bill was in doubt.

When he made the announcement Wednesday, supporters were not allowed into his office. But their cheers from the hallway could be heard inside the governor's office as he read his prepared statement.

Opponents said they were "very surprised" the governor signed the bill as quickly as he did and vowed to try to overturn it with a people's veto.

The effective date of the law -- set for mid-September -- could be delayed by that process.

"I figured the vote would be done today, but certainly did not expect the governor to turn around and sign it while the ink was still wet," said Marc Mutty, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, which is leading a coalition against gay marriage.

Mutty and Bob Emrich, who is also part of the coalition, said opponents thought they would have time to meet with the governor after the final Senate vote.

"I felt like he shortchanged us by doing it so quickly," Emrich said. "We're disappointed and now we'll go to the next thing."

That "next thing" is a people's veto, a right guaranteed in the Maine Constitution that allows citizens to gather signatures to put a question before voters asking them to repeal a law.

The prospect of a people's veto tempered the celebrations by gay activists who said that, while they were thrilled with the governor's decision, they are preparing to fight the veto.

"We will fight to the very end for what we earned here today," Hopkins said.

If the opponents are successful in getting 55,087 signatures, the issue would go before the voters either in November or June, depending on how quickly they are able to turn the signatures in to the state.

Mutty said they want to be on the November ballot, which will feature other traditionally conservative questions on tax and spending issues.

The Senate spent about 15 minutes on the bill before taking a final vote, an anticlimactic last step after granting initial approval last week. The House voted 89-57 in support of the bill Tuesday.

In the Senate, President Elizabeth Mitchell, D-Vassalboro, handed her gavel to Sen. Larry Bliss, D-South Portland, so he could preside over the final vote. Bliss, an openly gay man and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was a co-sponsor of the bill.

During the brief debate, Sen. Debra Plowman, R-Hampden, said she felt "people of faith" were not represented in the Statehouse debate.

"You are making a decision that is not well founded," she said.

The law, which was sponsored by Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, changes the definition of marriage to be the legally recognized union of two people, and it allows any two people, regardless of sex, to apply for a marriage license.

Also, it affirms that religious institutions will maintain control over who may marry within their faith and recognizes the validity of marriages performed in other states. Gay couples from out of state would also be able to come to Maine to get married.

Baldacci said he made his decision only after listening to the public hearing and debate in the House and Senate. He said he read many of the communications sent to his office, which he said numbered in the "thousands."

"I did not come to this decision lightly or in haste," he said.

He cited Article 1 of the Maine Constitution as part of the reason he supported the law.

The article states "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor be denied the equal protections of the laws, nor be denied the enjoyment of that person's civil rights or be discriminated against."

Baldacci said he believes the attitudes of Mainers and others across the county have "evolved" on the issue of gay marriage.

"People are evolving," he said. "We're listening to each other. Times are so tough out there that people are spending a lot more time talking with each other and having more discussion. I just think times have changed."

from the Associated Press, 2009-May-3, by Norma Love:

NH demographic change shows in Legislature votes

CONCORD, N.H. — The New Hampshire Senate showed itself to be less liberal than the state House, yet voted to let gays marry and people with debilitating illnesses smoke marijuana if they'll benefit.

Last week's vote was a historic change for a once reliably Republican and conservative state, but reflects New Hampshire's changing demographics as younger and more liberal, according to political scientists.

"Gay marriage is historic legislation. In that sense, it is a big deal," said Dante Scala, associate political science professor at the University of New Hampshire. "I think it is more a matter of the Legislature catching up with the public."

State GOP Chairman John H. Sununu believes the opposite is true: Neither gay marriage nor legalizing marijuana reflects New Hampshire's values.

"What has changed has been, if you will, the last two election cycles reflecting more of a national election than a state election," he said. "That allowed Democrats to take over and pass legislation that is not reflective of the state."

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 13-11 to legalize gay marriage by establishing a two-tier system of civil marriage and religious marriage. If it becomes law, New Hampshire would be the fifth state to allow gay marriage.

Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Iowa allow gay marriage. California briefly allowed it last year, but a voter initiative in November repealed it.

In New Jersey, Gov. Jon Corzine has said he will sign a gay marriage bill if state lawmakers pass one that's been introduced. In New York, Gov. David Paterson is making another push to legalize gay marriage.

Maine legislators also are considering allowing gay marriage.

Two years ago, New Hampshire lawmakers passed, and the governor signed, a bill allowing civil unions. More than 600 New Hampshire couples have entered into civil unions since the law took effect.

Federal law does not recognize civil unions or same-sex marriages. Voters in 29 states have approved state constitutional amendments that ban gay marriage.

In March, the House rejected a measure that would have established civil and religious marriage licenses, though the proposal didn't define the difference. The Senate version goes into much greater detail about the distinction between the types of marriages.

The bill allows churches to decide to conduct religious marriages for same-sex couples. Civil marriages would be available to both heterosexual and same-sex couples.

Also in contrast to the House's version, the Senate's would allow each party to the marriage to be identified as bride, groom or spouse. Same-sex couples united by civil unions in the past year would automatically be assumed to have a "civil marriage" under the bill.

Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, says the polling he has done for the last six years for the New Hampshire Freedom to Marry Coalition consistently finds a majority support gay marriage and about one-third oppose it.

Similarly, a survey center poll last month found 45 percent would be more likely to vote for a state Senate candidate who supported legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes — which the Senate voted 14-10 to do, sending the measure back to the House.

Thirteen states now allow medical marijuana use. Federal drug agents have raided dozens of medical marijuana dispensaries, mainly in California. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said that the Obama administration would end such raids.

The House is expected to vote Wednesday on whether to send the two bills to Gov. John Lynch, who has not said if he will veto them.

Smith said he isn't surprised by the bills' passage because of changes in the state's demographics.

Younger voters grew up with gay characters on television and as celebrities.

"To them, it isn't a big deal," he said.

Second, as people move into the state and older, more conservative Republicans move out or die, the population has shifted to more liberal and more democratic, he said. New Hampshire also is less religious than many other states, he said.

Scala believes the demographic shift highlights the difficulties facing the Republican Party.

"The more the Republican Party is seen as the quote unquote 'religious party,' the more difficulties they are going to have in New England and in New Hampshire," he said.

Some Democrats could face tough re-election bids depending on the composition of their districts, say Smith and Scala.

Kevin Smith, executive director of conservative Cornerstone Policy Research, says conservatives will show their displeasure with Democrats at the ballot box.

"New Hampshire already has civil and religious marriages for heterosexual couples and to suggest that this is something new they've created is downright ridiculous," he said.

Senate Democratic Leader Maggie Hassan, the Exeter Democrat who led the gay marriage fight in the Senate, insists gay marriage is in keeping with New Hampshire's libertarian traditions.

"In the 'Live Free or Die' state, freedom should be available to every citizen who abides by our laws. If you don't have the same right to a civil marriage, you're not free," she said.

from NewsBusters.org, 2009-Apr-20, by Ken Shepherd:

ABCNews.com Ignores Prop 8 Vote in Story on Beauty Pageant Gay Marriage Question

Let's get this straight [pardon the pun]: A beauty contest contestant with a conservative view on same-sex marriage upsets an openly gay blogger with her answer to his question about her thoughts on the issue. Yet in reporting the story, ABCNews.com paints her as the bad guy for offending the celebrity judge, while failing to mention that a majority of said beauty queen's fellow Californians agree with her views.

Welcome to the saga of Carrie Prejean, Miss California, whom ABCNews.com describes as having "floored" gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who went on to "skewer" the Miss USA runner-up for her honest answer in an angry video blog entry.

What caused celebrity judge Hilton to seethe so? Only Prejean's honest, politely-delivered answer. Quotes ABCNews.com's Luchina Fisher:

"I think it's great Americans are able to choose one or the other," she said. "We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what in my country, in my family I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody there, but that's how I was raised and that's how I think it should be, between a man and a woman."

While Prejean's answer was hardly the most articulate defense of traditional marriage, Hilton's angry rant -- calling her a "dumb bitch" -- on his blog was highly unprofessional for a public figure chosen to judge the competition.

What's more, Prejean's answer about Americans being "able to choose one or the other" could arguably be construed to mean that she thinks it's great that the gay marriage issue is left up to individual states to decide, regardless of her personal convictions.

While Fisher noted in her April 20 story that an angry Hilton insisted that he would have been happy with Prejean saying that gay marriage is "a question that each state should decide for themselves," Fisher left out of her article that a majority of Californians at the polls last November did just that, agreeing with Prejean by voting 52% in favor of Proposition 8.

Despite representing the majority of her state and answering in a gracious manner, Miss Prejean was not only trashed by Hilton, but by a pagaent official who made clear Prejean's conservative views were unwelcome on the platform, at least as far as the state pagaent organization was concerned:

Keith Lewis, who runs the Miss California competition, released a statement to the media in response to Prejean's answer last night.

"As co-director of the Miss California USA, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss California believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman," said Lewis in a statement. "I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit. I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone and religious beliefs have no politics [sic] in the Miss California family."

That a Miss USA pagaent judge and a Miss California USA official ganged up on a pagaent contestant for expressing a conservative political belief during the interview portion of a contest could have and arguably should have been the lede to Fisher's article.

Unfortunately Fisher and her editors opted for making an innocuous, ditzy answer from a beauty queen the perfect excuse for hyping the rant of a notorious gay drama queen.

Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters

from the Associated Press, 2009-May-5, by Lisa Leff:

Calif pageant eyes Prejean for contract violations

SAN FRANCISCO — The directors of the Miss California USA pageant are looking into whether title holder Carrie Prejean violated her contract by working with a national group opposed to same-sex marriage and by posing semi-nude when she was a teenage model.

Pageant spokesman Roger Neal said Tuesday it appears Prejean has run afoul of several sections of the 12-page contract that all prospective contestants were required to sign before competing in the November state contest.

The detailed document prohibits the titular Miss California from making personal appearances, giving interviews or making commercials without permission from pageant officials. In the last 10 days, Prejean has made televised appearances at her San Diego church and on behalf of the National Organization for Marriage, a group opposed to same-sex marriage.

The contract also contains a clause asking participants to say whether they have conducted themselves "in accordance with the highest ethical and moral standards." As an example, it asks if they have ever been photographed nude or partially nude.

"As you can see from the contract, she violated multiple items," Neal said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

A photo of Prejean wearing only pink panties with her back turned to the camera appeared Monday on the gossip blog theDirty.com. She issued a statement early Tuesday saying she posed for the shot when she was a 17-year-old model and objected to its release as an attempt to belittle her religious faith: "I am a Christian, and I am a model. Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos."

Prejean spokeswoman Melany Ethridge said she could not comment on the contract because she was unfamiliar with its contents. Ethridge said she had not heard the pageant directors were reviewing it.

Prejean, a San Diego native who attends San Diego Christian College, was named the first runner-up to Miss North Carolina in the Miss USA pageant April 19. Her response to a question during the pageant that she opposed same-sex marriage made her a media sensation, darling of religious conservatives and the target of embarrassing disclosures.

Her post-pageant activities also have estranged her from the two directors of the state pageant, who under the terms of the contract have almost unlimited control over Miss California's activities, including the right to revoke her crown for breaching its provisions.

On the day last week that Prejean was in Washington with National Organization for Marriage leaders to announce her support for a new advertisement the group created based on her pageant experience, Keith Lewis, co-director of the California contest, expressed concern.

"There is a contract that all participants sign that is very involved and very intricate and limits a lot of their activities," said Lewis, a Los Angeles talent agent.

Meanwhile, the Miss Universe Organization, which also owns the Miss USA pageant, confirmed Tuesday that it had sent a letter demanding the National Organization for Marriage to remove the Prejean spot from the air and the group's Web site. It includes footage from the April 19 pageant.

The Miss Universe Organization "neither sanctions nor disapproves of the viewpoints expressed in the advertisement but cannot allow its copyrighted material to be used without permission to support the National Organization for Marriage's political agenda and fundraising efforts," organization President Paula Shugart said.

NOM executive director Brian Brown said the group did not plan to comply with the pageant's request.

"It is clearly fair use, and all they are attempting to do is silence us by using false legal claims," Brown said. "But they have another thing coming if they think these ads are coming down. None of us are relenting, least of all Carrie."

NOM President Maggie Gallagher also issued a statement Tuesday sympathizing with Prejean over the release of her modeling picture and saying it did not disqualify her as a traditional marriage advocate.

"Of course Carrie is not perfect," Gallagher said. "On a personal note, as a former unwed mother, I want to say to Americans: You don't have to be a perfect person to have the right to stand up for marriage."

from the Washington Post, 2009-Apr-4, p.A3, web-posted 2009-Apr-4, by Keith B. Richburg in New York, with William Branigin in Washington and Kari Lydersen in Chicago contributing:

Iowa Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
Ban Violated Constitutional Rights, State Supreme Court Rules

Iowa became the third state in the country and the first from the rural heartland to legalize same-sex marriage when its Supreme Court yesterday unanimously struck down the state's decade-long ban.

Gay advocacy groups hailed the decision as another example of same-sex marriage gaining traction in an increasing number of states, despite a ballot initiative in California last year that banned it there. They also said the emphatic ruling probably will sway other courts, including California's Supreme Court, which must decide by early June whether the November referendum is constitutional.

"Justices look at opinions from other states," said Jennifer C. Pizer, the national marriage project director for Lambda Legal, which brought the Iowa case. "There's a significant likelihood that [the decision] will influence other states, like California."

Efforts to legalize same-sex marriage are also gaining political support. On Thursday, the state House in Vermont overwhelmingly approved a bill legalizing such unions, following a similarly lopsided vote earlier in the state Senate. Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R) has said he would veto the measure, but gay advocacy groups noted that the House vote was just four short of the number needed to override a veto.

On March 26, the state House in New Hampshire voted narrowly to allow same-sex marriage in that state, sending the bill to the Senate.

Before yesterday's ruling, only Massachusetts and Connecticut allowed same-sex marriage. New York has said it would recognize such unions performed in other states. California allowed same-sex marriage for about five months last year before the ballot initiative banned it.

The strongly worded decision by all seven justices of Iowa's Supreme Court moves the issue away from more liberal coastal states, where most of the legal and legislative action aimed at overturning bans on same-sex marriage has taken place. While Iowa is home to many conservative Christians and evangelicals, the decision adds to a strong liberal streak that has spawned politically progressive movements.

"Iowa really does have a very impressive visionary history when it comes to civil rights, from desegregation to public accommodation to the rights of women," said Ben Stone, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa.

The Iowa Supreme Court decision upholds a lower court's ruling that a 1998 state law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.

"We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective," the justices wrote.

The decision will take effect in 21 days unless a rehearing is requested. Attorneys for Polk County, which challenged the earlier ruling, indicated that the county will not request a review, meaning that same-sex couples will be able to apply for marriage licenses in Iowa in three weeks.

The only other recourse for overturning the decision is a state constitutional amendment, which would take at least two years to be adopted.

At least one group opposed to same-sex marriage, the Liberty Counsel, said it plans to advance a referendum to amend Iowa's Constitution to prohibit same-sex unions. "The Iowa Supreme Court has become a proselytizing engine of radical social change," said Mathew D. Staver, the group's founder. "Untying the knot that holds together traditional marriage will unravel the family, destabilize the culture and harm children."

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) blasted the decision and vowed to effectively overturn it. "This is an unconstitutional ruling and another example of activist judges molding the Constitution to achieve their personal political ends," he said in a statement.

from the New York Times, 2009-Mar-15, by Patricia Leigh Brown and Carol Pogash:

The Pleasure Principle

SAN FRANCISCO

EVEN in a culture in which sex toys are a booming business and Oprah Winfrey discusses living your best life in the bedroom, a coed live-in commune dedicated to the female orgasm hovers at the extremes.

The founder of the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, Nicole Daedone, sees herself as leading “the slow-sex movement,” one that places a near-exclusive emphasis on women's pleasure — in which love, romance and even flirtation are not required.

“In our culture, admitting our bodies matter is almost an admission of failure,” said Ms. Daedone, 41, who can quote the poet Mary Oliver and speak wryly on the intricacies of women's anatomy with equal aplomb. “I don't think women will really experience freedom until they own their sexuality.”

A core of 38 men and women — their average age the late 20s — live full time in the retreat center, a shabby-chic loft building in the South of Market district. They prepare meals together, practice yoga and mindfulness meditation and lead workshops in communication for outside groups as large as 60.

But the heart of the group's activity, listed cryptically on its Web site's calendar as “morning practice,” is closed to all but the residents.

At 7 a.m. each day, as the rest of America is eating Cheerios or trying to face gridlock without hyperventilating, about a dozen women, naked from the waist down, lie with eyes closed in a velvet-curtained room, while clothed men huddle over them, stroking them in a ritual known as orgasmic meditation — “OMing,” for short. The couples, who may or may not be romantically involved, call one another “research partners.”

A commune dedicated to men and women publicly creating “the orgasm that exists between them,” in the words of one resident, may sound like the ultimate California satire. But the Bay Area has a lively and venerable history of seekers constructing lives around sexual adventure.

San Francisco is proud of its libertine heritage, as Sean Penn recently demonstrated in “Milk.” The search for personal transformation, including through sex, led to the oceanside hot tubs at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, cradle of the human potential movement, and in the 1960s, communes flourished in the city, many espousing free love.

One Taste is but the latest stop on this sexual underground, weaving together strands of radical individual freedom, Eastern spirituality and feminism.

“The notion of a San Francisco sex commune focused on female orgasm is part of a long and rich history of women being public and empowered about their sexuality,” said Elizabeth A. Armstrong, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University, who has studied San Francisco's sexual subcultures.

As with many a commune before it, the leader of One Taste, Ms. Daedone, is a polarizing personality, whom admirers venerate as a sex diva, although some former members say she has cultlike powers over her followers. They say she sometimes strongly suggested who should pair off with whom romantically.

“There was always a pushing of peoples' boundaries,” said Judy Silver, who lived at One Taste for three and a half years and left last fall. “We all knew it was a hardcore place, and we came to play hard.”

The group has drawn scant attention during its four and a half years — perhaps because it is just the sort of community San Franciscans expect in their backyard — although there was a brief sensation when The San Francisco Chronicle wrote about the group's naked (nonsexual) yoga classes. Many voyeuristic non-yogis showed up. Now the yoga is fully clothed.

Those drawn to One Taste are an eclectic lot. Some are in life transitions, among them a baby-faced 50-year-old Silicon Valley engineer, a recently divorced man, who said that the practice of manually fixing his attention on a tiny spot of a woman's body improves his concentration at work.

Most residents are young questers, seeking to fill an inner void and become empowered through Ms. Daedone's blend of female-centric spirituality and sexuality. One, Beth Crittenden, 33, grew up in conservative Virginia tobacco country, a place, she said, where the fundamentals of the female anatomy were never discussed and masturbation was unmentionable. “I'd never done anything even in the dead of night,” she said.

She stumbled onto the center's Folsom Street building, with its comfy overstuffed sofas, and enrolled in a women's self-pleasure course because her relationships with men, as she put it, “kept running into a cement wall.”

She resisted offers to pursue further courses (for a fee), deleting the center's incessant e-mail messages. But on the cusp of her 29th birthday, she tentatively returned. “I was scared to open up my life that much, but I was more scared not to,” she said.

Now an instructor herself, Ms. Crittenden talks about “the lingering velocity of my desire and my hesitation to give into it.”

Another member, Racheli Cherwitz, 28, had spent years grappling with anorexia and alcoholism, she said. In search of identity, she moved to Israel and became an Orthodox Jew.

Discovering One Taste, she said, has improved her self-image and given her “deep physical access to the woman I am and the woman I want to be.”

Ms. Cherwitz commutes to New York and offers private sensuality coaching at a satellite outpost operated by One Taste on Grand Street. Many of her clients, she said, are married Orthodox Jewish couples from Brooklyn.

In the One Taste world, a weirdly clinical pact is made between the women and men. There is no eye contact during orgasmic meditation. The idea, similar to Buddhist Tantric sex, is to extend the sensory peak — and publicly share it — before “going over,” as residents, who tend toward group-speak, call climaxing.

Although men are not touched by the women and do not climax, they say they experience a sense of energy and satiation. Both the strokers and strokees insist that all this OMing is really about the “hydration” of the self, the human connection, not sex.

Reese Jones, a venture capitalist-slash-geek-slash Ms. Daedone's boyfriend, likens orgasmic meditation to massage.

“It's a procedure to nourish the limbic system, like yoga or Pilates, with no other strings attached,” he said. “When you go to a massage therapist,” he added, “you don't take the masseuse to dinner afterward.”

MS. DAEDONE'S inspiration and mentor as a sex guru was Ray Vetterlein, who achieved fame of sorts in sex circles by claiming to lengthen the average female orgasm to 20 minutes.

Mr. Vetterlein, now in his 80s, was inspired by Lafayette Morehouse, a controversial 40-year-old community still in existence in suburban Lafayette, Calif., that has been conducting public demonstrations of a woman in orgasm since 1976.

Morehouse's founder, Victor Baranco, was a former appliance salesman who called his philosophy “responsible hedonism.” By some accounts, Mr. Baranco, who died in 2002, used coercive techniques of mind control.

“It was a huge ego-crushing machine, as any valid monastic tradition is,” said a man who lived at Morehouse for 20 years and did not want to be identified.

Ms. Daedone's early career was hardly alternative: she studied semantics at San Francisco State University and then donned her pearls to help found an art gallery. But at 27, her world came crashing down when she learned that her father, from whom she was largely estranged, was dying of cancer in prison, after being convicted of molesting two young girls.

“Everything in my reality just collapsed,” she said. “My body turned to stone and crumbled.”

Her father had not behaved inappropriately toward her, Ms. Daedone said; on the contrary, he was a distant figure.

“There had been a way I felt close to him in this felt way, and then all of the sudden he would shut down,” she said. “I later came to understand that he was trying to protect me from himself, from his pathology.”

Her pathway back to life was initially Buddhism, which she pursued with a vengeance, intending to live in a Zen community. But at a party in 1998, she met a Buddhist who had a practice in what he called “contemplative sexuality.”

He invited her to lie down unclothed, set a timer and, while stroking her, proceeded to narrate in tender detail the beauty he saw, the colors that went from coral, to deep rose, to pearlescent pink. “I just broke open, and the feeling was pure and clean,” Ms. Daedone said. “In a strange way, I think at that moment I decided to live.”

Since opening One Taste, she has allowed it to go through numerous permutations; to her chagrin, it initially attracted misfits who “liked to get sloppy and grope each other,” she said.

She concedes that she has made mistakes — among them the naked yoga class — but she has been savvy about packaging her product. She changed the term “deliberate orgasm,” as it is called by other practitioners, to the more marketable “orgasmic meditation.”

Much of the community's tone revolves around Ms. Daedone, a woman of considerable charm, although detractors regard her as a master manipulator.

“Nicole groks people,” said Marci Boyd, 57, the group's oldest resident, borrowing a phrase from Robert A. Heinlein's “Stranger in a Strange Land” that connotes understanding someone so totally that the observer becomes one with the observed.

Elana Auerbach, an original resident, who left the group with Bill Press, who is now her husband, said the upshot of Ms. Daedone's ability to become exactly the person an individual yearns for is that “they take on Nicole, exude Nicoleness.”

“You stop trusting yourself and start trusting Nicole,” she said.

Until recently, residents lived in tight quarters, sacrificing privacy for the group, two to a bed, 12 beds to a room, each bed separated by a curtain. Now they have private rooms in a building adjacent to the meditation center (both are somewhat providentially on Folsom Street, home of the world's largest annual leather, bondage and fetish fair).

Ms. Auerbach said that she and Mr. Press eventually decided they wanted a life that was “heart-focused rather than genital-focused.” Now parents of a baby boy, they view their experience as a cautionary tale.

“Nicole promulgates a message and everyone else reflects that,” Mr. Press said.

Ms. Daedone insists she does not invite or like the all-powerful image. “There's a high potential for this to be a cult,” she said.

She recently moved out of the communal living quarters, in part to fight this tendency. “Whenever I was in the space, everybody treated me like a guru,” she said. “I'd wake up and people would come sit on my bed.”

Now she lives with Mr. Jones, her boyfriend, a braniac who sold a computer software company he founded, Netopia, to Motorola for $208 million, and makes financial resources available to One Taste, including helping to buy a retreat in Stinson Beach, Calif.

Ms. Daedone wants One Taste to be mainstream, and to that end the center presents lectures by rabbis and Tibetan monks, along with public classes and workshops in “mindful sexuality.”

But a One Taste Peoria seems hard to imagine. At a weekend workshop at the center recently, attended by scores of men and women interested in learning orgasmic meditation, Ms. Daedone outlined her philosophy.

“In our culture,” she said, while beatifically seated on a cushion, “women have been conditioned to have closed sexuality and open feelings, and men to have open sexuality and closed feelings. There's this whole area of resistance and shame.”

Soon the aspiring OM-ers, including a couple from Marin County hoping to rekindle their marriage, gathered on the floor kindergarten-style around a massage table. Justine Dawson, a wholesome-looking 34-year-old community resident, took off her robe and hopped up. Another resident, Andy Roy, 28, began his task, his concentration so exquisite that he broke into a sweat.

Attendees were instructed to call out their feelings, and many did, describing the turn-on they, too, were feeling.

When it was over, Ms. Dawson emanated radiance worthy of a Caravaggio, a youthful innocence. In another context, it might have been a profound and romantic moment between two lovers. Instead, a different image came to mind: the post-coital interview by Howard Cosell, holding a microphone, in Woody Allen's “Bananas.”

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Jan-6, by William McGurn:

Like a Virgin: The Press Take On Teenage Sex
Yes, attitudes do make a difference in behavior.

The chain reaction was something out of central casting. A medical journal starts it off by announcing a study comparing teens who take a pledge of virginity until marriage with those who don't. Lo and behold, when they crunch the numbers, they find not much difference between pledgers and nonpledgers: most do not make it to the marriage bed as virgins.

Like a pack of randy 15-year-old boys, the press dives right in.

"Virginity Pledges Don't Stop Teen Sex," screams CBS News. "Virginity pledges don't mean much," adds CNN. "Study questions virginity pledges," says the Chicago Tribune. "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds," heralds the Washington Post. "Virginity Pledges Fail to Trump Teen Lust in Look at Older Data," reports Bloomberg. And on it goes.

In other words, teens will be teens, and moms or dads who believe that concepts such as restraint or morality have any application today are living in a dream world. Typical was the lead for the CBS News story: "Teenagers who take virginity pledges are no less sexually active than other teens, according to a new study."

Here's the rub: It just isn't true.

In fact, the only way the study's author, Janet Elise Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University, could reach such results was by comparing teens who take a virginity pledge with a very small subset of other teens: those who are just as religious and conservative as the pledge-takers. The study is called "Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers," and it was published in the Jan. 1 edition of Pediatrics.

The first to notice something lost in the translation was Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former head of both the Red Cross and the National Institutes of Health. Today she serves as health editor for U.S. News & World Report. And in her dispatch on this study, Dr. Healy pointed out that "virginity pledging teens were considerably more conservative in their overall sexual behaviors than teens in general -- a fact that many media reports have missed cold."

What Dr. Healy was getting at is that the pledge itself is not what distinguishes these kids from most other teenagers. The real difference is their more conservative and religious home and social environment. As she notes, when you compare both groups in this study with teens at large, the behavioral differences are striking. Here are just a few:

- These teens generally have less risky sex, i.e., fewer sexual partners.

- These teens are less likely to have a teenage pregnancy, or to have friends who use drugs.

- These teens have less premarital vaginal sex.

- When these teens lose their virginity they tend to do so at age 21 -- compared to 17 for the typical American teen.

- And very much overlooked, one out of four of these teens do in fact keep the pledge to remain chaste -- amid much cheap ridicule and just about zero support outside their homes or churches.

Let's put this another way. The real headline from this study is this: "Religious Teens Differ Little in Sexual Behavior Whether or Not They Take a Pledge."

Now, whatever the shock that might occasion at CBS or the Washington Post, it comes as no surprise to parents. Most parents appreciate that a pledge of virginity -- a one-time event that might be made at an emotional moment in a teen's life -- is not some talisman that will magically shield their sons and daughters from the strong and normal desires that grow as they discover their sexuality. What these parents hope to do is direct these desires in a way that recognizes sex as a great gift, which in the right circumstances fosters genuine intimacy between a man and a woman and at its freest offers the possibility of new life.

This is not the prevailing view, of course. And these parents know it. Far from conformists living in a comfortable world where their beliefs are never challenged, these families live in an environment where most everything that is popular -- television, the movies, the Internet -- encourages children to grow up as quickly as possible while adults remain locked in perpetual adolescence.

Nor do these families believe their children are better than other kids. Unlike the majority of health experts and their supporters in the press, however, they don't believe that the proper use of the condom is the be all and end all. For these parents, the good news here is that the striking behavioral differences between the average American teen and the two teen groups in this study show that homes and families still exert a powerful influence.

That, alas, is not something you're likely to read in the headlines. For when it comes to challenging the conventional wisdom on issues of sexuality, the American media suddenly become as coy as a cloistered virgin.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Feb-12, by Ted Baehr and Tom Snyder:

A Hollywood Stimulus Plan: Make More Uplifting Movies
Tips from the folks who bring us the Christian Oscars.

On Wednesday, Movieguide held its 17th Annual Faith & Values Awards ceremony. Among the winners was "Fireproof," which received a $100,000 Epiphany Prize for the Most Inspiring Movie of 2008, sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. Even more valuable was the information we released in our Report to the Entertainment Industry, a detailed survey of what kinds of movies made money last year, and why.

Our organization was founded in part to help families who want to find movies and TV shows that stay within the perimeters of biblical principles. We also seek to encourage the production of such works. The entertainment industry can be resistant to our prodding, but this year it may want to listen. With media conglomerates, from Time Warner to Disney to News Corp., reporting big losses, few can afford to ignore proven recipes for box-office success. And when it comes to movies, what succeeds is capitalism, patriotism, faith and values.

We know this because each year Movieguide.org examines more than 250 major films from Hollywood studios and independents for their social, political, philosophical, moral and religious content. When all the information -- categorized by dozens of criteria -- is in a database, we calculate which movies took in the most money at the theatrical box office in America and Canada in 2008. (The full report can be found at www.movieguide.org.)

Once again, family-friendly, uplifting and inspiring movies drew far more viewers in 2008 than films with themes of despair, or leftist political agendas. Sex, drugs and antireligious themes were not automatic sellers, either. Among the 25 top-grossing movies alone, 14 out of 25 had strong or very strong Christian, redemptive and moral content, and nearly all had at least some such content.

Values of importance to all people of faith were not the only ingredients in many of 2008's top movies. As in past years, films with strong pro-capitalist content -- extolling free-market principles or containing positive portrayals of real or fictional businessmen and entrepreneurs -- tended to make the most money. The hero of the biggest success of the year, "The Dark Knight," is a billionaire capitalist who, disguised as Batman, defends Gotham City and its residents from a crazed, anarchistic terrorist criminal. In "Iron Man," the second-most popular movie with American and Canadian moviegoers in 2008, a capitalist playboy and billionaire defense contractor stops working against the interests of America and its citizens and uses his wealth to defend America and its free-market values.

The box-office receipts of pro-capitalist movies, which also included "Australia," "City of Ember" and "Bottle Shock" (which extols the virtues of the California wine industry), averaged $152 million per picture in North American theaters. On the whole, they far outperformed movies with strong anticapitalist content. That group, with films such as "Mad Money," "Chicago 10" and "War, Inc.," averaged only $5.4 million per picture in North American theaters.

The moneymaking trend was similar for movies with explicit or implicit anticommunist content. That group -- including an "An American Carol," which mocks communism; "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," where Indy reviles communists and their impoverished ideology is exposed; "City of Ember," where a tyrant steals from the people; and "Fly Me to the Moon," about the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union -- averaged $71.8 million at the 2008 box office in America and Canada. By comparison, movies with pro-communist content, such as "Che," "The Children of Huang Shi," "Gonzo," "Trumbo" and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," averaged a measly $7.9 million in 2008.

Movies in a broader "conservative" category -- those with a positive view of democracy and property rights, for instance; that were pro-life or anti-abortion; or that promoted freedom of speech or the right to bear arms -- were much more successful at the domestic box office, on average, than movies with content that attacked America, were politically correct, inserted some politically correct messages, etc.

Among the films with more conservative content were "Valkyrie" (with its theme of opposing Nazi tyranny), "Defiance" (resistance fighters unite to save lives in World War II), "Bolt" (which promotes such moral values as loyalty, sacrifice and doing the right thing), "Rambo," "Prince Caspian" and "Gran Torino." They and others in their category averaged nearly $70 million more per movie at the domestic box office than more liberal movies. That group's films range from those with very strong libertine content (such as "Mamma Mia!") or licentious content ("Milk" and "Brideshead Revisited") to those with politically correct content, such as "Sex and the City" and "Under the Same Moon." Also in the category are movies with anti-American content, such as "Stop-Loss" and "The Visitor, and with very strong atheist or nihilistic content, such as "Religulous" and "Wanted."

None of these box-office results should come as a surprise. Moviegoers in the U.S. (and most moviegoers overseas) prefer inspiring, heroic stories that extol free-market principles and limited representative government. Although many, if not most, Americans (including self-described "moderates") now support some liberal policies, as shown by the last two national elections, they still don't like to watch movies mocking or demonizing traditional beliefs and mainstream American values, especially movies that take more extreme positions.

While Washington may have taken a left turn, Hollywood cannot afford to snub its nose at the values of most Americans. It may decide to reject them at its annual Oscar ceremonies, but it cannot do so at the box office. Not if it wants to keep its fancy houses, cars and planes.

Mr. Baehr is the founder and publisher of Movieguide: A Family Guide to Movies, Entertainment and Culture. Mr. Snyder is the editor of Movieguide.

The point of the following item is that renunciation of sexual behavior — which the Dalai Lama promotes — is incompatible with biologically predetermined human psychology, so that a blanket deprecation of sexual behavior is not expressed in abstinence, but rather, in perversion and debauchery. Even more generally, without procreation there is only extinction, so the Dalai Lama is advocating extinction itself, which is inherently nihilistic, and so enables all manner of depravity, centered on sexuality.

from Agence France-Presse, 2008-Nov-28:

Sex invariably spells trouble, says Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual and temporal leader, on Friday said sex spelt fleeting satisfaction and trouble later, while chastity offered a better life and "more freedom."

"Sexual pressure, sexual desire, actually I think is short period satisfaction and often, that leads to more complication," the Dalai Lama told reporters in a Lagos hotel, speaking in English without a translator.

He said conjugal life caused "too much ups and downs.

"Naturally as a human being ... some kind of desire for sex comes, but then you use human intelligence to make comprehension that those couples always full of trouble. And in some cases there is suicide, murder cases," the Dalai Lama said.

He said the "consolation" in celibacy is that although "we miss something, but at the same time, compare whole life, it's better, more independence, more freedom."

Considered a Buddhist Master exempt from the religion's wheel of death and reincarnation, the Dalai Lama waxed eloquent on the Buddhist credo of non-attachment.

"Too much attachment towards your children, towards your partner," was "one of the obstacle or hindrance of peace of mind," he said.

Revered by his followers as a god-king, the Dalai Lama arrived in Lagos on Friday on a three-day visit following an invitation from a foundation to attend a conference. He has made no political speeches in the west African country.

He leaves Friday night for the Czech Republic and then on to Brussels to address the European Parliament before heading to Poland, where he is due to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The 73-year-old Nobel Peace laureate has been a mainstay on the diplomatic stage ever since he fled his native land for neighbouring India in 1959.

Still based in northern India, the Dalai Lama has increasingly been in the spotlight since protests in Tibet turned violent in March this year, just months before the Chinese capital Beijing hosted the Summer Olympic Games.

Regarded by his many supporters outside China as a visionary in the vein of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his accent on non-violence to achieve change.

However, he is reviled by the Chinese government, which has branded him a "monster" and accused him of trying to split the nation.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2008-Nov-27, by Naomi Schaefer Riley:

The Young and the Restless: Why Infidelity Is Rising Among 20-Somethings

In 2006, about 19% of married men and 13% of married women under the age of 30 said that they had been unfaithful to their spouse. Do those numbers sound high? They certainly are if we compare them with the results of a survey 15 years before, when the respective numbers were roughly 13% and 11%. A "mere" two-percentage-point increase for women and a six-percentage-point increase for men may not sound like much, but to put it another way: Between 1991 and 2006, the numbers of unfaithful wives under 30 increased by 20% and husbands by a whopping 45%. These numbers come from a study conducted by David Atkins of the University of Washington Center for the Study of Health and Risk Behaviors. Mr. Atkins, who reached these conclusions by breaking down data from the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey, presented his findings at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies conference in Orlando earlier this month.

The rise in infidelity among this cohort has caught some marriage experts off-guard. David Popenoe of the Marriage Project, at Rutgers University, immediately noted this oddity: Although our culture may have gotten more sexually permissive over the past 50 years, "the attitudes against adultery have gotten firmer over time." He cites one survey showing that more than 90% of the population believes that cheating on one's spouse is always wrong.

So why haven't those strong beliefs translated into better behavior? Diane Sollee, who used to be a marriage counselor and now runs Smart Marriages (a coalition of marriage educators), believes that infidelity in most instances is simply a matter of opportunity. And people have more opportunities these days. Many of the men she has spoken with over the years tell her that the other woman "wasn't even cute or sexy." She reports that her clients "accidentally started having intimacy with a person. Whether at work or at church, wherever they're hanging out, anything that increases those encounters increases the chance of infidelity."

There is no doubt that the opportunity for infidelity has increased since large numbers of women came into the workplace. But this is not a particularly recent phenomenon. Ms. Sollee does note that it is possible for individuals to have more "secrecy" now, thanks to modern technology like cellphones and email, but Edward Laumann, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, suggests that technology is a "slender reed to speculate about." Even with the best technology, he notes, to have an affair "you still have to be able to meet people in person."

It turns out that young couples have always had a higher rate of infidelity than their elders. The seven-year itch is something of a myth, says Ms. Sollee, who cites research showing that most cheating takes place within the first three years of a marriage and, perhaps most surprisingly, within six months of the birth of a first child. These facts still seem to be true.

So what is going on? Why is there so much cheating? All of the scholars I spoke with point to the higher median age at which young people get married as the most likely explanation. Since 1950, the age of first marriage has risen to 25 from 20 for women and to 27 from 22 for men. "It's more common for people to be hooking up or having relationships with multiple partners" before marriage, says Prof. Laumann.

Even young people who engage in monogamous relationships before marriage may be hurting their prospects for a faithful married life. The habits they form in those premarital relationships are likely to affect their marriages, according to Barry McCarthy, a psychologist and professor at American University in Washington. "The most common way that dating couples end a relationship is by starting another" -- that is, by cheating on their current partner. Moreover, once people have gone through a couple of breakups of long-term relationships, they may not be as worried about what will happen at the end of their marriage. "The costs of exiting have changed," says Mr. Laumann.

And it is not just the interaction with boyfriends and girlfriends that may affect their behavior in marriage. Even the habits that young people form with nonromantic companions can change the way they relate to their future spouses. It is very common, for instance, for 20-somethings to form close, long-lasting friendships with members of the opposite sex. Some may even be "friends with benefits." While in the past it was clear that a platonic friendship between a single woman and a single man would end when one of them got married -- or at least would wind down -- today that is not the case, according to Ms. Sollee. Instead, she notes, young people say: "Just because I'm getting married doesn't mean things will change." But those friendships can, over time, develop into a source of temptation.

Even friendships with members of the same sex generally used to fall by the wayside when people got married or, again, change in scale or importance. Ms. Sollee, who is in her 60s, recalls her own generation's attitude toward them: "The idea that these friendships would take any priority over your husband was unheard of." But she cites a number of 20- and 30-something women she knows who still have "girls' nights out" at bars and even go on vacation with their friends and without their husbands.

Mr. Laumann notes that while not a lot of quantitative research has been done on these friendships, there is plenty of evidence that they are occupying a more significant place in the lives of young people today. He cites a book called "Urban Tribe," by Ethan Watters, a man in San Francisco who writes about the difficulty of finding a wife who fits in with his group of friends. Such groups of friends represent a new kind of family for young adults. And while a potential spouse might initially prefer them to the stereotypical overbearing in-laws, it's clear that these friends are bringing a whole new set of problems to the table.

Ms. Riley is the Journal's deputy Taste editor.

from City Journal, 2008-Autumn, by Theodore Dalrymple:

The Quivering Upper Lip
The British character: from self-restraint to self-indulgence

When my mother arrived in England as a refugee from Nazi Germany, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, she found the people admirable, though not without the defects that corresponded to their virtues. By the time she died, two-thirds of a century later, she found them rude, dishonest, and charmless. They did not seem to her, moreover, to have any virtues to compensate for their unpleasant qualities. I occasionally asked her to think of some, but she couldn’t; and neither, frankly, could I.

It wasn’t simply that she had been robbed twice during her last five years, having never been the victim of a crime before—experiences that, at so advanced an age, would surely change anyone’s opinion of one’s fellow citizens. Few things are more despicable, after all, or more indicative of moral nihilism, than a willingness to prey upon the old and frail. No, even before she was robbed she had noticed that a transvaluation of all values seemed to have taken place in her adopted land. The human qualities that people valued and inculcated when she arrived had become mocked, despised, and repudiated by the time she died. The past really was a foreign country; and they did do things differently there.

What, exactly, were the qualities that my mother had so admired? Above all, there was the people’s manner. The British seemed to her self-contained, self-controlled, law-abiding yet tolerant of others no matter how eccentric, and with a deeply ironic view of life that encouraged them to laugh at themselves and to appreciate their own unimportance in the scheme of things. If Horace Walpole was right—that the world is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel—the English were the most thoughtful people in the world. They were polite and considerate, not pushy or boastful; the self-confident took care not to humiliate the shy or timid; and even the most accomplished was aware that his achievements were a drop in the ocean of possibility, and might have been much greater if he had tried harder or been more talented.

Those characteristics had undoubted drawbacks. They could lead to complacency and philistinism, for if the world was a comedy, nothing was serious. They could easily slide into arrogance: the rest of the world can teach us nothing. The literary archetype of such arrogance was Mr. Podsnap in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, a man convinced that all that was British was best, and who “had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm in often clearing the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him.” Still, taken all in all, my mother found the British culture of the day possessed of a deep and seductive, if subtle and by no means transparent or obvious, charm.

My mother was not alone. André Maurois, the great French Anglophile, for example, wrote a classic text about British character, Les silences du Colonel Bramble. Maurois was a translator and liaison officer between the French and British armies during World War I and lived closely for many months with British officers and their men. Les silences was the fruit of his observations. Maurois found the British combination of social self-confidence and existential modesty attractive. It was then a common French opinion that the British were less intelligent than the French; and in the book, Maurois’ fictional alter ego, Aurelle, discusses the matter with one of the British officers. “ ‘Don’t you yourself find,≈ said Major Parker, Ωthat intelligence is valued by you at more than its worth? We are like the young Persians of whom Herodotus speaks, and who, until the age of twenty, learnt only three things: how to ride, archery and not to lie.’ ”

Aurelle spots the paradox: “You despise the academic,” he replies, “and you quote Herodotus. Even better, I caught you the other day in flagrante, reading Xenophon. . . . Very few French, I assure you . . .”

Parker quickly disavows any intellectual virtue in his choice of citations or reading matter. “That’s very different,” he says. “The Greeks and Romans interest us, not as an object of enquiry, but as our ancestors and as sportsmen. I like Xenophon—he is the perfect example of a British gentleman.”

Forty years later, in 1959, another French writer, Tony Mayer, in his short book La vie anglaise, noticed the reluctance of the English to draw attention to their accomplishments, to blow their own trumpets: “Conversation still plays an important role in England. They speak a lot, but in general they say nothing. As it is bad form to mention personal or professional matters which could lead to discussion, they prefer to speak in generalities.” The Franco-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco brilliantly parodied this tendency in his La cantatrice chauve (The Bald Soprano), in which a respectable English couple has a long conversation at a dinner party. At the end, after many pages of utter banalities, they realize that they are actually married, and have been for a long time.

Appearances in Britain could deceive. The British, after all, despised intellectuals, but were long at the forefront of intellectual inquiry; they were philistines, yet created a way of life in the countryside as graceful as any that has ever existed; they had a state religion, but came to find religious enthusiasm bad form. Mayer comments:

Even in the most ordinary places and circumstances, an accident happens. You hit by chance upon a subject that you have long studied; you go as far as allowing your interest in it to show. And suddenly you realize that your interlocutor—so reserved, so polite—not only knows a hundred times more about this subject than you, but about an infinite number of other subjects as well.

This attractive modesty mixed also with a mild perfidy (this is la perfide Albion we are talking of, after all): irony, understatement, and double meaning were everywhere, waiting to trap the unwary foreigner. The British lived as if they had taken to heart the lines of America’s greatest poet (who, not coincidentally, lived her whole life in New England):

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
Success in Circuit lies . . .

The habit of indirection in speech, combined with probity of action, gave English life its savor and its interest. Mayer provided a brief interpretive key for the unwary:

I may be wrong—I am absolutely sure.
I don’t know much about—I am a specialist in.
No trouble at all—What a burden!
We must keep in touch—Good-bye forever.
Must you go?—At last!
Not too bad—Absolutely wonderful.

The orderliness and restraint of political life in Britain also struck my refugee mother. The British leaders were not giants among men but—much more important for someone fleeing Nazi Germany—they were not brutes, either. They were civilized men; the nearest they came to the exercise of arbitrary power was a sense of noblesse oblige, and the human breast is capable of far worse sentiments. Politics was, to them and the voters, only part of life, and by no means the most important. Maurois’ Dr. O’Grady describes to Aurelle what he calls “the safety-valve of parliament”: “From now on, elected champions have our riots and coups d’état for us in the chamber, which leaves the rest of the nation the leisure to play cricket.” Major Parker takes up the theme, also addressing Aurelle: “What good has it done you French to change government eight times in a century? The riot for you has become a national institution. In England it would be impossible to make a revolution. If people gathered near Westminster shouting slogans, a policeman would tell them to go away and they would go.”

Many remarked upon the gentleness of British behavior in public. Homicidal violence and street robberies were vanishingly rare. But it wasn’t only in the absence of crime that the gentleness made itself felt. British pastimes were peaceful and reflective: gardening and the keeping of pigeons, for example. Vast sporting crowds would gather in such good order that sporting events resembled church meetings, as both George Orwell and anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer (writing in 1955) noted.

Newsreels of the time reinforce the point. The faces of people in sports crowds did not contort in hatred, snarling and screaming, but were peaceful and good-humored, if a little pinched and obviously impoverished. The crowds were almost self-regulating; as late as the early sixties, the British read with incredulity reports that, on the Continent, wire barriers, police baton charges, and tear gas were often necessary to control crowds. Incidents of crowd misbehavior in Britain were so unusual that when one did happen, it caused a sensation.

The English must have been the only people in the world for whom a typical response to someone who accidentally stepped on one’s toes was to apologize oneself. British behavior when ill or injured was stoic. Aurelle recounts in Les silences du Colonel Bramble seeing an officer he knew on a stretcher, obviously near death from a terrible abdominal injury. The officer says to him: “Please say good-bye to the colonel for me and ask him to write home that I didn’t suffer too much. I hope this is not too much trouble for you. Thanks very much indeed.” Tony Mayer, too, says of the English that when they were ill they usually apologized: “I’m sorry to bother you, Doctor.”

No culture changes suddenly, and the elderly often retained the attitudes of their youth. I remember working for a short time in a general practice in a small country town where an old man called me to his house. I found him very weak from chronic blood loss, unable to rise from his bed, and asked him why he had not called me earlier. “I didn’t like to disturb you, Doctor,” he said. “I know you are a very busy man.”

From a rational point of view, this was absurd. What could I possibly need to do that was more important than attending to such an ill man? But I found his self-effacement deeply moving. It was not the product of a lack of self-esteem, that psychological notion used to justify rampant egotism; nor was it the result of having been downtrodden by a tyrannical government that accorded no worth to its citizens. It was instead an existential, almost religious, modesty, an awareness that he was far from being all-important.

I experienced other instances of this modesty. I used to pass the time of day with the husband of an elderly patient of mine who would accompany her to the hospital. One day, I found him so jaundiced that he was almost orange. At his age, it was overwhelmingly likely to mean one thing: inoperable cancer. He was dying. He knew it and I knew it; he knew that I knew it. I asked him how he was. “Not very well,” he said. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” I replied. “Well,” he said quietly, and with a slight smile, “we shall just have to do the best we can, won’t we?” Two weeks later, he was dead.

I often remember the nobility of this quite ordinary man’s conduct and words. He wanted an appropriate, but only an appropriate, degree of commiseration from me; in his view, which was that of his generation and culture, it was a moral requirement that emotion and sentiment should be expressed proportionately, and not in an exaggerated or self-absorbed way. My acquaintance with him was slight; therefore my regret, while genuine, should be slight. (Oddly enough, my regret has grown over the years, with the memory.) Further, he considered it important that he should not embarrass me with any displays of emotion that might discomfit me. A man has to think of others, even when he is dying.

My wife, also a doctor, worked solely among the old, and found them, as I did, considerate even when suffering, as well as humorous and lacking in self-importance. Her patients were largely working-class—a refutation of the idea, commonly expressed, that the cultural ideal that I have described characterized only the upper echelons of society.

Gradually, but overwhelmingly, the culture and character of British restraint have changed into the exact opposite. Extravagance of gesture, vehemence of expression, vainglorious boastfulness, self-exposure, and absence of inhibition are what we tend to admire now—and the old modesty is scorned. It is as if the population became convinced of Blake’s fatuous dictum that it is better to strangle a baby in the cradle than to let a desire remain unacted upon.

Certainly, many Britons under the age of 30 or even 40 now embrace a kind of sub-psychotherapeutic theory that desires, if not unleashed, will fester within and eventually manifest themselves in dangerous ways. To control oneself for the sake of the social order, let alone for dignity or decorum (a word that would either mean nothing to the British these days, or provoke peals of laughter), is thus both personally and socially harmful.

I have spoken with young British people who regularly drink themselves into oblivion, passing first through a prolonged phase of public nuisance. To a man (and woman), they believe that by doing so, they are getting rid of inhibitions that might otherwise do them psychological and even physical harm. The same belief seems universal among those who spend hours at soccer games screaming abuse and making threatening gestures (whose meaning many would put into practice, were those events not policed in military fashion).

Lack of self-control is just as character-forming as self-control: but it forms a different, and much worse and shallower, character. Further, once self-control becomes neither second nature nor a desired goal, but rather a vice to avoid at all costs, there is no plumbing the depths to which people will sink. The little town where I now live when in England transforms by night. By day, it is delightful; I live in a Queen Anne house that abuts a charming Elizabethan cottage near church grounds that look as if they materialized from an Anthony Trollope novel. By night, however, the average age of the person on the street drops from 60 to 20, with few older people venturing out. Charm and delight vanish. Not long ago, the neighborhood awoke to the sound of a young man nearly kicked to death by other young men, all of whom had spilled forth from a pub at 2 am. The driver of a local car service, who does only prearranged pickups, tells me that it is now normal (in the statistical sense) for young women to emerge from the bars and try to entice him to drive them home by baring their breasts, even pushing them against his windows if for some reason he has to stop in town.

I laughed when hearing this, but in essence it is not funny. The driver was talking not about an isolated transgressor of customs but about a whole manner of cultural comportment. By no means coincidentally, the young British find themselves hated, feared, and despised throughout Europe, wherever they gather to have what they call “a good time.” They turn entire Greek, Spanish, and Turkish resorts into B-movie Sodoms and Gomorrahs. They cover sidewalks with vomit, rape one another, and indulge in casual drunken violence. In one Greek resort, 12 young British women were arrested recently after indulging in “an outdoor oral sex competition.”

No person with the slightest apprehension of human psychology will be surprised to learn that as a consequence of this change in character, indictable crime has risen at least 900 percent since 1950. In the same period, the homicide rate has doubled—and would have gone up ten times, had it not been for improvements in trauma surgery and resuscitation techniques. And all this despite the fact that the proportion of the population in the age group most likely to commit crimes has fallen considerably.

Two things are worth noting about this shift in national character: it is not the first such shift in British history; and the change is not entirely spontaneous or the result of impersonal social forces.

Before the English and British became known for self-restraint and an ironic detachment from life, they had a reputation for high emotionalism and an inability to control their passions. The German poet Heinrich Heine, among others, detested them as violent and vulgar. It was only during the reign of William IV—“Silly Billy,” the king before Victoria—that they transformed into something approaching the restrained people whom I encountered as a child and sometimes as a doctor. The main difference between the vulgar people whom Heine detested and the people loathed and feared throughout Europe (and beyond) today is that the earlier Britons often possessed talent and genius, and in some sense stood in the forefront of human endeavor; we cannot say that of the British now.

But the second point is also important. The moralization of the British in the first third of the nineteenth century—their transformation from a people lacking self-control into exemplars of restraint—was the product of intellectual and legislative activity. So, too, was the reverse movement.

Consider in this light public drunkenness. For 100 years or more in Britain, the popular view was that such drunkenness was reprehensible and the rightful object of repression. (My heart leaps with joy when I see in France a public notice underscoring the provisions of the law “for the suppression of public drunkenness.”) Several changes then came: officials halved the tax on alcohol; intellectuals attacked the idea of self-restraint, making it culturally unacceptable; universities unapologetically began to advertise themselves as places where students could get drunk often and regularly; and finally, the government, noting that drunkenness was dramatically increasing, claimed that increasing the hours of availability of alcohol would encourage a more responsible, “Mediterranean” drinking culture, in which people would sip slowly, rather than gulp fast. It is difficult not to suspect also the role of financial inducements to politicians in all this, for even they could hardly be so stupid.

Habits become character. Perhaps they shouldn’t, but they do. Therefore, when I hear that some American states seek to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18, on the grounds that it is absurd that an 18-year-old can join the army and die for his country but not drink a beer in a public bar, I experience a strong reaction. It is a more important goal of government to uphold civilization than to find a general principle that will iron out all the apparent inconsistencies of the current dispensation.

Not long ago, I attended the graduation of a friend’s son at an upstate New York university. The night before, and the night after, I observed the students through the windows of their frat houses getting drunk. They were behaving in a silly way, but they were not causing a public nuisance because they did not dare to step out of their houses. If they did, the local police would arrest them; or, if not, the university authorities would catch them and suspend them. (This, incidentally, is powerful evidence that drunks do know what they are doing and that the law is absolutely right not to accept drunkenness as a negation of mens rea.)

No doubt the student drunkenness in the frat houses was unsatisfactory from an abstract point of view; but from the point of view of upholding civilization, to say nothing of the quality of life of the townspeople, it was all highly satisfactory. In England, that town would have been a nightmare at night that no decent person would have wanted to be out in.

So I say to Americans: if you want your young people to develop character, have the courage of your inconsistencies! Excoriate sin, especially in public places, but turn a blind eye to it when necessary—as it often is.

Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His new book is Not with a Bang but a Whimper.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2008-Nov-6:

Voters and Marriage
The people have spoken – again.

On the same day that Barack Obama carried California by 24 points, the state's voters nonetheless amended its constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Late yesterday Proposition 8 was ahead 52% to 48% with 95% of precincts reporting.

This is a big event -- less for the merits of gay marriage than as a statement about democracy. In a referendum in 2000, 61% of California voters had voted to bar same-sex marriage in the state. But in a raw display of judicial power, a 4-3 Supreme Court majority erased that referendum by declaring in May that same-sex marriage was protected by the state constitution. So opponents of gay marriage had to return to the electorate to amend the state constitution. One of the more effective TV ads contrasted the millions who voted for that proposition in 2000 with the four judges who chose to impose their cultural will. And this is California, where the media portray anyone who opposes gay marriage as a bigot or yahoo.

Similar amendments also passed in Florida and Arizona Tuesday, bringing the number of states that have done so to 30. Arizona voters had defeated a similar measure two years ago, but it passed this year 56%-44%.

Clearly many of the voters who came out for Mr. Obama also voted for the gay marriage ban. The marriage amendments outperformed John McCain by 14 points in Florida and 15 in California. So what changed? The fact that two state Supreme Courts declared same-sex marriage a constitutionally guaranteed right this year -- California in May and Connecticut in October -- no doubt played a role in pushing the Florida and Arizona measures over the top.

All of which is a warning to the Obama Administration as it bids to seed the federal courts with judicial liberals. Mr. Obama says he opposes gay marriage, but he also opposes the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that says states needn't honor same-sex marriage laws in other states. Opponents of that law, which was signed by Bill Clinton, are hoping Mr. Obama will appoint judges who will declare it unconstitutional.

Tuesday's vote shows that's a risky strategy. Instead of trying to impose gay marriage by judicial fiat, perhaps some democratic persuasion is in order. Same-sex marriage was not a divisive political issue until courts legislated it from the bench.

from the San Francisco Chronicle, 2008-Dec-20, p.A1, by Bob Egelko:

Brown asks state high court to overturn Prop. 8

(12-19) 19:43 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- State Attorney General Jerry Brown, in a surprise turnabout, asked the California Supreme Court on Friday to overturn Proposition 8, saying the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage violates basic rights guaranteed in the state Constitution.

Brown, who is required to defend state laws unless he cannot find reasonable legal grounds to do so, said after Prop. 8 passed Nov. 4 that he would support the initiative before the state's high court.

But in a lengthy filing late Friday, he argued that the constitutional amendment was "inconsistent with the guarantees of individual liberty" in California's governing charter.

"Proposition 8 must be invalidated because the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights without compelling justification," Brown said.

The authors of the state Constitution, he said, did not intend "to put a group's right to enjoy liberty to a popular vote."

Hours earlier, sponsors of Prop. 8 filed arguments asking the court to uphold the ballot measure, which passed with a 52 percent majority. Andrew Pugno, attorney for the Yes on 8 campaign, said he was disappointed by Brown's stance.

"It's unfortunate that the attorney general would not do his duty to defend the will of the voters," Pugno said.

The position of the attorney general, the state's top lawyer, ordinarily carries considerable weight with the court. Brown's office was on the losing side, however, when the court overturned California's previous ban on same-sex marriage in May.

Asked about his change of position, Brown said Friday evening that since his initial comments the day after the election, he and senior lawyers in his office had looked closely at the court's precedents and at the recent marriage ruling and concluded they couldn't defend Prop. 8.

"We have a conflict between the amendment power (through voter initiatives) and the duty of the Supreme Court to protect minorities and safeguard liberty," Brown said.

Fundamental rights in the state Constitution, including the right to marry that the state's high court has recognized, "become a dead letter if they can just be amended" by popular vote, Brown said.

The Yes on 8 forces' brief was filed by Kenneth Starr, the former Whitewater special prosecutor and now dean of Pepperdine University law school. He argued that the court should preserve the people's lawmaking powers by upholding the initiative and invalidating 18,000 same-sex weddings performed before the election.

Prop. 8 "does not broadly seek to diminish or eliminate the constitutional or civil rights of gays and lesbians," but is simply "about restoring and maintaining the traditional definition of marriage," Starr said. Decades of legal precedents, he said, require "judges - as servants of the people - to bow to the will of those whom they serve."

The court ruled 4-3 on May 15 that California's ban on same-sex marriage violated the constitutional rights of gays and lesbians to marry the partner of their choice and discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation. Prop. 8 amended the state Constitution to overturn the ruling and declare that only marriage between a man and a woman is "valid or recognized in California."

The court is reviewing lawsuits filed by gay and lesbian couples and by an array of local governments, led by San Francisco, that contend the ballot measure exceeded the legal limits on initiatives by destroying fundamental rights and stripping judges of their authority to protect a historically persecuted minority.

Such profound changes, the plaintiffs argue, amount to a constitutional revision - not merely an amendment - and require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to reach the ballot.

The justices could hear the cases as early as March and would be required to rule within 90 days. Other interested parties on both sides are scheduled to submit written arguments Jan. 15.

Starr argued Friday that Prop. 8 is a relatively modest measure and not the type of far-reaching change that qualifies as a constitutional revision.

"It simply reinstates the traditional definition of marriage without any impact on the foundational powers of government," he wrote. Judges, Starr said, retain their power to interpret the law and have never held a "mandate to protect minority rights or ensure equality apart from the law."

He also said Prop. 8's language, declaring that only marriages between men and women are "valid or recognized," invalidates all same-sex marriages conducted in California and bars the state from acknowledging those performed elsewhere. That intention was underscored by Yes on 8 ballot arguments declaring that only opposite-sex marriages would be recognized in the state "regardless of when or where performed," Starr said.

Brown disagreed on that issue as well, saying in his brief that Prop. 8 did not explicitly state it would apply retroactively. If upheld, he said, the measure should be interpreted to apply only to marriages performed since it passed.

The attorney general agreed with Starr that the ballot measure is not a constitutional revision and does not weaken judicial powers. But Brown said Prop. 8 conflicts with the Declaration of Rights, the basic guarantees of liberty declared in the first sentences of California's Constitution.

As the "chief law officer of the state," Brown said in his brief, he is "duty bound to uphold the whole of the Constitution" and not merely the power of the people to change the laws by initiative.

The case is Strauss vs. Horton, S168047. E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

from the Los Angeles Times, 2008-Nov-23:

Why Hollywood is torn on Prop. 8 activism

Should there be boycotts, blacklists, firings or de facto shunning of those who supported Proposition 8?

That's the issue consuming many in liberal Hollywood who fought to defeat the initiative banning same-sex marriage and are now reeling with recrimination and dismay. Meanwhile, activists continue to comb donor lists and employ the Internet to expose those who donated money to support the ban.

Already out is Scott Eckern, director of the nonprofit California Musical Theatre in Sacramento, who resigned after a flurry of complaints from prominent theater artists, including "Hairspray" composer Marc Shaiman, when word of his contribution to the Yes on 8 campaign surfaced.

Other targets include Film Independent, the nonprofit arts organization that puts on both the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Spirit Awards; the Cinemark theater chain; and the Sundance Film Festival.

For many in Hollywood, the Proposition 8 backlash represents a troubling clash of free speech, religious beliefs and the right to fight intolerance. Many supporters of same-sex marriage view the state constitutional amendment as codified bigotry, a rollback of civil liberties for gays and lesbians.

from syndication via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2008-Nov-15, by Guy Adams:

Mormons under siege for Prop. 8 role

SALT LAKE CITY -- Sister Sugiyanto's guided teatime tour of Temple Square, the world headquarters of the Mormon Church, was rudely interrupted by the sound of emergency sirens and police helicopters hovering over central Salt Lake City.

A suspicious package containing white powder had been opened by a clerk in the church administration office, prompting FBI agents wearing chemical warfare suits to swiftly evacuate the building. Across town, news was coming in that eight local churches had been vandalized. One, in a family neighborhood, had obscene graffiti scrawled on its walls. The other seven, in the nearby towns of Layton and Ogden, had windows shot out, apparently with a BB gun.

The brouhaha on Thursday was severely testing the happy demeanor of the sister, a visiting missionary from Indonesia whose informative trips round the Mormon Church's 45-acre HQ culminate in a not-so-subtle attempt to recruit you. "I feel we are being picked on," said Sister Sugiyanto. "We are not the only group that supported this proposition, so why do they only blame us? Last week, thousands came here to protest. It made me sad, more than anything."

The proposition in question is Proposition 8, a ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage in California that was backed by 52 percent of voters on Nov. 4. The "they" refers to gay rights activists upset by the Mormon Church's role in the campaign to push the measure through. Modern morality and religious doctrine have collided in spectacular fashion, and nowhere more so than here in Utah.

To liberal America, the Church of the Latter Day Saints and its 12 million members around the world are suddenly public enemy number one. They stand accused -- and, it must be said, it is an accusation they strongly deny -- of thinly veiled homophobia, using their massive financial muscle to help railroad the ballot measure.

In California, where 18,000 recently married gays and lesbians, including the chat show host Ellen DeGeneres and the Star Trek actor George Takkei, have been thrown into legal limbo, anger has reached fever pitch. Dozens of Hollywood stars have backed a campaign to name-and-shame Mormon-owned businesses that financed Prop. 8. Others have attended protests at temples, severely testing the diplomatic skills of Mormon performers such as Donny Osmond and Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of The Killers. More gay rights demonstrations will be held at church properties across the U.S. today.

Utah, where more than a million Mormons reside (they are the majority religion in the state) is now facing a consumer boycott that threatens to disrupt its $6 billion winter ski season and may even affect January's Sundance film festival.

Salt Lake City sits in the middle of this storm. It was built by Brigham Young, a Mormon leader who fled west in the 1840s after suffering religious persecution and today, the city's inhabitants greet their new troubles with steely resolve.

"This is not democracy. This is not American. This is terrorism, for want of a better word," said Renee Scheffers, a guest at a wedding at the Salt Lake Temple, the imposing granite building that, together with the snow-capped Wasatch mountains, dominates the city's skyline. "The gays have become everything they accused their opponents of," added her fellow guest, Wilson Clyde. "They're intolerant of me, of my beliefs and my way of life. They're nothing more than extremists who are trying to intimidate and silence anyone who disagrees with them."

The debate has certainly turned ugly. In addition to the "anthrax" scares that saw Temple Square, together with a Mormon temple in Los Angeles, evacuated on Thursday (tests later showed that the white powder was not toxic), attacks on other Mormon properties have raised a chilling specter of religious hatred. In one a charred copy of the Book of Mormon, which members study in addition to the Bible, was found on the steps of a church in Colorado.

For Mormon leaders, it's another chapter in a long history of vilification that sees them wrongly portrayed as teetotal, right-wing oddballs, or freakish polygamists.

"It's easier to attack a minority religion, especially one that frankly isn't very well understood, than to protest because 70 percent of African American voters also supported Proposition 8," says Mike Ottermeyer, a somewhat exasperated church spokesman. "It's a tactical thing. It makes it easier for them to vent their anger and frustration. But to vandalize chapels, vandalize temples, put graffiti on our buildings, protest outside our temples ... It's completely unreasonable. People have the right to protest. But this is way over the top."

The facts regarding the current round of protests are disputed by both sides. The disagreement started several months before polling day, when Mormon congregations were read a letter by Thomas Monson, the Church's president or "prophet" (a sort of Mormon Pope) asking them to give time and money to help ban gay marriage.

Followers, who place the family at the heart of their faith, responded in their thousands, providing up to $40 million by some estimates that allowed the "Yes on 8" campaign to run a series of aggressive and highly successful television attack ads. Some featured small girls announcing: "Today I learned in school that a prince can marry a prince and I can one day marry a princess!"

That campaign aggravated those who already harbored misgivings about the church's financial clout, puritanical streak, and influence on public affairs. Many influential politicians are Mormons, including the former Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, and the prominent Democrat Harry Reid.

In Utah, to the dismay of non-religious residents, the church's influence on public affairs means the state boasts the most stringent alcohol licensing laws in the U.S., and is the only state in the U.S. where it remains illegal to gamble.

Yet, despite the controversy, the real face of Mormonism is reassuringly cuddly. Church members may not necessarily be perfect company at a dinner party (they are required to forswear alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee) but they tend to be sympathetic souls who would make agreeable next-door neighbors.

Even the local gay pride office has some words of praise for the Mormon Church: "In a lot of communities prejudice airs itself in a violent way, in an outward way," says a spokeswoman, Maria Gomberg. "Here in Utah, although we do experience hate crimes, the LDS Church generally fights through legal action."

To the fascination of the rest of the world, a few members still practice polygamy (an estimated 30,000 in Utah), but it is officially frowned upon by the church, who renounced it as a condition of Utah gaining statehood in the late 19th century. The public face of the practice is now limited to television shows such as Big Love, and fundamentalist breakaway factions, including the Texan sect that was raided by child-support services this year.

Mormons believe in a version of Christianity that stems from a new chapter of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, allegedly recorded on gold tablets by inhabitants of North America shortly after the time of Christ. The tablets were discovered in the 1820s -- or so the story goes -- by the religion's founder, Joseph Smith.

Smith's own standing as a polygamist has laced the argument over gay versus "traditional" marriage with a heavy dose of irony. Among members of Salt Lake City's surprisingly active gay community, it is a source of mild amusement. "We have actually opened a gay bar in the middle of a polygamist compound," says Brian Morriss, owner of the newly built hostelry Jam in the city's Marmalade district. "Just after we leased the land, we discovered that a family called the Kingstons owned three buildings around us. The father has 106 children."

Though Morriss and Todd Croft, his business (and romantic) partner, joined their patrons at noisy anti-Mormon protests at Temple Square, they say Salt Lake City is a surprisingly hospitable place for the gay community. "It is the third largest gay city per capita in the West, after Los Angeles and San Francisco. Thirty-thousand come to our gay pride events," he says. "I have a lot of Mormon friends, and they are not as extreme as everyone thinks. In fact, they are mostly apologetic about what their church has done."

Scott McCoy, an openly gay state senator whose election lays bare the metropolitan nature of at least some areas of Salt Lake City, says that any boycott of his state will merely cause the church to shift further to the right. "By saying we're going to build a big wall around Utah, well for folks who live here who are trying to make changes, it just leaves us high and dry. Mormons further to the right would be delighted if gay people boycotted Utah, because they don't want gay people here."

The future of the debate may therefore lie in the hands of moderate Mormons who recognize the potential PR problems recent weeks have brought to their church and who say the time is right for a rapprochement. "I speak only for myself, and not the Church, but I am in favor of domestic partnerships," says Paul Pugmire, a PR consultant and prominent figure in local Mormon circles. "This would include gay couples. It would include a pair of unmarried sisters living in my neighborhood, it would include any number of different non-traditional families.

"Marriage is a bright line I don't think we'll ever cross. But there is a great deal leading up to that bright line which really should be examined. We now have a great opportunity to come together on this. There is so much more that can be done, and if recent events have taught us anything it is that we must end the hate, for everyone's sake."

Guy Adams writes for The Independent of Britain.

from the Seattle Times, 2008-Nov-15, by Steve Miletich:

Seattle parks officials drop plan to ban nudity in parks

Seattle Parks and Recreation will drop its pursuit of a proposal that would make public nudity in parks subject to prosecution for criminal trespass and also will explore the possibility of a clothing-optional beach in the city.

Seattle Parks and Recreation will drop its pursuit of a proposal that would make public nudity in parks subject to prosecution for criminal trespass.

And, in a nod to tolerance, Seattle's parks commissioners asked parks officials to explore the possibility of a clothing-optional beach in the city.

The seven-member board, which was going to take up the nudity proposal in January, abruptly decided at its regular meeting Thursday night to urge parks officials to drop the idea in the face of strong opposition.

A crowd "asserting the right to be naked outside" appeared at the meeting of the volunteer advisory board, said Dewey Potter, parks spokeswoman.

"This is how we learn and find out what people want," she said.

Bob Morton, the Texas-based executive director of the Naturist Action Committee, which advances and protects the rights of naturists, applauded the parks board.

"Seattle is diverse and maintaining that diversity is one of your biggest assets in Seattle," Morton said. He wasn't at Thursday's meeting, but a representative of the group was there as part of its nationwide interest in naturist issues.

Officials proposed an administrative rule that would have allowed police to ask nude park visitors to leave or face a criminal trespass citation if they didn't.

The proposal grew out of concern about a World Naked Bike Ride event on July 12, one of three held in Seattle this year to draw attention to oil dependency.

The cyclists got a permit to gather at Gas Works Park, where they stripped, painted themselves and rode through downtown Seattle, ending at Seattle Center.

Police received six complaints that the naked riders were offensive and police took down 23 riders' names.

No charges will be brought against those riders, according to the City Attorney's Office.

Daniel Johnson, 34, organizer of the July 12 event, attended the board meeting. He said Friday he was pleased with the board's action. He said the riders in his event aren't necessarily nudists, but he supports the study of a clothing-optional beach.

Johnson and Morton said there has been strong public demand for a clothing-optional beach in the Seattle parks strategic-action plan.

Parks spokeswoman Potter said the commissioners instructed the department to monitor for several months compliance with permits issued for parks events.

That means people must abide by federal, state and local laws, Potter said.

Under state law, public nudity is not illegal unless it is an affront to someone else or causes alarm, Potter said.

"It's subjective," she said. "It's in the eye of the beholder."

Nudity is not illegal "per se" under state law and the city doesn't have a law regulating nudity, according to a parks memo on the now-dead nudity proposal.

The proposal likely wouldn't have affected Seattle's most famous nudist event -- the naked bicycle ride during the Fremont Fair -- because participants don't gather at a park.

Nor would it have affected the renting of enclosed public swimming pools for private nudist events.

from the Associated Press via the Seattle Times, 2008-Nov-15:

Protest in the buff OK, Portland judge decides

PORTLAND — A judge has ruled that you can, indeed, "let it all hang out" in Portland and dismissed indecent exposure charges against a nude bicycle rider who did just that.

In Portland, the judge said, cycling naked has been anointed as a "well-established tradition" and understood as a form of "symbolic protest."

Judge Jerome LaBarre said the city's annual World Naked Bike Ride — in which as many as 1,200 people took part last June 14 — has helped cement riding in the buff as a form of protest against cars and dependence on fossil fuels.

LaBarre then cleared Michael "Bobby" Hammond, 21, after two days of hearings.

Hammond ran afoul of the constabulary June 26, when he stripped down and hopped on his 10-speed in an effort, he says, to show that he alone was powering it.

Portland police, however, saw Hammond's two-minute ride through the Alberta Arts District as a stunt, not free speech, and arrested him, citing a city code that states it's illegal to expose genitalia in a public place in view of members of the opposite sex.

A bystander recorded the episode, which was posted on the Web.

As Hammond pulled to a stop, police began to question him.

Hammond said he didn't think he was doing anything wrong.

An officer told him to put on some pants or go to jail. "There are kids out there," the officer said.

"I just want to ride my bike," Hammond says. "I'm wearing a helmet."

The officer said that was nice, but that it was either pants or jail.

Three officers then brought Hammond to the ground, cuffed him and left him naked in the street.

The district attorney's office sought misdemeanor convictions for resisting arrest, fourth-degree assault and indecent exposure.

Hammond, who works at a cafe and as a caregiver for people with developmental disabilities, said he had moved to Portland from New Mexico and thought nudity was legal because he'd participated in his first World Naked Bike Ride without incident.

"It's one of the reasons I live in Portland. As far as you can see — as far in front of you and behind — it's naked people."

Twelve days after the group bike ride Hammond, housemates and friends sat on the lawn of his home selling art and bemoaning the traffic.

He and a friend, Walter Geis, decided to strip down and ride their bikes up and down the boulevard.

Hammond testified that he was expressing a message in support of bikes and against cars, foreign oil, the Iraq war and air pollution.

Deputy District Attorney Ryan Lufkin said Hammond made no attempt to communicate that.

"This was, by every definition of the word, streaking," Lufkin said and told the judge that if he dismissed the charges anyone who'd been arrested for indecent exposure could make the same case.

In 1985, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in that appearing nude in public can be a protected form of expression if it's done in political protest and should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

LaBarre said Hammond's case qualified.

Would he ride naked again?

"Oh, yeah," he said.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2008-Nov-27, by Dale Buss:

Discordant Voices Among eHarmony's Customers

Amanda Brophy and J.P. Duffy met on eHarmony.com in 2006. Each appreciated the dating site's dedication to facilitating long-term relationships -- and the Christian background of the founders. Mr. Duffy, media director at the Family Research Council in Washington, and Ms. Brophy, an art teacher from Annapolis, Md., married last fall.

But now the Duffys are disappointed with eHarmony.com because the Pasadena, Calif.-based company just capitulated to an anti-discrimination lawsuit and agreed to launch a separate site aimed at matching homosexuals with suitable partners. A gay match-seeker in New Jersey filed a complaint, and the state's attorney general found probable cause that eHarmony had violated New Jersey's nondiscrimination statute.

"EHarmony's success didn't come from its slick advertising campaigns," said Mr. Duffy. "It was their high moral standards, because they rose above the 'hook-up' mentality of their competitors, and because they were openly helping people find marriage partners." Mr. Duffy is hardly alone among Christian conservatives in his disappointment with eHarmony.

The complaints among this group are twofold. First, there is the concern that homosexual activists have succeeded in taking a private business hostage. Why should eHarmony have to serve every type of clientele? Do Jewish dating sites have to serve Christians? Can meat-eaters demand a hamburger at vegetarian restaurants?

Gays and lesbians have succeeded in gaining greater protections from public entities. New York and San Francisco, for instance, have long granted employment benefits to same-sex partners of municipal workers. And Orlando, Fla., began doing so last month. But many businesses had been able to resist pressure by activists. And now, some observers worry, eHarmony's surrender may have tipped the balance. "The legal and cultural trends are undeniable," said Peter Siegel, a labor and employment attorney with Greenspoon Marder in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "The real question is whether corporate America is prepared to follow the lead of eHarmony and acquiesce without a fight." Or at least without a publicized court battle.

When Christian psychologist Neil Clark Warren founded the dating site in 2000, his avowed purpose was to distill all that he had learned and written about what makes relationships work -- and not work -- into "29 key measures of compatibility." Though the company didn't ban open homosexuals, "sexual orientation" never was one of its matching criteria. And Mr. Warren made it clear with his statements, for instance warning against premarital sex, that he wanted to help people find traditional marriage partners. In fact, rival site Chemistry.com, in its ads, has taunted eHarmony by name for not matching gays and lesbians.

So over the past three years, eHarmony has spent millions of dollars battling attempts by homosexual litigants to force it to cater to them. A California judge has just classified a lesbian's suit against eHarmony as a class action. And the company feared actions in more than a dozen other states where homosexuals are protected from discrimination.

"It's a very difficult area, and you can never be sure if you can take cases all the way to the Supreme Court," said Ted Olson, former U.S. solicitor general and now eHarmony's chief outside counsel. In addition to expressing uncertainty about any outcome in court, Mr. Olson said: "At some point a company has to decide if its resources can be used all the way to the end of the line."

But many evangelical Christians are upset with what they see as eHarmony's cop-out. This community was responsible for making eHarmony thrive, especially after Mr. Warren allied himself with fellow California psychologist James Dobson and was featured repeatedly on Mr. Dobson's Focus on the Family radio show. Mr. Warren's Christian base allowed him to compete with the giants of the nascent matchmaking business, including Match.com.

Then, in 2005, Mr. Warren suggested in a couple of interviews that his association with evangelicals was hurting the company. Seeking a broader audience, he pointedly broke with Focus on the Family because "people do recognize [it] as occupying a very precise political position in this society and a very precise spiritual position," he told USA Today.

EHarmony's drift seemed to intensify after Mr. Warren left day-to-day management of the company in 2006 and its new venture-capitalist owners asserted their own sensibilities. Last spring, eHarmony gave advice on "navigating the one-night stand" in a newsletter. It later apologized after the Family Research Council's Mr. Duffy criticized the newsletter in a piece for Worldnetdaily.com. Now, many of eHarmony's original supporters see last week's settlement as a final moral compromise.

It's difficult for these critics to accept what they see as the company's premature concession of legal defeat -- particularly given Mr. Olson's credentials, they are disappointed that the fight didn't go further. There are also precedents for success in this arena. For example, in 2000 the Supreme Court sided with the Boy Scouts of America when they asserted their right to ban homosexuals from serving as troop leaders.

In a statement released last week, Mr. Olson seemed optimistic about the company's prospects: "EHarmony looks forward to moving beyond this legal dispute, which has been a burden for the company, and continuing to advance its business model of serving individuals by helping them find successful, long-term relationships."

But the future holds some challenges. The company has not only lost some of its loyal customer base, but still finds itself in legal hot water. The California class-action plaintiffs could sue for damages, alleging that eHarmony has already hampered their love lives. Maybe the company should have stuck to its principles.

Mr. Buss is a Michigan-based journalist and the author of a biography of James Dobson.

from the Telegraph of London, 2008-Aug-24, by Toby Harnden:

Frank Marshall Davis, alleged Communist, was early influence on Barack Obama
New details about a black poet in Hawaii who was a key early influence in Barack Obama's life can be revealed by The Telegraph.

Washington -- Although identified only as Frank in Mr Obama's memoir Dreams from My Father, it has now been established that he was Frank Marshall Davis, a radical activist and journalist who had been suspected of being a member of the Communist Party in the 1950s.

Mr Davis moved to Honolulu from Chicago in 1948 with his second wife Helen Canfield, a white socialite, at the suggestion of his friend the actor Paul Robeson, who advised them that there would be more tolerance of a mixed race couple in Hawaii than on the American mainland.

A bohemian libertine who drank heavily and loved jazz, he became friends with Stanley Dunham, Mr Obama's maternal grandfather in the 1960s. Mr Davis died in 1987 at the age of 81, five years before Mr Dunham.

“He knew Stan real well,” said Dawna Weatherly-Williams, a close friend of Mr Davis “They'd play Scrabble and drink and crack jokes and crack jokes and argue. Frank always won and he was always very braggadocio about it too. It was all jocular. They didn't get polluted drunk. And Frank never really did drugs, though he and Stan would smoke pot together.”

While his mother was in Indonesia during part of his teenage years, Mr Obama lived with his white grandparents. Mrs Weatherly-Williams said that the poet was first introduced to the future Democratic presidential candidate in 1970 at the age of 10.

“Stan had been promising to bring Barry by because we all had that in common - Frank's kids were half-white, Stan's grandson was half-black and my son was half-black. We all had that in common and we all really enjoyed it. We got a real kick out of reality.”

Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's half-sister, told the Associated Press recently that her grandfather had seen Mr Davis was “a point of connection, a bridge if you will, to the larger African-American experience for my brother".

In his memoir, Mr Obama recounts how he visited Mr Davis on several occasions, apparently at junctures when he was grappling with racial issues, to seek his counsel. At one point in 1979 Mr Davis described university as “an advanced degree in compromise” that was designed to keep blacks in their place.

Mr Obama quoted him as saying: “Leaving your race at the door. Leaving your people behind. Understand something, boy. You're not going to college to get educated. You're going there to get trained.”

He added that “they'll tank on your chain and let you know that you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you're a nigger just the same.”

It has also been established that Mr Davis, who divorced in 1970, was the author of a hard-core pornographic autobiography published in San Diego in 1968 by Greenleaf Classics under the pseudonym Bob Greene.

In a surviving portion of an autobiographical manuscript, Mr Davis confirms that he was the author of Sex Rebel: Black after a reader had noticed the “similarities in style and phraseology” between the pornographic work and his poetry.

“I could not then truthfully deny that this book, which came out in 1968 as a Greenleaf Classic, was mine.” In the introduction to Sex Rebel, Mr Davis (writing as Greene) explains that although he has “changed names and identities…all incidents I have described have been taken from actual experiences”.

He stated that “under certain circumstances I am bisexual” and that he was “ a voyeur and an exhibitionist” who was “occasionally mildly interested in sado-masochism”, adding: “I have often wished I had two penises to enjoy simultaneously the double – but different – sensations of oral and genital copulation.”

The book, which closely tracks Mr Davis's life in Chicago and Hawaii and the fact that his first wife was black and his second white, describes in lurid detail a series of shockingly sordid sexual encounters, often involving group sex.

One chapter concerns the seduction by Mr Davis and his first wife of a 13-year-old girl called Anne. Mr Davis wrote that it was the girl who had suggested he had sex with her. “I'm not one to go in for Lolitas. Usually I'd rather not bed a babe under 20.

“But there are exceptions. I didn't want to disappoint the trusting child. At her still-impressionistic age, a rejection might be traumatic, could even cripple her sexually for life.”

He then described how he and his wife would have sex with the girl. “Anne came up many times the next several weeks, her aunt thinking she was in good hands. Actually she was.

“She obtained a course in practical sex from experienced and considerate practitioners rather than from ignorant insensitive neophytes….I think we did her a favour, although the pleasure was mutual.”

On other occasions, Mr Davis would cruise in Hawaii parks looking for couples or female tourists to have sex with. He derived sexual gratification from bondage, simulated rape and being flogged and urinated on.

He boasted that “the number of white babes interested in at least one meeting with a Negro male has been far more than I can handle” and wished “America were as civilised as, say, Scandinavia”. He concluded: “I regret none of my experiences or unusual appetites; for me they are normal.”

According to Mrs Weatherly-Williams, Mr Davis lost touch with Mr Dunham some time in the 1980s. John Edgar Tidwell, who wrote the introduction to Davis's memoir and edited a collection of his work, said that there was no mention of Mr Dunham or Mr Obama in any of Mr Davis's papers.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2008-Sep-26, by Ashley Samelson:

Lipstick Jungle

A few weeks ago, I helped my 18-year-old sister move into her freshman dorm at Hillsdale College in Michigan. I was anxious for her -- I worried that the female culture at her school would be similar to that at my own alma mater, Tufts University in Medford, Mass.

As a reserved evangelical from Colorado Springs, Colo., I was shocked by a lot of things at Tufts when I entered in the fall of 2003. What shocked me more than anything, however, was the way women treated other women. I regularly heard young women refer to each other using the most obscene and degrading insults. I observed females encouraging others to binge drink and then berating those who couldn't hold their liquor. At breakfast on the weekends, I often overheard young women discussing their shame after feeling pressured by their girlfriends to participate in a degrading activity, such as a lingerie-themed or "secretaries and bosses" party. One year, a sorority actually commanded its pledges to strip to their underwear and allow fraternity brothers to mark the physical flaws on their bodies with permanent ink.

Contrary to the feminist narrative about men being responsible for the oppression of women, nearly every instance of female misery I encountered at Tufts seemed to be instigated initially by another woman. My junior year, a controversial joke about rape was published in the student humor journal while a woman was editor in chief.

Such a hostile environment is not unique to Tufts. The Delta Zeta women at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., last year asked unattractive and unpopular sisters to leave the sorority. In her memoir, "Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood" (2005), Koren Zailckas, a recent graduate of Syracuse University and a recovering alcoholic, sets a scene of young women at that upstate school not only encouraging one another to drink to the point of illness or blackout as a way to forge friendships but also competing with one another to be the most sexually adventurous.

Ms. Zailckas's bitter experiences and those of countless others should dispel the notion that binge drinking on college campuses -- which inarguably leaves women more vulnerable to sexual assault -- is spurred on solely by frat boys. Step onto just about any college campus on a Saturday night and you will see that women are just as much the culprits.

Ask Ariel Levy, a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., and the author of "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture" (2005). She details the emergence of what she terms the "nouvelle raunch feminist," a woman who gleefully participates in group sex and attends hook-up parties. Such degradation, Ms. Levy argues, is something that young women are learning in school and are forcing on one another. She writes: "If Male Chauvinist Pigs were men who regarded women as pieces of meat, we would outdo them and be Female Chauvinist Pigs: women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves."

Meanwhile, college men are watching and taking notes. A male friend who attended the University of Michigan wrote to me in an email last month: "I, perhaps unconsciously, observe women to try and determine how they want to be treated. When I see girls at a party who seemingly have no self-control, I'll admit that it's really tough to visualize them as 'ladies.' It's as if they, solely through their own actions, have lowered my expectations, lowered my standards of behavior."

Upon arriving with my sister at Hillsdale, a school known for attracting conservative and religious students, I noticed a contrast immediately. I began chatting with a rising senior, and she and I quickly discovered an acquaintance in common. Referring to this woman, the Hillsdale student said: "She is such an amazing woman. I just have so much respect for her." I was speechless. I was simply not used to hearing college women speak about their peers with such esteem.

A walk around the Hillsdale freshman girls' dorm confirmed my suspicion that young women at the Michigan college had more respect for one another and lived in a happier and healthier environment than what I had experienced at Tufts. The posters on the walls in my all-female freshman dorm at Tufts offered information about eating disorders, what to do if you think you have been sexually assaulted, and suicide and depression hotlines. The Hillsdale walls that I saw were covered with advertisements for quilting clubs, charity opportunities and a listing of local churches.

My female friends who have gone to schools similar to Hillsdale fondly recall their campus culture. A friend who attended Wheaton College, an evangelical school just outside of Chicago, wrote to me that "there were times when my girlfriends and I banded together at the expense of guys. We knew that our real support came from one another." She still gets together with those friends for a support group in which they pray for one another and sustain each other through struggles.

At Patrick Henry College, a Purcellville, Va., school where traditional marriage and family roles are emphasized, the culture is similar. A graduate told me: "My wing of girls made a 'gossip pact' to refrain from slandering others and to encourage others to do the same. We're working hard to create a culture of honor that stands above the fray of cattiness and competition." The institutions of higher education that endorse the vision of "modern" feminism as the key to women's happiness -- namely, the sexually aggressive female -- could learn a lesson from these more conservative schools.

There are some who will say "girls will be girls," regardless of a school's culture. Two years ago, I might have agreed, however sadly. But college girls and the high-school students who will soon join them should know that there are alternatives.

Ms. Samelson is director of development at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

AMPP Ed note on the following item: don't worry, the body of the article is very well written, it's just the headline that's from junior high.

from the Daily Mail of London, 2008-Oct-30, by Tom Rawstorne with additional reporting by Alison Smith-Squire:

The sex timebomb: Its unthinkable... a generation of girls facing infertility due to sexually transmitted diseases

Romance increasingly comes a distant second place to harsh reality in 21st century Britain - a lesson that Hannah Gregory learned the hard way. At the age of 16 she lost her virginity to a jeweller named Paul, a young man who was her first serious boyfriend and who, as is the way with teenagers, she was deeply in love with. Hannah trusted him implicitly and so when he dropped the bombshell that he'd just been diagnosed as suffering from chlamydia, a sexually transmitted infection (STI) that he had caught during a one-night stand, she was understandably devastated. Timebomb: Britain has the worst sexual health in Europe - and it is teenagers who have the worst sexual health of all Timebomb: Britain has the worst sexual health in Europe - and it is teenagers who have the worst sexual health of all 'As we weren't using condoms, I knew there was a good chance that I would have it too,' she explains. 'I had to feign illness to get the afternoon off school and ended up sitting in the clinic in tears, thinking: 'What am I doing in a place like this?' The staff were sensitive, but I cried all the way through the physical examination. And when the diagnosis came back that, yes, I too had chlamydia, it just felt so dirty.' So 'dirty', in fact, that ever since that day Hannah instigated an unbreakable rule: any man she fancies and plans to sleep with has to accompany her on a 'date' down to the genito-urinary medical clinic. Only if he passes tests for STIs such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes and the like will she take the relationship further. Romantic it is not, but in the current climate what else can a girl do? For the stark truth is that Britain today is in the grip of an epidemic of STIs. The nation has the worst sexual health in Europe - and it is teenagers who have the worst sexual health of all. The statistics are shocking. Since 2003, cases of STIs diagnosed in those aged under 19 have risen by 21 per cent. Chlamydia and gonorrhea are a particular problem, while herpes in teenage girls rose 16 per cent between 2005 and 2006. These are nasty diseases. While chlamydia is curable with a dose of antibiotics, it is often symptomless and can progress to such a degree that it can cost a woman her fertility. Danger: Thousands of British girls visit the Greek Island of Rhodes where a drunken holiday romance could go wrong without precautions Danger? Thousands of British girls visit the Greek Islands each year where a drunken holiday romance could go wrong without precautions (file picture) Herpes, meanwhile, is incurable. The virus remains in the body for life and sufferers experience repeated recurrences which can be severe. Further evidence of the risks being taken are contained in abortion statistics, which show that the number of teenagers having terminations rose 15 per cent in the past five years. Worse still, between 2006 and 2007 there was a 10 per cent rise in abortions among under-16s, from 3,990 to 4,376. Most involved girls aged 15, but 1,008 were 14 and 163 were even younger. Beyond the toll these abortions and STIs have on the physical and mental health of individuals, they also cost society as a whole. Last year, the bill for treating teenagers suffering from STIs came to more than £40million - that's an increase of £7million since 2003. Add in the £44 million cost of teenage abortions and the vast amounts spent trying to bring down teenage birth rates, and the figures run into hundreds of millions of pounds. So how does the Government intend to fix this? By spending more money, of course. Not only do they want to open more clinics, but they want to spend even more money on sex education. And, specifically, they want to extend that sex education to children as young as five. The idea is that if British teenagers were better educated, they would understand the risks and so be better able to make an informed decision. That decision, so the received logic goes, would be either to abstain from sex or, if they are to have sex, to have it safely. Binge culture: Excessive drinking amongst teens is a reason STIs spread (posed by models) Binge culture: Excessive drinking amongst teens is a reason STIs spread (posed by models) Dr Eva Jungmann is a consultant at the Archway Sexual Health Clinic in Camden, North London, and says she is regularly shocked by how ill-informed young patients are about sexual health. 'We see the whole spectrum,' she says, 'from people who do not know the basic principles of their anatomy to people who are very well-educated. One of our assessments when we see them is to see how well informed they are.' A 'substantial minority', she says, do not even know the terminology to describe their genitalia how they work or what is involved in a pregnancy. 'It does surprise me in a way, because I think that should be covered in schools. But then I have not been in biology lessons, so I don't know how good they are at imparting that knowledge and how reproductive health is discussed at home,' she says. Dr Jungmann is a strong believer that by improving education and the flow of information, children will be better able to protect themselves from potential harm. But at the same time she admits that it is not an easy fix. 'If you look at human behaviour, that is very difficult to change anyway,' she says. 'And if you look at sexual behaviour that is even harder to change.' That reality is something that the story of 18-year-old North Londoner Helen Davis demonstrates perfectly. Helen, who begins a university course in nursing next month, contracted gonorrhea following a one-night stand. 'Looking back, I will never forgive myself for putting my health at risk,' she says. 'But, ultimately, I just never thought that I could get gonorrhea from a holiday romance.' Together with three girlfriends, Helen travelled to Bulgaria for a two-week break last July. She had recently split up with her boyfriend of one year, the only person she had previously slept with. She had been taking the contraceptive pill and continued to do so. 'In the back of my mind I thought at least if I did meet someone and something did happen, I wouldn't get pregnant,' she admits. 'An unwanted pregnancy has always been my main worry.' Nevertheless, she and her friends were not ignorant of the safe sex message. 'My friends and I actually took a large pack of condoms with us. We kept them in the apartment with the idea that if anyone needed one, they knew where they were. 'In hindsight, I should have popped one in my handbag, but then I didn't like the idea of going out 'ready for sex'. Yes, I didn't rule out meeting someone on holiday, but I also didn't want any bloke to think I was looking just for sex.' Three days into the holiday, she met a 21-year-old British holidaymaker called Dan in a bar. That night, they got on well and the evening ended with a kiss, but nothing more. They agreed to meet again the following day. This time, the drink was flowing and any inhibitions were soon forgotten. 'The bar was holding a toga and foam night and we all went dressed in sheets wrapped round us like togas,' says Helen. 'Dan was there and I did get quite drunk on cocktails. This time, I found myself going back to his hotel room and we did have sex. I was drunk, and so was he, and never did there seem a good time to stop and say, "let's use a condom". 'Over the next couple of days we met and had sex several times. But as we'd already slept together without using a condom, there seemed little point in using one then.' Three months on, Helen would come to regret that drunken decision. She began to get symptoms similar to those associated with cystitis - a burning sensation when urinating - and got an over-the-counter treatment from the chemist. 'It didn't work and I noticed further symptoms,' she says. 'I knew then that there was something more wrong. I felt sick with worry and far too embarrassed to see my GP or even talk to friends. 'I found the number of my local STI clinic on the internet and booked an appointment. When the doctor there said I had gonorrhea, I wasn't surprised. Frankly, I was just relieved it was diagnosed early. The doctor told me I was lucky I had symptoms, as many women don't get any and then the disease can actually cause permanent damage.' A course of antibiotics followed and within days the symptoms began to clear up. Helen was told to contact anyone she had slept with. Dan was the only one, but she was too embarrassed to do so, even though they had been in touch since the holiday. The answer? Children as young as seven are to be taught the facts of life in compulsory lessons and five-year-olds The answer? Children as young as seven are to be taught the facts of life in compulsory lessons and five-year-olds will prepare for the classes by learning about body parts and sex differences (file picture) 'I just told the doctor I didn't know how to contact him,' she says. 'The last thing I wanted to do was to send him a text saying he had an STI. I was sure he would have had symptoms himself and got his own treatment.' From Helen's story, several factors of note emerge. First, the fact that she did not inform Dan that he was carrying gonorrhea will shock many. Given her experience, one might have expected her to do everything in her power to ensure no one else suffered as she had done. Second, the role played by alcohol in the epidemic of STIs cannot be underestimated. Teenagers can be taught lessons about sexual health until they are coming out of their ears, but after a few drinks common sense goes out of the window. One recent study, conducted at a sexual health clinic, found that nine out of ten patients admitted they routinely exceeded recommended daily drinking guidelines (two to three units for women and three to four for men). Three-quarters admitted they had unprotected sex after drinking, and only 14 per cent of men and 18 per cent of women said they used a condom with a new sexual partner. Linda Tucker, co-author of the research, said: 'The link between sexual risk and drinking too much alcohol is not the most original idea in the world, but we now have clear scientific evidence of the relationship.' The study, published in the International Journal of STD and AIDS, also found women who binge-drank had more sexual partners than those who did not. To this background, one solution to the epidemic of STIs would be first to address excessive drinking among teenagers. But as we have already seen, that is unlikely to occur any time soon. In the meantime, then, it is all down to sex education. The trouble is, critics argue, that the information being imparted to teenagers is simply not having the desired effect. They claim that it is being delivered without direction or reference to any moral framework. In this context, there are fears that it may be contributing to the problem rather than solving it. Dr Trevor Stammers, a London GP and chairman of the Christian Medical Fellowship, says: 'This increase in incidence of STIs is exactly what I would have predicted given the prevailing ethos that means there is no ethical foundation to the sex education of young people. 'For the past 20 years we have had laissez-faire, value-free sex education in which children and teenagers are being taught a 'do as you feel' gospel that simply centres on condoms and consent. But if you teach people that condoms and consent are all you need then you have got no ethical foundation for saying that having serial, multiple partners is wrong.' Dr Stammers believes it is essential that the information given about sex is not imparted in a moral vacuum. Parents also have a key role to play. 'Where there is a strong, family-based value system, where parents are talking to children about sexual issues, where they are saying that underage sex is not only illegal but dangerous, we know that these children are less likely to get STIs,' he says. 'We should be communicating that love and sexuality are intimately linked and that if you separate one from the other, your life will be impoverished as a result of it.' This view is one broadly supported by Nadine Dorries. The Tory MP has three daughters, aged 23, 20 and 16, and feels that the nature of sex education is very wrong. 'Under Labour, there has been a massive increase in the amount of sex education given in schools, yet there has also been a massive rise in the incidence of STIs, not just in teenagers but in children as young as 11 and 12,' she says. 'Maybe the time has come to teach teenagers to say no. Children in their early teens should be taught that it is illegal to have sex and that it is wrong.' Recently, she explains, the parents of a 13-year-old girl came to see her and told how shocked their daughter had been after being instructed how to put a condom on a banana. 'Now we're being told they want to teach children as young as five that sort of thing, but the message they are actually giving them is 'go out and try it for yourself',' she says. 'We are actually empowering, and equipping younger and younger children to have sex. We need to teach more about the consequences of sex and the responsibilities of sexual activity. The teaching is all too non-directional, which has long been Labour's mantra. Basically, all they will say is 'here is the information', which is an open invitation for children to go and try it for themselves.' Of course, such views go against the current, perceived wisdom. But maybe after a decade of doing it Labour's way, a decade which has spawned a generation of teenagers who drink to excess, eat to excess and who suffer from more sexually transmitted diseases than ever, the time is right to take a different approach.

from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 2008-Oct-30, by Carl Prine:

Majority of Allegheny prostitutes are on the Democratic side

John McCain and Barack Obama, if you're wooing a population of registered voters who are young, female and drawn to men in suits, then Allegheny County has 675 ladies ready to pull your lever.

They're convicted streetwalkers, escorts and brothel babes collared in 2000 and from 2003-2006, uncovered by the Trib.

Based on the prostitutes' voter registration cards, they're destined to become Obama girls in November. That's because 78 percent of them registered as Democrats. Countywide, Dems make up only about 62 percent of voters, according to the Division of Elections.

The Illinois senator also has the advantage with local "johns" -- 72 percent go Democratic. And convicted pimps: Four out of every five register Democratic. And for the most special of special interest groups -- male transvestite hookers -- they're batting a thousand for Dems, albeit in drag.

"For years and years we had politicians paying too much attention to hookers, so it's great to finally see hookers paying attention to politics," said Dan Fee, a top Philadelphia Democratic consultant who helped Obama's Pennsylvania primary campaign.

Fee's tongue was firmly embedded in his cheek, but pretrial detainees; people incarcerated for misdemeanors; and felons released from prison, on home arrest or in halfway houses can vote legally, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State. Based on registration addresses, Democratic sex workers likely will go the polls most heavily in Pittsburgh's Uptown, North Side and Lawrenceville wards, with Republican prostitutes voting in Morningside, Allentown and Beechview.

"You don't disregard any voter, but how would you even advertise with these women?" said Fee, Gov. Ed Rendell's former spokesman.

No ad buys are needed. Without any party outreach beyond disgraced New York Gov. Eliott Spitzer's credit card, prostitutes already display an impressive loyalty to the Democratic brand, at least locally. Not so with the Republicans, despite the best personal efforts of political strategist Dick Morris -- caught sucking a Carrick call girl's toes in 1996 -- and Louisiana Sen. David Vittner, who became ensnared in last year's "DC Madam" scandal with Deborah Jeane Palfrey, a Charleroi native.

While about one out of every four county voters registers Republican, less than 10 percent of the oldest profession joins the Grand Old Party. What can a 72-year-old pro-business Senator from Arizona do to win over the Bordello Belt? Something involving a stimulus package?

"We're not writing off any votes this time!" declared, in jest, Allegheny County Republican Committee chairman Jim Roddy.

The former County Executive joked about sending a mass e-mail begging GOP volunteers to "contact all these folks" before they vote Obama, but "I can't divulge who I think will respond."

from the Sydney Morning Herald, 2008-Oct-10, by Tim Duggan:

The dangers of fauxmosexuality

Katy Perry kissed a girl, and I didn't like it. The American singer didn't just kiss a girl, she wrote a song about it, sold millions of records and trivialised a pretty serious issue. And did I mention that she's straight?

Pretending to be a lesbian is suddenly cool. It's hip not to be square. Celesbianism, as it has been labelled, is on the front pages, at the top of the charts and making money like never before.

Perry is leading the charge (and performing in Sydney tonight). She recently spent six weeks at the top of the ARIA singles charts with her single I Kissed A Girl. Its lyrics include: "I kissed a girl and I liked it, the taste of her cherry ChapStick."

The song even spent seven weeks at the top of the notoriously fickle American charts last month, tying with the Beatles' I Want To Hold Your Hand as the longest-running No. 1 for Capitol Records since 1964.

Who would have thought? Certainly no one who bought Perry's previous album, a collection of Christian gospel songs she, a daughter of Protestant pastors, released under the name Katy Hudson. Far from kissing girls, the lead single from that album was Trust In Me, with lyrics such as "Don't worry, for I've healed the blind man and set the captives free".

Cue an overnight makeover, some fauxmosexual lyrics, a masterfully manufactured image and behold! A new, improved and, it goes without saying, successful product.

But lesbians and gays haven't spent the past few decades fighting for equal rights only to have it thrown back in our faces as a novelty song about being, like, totally outrageous to kiss someone of the same sex.

Riding shotgun with Perry on the lesbian-as-social-currency bandwagon is the Veronicas' Jess Origliasso. Barely a day goes by that her romance with MTV VJ (and bona fide, lifelong lesbian) Ruby Rose isn't breathlessly reported with every staged "sighting". Look, there they are canoodling at a restaurant, there they are making out at a bar. Oh, is their new album really out this week?

Add tabloid-hungry Lindsay Lohan and her DJ girlfriend, Samantha Ronson (They Swapped Engagement Rings! They're Moving In!) and even the designer Marc Jacobs to the list. He has selected Russian duo Tatu to replace Victoria Beckham as the faces of his latest collection. Remember them? No, didn't think so. They were paraded on Eurovision in 2003 as a "lesbian couple", only to be revealed as a marketing ploy dreamt up by their Svengali manager.

Their Warholian moment came when they made out on live television wearing matching school uniforms. Most assumed they would be footnoted into musical history by now, but Marc Jacobs, channelling the zeitgeist, has dragged them out of Siberian obscurity.

But what part does real lesbianism have in all of this? You know, the type based on genetic - rather than marketing - instinct?

By pretending it's cool to kiss other girls for fun, Perry insults the very people she is parodying - real life, garden-variety lesbians. When the bulbs stop flashing and the fad moves on, the sexuality of lesbians and gays will remain steadfastly unchanged. In its place is a confused and battered community that has been taken for a ride.

The current popular culture "acceptance" of lesbianism is a temporary pass that is expected to be handed back when the novelty wears off. It's OK to go for a swim off the Isle of Lesbos, but don't ever think about living there.

What does this say to girls struggling with their own sexuality? When Perry steps out with her boyfriend, or Origliasso settles down with a guy, or Lohan courts the next headline with a bloke, the mixed messages are extremely confusing.

In interviews, Perry implies it's just all a bit of fun. But when up to 30 per cent of teen suicides in the US are by lesbian or gay teens, it's very a dangerous game for celebrities to play.

The gay equality movement has gradually, thankfully, started to take hold across the world. And then along comes a simple, straight singer with dollars in her eyes who takes us back to a fantasyland created by video-clip directors.

It's time for Perry to stop kissing girls and start taking responsibility for the knock-on effect of her thoughtless lyrics.

Tim Duggan is the co-founder of the gay and lesbian website www.SameSame.com.au

from ABC News, 2007-Feb-23, by Jack Date:

Former ACLU Chapter President Arrested for Child Pornography
Complaint Alleges Virginia Man Accessed, Downloaded Graphic Child Pornography

Federal agents arrested Charles Rust-Tierney, the former president of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU, Friday in Arlington for allegedly possessing child pornography.

According to a criminal complaint obtained by ABC News, Rust-Tierney allegedly used his e-mail address and credit card to subscribe to and access a child pornography website.

The complaint states that federal investigations into child pornography websites revealed that "Charles Rust-Tierney has subscribed to multiple child pornography website over a period of years."

As recently as last October, the complaint alleges, "Rust-Tierney purchased access to a group of hardcore commercial child pornography websites."

Complaint Alleges Access to Graphic Material

Rust-Tierney admitted to investigators that he had downloaded videos and images from child pornography websites onto CD-ROMs, according to the complaint.

The videos described in the complaint depict graphic forcible intercourse with prepubescent females. One if the girls is described in court documents as being "seen and heard crying", another is described as being "bound by rope."

The investigation is being conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and the Arlington County Police as part of the Northern Virginia and District of Columbia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Rust-Tierney made an initial appearance in a federal court in Alexandria, VA, Friday. He is being detained pending a preliminary hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 28.

Youth Coach, Argued Against Restricting Public Internet

Rust Tierney coaches various youth sports teams in and around Arlington, Virginia, according to court documents.

In the past, Rust-Tierney had argued against restricting Internet access in public libraries in Virginia, writing, "Recognizing that individuals will continue to behave responsibly and appropriately while in the library, the default should be maximum, unrestricted access to the valuable resources of the Internet."

Calls to Rust-Tierney's home were not answered and calls to the ACLU of Virginia were not immediately returned.

from the Associated Press via the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 2007-Apr-6, by Kim Curtis:

Child Psychiatrist Accused of Molesting

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- A child psychiatrist who once headed the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry was arrested amid allegations he had molested male patients dating back to the 1960s.

Dr. William Ayres, 75, was taken into custody Thursday at his San Mateo home and charged with 14 felony counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14.

He is accused of fondling three boys repeatedly between 1991 and 1996 while they were his patients, according to the complaint. The statute of limitations for such crimes is 10 years or until the victim turns 28. The alleged victims are now 21, 25 and 26.

"We have many other victims who are outside the statute of limitations,'' prosecutor Melissa McKowan said Friday. She said their testimony would be used at trial to show a pattern of behavior. The earliest case she said she was aware of was from 1969.

Ayres, a prominent psychiatrist who retired last year, had been honored in 2002 by the San Mateo board of supervisors with a lifetime achievement award for "his tireless effort to improve the lives of children and adolescents.'' He also served as president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry from 1993 to 1995.

His arrest followed a four-year investigation.

"The real tragedy here is that parents entrusted their children to this doctor for help, and they were victimized while in his care,'' San Mateo police Capt. Mike Callagy said. "That's so tragic.''

Ayres was being held on $1.5 million bail and was scheduled to be arraigned Friday.

His attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment, and The Associated Press was not immediately able to reach Ayres' family.

Suspicions have dogged Ayres since 2003, when one former patient sued, accusing him of molesting him under the guise of a medical exam on several occasions in the late 1970s when the patient was 13.

In July 2005, the two sides reached a confidential settlement in which Ayres' attorney said the psychiatrist did not concede any wrongdoing.

Ayres said under oath that he didn't remember the alleged victim and denied molesting him. He acknowledged that he sometimes conducted physical exams of patients, according to a transcript of his deposition in the lawsuit.

"I do not think there is any standard of care that says it's inappropriate for a physician who is a child psychiatrist, that they should not do physical examinations,'' Ayres said, according to the transcript.

At least two other molestation reports against Ayres arose before the lawsuit, but one was determined to be "unfounded'' in 1987, and the other alleged victim wouldn't cooperate with police, according to court records.

In 2005, at least two other men said Ayres molested them when they were teens in the 1960s and 1970s, but authorities couldn't proceed with the cases because the statute of limitations had expired, police reports show.

A spokeswoman for the Medical Board of California said Ayres' license to practice doesn't expire until January and he has no record of complaints to the board. (PROFILE (COUNTRY:United States; ISOCOUNTRY3:USA; UNTOP:021; APGROUP:NorthAmerica;)

from Fox News, 2008-Jul-25:

Guard Confirms Late-Night Hotel Encounter Between Ex-Sen. John Edwards, Tabloid Reporters

A Beverly Hills hotel security guard told FOXNews.com he intervened this week between a man he identified as former Sen. John Edwards and tabloid reporters who chased down the former presidential hopeful after what they're calling a rendezvous with his mistress and love child.

The Beverly Hilton Hotel guard said he encountered a shaken and ashen-faced Edwards — whom he did not immediately recognize — in a hotel men's room early Tuesday morning in a literal tug-of-war with reporters on the other side of the door.

"What are they saying about me?" the guard said Edwards asked.

"His face just went totally white," the guard said, when Edwards was told the reporters were shouting out questions about Edwards and Rielle Hunter, a woman the National Enquirer says is the mother of his child.

The guard said he escorted Edwards, who was not a registered guest at the hotel, out of the building after 2 a.m. Edwards did not say anything while he was escorted out, said the guard, adding that at times the reporters on the scene were "rough on him," sticking a camera in his face and shouting questions.

The guard did not recognize Edwards at the time of the incident, but said he concluded it was the 2008 presidential hopeful after hearing reports about the incident and finding an Enquirer reporter's notebook at the scene.

The guard said during the chase the reporters had dropped the notebook, which he picked up. "This book has everything in it on him," he said, referring to Edwards. The guard later confirmed Edwards' identity after being shown a photograph.

A former campaign staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told FOXNews.com he wishes he were "more surprised" to hear reports Edwards was visiting Hunter. "I'm definitely upset by it. I wish I was more surprised, though."

Edwards this week has repeatedly refused to comment on the Enquirer report. Asked about it on Thursday at an event in New Orleans, he said: "I have no idea what you're asking about. I've responded, consistently, to these tabloid allegations by saying I don't respond to these lies and you know that ... and I stand by that."

Edwards spokesmen did not respond to repeated calls by FOXNews.com to respond to this story.

Beverly Hills Police Sgt. Michael Publicker, meanwhile, confirmed Friday that an incident report was filed with the department by two of the tabloid's reporters. Publicker said that contrary to a published report, a "criminal complaint" was not filed and there are no charges pending.

"It will be looked into," Publicker said, refusing to say whether Edwards would be contacted as part of a formal investigation. "We're not going to comment on the investigation," he said.

Police department spokesman Tony Lee said Publicker told him that Edwards was not named on the incident report.

Enquirer Editor-in-Chief David Perel told FOXNews.com his reporters caught Edwards visiting Hunter and her baby at the hotel earlier Monday evening. Perel said Hunter and Edwards have been occasionally getting together so Edwards can see the baby. Hunter came to Beverly Hills with a male friend, Bob McGovern, said Perel. Hunter and her companion reportedly booked two rooms under McGovern's name, and McGovern picked up Edwards to bring him back to the hotel.

Perel said Enquirer staff had been given information about the planned Edwards-Hunter meeting, and the tabloid sent reporters to the hotel in anticipation of Edwards' arrival. According to the Enquirer, Edwards was first spotted being dropped off at the hotel at 9:45 p.m. PT, about 25 minutes after reporters watched McGovern leave the building in his BMW.

Edwards went to Hunter's room and the two left the hotel together and returned 45 minutes later, Perel said. Edwards reportedly entered her room and stayed there until after 2:30 a.m. PT.

FOXNews.com could not independently confirm the Enquirer's allegations. Perel also declined to identify where the Enquirer received the information about Edwards' alleged visits.

Perel told FOXNews.com that after leaving Hunter's room, Edwards took an elevator to the basement, where he was confronted by two Enquirer reporters. He ran into the bathroom, where he remained until the security guard arrived.

The Enquirer says it has videotape showing Hunter entering the room where she met Edwards, and shows Edwards leaving the same room. However, the Enquirer has thus far declined repeated requests by FOXNews.com to release any photographs or videotape evidence of the incident.

Lynda Simonetti, director of public relations at the Beverly Hilton, refused to comment on the guard's version of the incident, citing the hotel's privacy policy.

"We value the privacy of all the guests," Simonetti told FOXNews.com, adding, "The non-disclosure policy applies to the requests of the names, whether it's past, current or anticipated guests... That's our policy."

Simonetti said she had "no knowledge" of the incident report filed by the two Enquirer reporters, and "I don't have any knowledge of any other circumstances."

As recently as last month, individuals vetting vice presidential candidates for Barack Obama had listed Edwards as a potential running mate. Edwards was viewed as a candidate who could help Obama appeal to white, working-class voters who had favored Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

Edwards, who was John Kerry's running mate in 2004, endorsed Obama in May, saying the presumptive presidential nominee held the same views he did about uniting a divided America.

Before and during the Democratic primaries, Edwards urged all candidates to boycott planned debates on FOX News, even though he had made prior appearances on the channel. One of those debates was to be sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.

Last October, the Enquirer reported that several sources said a former campaign worker on Edwards' campaign had been having an affair with the former North Carolina senator. In an e-mail allegedly written by Hunter to a friend, she wrote that she is "in love with John," but it's "difficult because he is married and has kids."

Edwards' wife Elizabeth, whom many have credited as being one of the driving forces behind Edwards' campaign, announced in March that her breast cancer had re-emerged after going into remission following a 2004 diagnosis.

Hunter has said that the father of her child is former Edwards campaign official Andrew Young. The 41-year-old married father of three has also said he is the father.

from the New York Times, 2008-Oct-10, by Sharon Otterman:

Connecticut Ruling Overturns Ban on Same-Sex Marriage

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled on Friday that same-sex couples have the right to marry, reversing a lower court decision that had concluded that the civil unions legalized in the state three years ago had offered the same rights and benefits as marriage.

With the 4-to-3 ruling, Connecticut becomes the third state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage. California legalized gay marriage in May 2008, and Massachusetts in 2004.

“Today is really a great day for equality in Connecticut,” said Bennett Klein, senior lawyer at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, which argued the case before the Supreme Court. “Today's decision really fulfills the hopes and dreams of gay and lesbian couples in Connecticut to live as full and equal citizens.”

In his majority opinion, Justice Richard N. Palmer wrote that the court found that the “segregation of heterosexual and homosexual couples into separate institutions constitutes a cognizable harm,” in light of “the history of pernicious discrimination faced by gay men and lesbians, and because the institution of marriage carries with it a status and significance that the newly created classification of civil unions does not embody.”

The court also found that “the state had failed to provide sufficient justification for excluding same-sex couples from the institution of marriage.”

In 2005, the Connecticut Legislature passed civil union legislation, but the eight gay and lesbian couples who were plaintiffs in the case that was decided on Friday argued that the civil union law had created an unequal status for gay men and lesbians and did not confer upon them the same rights and protections as marriage.

While the Connecticut civil union law states that parties to a civil union have all the same benefits, protections and responsibilities under law that are granted to spouses in a marriage, it also included a clause that defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

With the ruling, Connecticut joins Massachusetts and California as the only states that allow same-sex couples to marry. Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and New Jersey have civil unions, while Maine, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii have domestic partnership laws that allow same-sex couples to receive some of the same benefits granted to those in civil unions.

The high courts of New York, New Jersey and Washington have ruled that there is no right to same-sex marriage under their constitutions.

Of the eight same-sex couples who were plaintiffs in the Connecticut case, Kerrigan, Elizabeth, et al., v. Connecticut Department of Health, et al., four of the couples had already entered same-sex civil unions, the others had been holding out for the marriage designation.

The case turned on whether same-sex couples should be treated as a “suspect class” — groups like minorities and women that have experienced discrimination — which could lead to heightened legal scrutiny of the decision to offer separate institutions.

In oral arguments before a Supreme Court panel, the assistant attorney general said the number of “prominent politicians who are openly gay and lesbian” proves that homosexuals are not “politically powerless,” one of the requirements of a suspect class; that caused one justice to say, “If it were true political power,” they would have already won the right to marry.

The state also argued that the plaintiffs had no case because they were free to marry, just not someone of the same sex, and that there was no gender discrimination because men and women were equally constrained. In July 2006, the lower court judge, Patty Jenkins Pittman of Superior Court in New Haven, backed the state, ruling that Connecticut's Constitution “requires there be equal protection and due process of law, not that there be equivalent nomenclature.”

About 1,800 couples have obtained civil unions in Connecticut since 2005, more than a third of them in the first three months they were offered. Some gay-rights advocates say the demand has slowed since, amid complaints that the unions leave people feeling not quite married and not quite single, facing forms that mischaracterize their status and questions at airports challenging their ties to their own children.

from the New York Times, 2008-Jul-16, by Pam Belluck and Katie Zezima:

State Sees Perks to Repealing Marriage Ban

BOSTON — Massachusetts may have been the first state to legalize same-sex marriage for its residents, but when California last month invited out-of-state gay and lesbian couples to get married, the potential economic benefits did not go unnoticed here. Now Massachusetts wants to extend the same invitation.

On Tuesday, the State Senate voted to repeal a 1913 law that prevents Massachusetts from marrying out-of-state couples if their marriages would not be legal in their home states. The repeal, which passed with no objections on a voice vote, is expected to pass the House later this week. Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat and a supporter of same-sex marriage whose 18-year-old daughter recently disclosed publicly that she is a lesbian, has said he will sign the repeal.

The repeal of the out-of-state marriage ban would come more than four years after Massachusetts became the first state to allow gay men and lesbians to marry, and same-sex marriage advocates said the timing was carefully calculated to catch the prevailing political — and economic — winds.

State officials said they expected a multimillion-dollar benefit in weddings and tourism, especially from people who live in New York. A just-released study commissioned by the State of Massachusetts concludes that in the next three years about 32,200 couples would travel here to get married, creating 330 permanent jobs and adding $111 million to the economy, not including spending by wedding guests and tourist activities the weddings might generate.

“We now have this added pressure, given what's happened in California, that we really think that it is a good thing that we be prepared to receive the economic benefit,” State Senator Dianne Wilkerson, a Democrat who sponsored the repeal bill, said Tuesday on the Senate floor.

Ms. Wilkerson added, “For me it wasn't the most important basis of the argument, but it certainly is a perk.”

Legislators and same-sex marriage advocates said their primary motivation for the repeal was to allow all same-sex couples an opportunity to marry and to revoke a law that many saw as discriminatory. The law, believed to have been designed to uphold other states' bans on interracial marriage, was invoked in 2004 by Gov. Mitt Romney, a same-sex marriage opponent who said he did not want to make Massachusetts “the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage.”

Kofi Jones, spokeswoman for Secretary Dan O'Connell of Housing and Economic Development, said: “The administration believes repealing this discriminatory and antiquated law is simply the right thing to do. The study does show, though, that this action could also bring some added economic benefits to the commonwealth, which would be welcomed.”

Ted Jarrett, owner of the Old Mill on the Falls Bed and Breakfast in Hatfield, Mass., which plays host to many same-sex weddings, said: “Obviously it would help us from a business standpoint. I kind of feel like there will be people coming in.”

Politically, the California decision and a decision by Gov. David A. Paterson of New York to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, gave supporters of same-sex marriage here the fuel they needed to press for repeal without fear that it would become a lightning rod in the presidential election, advocates said.

“We were collectively thinking about planning to wait until after the November elections because we were concerned that the far right, the Karl Rove types of people, would once again try to use this issue as a wedge issue in the campaign,” said Marc Solomon, campaign director for MassEquality. “Once the California decision happened and out-of-state couples could go to California, there was no reason not to move forthwith.”

Arline Isaacson, co-chairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, said that many lawmakers felt the California ruling made support for lifting the ban far less controversial, and that the economic argument did not hurt.

“Like other states, it's tough fiscal times,” Ms. Isaacson said, “and everyone recognizes that this will be an economic boon for Massachusetts because every gay person who comes here to marry, most won't come alone.”

She continued, “They will bring their families and their friends and all those people will stay at the hotels, eat at the restaurants, shop at the stores and hire caterers and florists and musicians.”

The study predicts that most of the couples — about 21,000 — will come from New York, nearly half of the 48,761 same-sex couples in that state.

Alan Van Capelle, the executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay rights group in New York, said that he could not speculate on the numbers and that “there are a certain percentage of people like myself” who will “wait till New York issues marriage licenses.”

But, he predicted “a lot of Jet Blue cancellations from LaGuardia to Laguna and some Amtrak purchases from New York to Boston,” adding, “Tanglewood, the Red Lion Inn, how do you say no?”

Mr. Van Capelle and other advocates said they expected the Massachusetts decision to galvanize efforts to persuade other states, particularly those near Massachusetts, to legalize same-sex marriage.

Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the Family Research Council, said that in a few states “there may be some impact.” But, he said, citing the 26 states with constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage: “I wouldn't say the other side is gaining momentum. I would say that the other side has just come up for air with the California ruling after a long period of regression.”

Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said the repeal “will open up a Pandora's box of lawsuits to challenge the marriage requirements in other states.”

Mr. Mineau added, “And one thing for sure, it will affirm the need for a federal marriage amendment.”

from the Washington Post, 2007-Jul-24, by Emil Steiner:

Lack of Gay Rights Causes Alimony Abuse

How California's Stance Against Same Sex Marriage Actually Helps Lesbians

Is it possible that laws defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman provide benefits to gays unavailable to married heterosexuals? Judging from a recent legal ruling in California, the answer would seem to be yes.

In March, I wrote about the story of Julio Roberto Silverwolf (nee Julia), whose ex-husband was forced to continue to pay alimony even though Silverwolf's sex change operation made it impossible for them to reconcile. That was in Florida. Now there's a similar case in California: A judge in Orange County has ordered a man to continue paying alimony to his ex-wife despite the fact that she is now in a registered domestic partnership with another woman.

According to the ruling, Ron Garber is legally bound to give Melinda Kirkwood (she took her lesbian partner's last name) $1,250 a month until she marries a man or dies. And since California does not recognize gay marriage, Garber will have to pay while his ex-wife lives in a state-recognized civil union with its own set of limited benefits.

Proponents of gay marriage, of course, say this situation illustrates the ridiculousness of laws preventing gay marriage. According to Therese Stewart, chief deputy city attorney for San Francisco, it demonstrates "the irrationality of having a separate, unequal scheme," for same sex couples. For Garber, however, the case is about "the law being fair."

They could both be right. In the meantime, the California Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments later this year on the state's law banning same-sex marriage. And social conservatives who fought for the strict definition can take some solace in the fact they've walked a mile in Dick Cheney's shoes.

from the San Jose Mercury News, 2008-May-15, by Howard Mintz:

California Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage

A sharply divided California Supreme Court today legalized same-sex marriage, a historic ruling that will allow gay and lesbian couples across the state to wed as soon as next month and inflame the social, political and moral debate over gay unions.

In a 4-3 ruling written by Chief Justice Ronald George, the Supreme Court struck down California laws that restrict marriage to heterosexual couples, finding that it is unconstitutional to deprive gays and lesbians of the equal right to walk down the aisle with a marriage license in hand.

See complete text of the ruling

The California and Massachusetts Supreme Courts are now the only top courts in the country to uphold the right of gay couples to marry.

"The California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples," the court observed in a 121-page decision.

The reaction was immediate.

A spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom sent a simple e-mail to his press staff: "We won."

When the news was signaled to the more than 100 people gathered on the steps outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco by a thumbs up, they let out whoops of joy, and some broke out in tears.

Among those celebrating were Myra Beals and Ida Matson, of Mendocino, who were among the plaintiffs in the case. "It's been a great privilege to be a part of this," Beals said. "When we go home, we're going to be mobbed by our friends, our family and our neighbors. We have been promising them the biggest wedding they've ever seen."

The ruling marks a watershed moment in the conflict over gay marriage, with the most influential state Supreme Court in the nation, dominated by Republican appointees, ruling in favor of gay rights advocates in the state with the largest gay population. California was considered a crucial battleground for civil rights groups, which have lost a number of major legal challenges in recent years in other states such as New York, Washington and New Jersey.

The decision is sure to spark a furor that could spill into the ballot box in November, when there is a strong chance voters will be weighing a ballot initiative to change the state Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger previously announced his opposition to the ballot initiative, and reiterated his opposition today.

"I respect the court's decision and as governor, I will uphold its ruling," Schwarzenegger said within minutes of the ruling. "Also, as I have said in the past, I will not support an amendment to the constitution that would overturn this state Supreme Court ruling."

The three dissenters in today's ruling argued that it should be up to the voters or Legislature to sanction gay marriage, not the courts. A divided state appeals court reached that conclusion in 2006 when it upheld the ban on gay marriage, but that ruling was overturned by today's Supreme Court decision.

Justice Marvin Baxter, in one dissent, warned that the court had overstepped its judicial powers by overturning existing marriage laws.

"There is no deeply rooted tradition of same-sex marriage, in the nation or in this state," Baxter wrote, adding there is no constitutional right to gay marriage "because marriage is, as it always has been, the right of a woman and unrelated man to marry each other."

George was joined in the majority decision by two other Republican justices, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Joyce Kennard. Justice Carlos Moreno, the lone Democratic appointee on the court, also joined George's ruling. Baxter, Ming Chin and Carol Corrigan dissented.

The Supreme Court's intervention has been inevitable since February 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ignited a national outcry by giving same-sex couples the short-lived right to marry at City Hall, a move that attracted lines of couples to City Hall steps each day. The Supreme Court quickly put a halt to Newsom's edict, invalidating thousands of marriage licenses - the justices found that Newsom had overstepped his authority by violating state law, but invited a broad legal challenge to California's ban on gay marriage.

San Francisco city officials, civil rights groups and gay couples then filed a series of lawsuits challenging a state family code section that restricts marriage to heterosexual couples, and also a 2000 voter-approved ballot initiative, Proposition 22, that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The lawsuits argued that the state is denying gay couples equal treatment. One of the leading cases to back their cause was a 60-year-old California Supreme Court ruling that struck down the state's ban on interracial marriage, at the time the first such decision in the United States.

California officials have defended the current law, despite the fact that both former Attorney General Bill Lockyer and current Attorney General Jerry Brown do not oppose gay marriage. State lawyers have argued that California's strong domestic partners laws essentially already provide equal benefits to same-sex couples, eliminating the need to tamper with the traditional definition of marriage laws.

Conservative groups opposed to gay marriage have taken a stronger view, arguing that the state has a crucial interest in restricting marriage to heterosexual couples for social cohesion and because they maintain marriage is rooted in procreation. Throughout the court case, they have vowed to turn to the voters if the current laws are overturned, a strategy that has worked in other states.

A San Francisco trial judge initially found the state's gay marriage ban unconstitutional, but that ruling was overturned by the San Francisco-based 1st District Court of Appeal in 2006.

from the San Francisco Chronicle, 2007-May-17, p.A1, by Cecilia M. Vega:

Transgender pioneer rises to powerful spot

If ever there was a real-life, rags-to-riches fairy tale, Theresa Sparks' story is it.

Only, this being San Francisco, Cinderella used to be a man and went from riches (traveling in a corporate jet) to rags (driving a taxi and sleeping on friends' couches) to prominence again by becoming a pioneering transgender activist and the chief executive officer of a multimillion-dollar sex-toy company.

It's not the way Sparks, 58, ever thought her life would turn out.

As she says in her profile on an Internet dating site, she's "just another San Francisco trans-woman with the uncanny ability to get myself into trouble."

But this week Sparks started what could be one of the most important chapters in her life when she was voted president of the San Francisco Police Commission. Her election shook up City Hall -- she beat out Mayor Gavin Newsom's pick for the job and prompted a prominent member of the board to resign abruptly.

After her election as president of one of the city's most powerful commissions, which oversees department operating rules and sets crucial policies, Newsom's administration is promising to work well with her, the transgender community is hailing her ascent as groundbreaking, and Sparks is enjoying the ride.

"Yesterday, I hit a new record in phone calls," Sparks said Friday, juggling a morning of interview requests from the media and meeting appointments with Newsom and other City Hall politicos. "I actually had to start counting them. Fifty-three!"

It's a far cry from the life she led a decade ago when, shortly after she transitioned from being a man to a woman, Sparks suffered countless rejections of job applications and was a near-homeless cabdriver.

"I went on 30 interviews, sent out 150 resumes," she said. "I couldn't find a job."

They were barriers Sparks never had to encounter as a male.

She spent decades running several waste management and recycling firms in Kansas, California and overseas. She patented two recycling techniques she developed and shuttled back and forth between jobs on a corporate jet.

A Vietnam veteran who was divorced twice and has three grown children, Sparks called herself "an alpha dad."

"For a lot of people, the last person on Earth they thought this would happen to was a person like me," she said.

Born and raised in Kansas City, Sparks enjoyed dressing up in women's clothes from a very early age, but fought those urges as a young man and underwent intense therapy, including electric shock treatment, hoping to suppress his desire to live as a woman.

Eventually, Sparks realized the only way to be happy would be to stop living as a man. By 1997 Sparks was living full time as a female, and three years later she traveled to Thailand for sexual reassignment surgery.

"It's an unusual condition, but it's not unnatural," she said. "You discover that the only way to live with it is to transition physically so your physical appearance matches how you feel about yourself."

She moved to San Francisco to blend in easier and formed a support network and a close circle of friends in the transgender community.

San Francisco is thought to have the largest population of transgender people in the country -- estimates hover around 19,000 people. The term "transgender" covers a range of individuals, from men and women who have undergone surgery to change their gender to cross-dressers and the intersexed.

"Really, we get tested by life experiences constantly throughout our transition," said Cecilia Chung, deputy director of the Transgender Law Center in San Francisco and one of Sparks' best friends. "We're discriminated against, judged by everyone, and we have to overcome just being ourselves. All of those things make us transgender people better leaders, more empathetic. ... In all the things that we've gone through, we acquire certain skills, and most importantly we are more willing to take risks."

But the welcome Sparks found in San Francisco was the opposite of the reception she received from some of her own children.

While she remains very close to her daughter, who lives in Kansas City, her two sons don't speak to her. One son has done three tours of duty in Iraq and while overseas e-mailed Sparks occasionally, but the communication is limited.

"It's not an unusual story for transgendered people," she said. "They feel betrayed, probably. They feel embarrassed. They don't understand, even though I've sent them books."

To her daughter, Sparks is still Dad, or sometimes Tootsie-pops. Time will tell what her two young grandchildren choose to call her.

"This truly is a second life for me because everyone in my life now, I've become friends with since I've transitioned," she said.

In her search for a job, Sparks took temporary work at the sex-toy retailer Good Vibrations, packing vibrators in the shipping department over the Christmas holiday in 2001.

A few weeks later, she applied for a job as the company's chief financial officer and got it. Two years ago, she became the chief executive officer. The company that started out as a small Mission District shop opened by a sex therapist now does $12 million in sales annually and has stores in California and Massachusetts.

But it was the rampant discrimination she experienced when she became a woman that pushed Sparks into her activism. She became a regular face at City Hall meetings and the Police Department, demanding fairer treatment for people like her.

Sparks fought for things like getting the city to cover sex-change operations as part of its insurance plan for government workers and helped implement new rules for police sensitivity training in dealings with transgender people. She organized vigils for transgender homicide victims and founded the Transgendered Political Caucus in 2000 to advise local politicians.

"After you start learning that two transgendered people are murdered a month in the U.S., I don't think any person of conscience wouldn't get involved," Sparks said.

Former Mayor Willie Brown appointed Sparks to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission in 2001. The Board of Supervisors appointed her to the Police Commission in 2004.

State Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, became a mentor to Sparks when Leno was on the Board of Supervisors, and the two now are friends. She worked extensively on his election campaigns, and in 2003 he named her the Woman of the Year for his district. When Sparks showed up at the state Capitol to receive the award, she reportedly made some Republican lawmakers cringe.

"There was just an immediate connection between the two of us," Leno said. "She has enormous heart, soul and intellect. I have great respect for her as a human being."

Leno said Sparks' becoming president of the Police Commission couldn't have come at a better time.

"It's so beneficial for San Francisco when we're experiencing an epidemic of violence and violent crimes and a tug-of-war of sorts between the mayor and Board of Supervisors," he said. "Theresa is in a unique situation to bring everyone together."

Sparks' election comes at an especially critical time for the department and the commission, which are tackling major policy and organizational issues, including the installation of a tracking system to more quickly identify problem officers.

For backing the system, Sparks and other commissioners have come under fire from the Police Officers Association, which represents most officers in the department. The union's president, Gary Delagnes, did not return calls for comment Friday.

While some may be less than thrilled about her rise, Sparks said she is ready to get down to business.

"There are a lot of things we have to change," she said of society's views on transgender people. "Somebody has to do it. I'm old. There's not a lot people can do to me, so it's kind of like I figure I'll stand up and take the heat."

from WorldNetDaily, 2007-Jun-5, by Bob Unruh:

N-word fine, but 'family values' banned
Christians challenge ruling that 'hate speech' could scare workers

A Christian organization fighting on behalf of religious and speech rights is going to the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge an appellate court decision that found municipal employers could censor words such as "marriage" and "family values" because they are hate speech and could scare workers.

At the same time, those municipal officials for the city of Oakland, Calif., were allowing employees to exchange epithets such as the N-word, the appeal said.

"To allow the lower court's ruling to stand exposes every public employee to outright censorship by a municipal employer for merely mentioning words such as the 'natural family,' 'marriage,' 'and 'family values,' issues which are at the forefront of national debate," said the appeal prepared by the Pro-Family Law Center.

"In fact, the lower courts' decisions could preclude a public employee from so much as mentioning the birth of one's child or the fact that they were just married because this might theoretically offend a co-worker," said the file in the case argued at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals level by Richard D. Ackerman, of the Pro-Family Law Center, as well as Scott Lively.

"We are simply unwilling to accept that Christians can be completely silenced on the issues of the day – especially on issues such as same-sex marriage, parental rights, and free speech rights," Ackerman told WND.

"If we fail to get U.S. Supreme Court review, however, it will be up to each individual Christian in the United States to stand up for their rights to be heard on the issues of the day. If we choose to be silent, silenced we shall be," he said.

The case involves the Good News Employee Association and two women, Regina Rederford and Robin Christy, who wanted to launch the organization among co-workers. They put up an announcement on an Oakland city bulletin board asking those interested in those "family" issues to contact them.

This came after the same bulletin board – as well as the city's e-mail system – had been used to promote speech "concerning war, health-care, peace, employee outsourcing, sports, racism, slavery, spirituality, hate, God, the Gay-Straight Employee Alliance, tolerance, homosexuality, 'coming out,' diversity, Christ, the Bible, sexuality, and a host of other topics," the appeal said.

None of those topics was a problem. However, their supervisors ordered the two Christians' announcement about Good News pulled down, and issued a warning that such "homophobic" literature could lead to penalties up to and including dismissal, the law firm said.

The decision was affirmed by the 9th Circuit, which issued an unpublished "memorandum." in the dispute.

It found that municipalities have a right to dictate what form an employee's speech may take, even if it is in regard to controversial public issues.

"Public employers are permitted to curtail employee speech as long as their 'legitimate administrative interests' outweigh the employee's interest in freedom of speech," said the court's opinion noted.

"The district court appropriately described [the Christians' speech rights] as 'vanishingly small,'" the opinion continued.

"This incredible and devastating ruling has had the practical effect of silencing hundreds, if not thousands, of City of Oakland employees who simply wish to talk about marriage and family values. To the extent that this ruling has been shared by Oakland with other cities, there is a huge risk that these rulings are being treated as precedent by other cities across the nation. In fact, one of the defendants is presently in charge of the Washington, D.C., school district," the Pro-Family firm said.

The two Christian women had brought a complaint over the censorship of their announcement against the city as well as Joyce Hicks, the deputy executive director of the Community & Economic Development Agency in Oakland, and Robert Bobb, as city manager.

The lawsuit developed in 2002 when the women chose to create the Good News Employee Association, "in response to Bible-bashing by ranking city officials and free rein given to radical left-wing groups over the city's e-mail and bulletin board systems," the law firm said.

The Pro-Family Law Center noted that city-approved e-mails have included establishing an "altar" for Day of the Dead, and one e-mail that was circulated said, "I personally think the good book (Bible) needs some updating…"

The Christians' notice said:

Good News Employee Associations is a forum for people of Faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day. With respect for the Natural Family, Marriage and Family values.

If you would like to be a part of preserving integrity in the Workplace call Regina Rederford @xxx- xxxx or Robin Christy @xxx-xxxx

"The mere publication of these words was met with a direct threat of termination from employment," the law center said. "[The women] have been absolutely chilled in the exercise of free speech and cannot afford to lose their jobs."

Meanwhile Oakland's Gay-Straight Employees Alliance "was openly allowed to attack the Bible in widespread city e-mails, to deride Christian values as antiquated, and to refer to Bible-believing Christians as hateful. When the plaintiffs attempted to refute this blatant attack on people of faith, they were threatened with immediate termination by the City of Oakland. The Ninth Circuit did not feel that the threat of immediate termination had any effect on free speech," the appeal said.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker had ruled in 2005 that Oakland had a right to prevent the employees from posting that Good News Employee Association flier promoting traditional family values on the office bulletin board.

"The city of Oakland has interpreted this district court's ruling to mean that Christianity has no place in our society and should be subject to punishment. I want to believe that our Supreme Court will ultimately decide this case on the values and instructions set forth in motion by the nations Founders," said Ackerman.

His arguments are based on the 1st Amendment and the 14th Amendments.

"With the likelihood of a lively and important national debate about same-sex relationships, religion, and the future of our nation in the upcoming 2008 presidential election, there exist compelling reasons for granting review in this case. If review is not granted, there is an imminent likelihood that thousands of California's Bay Area employees will be chilled in the exercise of free speech … or completely silenced during a time where friendly debate about national issues should not only be allowed but invited," the appeal said.

During Bobb's tenure, employees were allowed to discuss just about anything they wanted except for threatening or actual violence against other employees. "In fact, employees could actually refer to each other as 'niggers' or other such derogatory terms, as a form of 'workplace speech,'" the appeal said. "It's hard to believe Respondent Bobb would allow the term 'nigger' to be used …but not the terms 'natural family, marriage and family values.'"

Ackerman's firm represents the women and said the Pro-Family Law Center and Abiding Truth Ministries have helped underwrite the thousands of dollars it has cost to fight the city's aggressive promotion of the homosexual lifestyle.

from the Associated Press, 2007-Jun-2, by Don Thompson:

California prisons permit conjugal visits by domestic partners
State decision makes California the first in the country to permit gay sex at prisons

SACRAMENTO -- California has started allowing overnight visits for gay and lesbian partners of prison inmates to conform to the state's domestic partnership law.

California is one of just six states that allow overnight family visits, which take place in trailers or other housing on prison grounds. But attorneys, gay rights advocates and corrections officials said they know of no other state that permits conjugal visits by same-sex partners.

“Historically, these types of requests were denied,” said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “Homosexuality is a touchy subject in prison. We don't want people to come to harm in prisons, but we need to comply with the law.”

Since the 1970s, immediate family members have been able to visit many prison inmates for up to three days at a time.

The privilege is being expanded to registered domestic partners under a law signed by former Gov. Gray Davis that took effect in 2005. It requires state agencies to give the same rights to domestic partners that heterosexual couples receive.

“This was one of the issues raised at the time. It's unfortunate that it's taken the Department of Corrections so long to comply with the law,” said Geoffrey Kors, executive director of Equality California.

His organization promotes gay rights and sponsored the bill when it was approved by lawmakers in 2003.

Thornton said the corrections department had already started examining its policies last year when the issue drew the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union.

A 40-year-old inmate had requested an overnight visit from his partner a year ago while he was serving an 18-month sentence at California Medical Facility in Vacaville for an attempted burglary conviction. When his request was denied, Vernon Foeller complained to the ACLU.

“To tell a couple like my partner and I that we weren't eligible, that to me is absolute discrimination,” Foeller said in a telephone interview.

Foeller, who was paroled in April and lives in Sacramento, registered his domestic partnership in August 2005, before he was incarcerated.

“You have a condition of unequal treatment,” ACLU staff attorney Alex Cleghorn said. “They were being denied something for which they were eligible.”

The new regulations permit visits only by registered domestic partners who are not themselves in custody, and the domestic partnership must have been established before one of the partners went to prison.

A public comment period on the proposed regulations ended May 15 with only a few comments, all of them supporting the change, said Thornton, the corrections spokeswoman.

The rules will formally take effect later this year, but the department already is complying. Foeller was allowed an overnight visit with his partner in December.

“I got to spend 2 1/2 days one-on-one with my partner, my best friend, my confidant, my life partner. It wasn't about the sex,” Foeller said. “You can actually just relax and get to know your partner again.”

Cleghorn, of the ACLU, said there is no record of how many domestic partners are serving prison terms. He said overnight visits allow inmates to remain connected to their families and help prepare them for their eventual release.

Family visits are not permitted for condemned inmates, inmates serving life without parole or who have not had a parole date set, or for sex offenders. Inmates serving time for a violent offense against a minor or a family member also are ineligible.

Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families, objected to the state permitting conjugal visits at all, no matter the partners' gender.

“These are unsupervised sex visits in trailers or rooms, and the guards can't go in there,” Thomasson said. “It's the main way of smuggling contraband for some of these inmates.”

Inmates also can spread sexually transmitted diseases, regardless of their sexual orientation, he said.

To comply with the state's 2005 law, corrections officials are adjusting their regulations for other matters, too, such as allowing inmates' domestic partners to be listed as legal next-of-kin.

from the Associated Press via the San Diego Union Tribune, 2007-Feb-3, by Lisa Leff:

Before mea culpa, mayor's missteps noticed in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO – Following his admission that he had an affair with a trusted aide's wife, Mayor Gavin Newsom pledged to work even harder for the city as he seeks re-election in November.

Yet even before his public apology over the tryst, there was talk that the 39-year-old mayor's heart was not totally in the job. Some of it came from Newsom himself, who openly bemoaned the toll being mayor took on his personal life and said he was unsure he wanted to do it another four years.

“Every single night – and I don't want this to sound like some therapy session – but I sit there at bars and restaurants doing homework and getting food to go,” Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle in late October. “That's not what I wanted to sign up for in my late 30s. I want a little more balance.”

While aides quickly brushed off the remark as a sign of fatigue, a series of missteps in the months before and since suggest San Francisco's most eligible bachelor was offering a revealing glimpse into life at the City Hall.

“There has been kind of a general agreement that the mayor's office in the last six months has been relatively unfocused,” said political consultant Jim Ross, who managed Newsom's 2003 mayoral campaign. “I've had people tell me the mayor doesn't seem to be enjoying the job.”

Newsom declined interview requests this week after acknowledging the sexual relationship with Ruby Ribbey-Tourk, a former staff member and wife of his now ex-campaign manager, Alex Tourk.

Some of the miscalculations have come in the personal realm, such as Newsom's decision to accompany actress Sonia Milos, whom he briefly dated last year, to a dinner hosted by a group co-founded by the Church of Scientology.

San Franciscans were quick to overlook the liaison until the mayor showed up at the San Francisco Symphony in September with a not-quite 20-year-old model who happened to be a registered Republican on his arm.

While Newsom has expressed frustration with the interest in his love life, he also has joked about it, noting that as someone who basks easily in the limelight he brought some of it on himself.

On the political front, Newsom also has taken his share of lumps.

When the San Francisco 49ers announced they planned to move to Santa Clara, the team blamed the decision, in part, on the mayor's failure to court the owners and delegating to his staff the job of negotiating a deal to build a new stadium.

In between, a series of bruising battles with the Board of Supervisors, where Newsom counts only four of the 11 members as reliable allies despite enjoying approval ratings that consistently top 70 percent, has limited his ability to advance his agenda.

Several supervisors, for example, have been openly hostile to his plan for providing free wireless Internet access service citywide. His most devoted rival sponsored a ballot measure calling on the mayor to appear before the board once a month, something Newsom has refused to do since the resolution passed in November.

The power struggle between the city's executive and legislative branches is nothing new in famously fractious San Francisco, but appears to have taken a toll.

“He has one hand tied behind his back,” said David Heller, president of the Greater Geary Boulevard Merchants Association, a business group that backed Newsom in the last election. “Whatever he wanted to do, the supervisors went against it and they are trying to do stuff to discredit him.”

Last Monday, speculation about what was going on inside the Newsom camp mounted when a local politics Web log reported that the mayor's top spokesman had posted a half-dozen negative messages about the mayor's critics under a fictitious name.

After at first denying the stealth strategy, the spokesman, Peter Ragone, acknowledged writing the blog posts. Whatever outrage there might have been about the incident was quickly consumed, however, by the bombshell over Newsom's tryst with his former appointments secretary.

“Sex is not an issue in San Francisco, but betrayal is,” noted Ross, the mayor's campaign manager in 2003. “Loyalty matters to people, and that's a huge issue.”

The recent events perhaps have tarnished Newsom more than they would another politician because such high expectations were held for him when he assumed office in January 2004.

At 36, he was San Francisco's youngest mayor in more than a century and with his lanky good looks, and a stylish wife at his side, he invited the inevitable Kennedy comparisons. And with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, then the House Minority Leader, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein as his political godmothers, he was quickly dubbed one of the Democratic Party's rising stars.

He immediately scored high marks for promoting women to lead both the police and fire departments, a national first for a city anywhere near San Francisco's size.

The reviews were more mixed on his next bold step, taken five weeks after his inauguration: throwing open the doors of City Hall to same-sex couples seeking marriage licenses, a move that disregarded California law and the pleas of his party elders.

After his marriage to Fox News Channel host Kimberly Guilfoyle collapsed under the strain of a bi-coastal relationship in January 2005, Newsom kept up a punishing pace, frequently disguising himself in a baseball cap and jeans so he could get a tourist's-eye view of the city.

Angela Alioto, a former city supervisor, said there is no doubt Newsom has made great strides in burnishing San Francisco's image, but it has at a cost.

“I just think he is having a hard time in life generally,” Alioto said. “I think the divorce was more devastating to him than people thought, and the fact that he gets more press about his hair and the girl he's dating than the programs he is killing himself over is hard.”

Newsom's chief campaign strategist, Eric Jaye, dismissed suggestions that the mayor is running low on motivation as he seeks a second term.

“He started his day yesterday about sunup yesterday and he did the people's business all day and was on the campaign trail all evening,” Jaye said Friday. “That is not the behavior of someone whose heart isn't in it.”

Despite the conventional wisdom that holds him out as a likely future candidate for governor or U.S. senator, he has often said he could just as easily see himself returning to the wine and restaurant empire he built before becoming mayor. He's joked that his stand on gay marriage pretty much out ruled out a bid for higher office until the rest of California and the country see the issue the way San Francisco does.

Now, there's the extra obstacle of overcoming the admission he made this week. But Ross said the fallout over his interoffice transgression may be just the wake-up call that Newsom needed to shake off any ambivalence he had about staying in politics.

“He might realize, 'If I'm going to make a difference, I have to do it here and now, there is not a tomorrow necessarily,'” Ross said. “Some people focus and do better when they are in a really adverse situation, and for a politician, he has put himself in as adverse a situation as you can get.”

from Reuters, 2007-May-31, by Jill Serjeant:

eHarmony sued in California for excluding gays

LOS ANGELES - The popular online dating service eHarmony was sued on Thursday for refusing to offer its services to gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

A lawsuit alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of Linda Carlson, who was denied access to eHarmony because she is gay.

Lawyers bringing the action said they believed it was the first lawsuit of its kind against eHarmony, which has long rankled the gay community with its failure to offer a "men seeking men" or "women seeking women" option.

They were seeking to make it a class action lawsuit on behalf of gays and lesbians excluded from the dating service.

eHarmony was founded in 2000 by evangelical Christian Dr. Neil Clark Warren and had strong early ties with the influential religious conservative group Focus on the Family.

It has more than 12 million registered users, and heavy television advertising has made it one of the nation's biggest Internet dating sites.

The company said the allegations of discrimination against gays were false and reckless.

"The research that eHarmony has developed, through years of research, to match couples has been based on traits and personality patterns of successful heterosexual marriages," it said in a statement.

"Nothing precludes us from providing same-sex matching in the future. It's just not a service we offer now based upon the research we have conducted," eHarmony added.

According to the lawsuit, Carlson, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, tried to use the site's dating services in February 2007. When she was denied access, she wrote to eHarmony saying that its anti-gay policy was discriminatory under California law but the company refused to change it.

"Such outright discrimination is hurtful and disappointing for a business open to the public in this day and age," she said.

Carlson's lawyer Todd Schneider said the lawsuit was "about changing the landscape and making a statement out there that gay people, just like heterosexuals, have the right and desire to meet other people with whom they can fall in love."

Carlson's lawyers expect a significant number of gays and lesbians to join the class action, which seeks to force eHarmony to end its policy as well as unspecified damages for those denied eHarmony services based on their sexual orientation.

from the Canadian Press, 2007-Jan-22, by Lee-Anne Goodman:

Sundance buzz: a different kind of horse flick; Dakota Fanning scene

PARK CITY, Utah - One of the most intriguing films screening at Sundance this year is also one of its most controversial - especially in a state known for its restrictive attitudes towards alcohol, gambling and sex.

"Zoo" is a surprisingly tasteful documentary about men who ... well ... have sex with horses.

It centres on a man from Washington state who is dropped off, dying, at an emergency room. His death from a perforated colon leads police to a nearby horse farm where they find hundreds of hours of videotapes of men from around the globe getting it on with Arabian stallions.

Despite the fact that the film is neither graphic nor exploitative, it was still a difficult story to bring to the screen, said Chris Mudede, writing partner of "Zoo" director Robinson Devor.

"It was a thought experiment," Mudede said during a Q-and-A session after weekend screening. "If somebody could get there physically, I could get there mentally."

-

Another film that's causing controversy at Sundance: "Hounddog," featuring a scene in which child actress Dakota Fanning is raped.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, is urging the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether the film's producers have violated child pornography laws. The film, also starring Robin Wright Penn and David Morse, was to premiere Monday night at the festival.

Donohue has not seen the film but has read published descriptions of it.

-

The celebrities are out in full force in Park City - in fact, there are so many of them wandering about town that one celebrity-watcher compared her hobby to "shooting fish in a barrel."

The many stars spotted include Justin Timberlake, Sienna Miller, Josh Hartnett, Parker Posey, Jared Leto, Mandy Moore, Chris Klein, Zooey Deschanel, Adam Brody and Canadians Scott Speedman and Ryan Reynolds.

And where the stars go, gossip is sure to follow. The rumour around town is that Miller and Hartnett are a new couple, and were seen getting very cosy and cuddly at a celebrity karaoke party on Sunday night.

-

And for those forlorn filmmakers at Sundance who fear their movies won't get snapped up for distribution, there is hope for both an answer and some comfort.

At Park City's Aura Spa, there is a sign on the door reading: "Will your movie get distribution? Come in for a psychic reading. Sundance special: 60-minute massage or facial with a 20-minute psychic reading for $115."

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2007-Jan-12, by Kay S. Hymowitz:

Scenes From the Exhibitionists
The fairer sex shows (and tells) too much.

Some of my best friends are women--heck, I am a woman--but I've come to the conclusion that we've seen too much of the fairer sex. For me, the final straw came last month when Britney Spears jauntily revealed her waxed nether-regions to waiting photographers as she exited her limo. Britney's stunt made her the Internet smash of the season. But in providing America's workers with this cubicle distraction, Britney was doing a lot more than making her own privates public.

In fact, Britney was following to its logical end what has become the first rule of contemporary American girlhood: to show that you are liberated, take it off. Liberty means responsibility . . . to disrobe. Paris Hilton, Britney's BFF (Best Friend Forever), taped her sexual escapades with an ex-boyfriend, though even she was tactful enough to pretend that she hadn't meant for the video to go public. Courtney Love, Lindsay Lohan and Tara Reid have also staged their own wardrobe malfunctions. But flashing is hardly limited to celebrities. The girls-next-door who migrate to Florida during spring break happily lift their blouses and snap their thongs for the producers of "Girls Gone Wild," who sell their DVDs to an eager public.

Nor is it just young female flashers who are driven to expose themselves to the masses. Older women, whether because of lingering traces of reticence or doubts about the camera-readiness of their intimate anatomy, use the written word to bare all. There are legions of women bloggers who write about last night's bed tricks, their underwear preferences and their menstrual cycles (yes, Virginia, there is a tamponblog.com). More sophisticated exhibitionists turn to tasteful erotic memoirs. In "A Round Heeled Woman," Jane Juksa gives us a detailed description of her varied sexual adventures after, at age 66, she advertised for sex in the personals of the New York Review of Books. In "Surrender," the ex-Balanchine dancer Toni Bentley tells of the spiritual transcendence she experienced during the 298 times she had anal sex with a former lover--making this the first transcendent sex ever to involve a calculator.

Now, this is the point at which the enlightened always begin grumbling: What's wrong with women showing that they are "sexual beings"? In this vein, the show-or-tell-all is an act of bravery, demonstrating a woman's determination to throw off society's taboos against full expression of her sexuality. "Female exhibitionism is . . . an act of female power," Richard Goldstein of the Village Voice has written. "We should redeem the slut in ourselves and rejoice in being bad girls," Naomi Wolf once urged (but has since modified now that she has an adolescent daughter). It follows that reservations about self-exposure are a sign of anti-sex, anti-woman prudery. They may just be the first step in a long-planned, mandated return to the missionary position, female frigidity and meatloaf dinners, cooked and served by apron-clad wives.

---

But this Puritans-are-coming! stance, validating, as it does, someone as cracked as Paris Hilton, finally implodes. The problem with a Britney or a Bentley is not that they are floozies. It is rather that they are, paradoxical as it might seem, naive. They underestimate the magnetic force field created by intimate sexual information and violate the logic of privacy that should be all the more compelling in a media-driven age. People in the public eye always risk becoming objectified; they are watched by hordes of strangers who have only fragmentary information about them. When that information includes details that only their Brazilian waxers should know for sure, it's inevitable that, humans being the perverse creatures that they are, all other facts of identity will fall away. Instead of becoming freer, the exhibitionist becomes an object defined primarily by a narrow sexual datum.

The writer Daphne Merkin offers the perfect cautionary tale about the dangers of giving the public Too Much Information. In 1996 Merkin published an essay in The New Yorker describing the erotic pleasure she found in spanking. Her sensational article hardly stalled her career; if anything it increased her name recognition. Understandably Ms. Merkin doesn't regret her essay, which she continues to believe to be "both intellectually and emotionally daring." But she kids herself when she says "I'm known more for the rigor of my thinking . . . than I am for revelations about my erotic preferences." Her article is still the major fact of her public identity; she will forever and always be Daphne Likes-to-Be-Spanked Merkin. This is not because the shocked public wants Ms. Merkin to cover herself up. It is because Ms. Merkin has invited us to know her by information that has far more power than her insights into Virginia Woolf.

It was doubtless for this reason that Susan Sontag hesitated to write about her romantic relationship with the photographer Annie Leibovitz. After her death, many accused Sontag of cowardice and hypocrisy for avoiding the L-word, but this seems an unlikely charge. A woman who braved the brutes of Kosovo, Sontag was probably less fearful of having it known that she was in love with a woman than of having it become the defining trait of her public identity; she must have dreaded being boxed in as the "lesbian writer Susan Sontag." Note that Sontag never shied from advancing a public persona on her own terms. On the contrary, that famous shock of white hair brashly announced that she was a woman with a talent for self-dramatization. But as an authority on the camera as well as on Western literature, she knew that the public gaze was always inclined to trivialize the complexities of identity.

---

Some people believe that it is lingering misogyny rather than naive exhibitionism that leads the public to define women by their sexual anatomy and proclivities. Perhaps there is something to that. But the exhibitionism surely doesn't help. It seems that men, despite their reputation as braggarts, actually don't find self-exposure all that appealing. Where are the male counterparts to Britney Spears and "Girls Gone Wild"? Jessica Cutler, the D.C. sex-blogger known as Washingtienne and a one-time congressional intern, is now being sued for $20 million by one of her gentleman callers, who for some reason preferred that his bedroom antics remain, well, in the bedroom.

In the highbrow world, Philip Roth clearly writes autobiographical novels, but it took a bitter ex-wife--the actress Claire Bloom--to rip off the fictional veil and give us the private Roth. Tom Stoppard, interviewed recently for the New York Times Magazine by Daphne Merkin (she once wrote an article about being spanked, by the way), hopes that his biography will be "as inaccurate as possible. . . . I flinch when I see my name in the newspapers."

Why men have become more discreet than women, assuming they have, is one of those cultural mysteries that is yet to be solved. But the fairer sex might want to take a lesson from Mr. Stoppard, who notes that it's not any sense of modesty that makes him reticent; rather it "has to do with not making myself available." To throw your intimate self before the public is to risk having your identity mauled by a mob of hyenas, and you will probably suffer for it. As Samuel Beckett said to Doris Lessing's lover when he heard that the novelist had used him as a model for one of her characters. "Identity is so fragile. How did you ever survive?" He peered at the man. "Or did you?"

Ms. Hymowitz is a contributing editor of City Journal. Her book "Marriage and Caste in America" was published in November.

from the New York Daily News, 2006-Nov-26, by Douglas Feiden:

Wild sex 101
S&M clubs, nude parties, porn, X-rated romps rule at Columbia

Famed as a hotbed of debate over academic freedom, New York's most elite school is also a playpen for sexual hijinks, sophomoric antics and the wacky indulgences of the children of the rich.

While their parents shell out $33,246 a year in tuition, Columbia University students doff their clothes at naked parties, flock to sex toys workshops, broadcast porn on campus TV, bake anatomically correct pies for the "Erotic Cake-Baking Contest" and heat up the steps of the Low Library in a mass makeout session called the "Big Kiss."

And of course, there's always the stimulating game, "Guess the Number of Condoms in the Jelly-Bean Jar."

Others volunteer for the bullwhip at Conversio Virium, the university-sanctioned S&M club that means "exchange of power" in Latin. It calls itself a "discussion group" that provides "education and peer support" and promotes "safe, sane and consensual play." But the club doesn't just talk.

Late on the night of Nov. 13, a Daily News reporter sat in room 303 of Hamilton Hall, a venerable classroom building where Columbia students have studied Poe, Plato and Plutarch for nearly 100 years.

As a female student volunteer stood facing the blackboard, and two dozen Columbians watched, a lecturer who identified himself only as Dov flogged her repeatedly with leather whips, rubber hoses - and a cat-o'-nine-tails.

"I'm Dov, and these are my toys," he said, and for the next 14 minutes he demonstrated lashing techniques. The activity was consensual, but the squeals of delight mingled with the occasional yelps of pain.

Columbia would make no specific comment on the club or the flogging incident. Ivy Leaguers were unaware the reporter was in attendance. Dov is not employed by the school, which doesn't police or censor club activities.

Referring only to student organizations generally, spokesman Robert Hornsby said the "university has a limited role in regulating student speech or private conduct."

The result: Columbia Gone Wild.

New York's Smartest still dream of winning a Nobel Prize. And bookworms still pull all-nighters in the Butler Library. But the 2 million-volume monument to the mind, which stays open 24 hours a day, doubles as a temple of earthier desires.

"Having sex in the stacks of Butler Library is one of the ultimate Columbia experiences," said Miriam Datskovsky, the sex columnist for The Spectator, the student newspaper.

"There's very little dating. It's predominately a hookup scene," said the 21-year-old, a senior from an Orthodox Jewish background who writes the "Sexplorations" column.

"Everything is so much easier and so much quicker - you go to dinner and then have sex," she added.

Consider the party scene. But it's no reason to get dressed up. In fact, there's no reason to get dressed at all: The merrymakers of Morningside Heights host naked parties, lingerie-only parties - and the more bourgeois "clothing-optional parties with naked rooms."

And taxpayers indirectly foot a chunk of the tab because bond offerings and loans from the state Dormitory Authority and federal Department of Education partially fund the renovation of dorms where naked frolickers muster.

Columbia wouldn't comment on this use of university space. Lee Bollinger, the school's $779,673-a-year president and a world-class expert on free speech, wasn't available.

The soirees aren't exactly orgies: "It's more like naked students sitting around drinking martinis, defying societal conventions and trying to act nonchalant at the same time," said Birk Oxholm, a religion major who graduated last year.

"They're trying to act like it's not about sex. But they're not really succeeding," he added.

One hostess, who staged a Halloween-themed "Naked Witches & Warlocks Party" last month, called it a "great unshackling from the clothing that so defines and imprisons us." But it was a "sex-neutral event," she said.

The same cannot be said of several X-rated campus happenings:

"Sex Toys 101." The university's Health Services division teamed up with Toys in Babeland, a SoHo sex shop, to host a sex toys workshop in John Jay Hall on Feb. 15.

Though it was part of "Safer Sex Week," the playthings on display on W. 114th St. included bondage and S&M tools like whips, paddles, "floggers" and "slappers."

"Sexhibition." The annual campus sex fair, held in April, featured phallic ring toss games, orgasm-for-beginners workshops and discreet liaisons in the "Tent of Consent."

"Thug Play with Princess Wendy." Another session of the S&M club, taking place Oct. 30 in Hamilton Hall, was advertised as "beating, punching and slamming boys into lockers, and why bullies are so so so much fun!"

The speaker discussed "boot service," the "fine art of humiliation" and how a $5 meat mallet can be used as a toy. But "Princess Wendy" also provided safety tips, counseling students to avoid kicking one another in the kidneys and spine.

"I like to hurt people," she said. "I don't like to send them to the hospital."

She also advised some 30 devotees, "If you're new to kicking and trampling, start out slow."

Conversio Virium's officers declined to address questions. Columbia's student activities coordinator, a university employee who advises the club, didn't respond to an e-mail.

But the Baltimore-based National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, which advocates for S&M groups, contacted The News at the request of the students.

"Educating people about the safest flogging techniques so they don't accidentally strike the kidneys is responsible behavior," said spokeswoman Susan Wright. "Basically, what they're doing is S&M 101."

"Smut TV." CTV, Columbia's in-house, student-run TV station, has a faculty adviser, uses school equipment and space, gets $5,021 a year in student activity fees - and is hungry for new viewers.

So at 10 p.m. on Oct. 17, it entered the hard-core porn business: Broadcasting into scores of dorms and lounges, it aired a five-minute clip, downloaded from the Internet, of a naked couple engaged in sex.

The footage ran during a sex advice show called "Sexiled" - which is student slang for getting kicked out of one's room so a roommate can have sex - and even some jaded Columbians who'd tuned in said they were offended.

CTV, which isn't edited, censored or monitored by the administration, said in a statement that airing porn was a "lapse of judgment." It was "inconsistent with broadcast standards" and won't happen again, said Alisa Gross and Nihar Shah, CTV's student co-presidents.

"The Naked Run." In the chill of November, at the stroke of midnight, a group of exhibitionists, led by the track team, dons running sneakers - and nothing else - for a sprint down College Walk and up Broadway.

So does anything go at Columbia? Actually, no. Flogging and bondage are accepted, but the school apparently draws the line at another form of communication between the sexes: love letters.

They were good enough for Cleopatra, who sent them to Mark Antony, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who exchanged them with his wife, Zelda. But Columbia University Health Services lists love letters as a form of nonphysical sexual harassment, according to its Web site.

"What's next for Columbia? Objecting to a little ankle?" said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonpartisan free speech watchdog group that examines academia.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2006-Dec-31:

Contempt in Massachusetts
Suddenly the Supreme Judicial Court can't tell the legislature what to do.

Nearly three years ago, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts read between the lines of the state constitution to discover a right to same-sex marriage previously undetected across the decades. The court then gave the legislature six months to rewrite state law to accommodate its diktat.

On Wednesday, however, the same court suddenly rediscovered the humility so lacking in its previous foray into the marriage debate. Before the court was a case brought by the governor together with citizens who had presented an initiative to amend the state constitution and so define marriage as a pact between a man and a woman. The petitioners had gathered more than 150,000 signatures. According to the state constitution, the legislature must now vote twice on the measure in successive legislative sessions before the amendment can be put on the ballot for a vote by the electorate.

The constitution only requires that 25% of both houses of the legislature vote to put the measure on the ballot, a bar set deliberately low to ensure that the people would have their say in all but the most extreme cases. But the legislature has so far refused to vote on the measure at all. In November, its members recessed until next Tuesday, the last day of the current legislative session, and to all appearances the politicians intend to adjourn the session without voting on the measure at all--thus letting it die.

---

Departing Governor Mitt Romney has threatened to withhold approval of legislators' raises for next year unless they vote on the initiative, but this has purely symbolic value. Thanks to a voter-passed constitutional amendment from 1998, legislators are guaranteed raises every two years. Yet this is that same constitutional-amendment procedure that is now being flouted by legislators who lack the votes to defeat the measure on a straight vote.

The petitioners sued the legislature for abrogating its constitutional duty, and the state Supreme Judicial Court took the case. In its ruling last week, it agreed that the legislature's duty to vote on the measure was "unambiguous." But it claimed to be powerless to compel a vote. So the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, whose own arrogation of power created this mess, has suddenly discovered the limits of its power to clean it up.

All in all, this is quite the political spectacle. First judges usurp the power of the legislature to dictate their own social policy. Then the legislature uses a procedural ruse to deny voters a say on the gay-marriage issue. And these are some of the same people who say Iraqis aren't ready for democracy.

from the Boston Herald, 2007-Jan-3, by Casey Ross:

Legislators advance bid for gay-wed vote

Gov.-elect Deval Patrick suffered a stunning political defeat just two days before his inauguration yesterday when lawmakers rejected his last-ditch pleas and voted to move a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage one step closer to the 2008 ballot.

Lawmakers said Patrick lobbied aggressively yesterday afternoon, visiting with legislative leaders and making phone calls to rank-and-file members when the vote appeared to be turning against him. Some said he seemed “tone deaf” to legislators' concerns, and actually wound up losing ground when the matter came to a final vote.

“He didn't have his finger on the pulse of what was happening in terms of where the members of the House and Senate stood,” said state Sen. Richard Tisei, a Republican who, like Patrick, opposes the proposed ban on gay marriage.

“It seemed a little tone deaf,” Tisei added. “Had he been engaged over last couple weeks, maybe he could have helped influence the outcome.”

The measure defines marriage as between one man and one woman and would ban future gay marriages.

Patrick said last night that he is “disappointed” by the Legislature's vote, but pointed out that most legislators stood with him. The final vote was 62 in favor of the ballot initiative, 134 against. Only 50 of 200 votes were needed to advance the measure to the next legislative session, where lawmakers will take a final vote on whether to include it on the ballot in 2008.

“Look, this matter is not over,” Patrick told the Herald last night. “My position is we've never used an initiative petition to inject discrimination into the Constitution. The sooner we can put this behind us, the better.” Tisei and other observers said Patrick, who called a press conference to explain his opposition in the morning, did not seem to understand the impact of a Supreme Judicial Court ruling last week that unambiguously stated that lawmakers had to take an up-or-down vote.

Patrick did address the court's ruling in his comments to reporters yesterday, saying he believed that voting to adjourn would have constituted a vote on the merits of the proposed ban. He also said lawmakers have more important business to attend to, an argument that one State House insider called a “rookie mistake.”

“He didn't flip a single vote,” the insider said.

Gay marriage supporters pushed yesterday's constitutional convention into arecess yesterday after 61 members voted in favor of the ballot initiative, a move that bought Patrick and other opponents more time to change votes.

However, when the convention reconvened, the governor-elect's camp had actually lost one vote.

A Patrick aide last night said the vote to advance the gay marriage ban was “absolutely not” a damaging political defeat for Patrick.

“He showed today he's willing to do what he believes is right, not because it's politically expedient, but because it's what he believes,” Patrick spokeswoman Cyndi Roy said. “He believes in what he said before and after today's vote.”

The vote was a huge win for Gov. Mitt Romney, poised to enter the 2008 presidential race as a conservative Republican. “This is a huge victory for the people of Massachusetts,” Romney said in a statement last night. “In a democracy, the voice of the people is sovereign. I congratulate the Legislature and its leadership for upholding the Constitution and the rule of law.”

from the Associated Press, 2006-Jul-26, by Ling Liu:

Provincetown Straights Complain

PROVINCETOWN, Mass. -- Heterosexuals in this overwhelmingly gay resort town on the tip of Cape Cod are complaining that the oppressed have become the oppressors.

Straight people say they have been taunted as "breeders." One woman who signed a petition against gay marriage says she was berated as a bigot by a gay man, and another complained that dog feces were left next to her car.

"The gay community is not immune to having potential prejudices. We're all human, including gay people," said Tom Lang, director of knowthyneighbor.org, a nonprofit group that supports gay marriage.

Provincetown, or P-town, has long attracted writers, artists and gays and lesbians, and is known as a place where people can feel free to be themselves - a seaside version of Greenwich Village. New England's unofficial gay capital has just 3,400 year-round residents, but summer tourism brings nearly 10 times as many people.

Locals say the intolerance from those who have long pleaded for tolerance has been stirred, in part, by the dispute over Massachusetts' becoming the first and only state to legalize gay marriage.

Tensions boiled over this year after the names and addresses of nearly 5,000 Massachusetts residents - 43 of them from Provincetown - who signed a petition seeking a constitutional amendment against gay marriage were published on the knowthyneighbor Web site.

Earlier this month, a gay man got into a shouting match at a grocery store with a straight woman, calling her a bigot for signing the petition.

A week afterward, Police Chief Ted Meyer held a town meeting that drew about 50 people to discuss not just that argument, but wider issues of civility and respect.

Meyer said that two other people who signed the petition felt targeted after the Web site published their names. One woman charged that same-sex marriage supporters put dog feces next to her car, an accusation Meyer said would be impossible to prove. Another woman found a copy of the knowthyneighbor list on her windshield.

Straight tourists have also complained of being called "breeders," a joking or derogatory slur used by gays to describe heterosexuals.

"It's a term of divisiveness," said Town Manager Keith Bergman.

Most of the Provincetown residents who signed the petition are members of St. Peter's Catholic Church, according to Rev. Henry J. Dahl, pastor at St. Peter's. The majority of the church's 750 parishioners are Portuguese families who are not gay, though St. Peter's is listed as a "gay-friendly" church by various gay Web sites.

Dahl said he is offended that some proponents of same-sex marriage have equated the opposing view with bigotry. "I'll take ownership of being a Catholic and being a signer of the petition, but I won't take ownership of being a bigot," he said.

He said he believes the list was publicized to intimidate those who oppose same-sex marriage.

But Lang, of knowthyneighbor, said the list was published to encourage discussion of the gay marriage issue. And he condemned disrespectful behavior on the part of gays toward straight people.

"Despite all that's been thrown at the gay community, it's no excuse for being rude or using derogatory terms to anyone," he said.

The friction has also drawn attention to allegations of racism toward seasonal workers from Jamaica and Eastern Europe. Provincetown is overwhelmingly white, with 2000 Census figures showing just 258 blacks, 74 Hispanics, 17 Asians and 11 American Indians.

At a town meeting, the Rev. Brenda Hayward, a black woman who lives in Provincetown, said tourists and residents alike have called her the "n-word."

The police chief, however, said there have not been any hate crimes in Provincetown since 1996. And Liu Jizhong, a cook at a Chinese restaurant, said discrimination is not a problem in Provincetown.

"Here, everyone's gay," Liu said. "They don't have a discriminatory mindset."

from the San Francisco Chronicle, 2006-Sep-29, by Mark Morford:

Attention Liberals: Please Breed
Conservatives are outbirthing libs by a wide margin. How soon can you get knocked up?

Let this be your rallying cry. Let it be your new hot-button topic, a raw naked condomless blog-ready wildfire underground grassroots crusade, your juiciest of incentive programs, your inspired call to hot naked impregnable sperm-a-riffic action.

Because the statistics are ugly, getting uglier: Despite all divine hope and prayer to the contrary, it looks like baby-happy conservatives are outbreeding liberals by a margin of some 20 to 40 percent.

It's a fact. It's a trend. It's an onslaught. It's a dreadful soul-curdling predicament and the reasons for the Republican baby blitz are myriad, having to do with the lethal Christian belief that God really wants big narcotized families and birth control is a sin and, well, what the hell else are social conservatives gonna do with all that oily Halliburton stock and Lockheed Martin profit? Donate to charity? Buy some Implanon? Save the planet? Ha.

It is, as you can imagine, a looming catastrophe. But I am here to help. I am here to inspire the resistance, to propose solutions to this disastrous fertility gap and to help get liberals into the sack sans protection so they may go forth and multiply the number of people who adore "The Daily Show" and read actual books and think Aaron Sorkin is some sort of god.

Let me make the first offer right now: For every concerned well-educated progressive who reads this very column and agrees to have a child or two (instead of the increasingly common liberal alternative of, you know, getting a dog), which they will then lovingly nudge down the path of nuanced free-thinking nondogmatic independence, I shall hereby offer my personal services.

Like, say, babysitting. Free, once a month, so you and the spouse can go catch a movie and some Thai noodles and have public sex in Golden Gate Park, just like the old days. (Note: I am presuming you have HBO and wireless DSL and three kinds of single-malt scotch in your bar and a working hot tub, and I can put the kids to bed at 6 p.m.) Deal?

Or perhaps you'd like some free columnist swag? I have, right here on my desk, a stack of Possum Fur Nipple Warmers from my friends over at the New Zealand Nature Co. They're yours, with proof of liberal sonogram.

I hereby offer you a free lifetime subscription to The Chronicle. Please note: The Chronicle has no idea I am offering this. But I am quite certain they will see the value, especially when they envision the alternative: a future full of uninformed media lemmings who only read Christianity Today and Playboy and Forbes. Shudder.

You still really, really want that dog? No problem. We shall start a program: Free rescued Golden Retriever or Labrador with every successful ovum fertilization. Free puppy/baby organic ice-cream socials in the parking lot at regional Whole Foods, once a month. Bonus: I shall even throw in my mad baby-naming skills. You need a stupendous, unique name for your new child? I am here for you. Jarrod. Allegra. Zaya. Rowan. Pomegranate. See? I've got a million of 'em. Well, maybe a hundred. Send me an e-mail. First come, first served. So to speak.

See, I am all about the incentives, all about providing the hot spark for your juicy procreative fire. And apparently we really need the motivation. Because the same census data show that progressives are having fewer babies, also for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that most of us live in big cities and housing costs are insanely growth-prohibitive and it's just too difficult to put the baby's room in the closet with the wireless router and the yoga equipment and the hydroponic, er, "medical" plants.

Not to mention the thing about progressive city dwellers generally possessing higher intelligence, better educations, a more nuanced understanding of the world. Translation: We tend to think that if God wants anything at all, She wants free birth control and fewer warmongering cretins and the wild uncontrolled spread of unconditional nondenominational love of a kind that doesn't necessarily require a diaper and a burp blanket and a college fund. I'm just saying.

I am willing to go even further. Pending the necessary venture capital, I shall open the Mark Morford Summer Camp for Luminous Toddlers. Here is where kids will learn the fine arts of archery, yoga, organic farming, naughty Spanish slang, frat-boy incapacitation techniques, sake classifications, Fox News Neocon Bull-- Detection, how to properly tune a Fender Strat, and how to look at breeding Christian conservatives and laugh and shrug and offer them a drink and a vibrator and a copy of "Jitterbug Perfume" and a polyamorous weekend in Sonoma.

Why do I offer all this? Because the time is now. The issue is urgent. And because, well, I was wrong. I've always believed that it didn't really matter if conservatives were breeding more than liberals, because (the theory went) most kids invariably rebel against their parents' narrow dogma and hence all those GOP-duped kids would eventually wake up and run from the Dark Side like smart women shun the Catholic Church. Right?

Wrong. Turns out that four out of five kids end up sticking with the same political and religious affiliation as their parents, be they left, right or center. Hence, if the numbers continue as they are, we are on a collision course with a giant oatmealy wall of rashy whitewashed red-state blandness.

I know what you're thinking. Encourage breeding? In this abused, exploited, Bush-torn, Jennifer Aniston world? This is, you can argue, pure anathema to the progressive cause. And you are absolutely right. This is why I suggest another glorious option: adoption.

It's a solution as elegant as it is globally beneficial: We shall import the millions of orphaned foreign babies from China and India and Africa. We shall spread them evenly across the red states like exotic fertilizer and raise them as open-minded and spiritually inquisitive and hugely intelligent with a great eye for design and good sex toys and electric sports cars.

Voilà: Within a couple generations, we will have a class of gorgeous American beings who will effortlessly dazzle and woo the terrified Republican white-bread populace, and they will all interbreed and we shall beautifully mongrelize the gene pool and beat fundamentalist conservative righteousness out of the American bloodstream with the big stick of good sex and divine love and dark almond eyes.

What, too utopian? Too Angelina-Jolie-fever-dream? Fair enough. I am open to more practical solutions. Pouring massive amounts of birth control into the water supply in Kentucky and Utah and Colorado? Free condom-application demonstrations by porn stars with every fill-up of your Chevy pickup in Idaho? A global-warming luxury tax on all new Republican babies especially if conceived while listening to Kenny Chesney or Carrie Underwood? Works for me.

Meantime, preliminary sign-ups for the MMSCLT begin now. Oh, and if you need to become pregnant, I might be able to help with that, too. I have the experience. I know some people. It is, after all, your choice. You know what you have to do. What are you waiting for?

from the New York Times, 2006-Nov-10, by Pam Belluck:

Gain for Same-Sex Marriage in Massachusetts

BOSTON, Nov. 9 — Lawmakers in Massachusetts, the only state where same-sex marriage is legal, dealt what appeared to be a fatal blow Thursday to a proposed constitutional amendment to ban it.

In a flurry of strategic maneuvering, supporters of same-sex marriage managed to persuade enough legislators to vote to recess a constitutional convention until the afternoon of Jan. 2, the last day of the legislative session.

On that day, lawmakers and advocates on both sides said, it appeared likely that the legislature would adjourn without voting on the measure, killing it.

“For all intents and purposes, the debate has ended,” said Representative Byron Rushing, a Boston Democrat and the assistant majority leader. “What members are expecting is that the majority of constituents are going to say, `Thank you, we're glad it's over, we think it has been discussed enough.' ”

The measure had been expected by both sides to gain easily the 50 votes required from the 200 legislators as the first step toward making same-sex marriages illegal.

Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which sponsored the amendment, called the recess vote a “travesty,” and, waving a copy of the State Constitution, said the legislators had “just said that it's irrelevant.”

As for whether the fight was over, Mr. Mineau said, “We're assessing the situation.”

Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican who opposes same-sex marriage, said the vote was a “triumph of arrogance over democracy.” He said that he would “explore any alternatives” to try to force a vote, but that “my options are limited.”

Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for Mr. Romney, said: “The fact that they put this off until the end of the year makes it easier for them to adjourn. If they were giving consideration, I think they would have recessed until tomorrow or maybe Monday or Tuesday next week.”

The action on Thursday came two days after Massachusetts voters elected Deval L. Patrick, a same-sex marriage supporter, as the state's first Democratic governor in 16 years. Democrats were also elected to all of the statewide offices, leaving the state's Republican Party in shambles.

But the fact that the amendment had enough supporters to pass the first 50-vote round indicated that the issue of same-sex marriage remains divisive three years after the state's highest court ruled that such marriages were constitutional in Massachusetts. More than 8,000 same-sex couples have since married.

To bring the amendment before the legislature, the Massachusetts Family Institute had gathered 170,000 petition signatures. If the amendment were to get 50 votes, it would then require the votes of 50 legislators in another constitutional convention in the 2007-8 legislative session. Then it would be voted on in a referendum in November 2008.

Polls have generally found that just more than half of the citizens surveyed supported same-sex marriage, but about the same number wanted the constitutional amendment to come before voters.

The vote to recess followed a day of intense politicking and strategizing by supporters of same-sex marriage. Many legislators, even supporters of such marriages, had said they planned to vote for the amendment for fear that if they did not they would appear to be shirking their responsibility.

Gay rights advocates persuaded the legislators to first take up another amendment to ban same-sex marriage, one introduced nearly two years ago by a conservative lawmaker, but which was now considered by Mr. Mineau and other same-sex marriage opponents to be unable to pass constitutional muster because it would nullify the same-sex marriages that had already taken place.

Because that amendment had been initiated by a legislator and not a citizens' group, it would have needed 101 votes to pass. On Thursday it was defeated unanimously.

Arline Isaacson, co-chairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, said the plan was to give the legislators political cover with their constituents, because they “can all point to the fact that they fully debated same-sex marriage and took a vote on it.”

Same-sex marriage advocates also persuaded lawmakers to vote for a recess and not an adjournment because if they adjourned, Governor Romney could call them back into session.

Representative Michael A. Costello, a Democrat from Newburyport and a strong opponent of the amendment, said: “The way I looked at it was that we would kill it with a handgun or a hand grenade. It's never been proper to put civil rights on the ballot. So we killed it through procedure, rather than on substance.”

The debate in the House was full of impassioned speeches.

“I'm 3,000 feet to the right of Attila the Hun, they tell me,” Representative Marie J. Parente, a Democrat from Milford who had lost her re-election bid on Tuesday, told her colleagues. “But you're not. You're the other side. The gracious people, the liberal people, the socially conscious people.”

For the 170,000 people who signed the petition and want a referendum, “does your graciousness end?” she asked. “Give the people the right to be heard.”

Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, who is gay and married, told the chamber, “It's time for a little straight talk.”

Pointing to his wedding band, he said: “You don't have to live next to us. You don't have to like us. We are only asking you to end the debate,” so that “we will at least have the right to enjoy the same rights that the rest of you have enjoyed from time immemorial.”

Ariel Sabar contributed reporting.

from the Associated Press, 2006-Sep-29, by Denise Lavoie:

Mass. Judge OKs Marriage for R.I. Gays

BOSTON -- A gay couple from Rhode Island has the right to marry in Massachusetts because laws in their home state do not expressly prohibit same-sex marriage, a judge ruled Friday.

Wendy Becker and Mary Norton of Providence argued that a 1913 law that forbids out-of-state residents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be permitted in their home state did not apply to them because Rhode Island does not specifically ban gay marriage.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Connolly agreed.

"No evidence was introduced before this court of a constitutional amendment, statute, or controlling appellate decision from Rhode Island that explicitly deems void or otherwise expressly forbids same-sex marriage," he ruled.

Although the ruling allows same-sex couples from Rhode Island to get married in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts court has no power to ensure that Rhode Island recognizes such marriages. No other states are affected.

Michael Maynard, a spokesman for Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri, had no immediate comment, and a spokeswoman for the state's attorney general, Patrick Lynch, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, which represented the couples, hailed the decision "as another step toward marriage equality." Becker and Norton said they were "thrilled."

"There shouldn't be restrictions on people who love each other and want to get married," said Becker. "We should want more of those couples to be married, not less."

Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly issued a statement saying he would not appeal because it would be a waste of time and money. He added, "This case has always been about respecting the laws of other states."

A spokesman for Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, however, said the governor was "exploring options" that could include an appeal. Spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom also called Connolly's ruling "completely illogical."

Reilly's office had argued that Rhode Island laws' use of gender-specific terms such as "bride" and "groom" make it clear that their intent was to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"I think Gov. Carcieri and the people of Rhode Island will be surprised to learn that gay marriage is permissible in their state," Fehrnstrom said. "If that's the case, there's no reason for same-sex couples to come to Massachusetts to get married."

Prompted by a ruling from its highest court, Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004 and remains the only state to have done so. Couples from many other states began lining up to get marriage licenses, but Romney, who opposes same-sex marriage, directed municipal clerks not to give licenses to out-of-state couples, citing the 1913 law.

Eight couples from six nearby states challenged the law. In March, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Massachusetts could use the 1913 law to bar gay couples from Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont from marrying here. But the court said the law was unclear in New York and Rhode Island, and sent that part of the case back to a lower court for clarification.

In July, New York state's highest court said that its state law limits marriage to between a man and a woman. Connolly cited the New York court's decision in his ruling, saying that state expressly prohibits gay marriage. That left only the Rhode Island couples free to marry in Massachusetts.

Kris Mineau - president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which opposes gay marriage - predicted that people in other parts of the country will see Massachusetts as "the Las Vegas of gay marriage."

"We think it's very strange that a judge would say that Rhode Island has nothing to prohibit gay marriage when their statutes define marriage as between a bride and groom," he said.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2006-Apr-21, by Daniel Henninger:

Disinhibition Nation
When blogs rule, we'll all talk like ----.

Kevin Ray Underwood, the repressed Oklahoma cannibal, kept an Internet "blog" of his compulsions for years before kidnapping and killing a 10-year-old neighbor last week. On his blog, Kevin wrote a lot about Kevin: "The reason for my lackluster social life is a severe case of social anxiety and depression. I'm on medication now, which helps a lot. Well, in ways."

I don't think the blogosphere is breeding cannibals. But it looks to me as if the world of blogs may be filling up with people who for the previous 200 millennia of human existence kept their weird thoughts more or less to themselves. Now, they don't have to. They've got the Web. Now they can share.

Technorati, a site that keeps numbers on the blogosphere, reports that as of this month the number of Web logs the site tracks is 35.3 million, and doubling every six months. Technorati claims each day brings 75,000 new blogs. We know something's happening here but I'm not sure we know what it is.

Typically, a blogger creates a Web site and then, in the pale glow of a PC screen, types onto a keyboard what's on his or her mind. A blog nearly always invites readers to share their "comments," which they do, and which the blogger posts seriatim. People in my business tend to think blogging is mostly about politics on sites such as Wonkette, the Huffington Post or the Daily Kos. There are highly intellectual blogs, such as the Becker-Posner Blog, run by Nobel economics laureate Gary Becker and federal judge Richard Posner. Their April 16 post is titled "Tax Complexity and the Cost of Compliance," with comments.

But in a "Blogs Trend Survey" released last September, America Online reported that only 8% blog to "expose political information." Instead, 50% of bloggers consider what they are doing to be therapy. Some might argue that using the Internet to self-medicate includes many nominally political blogs, but more on that shortly.

---

Not surprisingly, a new vocabulary has emerged from clinical psychology to describe generalized patterns of behavior on the virtual continent. As described by psychologist John Suler, there's dissociative anonymity (You don't know me); solipsistic introjection (It's all in my head); and dissociative imagination (It's just a game). This is all known as digital identity, and it sounds perfectly plausible to me.

A libertarian would say, quite correctly, that most of this is their problem, so who cares? But there is one more personality trait common to the blogosphere that, like crabgrass, may be spreading to touch and cover everything. It's called disinhibition. Briefly, disinhibition is what the world would look like if everyone behaved like Jerry Lewis or Paris Hilton or we all lived in South Park.

Example: The Web site currently famous for enabling and aggregating millions of personal blogs is called MySpace.com. If you opened its "blogs" page this week, the first thing you saw was a blogger's video of a guy swilling beer and sticking his middle finger through a car window. Right below that were two blogs by women in their underwear.

In our time, it has generally been thought bad and unhealthy to "repress" inhibitions. Spend a few days inside the new world of personal blogs, however, and one might want to revisit the repression issue.

The human species has spent several hundred thousand years sorting through which emotions and marginal neuroses to keep under control and which to release. Now, with a keyboard, people overnight are "free" to unburden and unhinge themselves continuously and exponentially. One researcher quotes the entry-page of a teenage girl's blog: "You are now entering my world. My pain. My mind. My thoughts. My emotions. Enter with caution and an open mind."

The power of the Web is obvious and undeniable. We diminish it at our peril. But what if the most potent social effect to spread outward from the Internet turns out to be disinhibition, the breaking down of personal restraints and the endless elevation of oneself? It may be already.

Disinhibited vocabulary is now the normal way people talk on cable TV, such as on "The Sopranos" or in stand-up comedy. On the Web and on the street, more people than not talk like this now. What once was isolated is covering everything. No wonder the major non-cable networks are suing to overturn the FCC's decency rulings; they, too, want the full benefits of normalized disinhibition. Hip-hop, currently our most popular music form, is a well-defined world of disinhibition.

Then there's politics. On the Huffington Post yesterday, there were more than 600 "comments" on Karl Rove and the White House staff shake-up. "Demoted my --- the snake is still in the grass." "He should be demoted to Leavenworth." "Rove is Bush's Brain, and without him, our Decider-in-Chief wouldn't know how to wipe his own ----."

From a primary post on the same subject on the Daily Kos, widely regarded as one of the most influential blogging sites in Democratic politics now: "I don't give a ----. Karl Rove belongs in shackles." "A group of village whores have taken a day off to do laundry."

Intense language like this used to be confined to construction sites and corner bars. Now it is normal discourse on Web sites, the most popular forums for political discussion. Much of this is new. Politics is a social endeavor. The Web is nothing if not "social." But the blogosphere is also the product not of people meeting, but venting alone at a keyboard with all the uninhibited, bat-out-of-hell hyperbole of thinking, suggestion and expression that this new technology seems to release.

---

At the risk of enabling, does the Internet mean that all the rest of us are being made unwitting participants in the personal and political life of, um, crazy people? As populist psychiatry, maybe this is a good thing; the Web allows large numbers of people to contribute to others' therapy. It takes a village.

But researchers note that the isolation of Web life results in many missed social cues. It is similar to the experience of riding an indoor roller coaster, what is known in that industry as a "dark ride." This dark ride could be a very long one.

from the Associated Press via the San Francisco Chronicle, 2005-Dec-13, by David Germain:

`Brokeback Mountain' tests Oscar waters for gay-themed films

Beverly Hills, Calif. -- The cowboys-in-love drama "Brokeback Mountain" received a leading seven Golden Globes nominations, yet the critical favorite has an uphill trail for the Academy Awards, where a gay-themed film has never won top honors.

Along with best dramatic picture, Globe nominations Tuesday for "Brokeback Mountain" included lead actor Heath Ledger, supporting actress Michelle Williams and director Ang Lee.

Also nominated for dramatic picture were the murder thriller "The Constant Gardener," the Edward R. Murrow tale "Good Night, and Good Luck," the mobster story "A History of Violence" and "Match Point," a drama about infidelity.

Chosen as 2005's best film by critics groups in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, "Brokeback Mountain" stars Ledger as a husband and father carrying on a secret affair with an old sheepherding companion (Jake Gyllenhaal).

Lee, who won the best-director Golden Globe for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," said he does not worry the gay subject matter will turn off audiences or Oscar voters. But he said he does hesitate to call it a movie about gay cowboys because "it sounds a little funny to me in its connotation, like we're doing `Blazing Saddles.'

"That's what's bothering me, because it's a serious love story," Lee said. "Given the Western macho aura ... the more difficult, the more love is hindered, the more grand the love is."

Joining Lee as Globe directing nominees were Woody Allen for "Match Point," George Clooney for "Good Night, and Good Luck," Peter Jackson for "King Kong," Fernando Meirelles for "The Constant Gardener" and Steven Spielberg for "Munich." Clooney also earned a supporting-actor nomination for the oil-industry thriller "Syriana."

Felicity Huffman received two nominations — best dramatic actress in a film for her role as a man preparing for sex-change surgery in "Transamerica" and best actress in a TV musical or comedy for "Desperate Housewives." Her "Desperate Housewives" co-stars Marcia Cross, Teri Hatcher and Eva Longoria also were nominated, and the ABC show earned a best TV comedy bid.

Despite the acclaim and an impressive debut last weekend, when the film took in $550,000 in just five theaters, "Brokeback Mountain" may prove more off-putting to Oscar voters than to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Golden Globe organizers who have traditionally been more receptive to gay themes.

"It's going to be a front-runner, but it really has a mountain to climb, because never have we seen a gay romance in the best-picture race before," said Tom O'Neil, who runs theenvelope.com, an awards Web site.

Movies with gay angles have earned acting honors, Tom Hanks winning for "Philadelphia," Hilary Swank for "Boys Don't Cry," but those movies did not break into the best-picture pack. "Kiss of the Spider Woman" won an Oscar for William Hurt as a gay man and earned a best-picture nomination, losing to "Out of Africa," and best-picture winners "American Beauty" and "Midnight Cowboy" had homosexual subtexts. But "Brokeback Mountain" looks to be the biggest test yet for gay-themed films come Oscar time.

Conservative critics have assailed "Brokeback Mountain," saying it markets gay lifestyles.

"By utilizing two of the most attractive and popular young Hollywood actors for these roles in such a compelling story, they have created characters people can identify and sympathize with to sway the public into believing this is natural behavior," said David Kupelian, author of "The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom."

Novelist Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana — who shared a screenplay nomination for "Brokeback Mountain," adapted from Annie Proulx's short story — said the film was a broader story of tragic love, not a homosexual romance.

"People come in with preconceived notions about the film, I guess because it's acquired that tagline, `a story about gay cowboys.' We've had people at screenings refer to it as that," Ossana said. "One person who saw it said afterward, `I came in calling it that but will never call it that again.'"

"It's a tragedy, not a success story," McMurtry said. "It doesn't wave the banner of triumph over the homosexual lifestyle or any lifestyle. It's a story about life itself. This is a realistic story and a sad story."

The Globes were a triumph for smaller budgeted films over big studio productions. Philip Berk, head of the foreign press group, said it was the first time all nominees for best dramatic film were independent movies shot for less than $30 million.

The Globes have a separate category for musical or comedy films. Nominated were the theater tale "Mrs. Henderson Presents," the Jane Austen costume pageant "Pride & Prejudice," the Broadway musical "The Producers," the divorce story "The Squid and the Whale" and the Johnny Cash film biography "Walk the Line."

Along with Ledger, dramatic lead actor contenders included three performers playing real-life figures: Russell Crowe as Depression-era boxer Jim Braddock in "Cinderella Man," Philip Seymour Hoffman as author Truman Capote in "Capote," and David Strathairn as newsman Murrow in "Good Night, and Good Luck." The fifth nominee was Terrence Howard as a pimp-turned-rap singer in "Hustle & Flow."

Besides Huffman, dramatic actress nominees were Maria Bello as a wife learning painful secrets about her husband in "A History of Violence," Gwyneth Paltrow as an unstable math genius' daughter in "Proof," Charlize Theron as a woman leading a sexual harassment lawsuit in "North Country" and Ziyi Zhang as a poor girl who becomes the belle of Japan's geisha houses in "Memoirs of a Geisha."

For best actor in a movie, musical or comedy, Globe voters nominated Pierce Brosnan as a burned-out hit man in "The Matador," Jeff Daniels as a husband unglued by divorce in "The Squid and the Whale," Johnny Depp as candyman Willy Wonka in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," Nathan Lane as a Broadway con man in "The Producers," Cillian Murphy as a cross-dressing Irishman in "Breakfast on Pluto," and Joaquin Phoenix as country legend Cash in "Walk the Line."

Best musical or comedy film actress nominees: Judi Dench as a 1930s British dame who opens a nude theatrical review in "Mrs. Henderson Presents," Keira Knightley as the romantic heroine in "Pride & Prejudice," Laura Linney as a divorcing wife in "The Squid and the Whale," Sarah Jessica Parker as a woman hated by her fiance's relatives in "The Family Stone," and Reese Witherspoon as country singer June Carter in "Walk the Line."

Golden Globe winners will be announced Jan. 16, five days before polls close for Oscar voters. Oscar nominations come out Jan. 31, and the awards will be presented March 5.

The Globes generally serve as a solid barometer for Oscar nominations, though contenders typically say they try not to think ahead to the Oscars.

"But it certainly crosses my mother's mind," said dramatic actress nominee Bello. "She told me, `I'm saying a novena for you. I'm sure you'll be nominated.'"

from the Associated Press, 2006-Feb-1, by David Germain:

'Brokeback' ropes 8 Oscar nominations
"Crash," "Good Night, and Good Luck," "Munich," and "Capote" round out best picture nominees

The cowboy love story "Brokeback Mountain" led the Academy Awards field Tuesday with eight nominations, among them best picture and honors for actor Heath Ledger and director Ang Lee.

Also nominated for best picture were the Truman Capote story "Capote"; the ensemble drama "Crash"; the Edward R. Murrow chronicle "Good Night, and Good Luck"; and the assassination thriller "Munich."

The Johnny Cash biography "Walk the Line," considered a likely best-picture nominee, was left out of that category, though Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon earned acting nominations.

Three films were tied with six nominations each -- "Crash," "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Memoirs of a Geisha," though "Geisha" was shut out in the top categories.

"Munich," which had fallen off many awards analysts' best-picture picks after a lukewarm reception, scored well with five nominations, including director for Steven Spielberg.

"King Kong," directed by "Lord of the Rings" creator Peter Jackson, earned only technical nominations, losing out in the major categories.

George Clooney picked up three nominations: as supporting actor for his role as a steadfast CIA undercover agent in "Syriana" and best director and co-writer for "Good Night."

It was the first time ever that a contender was honored with acting and directing nominations for two different movies.

Along with best-actor contender Ledger, and directing nominee Lee, "Brokeback Mountain" scored nominations for Michelle Williams as supporting actress, Jake Gyllenhaal as supporting actor and Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana for their screenplay adaptation of Annie Proulx's short story.

Director Lee said he was gratified at the reception both homosexual and heterosexual audiences have given "Brokeback Mountain," which has proven a steady box-office draw across the country.

"I didn't know there were so many gay people out there. Everywhere, they turn up," Lee said. "More importantly, I think I'm amazed how people everywhere have had the sensitivity to want to get into the complexity of the issue, the probability of love, the illusion of love, all those things. It's not simple things you can categorize as right or wrong."

The acting categories were a mix of familiar Oscar faces such as past winners Judi Dench and Charlize Theron, veterans like Clooney, Witherspoon, Rachel Weisz, David Strathairn and Felicity Huffman gaining their first academy attention, and young performers such as Williams and Amy Adams as a big-hearted Southern waif in "Junebug."

Philip Seymour Hoffman, the best-actor favorite for his remarkable embodiment of Capote, joined Ledger in the best-actor category. Hoffman has triumphed at earlier film honors, including the Golden Globes.

Along with Hoffman, Ledger and Phoenix, the other nominees were Terrence Howard as a small-time hood turned rap singer in "Hustle & Flow" and Strathairn as newsman Murrow in "Good Night, and Good Luck."

The best-actress race presumably will shape up as a two-woman contest between Huffman in a gender-bending role as a man about to undergo sex-change surgery in "Transamerica" and Witherspoon as singer June Carter, Cash's musical companion and future wife, in "Walk the Line."

Huffman won the Golden Globe for best dramatic actress, while Witherspoon earned the Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy. Witherspoon beat Huffman on Sunday for the best-actress prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Also nominated for the best-actress Oscar: Dench in "Mrs. Henderson Presents," Keira Knightley in "Pride & Prejudice" and Charlize Theron in "North Country."

from City Journal, 2005-Jul-14, by Katherine Ernst:

Screwy NARAL
What do feminists really want?

If the militant feminist, pro-choice movement is known for anything, a sense of warmth is not it. These are the women—excuse me, womyn—who will happily follow lefty Hollywood hack Whoopi Goldberg on a march through Washington, the “Keep the U.S. Off My Uterus” crowd, the Bush-hating, humorless bunch who might flatten a man should he attempt to open a car door for one of them. So when part of the gang has a night of feminist fun, rest assured it’s not dinner and a movie topped off with a swell game of Parcheesi.

No: tonight the Washington state chapter of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) has planned what promises to be an unforgettable evening of pro-choice ecstasy—the “Screw Abstinence Party”—and they want you to be a part of it! Please, dear citizen, “PRINT OUT FLYER AND BRING ALL YOUR FRIENDS!” so you can watch while Seattle’s “hottest sketch comedy group [perform] a sex ed class for adults” (Edgy!), while “sex-positive purveyors of adult toys offer tips on ‘Sexy Safer Sex’” (Ooh . . . Dirty!), and you can listen to Lady Jane DJ spin “the latest in Hip-Hop and R&B.”

But don’t dare get your knickers in a twist, fellow Conservative, or you’ll be snapping at some not-so-ingenious bait. With the exception of Planned Parenthood, perhaps no other liberal organization has been as dangerously effective with pro-abortion demagoguery as NARAL. As any judicial scholar worth his or her salt will tell you, Roe v. Wade is the Adam and Eve of modern-day judicial activism—a case where seven liberal justices, fueled by ideology and emotion, found a constitutional right to a procedure that, oddly enough, the Constitution is silent on. And yet, NARAL has successfully shifted the debate from the legal merit of the Court’s opinion, states’ rights, and the rugged terrain of bioethics to the creation of a faux-threat: the Right-Wing-Christian-Boogeyman who aims to eliminate “women’s rights”—even in cases of rape and incest (as NARAL’s broken-record scare talk wrongly claims). Indeed, the Washington branch of NARAL’s website has a picture of the current Supreme Court: those Justices who would uphold Roe have halos over their heads, while Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas model devil horns. The group even wrote a mock want-ad for the current Supreme Court vacancy: “Seeking a right-wing yes man. . . . Narrow mindedness and interest in turning back the clock on women’s rights a plus.” So clever!

Hence, the “Screw Abstinence” trap. The organizers would love for the Right to rise up, put on their stuffiest shirts, and flood the media with Sodom and Gomorrah-style sound bites (the party is for those age 21 and older); such a stark juxtaposition allows NARAL to avoid making any intellectual defense of their hyper-abortion platform and paints Conservatives as out-of-touch prudish, Scarlet Letter Salemites. If NARAL can get a Conservative offended at the prospect of those over the drinking age not abstaining from sex, they have reached the pot of gold at the end of their liberal rainbow: proof that what abortion foes really seek is to make everyone save it for marriage—or even for procreation in marriage. But it’s not the prospect of young adults engaging in sexual relations that should give anyone pause, but rather NARAL’s implication, in this party invite, that abortion is their favorite form of birth control. “Let them know you keep it real when it comes to your sexual health and decision-making,” the online invitation boasts. “Keep it real?” Is this their wimpy attempt at appealing to the MTV generation, or is P. Diddy writing their press releases? “Come laugh, learn, socialize and buck the system,” they add. “Buck the system?” Cuban or Iranian dissidents “buck the system”; 20-something Seattleites (complete with thrift-store T-shirts and iPods full of Tori Amos tunes) at a liberal party are not exactly “bucking the system,” but acting as cliché as they can. This is NARAL gratifying itself by playing smoking-in-the-girls-room on a political stage; a way to feel cool and rebellious against Principal Bush and Dean Conservative. It deserves not fear but only a raised-eyebrow sneer.

Those on the Right cannot be blamed for feeling a little Schadenfreude in all this, either; Justice O’Connor’s retirement, coupled with Bush’s soon-to-be-tested resolve in picking an originalist nominee, is causing a near crack-up in Liberalville—as illustrated by “Screw Abstinence.” Despite the tired, old mantra that liberals want abortions to be “safe, legal, and rare,” the pro-choicers’ actions are demonstrating otherwise. (“Screw[ing] Abstinence” doesn’t exactly help the “rare” part.) And selling “I Had An Abortion” T-shirts (Planned Parenthood) or “I ♥ Pro-Choice Boys/Girls” wear (NARAL), and fighting common-sense parental-notification laws (which, polls show, a vast majority of Americans favor) won’t help to win many people over, either. NARAL and its ilk have become politically tone deaf. The lack of public support for their militant abortion-on-demand fantasy-land, plus the weakness of their legal argument, has made them intellectually lazy: they have been reduced to flippant T-shirt vendors and feminist yentas armed with placards and coat-hangers.

So fret not the end of civilized society when the guys and gals of NARAL throw their party tonight. “Screw Abstinence” is, after all, a last gasp for air; a way to attract the young and hang on to relevancy as the rest of America continues to erode out of their kooky hands.

from the National Post of Canada, 2006-Jan-13, by Melissa Leong, with files from CanWest News Service:

Legalize polygamy: study
Ottawa paid for report that says Charter might negate criminal ban

A new study commissioned by the federal government recommends that Canada legalize polygamy and change legislation to help women and children living in plural relationships.

The paper by three law professors at Queen's University in Kingston argues that a Charter challenge to Section 293 of the Criminal Code banning polygamy might be successful, said Beverley Baines, one of the authors of the report.

"The polygamy prohibition might be held as unconstitutional," Ms. Baines said in an interview last night.

"The most likely Charter [of Rights and Freedoms] challenge would be brought by people claiming their freedom of their religion might be infringed. Those living in Bountiful would say polygamy is a religious tenet."

The possibility of a Charter challenge to polygamy laws has added significance since Paul Martin pledged this week that the first act of a new Liberal government would be to remove the federal government's ability to use the Constitution's notwithstanding clause to override Supreme Court decisions dealing with Charter rights.

Polygamy has been practised for more than 60 years in Bountiful, in southeastern B.C. Last year, the RCMP launched an investigation into allegations of child abuse and sexual exploitation within the fundamentalist Mormon community of 1,000 people. No charges have ever been laid.

The Martin government commissioned the $150,000 study into the legal and social ramifications of polygamy just weeks before it introduced divisive same-sex marriage legislation. Same-sex marriage was approved last June.

Critics said at the time that the study underscored a deep concern in the federal government that legalized homosexual marriage could lead to constitutional challenges from minority groups who claim polygamy as a religious right.

"In order to best prepare for possible debate surrounding Canada's polygamy policy, critical research is needed," a Status of Women Canada document said last year.

"It is vital that researchers explore the impacts of polygamy on women and children and gender equality, as well as the challenges that polygamy presents to society."

Sayd Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, said last year that he opposes same-sex marriage, but said if it is legalized in Canada, polygamists would be within their rights to challenge for their choice of family life to be legalized.

"This is a liberally minded country with regards to equal rights, and literally millions live common law," Mr. Ali said.

Multiple marriage is legal in most Muslim countries, he said. But Muslim men who take more than one wife must prove to local courts that they are capable of treating them all equally, Mr. Ali said.

Chief author of the report Martha Bailey told The Canadian Press that criminalizing polygamy serves no good purpose.

"Why criminalize the behaviour?" she said. "We don't criminalize adultery.

"In light of the fact that we have a fairly permissive society, why are we singling out that particular form of behaviour for criminalization?, Ms. Bailey told The Canadian Press.

Ms. Baines said polygamy is rarely prosecuted. "No one is actually being prosecuted but the provision is still being used in the context of immigration and refugee stuff. People are not being admitted to the country."

She said removing it from the Criminal Code will not force marriage laws to recognize it, but would only remove criminal sanctions.

The report -- commissioned by the Justice Department and Status of Women Canada and written by Ms. Baines, Bita Amani and Ms. Bailey -- also says the criminalization of polygamy does not address the harms that women in polygamous relationships face and suggests Canadian laws be changed to better serve women by providing them spousal support and inheritance rights.

"They are denied access to our divorce law.... You have a great deal of difficulty claiming your rights with access to children, custody of children and financial support for the children," she said. "We are starting to make accommodations for some small things in some of the provinces [such as] extending support law to women and children in any kind of marriage.

"Polygamous marriages are legal in some countries. They come to Canada, the vast majority of them will not know the law and they have no legal protection. They could be prosecuted. Suddenly, they're living in fear."

Polygamy, outlawed in Canada but accepted in many countries, typically means a man having several wives at the same time.

from the Brussels Journal, 2005-Nov-17, by Paul Belien:

Polygamy All Over the Place

The riots in France have made the world suddenly aware of a reality which city dwellers in Europe have known for some years: that there are no-go areas surrounding almost every major European town. These have become virtually self-ruling enclaves, abandoned by European authorities and police. A case in point is the Swedish town of Malmö, which is said to be unique because creeping anarchy has spread to almost the entire town.

Another thing which many people have known, but which has never been said aloud, is the spread of polygamy across Western Europe. Since yesterday, when French officials, including one government minister, cited polygamy as a possible factor of social breakdown in the suburbs, the media are suddenly devoting attention to a phenomenon which many people have known existed for years: Muslim immigrants going home for a holiday and returning with an additional wife.

Only last week (November 11) the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reported statements from Norway’s Directorate of Immigration (UDI) that there are an increasing number of men with multiple wives in Norway. “The reason is married men travel to countries where polygamy is legal and then add a wife.” Though polygamy is illegal in Norway, “this is something that Norwegian authorities cannot prevent,” said UDI spokesman Karl Erik Sjøholt. The question is whether the authorities should encourage it. The Islamic Cultural Center Norway (ICCN), an immigrant organisation subsidised by the Norwegian state, advises Muslims in Norway to take several wives because polygamy “is advantageous and ought to be practiced where conditions lend themselves to such practice.”

So far men have been allowed to bring their second wives into Norway. As the strain on the Norwegian welfare system increases, the Immigration Directorate suggests that the government should prevent married men who marry again without first divorcing in Norway from bringing their new wives to Norway.

Muslim immigrants who come to live in Europe often bring along their extended families, which may contain two, three and even four wives, and all of their offspring. Such families average up to 15 people, which means that up to half a million of France’s 60 million inhabitants, a significant section of the entire population, may be living in polygamous families. There are also hundreds of polygamous families in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries. According to Jacques Kossowki, the mayor of Courbevoie in France and an MP, “It’s a disaster. We don’t even have housing big enough for these people.”

In Britain legislators have chosen to adopt a liberal approach, amending existing laws in an effort to accommodate the needs of the local Muslim population. Last year the Sunday Times reported that Muslim second wives will get a tax break: “The Inland Revenue is considering recognising polygamy for some religious groups for tax purposes. Officials have agreed to examine ‘family friendly’ representations from Muslims who take up to four wives under sharia, the laws derived from the Koran. Existing rules allow only one wife for inheritance tax purposes. The Revenue has been asked to relax this so that a husband’s estate can be divided tax-free between several wives.”

The stealth with which the European authorities have for almost two decades now been accepting polygamy is a clear indication that Western Europe has lost all faith in its own traditional values, such as monogamous marriage. This also became clear recently when the Dutch authorities refused to annul the civil union which a Dutch man concluded with two women before a notary. The latter is morally distinct from the traditional polygamy of the Muslims because the two women involved also engage in a lesbian relationship (their “husband” said his wives were bisexual), making the case not only a trio-marriage but a homosexual relationship as well. At least the Muslims have never taken decadence that far. How can societies that accept such situations object to Muslims with multiple wives?

In fact the Muslims are not to blame for the collapse of Western Europe’s civilisation. The latter’s problems are entirely self-inflicted. The reality that the old continent is gradually, but ever more rapidly, becoming Islamic is a consequence of the suicide of its once Christian and now hedonist and secular culture. The attitude that everyone can do whatever he or she likes so long as it makes them happy, is leading us directly to Eurabia. However, those who care about happiness may find consolation in the words of Philander Johnson: “Cheer up, the worst is yet to come.”

Paul Belien is the editor of the Flemish quarterly Secessie and the editor-in-chief of The Brussels Journal. He is a columnist at the Flemish weekly Pallieterke and at the Flemish monthly Doorbraak and a regular contributor to the Flemish conservative monthly Nucleus, which he co-founded in 1990.

from USA Today, 2005-Oct-28, by Sharon Jayson:

Births to unmarried women hit record

WASHINGTON -- A record number of babies — nearly 1.5 million — were born to unmarried women in the U.S. last year. And those moms were more likely to be 20-somethings than teenagers, according to new federal data released Friday.

"This is not a teenage issue," says Stephanie Ventura,. a demographer with the National Center for Health Statistics. "Women in their 20s are accounting for a huge percentage of these births."

The data show that 35.7% of all births were to unmarried women. Births last year to both married and unwed mothers totalled more than 4 million.

By age group, almost 55% of the births for mothers ages 20-24 were to unmarried women. For those between 25-29, almost 28% of the births were to single women.

Teenagers, who accounted for 50% of unwed births in 1970, accounted for 24% of unwed births in 2004.

Sarah Brown, director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, says she's thrilled about the decline in teenage mothers, but she worries about the trend for those ages 20 and above.

"It's not going in the right direction," she says. "The right direction would be non-marital childbearing in all groups to be going down."

Instead, the numbers of unwed births has increased slightly each year since 1990. But Ventura says "a steep increase in a short period" — the last two years — "caught our attention."

Between 2002 and 2004, births among unmarried women ages 25-29 jumped more than 14%. It rose about 7% among the 20-24 age group over the same period.

"There's been a sea change in terms of expectations around marriage and babies," says Dorian Solot, co-founder of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, an advocacy organization for the unmarried.

Solot says unmarried mothers present very different scenarios for their children, depending upon whether they are the single, professional parent-by-choice, a cohabiting couple, or a poor woman living alone.

Sara S. McLanahan, a sociology professor at Princeton University and director of the Center for Research on Child Well-Being, says most often unwed mothers are disadvantaged with a high school degree or less education. She worries about the children in such relationships, which tend to be less stable and create more complex families.

"These are relatively unstable relationships, even among older mothers," she says.

"It's really unfair to children," says David Poponoe, a sociology professor at Rutgers University who has studied the effects of marriage and cohabitation on children. He co-directs the National Marriage Project at Rutgers.

"One thing you don't know from these data is whether the births are to lone women or to a cohabiting women," he says.

Studies have shown cohabitating relationships are less stable and about half break up within five years. But cohabiting couples are more likely to provide a healthier environment for children than a single woman alone, the experts say.

The data also showed:

• Childbearing by women their early 20s showed a decline.

• Births to older women continue to increase.

from the Associated Press via the Los Angeles Times, 2006-Jul-6, by Mark Johnson:

N.Y., Georgia Courts Reject Gay Marriage

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The highest courts in two states dealt gay rights advocates dual setbacks today, rejecting same-sex couples' bid to win marriage rights in New York and reinstating a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in Georgia.

Activists had hoped to widen marriage rights for gays and lesbians beyond Massachusetts with a legal victory in liberal New York, but the Court of Appeals ruled 4-2 that the state's law allowing marriage only between a man and a woman was constitutional.

The decision comes two years after gay and lesbian couples, supported by gay-rights groups who saw a chance for a major court win in a populous state, sued for the right to wed.

"Clearly, in bringing the case and pushing it as hard as they did, it's pretty good evidence that they thought they had a substantial chance of victory," said Ohio State University law professor Marc Spindelman, who tracks lesbian and gay legal issues. "It's hard to read the decision as anything other than a rebuff of gay and lesbian couples."

In Georgia, where three-quarters of voters approved a ban on gay marriage when it was on the ballot in 2004, the top court reinstated the ban today, ruling unanimously that it did not violate the state's single-subject rule for ballot measures. Lawyers for the plaintiffs had argued that the ballot language was misleading, asking voters to decide on same-sex marriage and civil unions, separate issues about which many people had different opinions.

The twin rulings, which came less than two hours apart, become part of the nationwide debate that has continued to evolve since a Massachusetts court ruling in late 2003 ushered in a spate of gay marriage controversies from Boston to San Francisco.

High courts in Washington state and New Jersey are deliberating cases in which same-sex couples argue they have the right to marry. A state appeals court in California is scheduled to hear arguments next week on whether a trial judge erred in declaring the state's existing marriage laws unconstitutional.

Forty-five states have specifically barred same-sex marriage through statutes or constitutional amendments. Massachusetts is the only state that allows gay marriage, although California and Connecticut allow same-sex civil unions or domestic partnerships that confer most of the same legal rights.

"It's a sad day for New York families," said plaintiff Kathy Burke of Schenectady, N.Y., who is raising an 11-year-old son with her partner of seven years, Tonja Alvis. "My family deserves the same protections as my next door neighbors."

The New York court said any change in the state's law should come from the state Legislature, Judge Robert Smith wrote. The decision said lawmakers have a legitimate interest in protecting children by limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. It went on to say the law does not deny homosexual couples any "fundamental right" since same-sex marriages are not "deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition."

Advocates from the ACLU, Lambda Legal and other advocacy groups marshaled forces for the New York court fight and sued two years ago. Forty-four couples acted as plaintiffs, including the brother of comedian Rosie O'Donnell -- Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell -- and his longtime partner.

"There's no question they looked to New York as a place where they could win," said Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a conservative legal group based in Florida. "It would have been a major victory for them. Instead it's a stunning defeat for the same-sex marriage movement."

Matt Foreman, executive director of the Washington-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, acknowledged the sting of the New York decision but said the fight will continue.

"This is something that is going to work itself out over the next 10 or 15 years, ultimately through the U.S. Supreme Court or an act of Congress," he said.

Alan Van Capelle, executive director of the gay rights group Empire State Pride Agenda, said his organization would immediately launch a campaign to press the legislature to pass a gay marriage bill in 2007.

"New York is looked at as a place where marriage equality is possible and inevitable," he said. "This ruling doesn't change that. Those in the Legislature who have said they are our friends, it's now time for them to step up. We're going to hold their feet to the fire and hold them accountable."

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat leading in polls in the governor's race, has said he favors legalizing gay marriage and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he would personally campaign to change the law. Spitzer's office argued in court in support of outgoing Gov. George Pataki's contention that state law prohibits issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

In her dissent, Chief Judge Judith Kaye said the court failed to uphold its responsibility to correct inequalities when it decided to simply leave the issue to lawmakers.

"This state has a proud tradition of affording equal rights to all New Yorkers. Sadly, the court today retreats from that proud tradition," she wrote. "I am confident that future generations will look back on today's decision as an unfortunate misstep."

Judge Albert Rosenblatt, whose daughter has advocated for same-sex couples in California, did not take part in the decision.

A federal lawsuit filed over California's refusal to grant a marriage license to a gay couple reached the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May. The court, however, sidestepped the question of whether it was unconstitutional to deny gays and lesbians the right to marry, leaving the issue to state courts to decide.

from the Los Angeles Times, 2006-Jul-27, by Sam Howe Verhovek:

Washington Court Upholds Gay-Marriage Ban
In a 5-4 ruling, the state Legislature's 1998 ban is upheld. But three judges in the majority call on lawmakers to revisit the issue and its effects.

SEATTLE — Opponents of gay marriage racked up another legal victory Wednesday, as the highest court in Washington state ruled 5 to 4 that there was no constitutional right for people of the same sex to marry each other.

But even as the state Supreme Court upheld the Legislature's 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, three judges in the majority urged lawmakers to revisit their ban on same-sex marriage and the "clear hardship" it imposed on gay people and their children.

The ruling in liberal-leaning Washington echoed one this month in New York, and it left opponents of same-sex marriage elated and hopeful that the national movement was sputtering to an end.

"Christians all over the state have been praying for this decision, and there is a sense of joy," said Rick Kingham, senior pastor of the Overlake Christian Church in Redmond, Wash., and a leader of Allies for Marriage and Children, a citizens group. "We would truly say that God has intervened in the affairs of man."

For gay-marriage supporters, the ruling was a major setback. It overturned pro-gay-marriage decisions by two lower-court judges and leaves Massachusetts as the only state in the nation with legally sanctioned same-sex marriage.

But they seized hopefully on the narrow margin and the majority judges' call to lawmakers to revisit the issue as indications that their side would prevail.

"If the Legislature does not make changes first, I firmly believe that a future court will take up this issue again," said King County Executive Ron Sims, the chief elected official in a jurisdiction that includes Seattle and several eastern suburbs.

"And on that day," Sims said, "a wiser and more enlightened generation will overturn this ruling."

Sims and other gay-rights supporters had likened the struggle over same-sex marriage to earlier civil rights battles — such as school segregation and bans on interracial marriage — in which the courts stepped in to undo discriminatory laws.

But the majority of judges concluded that the matter of whether gay people should be able to marry was up to an elected legislature, or even directly up to the people via a popular referendum.

"While same-sex marriage may be the law at a future time, it will be because the people declare it to be, not because five members of this court have dictated it," wrote Justice Barbara A. Madsen in one of two opinions that made for a majority in the case.

"There is evidence that times are changing," added Madsen, "but we cannot conclude that at this time the people of Washington are entitled to hold an expectation that they may marry a person of the same sex."

In an unusual split among the majority, two justices, who are generally regarded as conservative, issued what was effectively a blistering critique of Madsen's times-may-change argument.

Those two justices, James M. Johnson and Richard B. Sanders, described their opinion as "analyzing and rejecting all constitutional claims to achieve finality" in resolving the contentious issue.

"This conclusion may not be changed by mere passage of time or currents of public favor and surely not changed by courts," wrote Johnson.

Four justices dissented altogether from the majority ruling.

"Unfortunately," Justice Mary E. Fairhurst wrote, those in the majority "are willing to turn a blind eye to DOMA's discrimination because a popular majority still favors that discrimination."

The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, was passed by the Legislature in 1998 over the veto of then-Gov. Gary Locke, a Democrat.

The current governor, Chris Gregoire, also a Democrat, maintained the sort of above-the-fray approach she has taken on the issue, in which she has suggested it was fundamentally religious, not legal.

"On the issue of gay marriage, Washington is a very diverse state, and there are many strongly held opinions and personal feelings on this issue," she said in a statement responding to the court's decision.

Gregoire said the state should provide the "same rights and responsibilities to all citizens." At the same time, she said, "the sacrament of marriage is between two people and their faith; it is not the business of the state."

In news conferences and interviews Wednesday, same-sex marriage opponents emphasized what they called the positive nature of the ruling.

"We are not against anyone. We are for marriage," said Jeff Kemp, president of Families Northwest, son of former Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) and a driving force in Allies for Marriage and Children.

"What the state is saying is that there is an ideal form of family. In this ideal we have a mother and a father," Kemp said at a rally and news conference at Seattle's Westin hotel.

But in equal measure, people on the other side of the issue — including the 19 gay and lesbian couples who were plaintiffs in the case, all seeking the right to marry — described painful feelings of exclusion upon hearing of the justices' ruling.

"There aren't words to describe how hurt people in the gay and lesbian community are," said state Rep. Ed Murray, a Seattle Democrat who is one of four openly gay members of the state Legislature. "There's a lot of tears and a lot of anger right now."

from the Washington Post, 2006-Jan-21, p.A1, by Matthew Mosk and John Wagner, with Hamil R. Harris, Ann E. Marimow, Mary Otto and Eric Rich contributing:

Judge Strikes Down Md. Ban on Gay Marriage
Ruling Is Stayed as Constitutional Fight Ignites

A Baltimore judge ruled yesterday that Maryland's law banning same-sex marriage is discriminatory and "cannot withstand constitutional challenge," throwing open the possibility of a bruising legislative battle over a constitutional amendment.

Unlike decisions in Massachusetts and New York state, the Maryland ruling will not immediately bring lines of same-sex couples to city hall for civil ceremonies. Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock immediately stayed her decision, and the attorney general's office has voiced plans for an appeal.

Nevertheless, the judge's decision thrilled the 19 gay men and lesbians who filed suit last year after being denied marriage licenses in courthouses across the state. They challenged a 1973 state statute that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"It really is exciting," said Dave Kolesar, 28, an engineer at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and one of the plaintiffs, who said he was bowled over by the victory. "I wasn't ready, mentally, for success."

The effect of the ruling could be far more immediate in how it alters Maryland's political landscape. The decision comes during the state's contentious 2006 campaigns for governor and U.S. Senate. And it lands as the Maryland General Assembly's 90-day session has just gotten underway.

Although Democratic leaders who control both chambers have not embraced gay marriage, they signaled strong resistance yesterday to a constitutional ban. Those opposing same-sex unions vowed to force the issue to the top of the legislature's agenda.

"The evidence is now on the table. We must pass a constitutional amendment," said Del. Donald H. Dwyer Jr. (R-Anne Arundel). "This issue is not for the courts to decide."

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) expressed dismay with the court at an afternoon news conference. He hinted that he would get behind a drive to amend the constitution, saying he would "take the appropriate steps to protect marriage."

"Obviously, I'm disappointed," Ehrlich said. "Again, Maryland is in the national limelight, and it's not positive."

Eighteen states define marriage in their constitutions, many in amendments approved since 2003, when a Massachusetts court opened the door to same-sex marriages there, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Massachusetts is the only state that issues marriage licenses to same-sex couples, though Vermont and Connecticut recognize civil unions. Four states, the District and several dozen localities allow couples to formalize relationships through domestic-partnership registries.

The Virginia House of Delegates has approved a constitutional amendment that would bar same-sex marriages. If approved in the Senate, the measure would appear on the ballot in November.

In the long-awaited 20-page Maryland court ruling, Murdock took the position that banning same-sex marriage was no less discriminatory than outlawing interracial marriage, saying that "although traditions and values are important, they cannot be given so much weight that they alone will justify a discriminatory statutory classification."

Advocates for gay rights hailed the ruling as a significant landmark. "Truly, a historic moment," said Dan Furmansky, executive director of Equality Maryland.

Yesterday afternoon, Gita Deane, 42, and Lisa Polyak, 44, partners for a quarter-century who are raising two daughters and are lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit, sat together in their comfortable living room in north Baltimore, finishing each other's sentences. Deane held a cup of tea in both hands and savored the stillness and the goodness of the moment.

But they know this is just a pause in the challenge they accepted when they became a couple so many years ago -- a connection that has been questioned by many authorities along the way: the doctor who ejected Polyak from the delivery room as Deane gave birth; the immigration official who separated Deane from Polyak and their daughters as the little girls looked on, confused and frightened.

"I feel relieved," Deane said quietly. "People listened. They realized our family needed the protections that other families have."

Others, though, criticized the court ruling as a step toward eroding marriage and family. "My concern is legalizing same-sex unions teaches a society that marriage is only about fulfilling sexual and emotional desires," said the Rev. Eric Redmond of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Temple Hills. "I think homosexuals can have equal civil rights . . . without altering the historic definition of marriage."

Lawmakers in Annapolis who have long advocated for gay rights said the ruling was just the first step. "Hold the corks in the bottles," Del. Maggie L. McIntosh (D-Baltimore) said. "We're still a long way from a final decision."

McIntosh said Democrats recognize that the ruling unleashes the politically combustible issue into a legislative environment fraught with partisan tension.

Even before the ruling yesterday, House Democrats took steps to try to prevent a constitutional ban from reaching a vote on the floor. House leaders made a technical change in procedural rules Thursday, over the objections of Republicans. Residual resentment from that move spilled into yesterday's floor session.

Minority Whip Anthony J. O'Donnell (R-Calvert) admonished his Democratic colleagues for what he said was an attempt to shield them from casting a tough vote in an election year. "We should not fear having a debate," he said.

Yesterday, House and Senate leaders met to discuss how to deal with the issue. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) and House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) have cast votes supporting the 1973 law against same-sex marriage.

But both also took the position that a constitutional amendment would be premature, because yesterday's ruling came from a single Circuit Court judge, not from the state's precedent-setting high court.

Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery), who chairs the Senate committee that would have to approve an amendment for it to advance, said he saw no reason to act before the Court of Appeals has ruled. "One Circuit Court judge's opinion is not cause for amending the constitution," Frosh said.

Political strategists said Ehrlich and Democrats in the legislature probably have recognized the potential for a ballot initiative to provide the governor with a significant political edge as he seeks reelection. Republican political consultant Kevin Igoe said the ruling was like "waving a red flag at a bull" for Ehrlich's conservative base. If the issue appears on a ballot, he said, it would almost certainly drive up GOP turnout.

For the issue to make the ballot, though, three-fifths of lawmakers must approve it, a prospect that is doubtful. Maryland law does not allow citizens to petition measures directly onto the ballot.

The two leading Democratic gubernatorial candidates showed no sign they would embrace the court ruling. In a statement, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley affirmed his belief that marriage should be between a man and woman, but he said he supports legislative steps to broaden health care decision-making rights for same-sex couples.

Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan issued a statement touting his past support for expanded rights. Although he has opposed same-sex marriage in the past, his statement yesterday was silent on the subject. .

Deane and Polyak acknowledged feeling anxious about where the issue is headed as they waited for their daughters to come home from school.

"I worry about what the General Assembly is going to do with this decision," Polyak said hesitantly. "That it will be used to make political hay at the expense of our families. I hope that doesn't happen."

from Maryland Community Newspapers, 2005-Nov-22, by Peggy Vaughn:

Parents slam schools for sex ed material
Definition of abstinence undergoes review

The county school system is re-thinking its definition of sexual abstinence after complaints from two parents that their children were receiving incorrect and even risky information in sex ed classes.

Karen Sees and Cindy Richards said the “contraception comparison chart” used in eighth-grade health class at Herbert Hoover Middle School describes three types of abstinence: No intercourse, withdrawal (ejaculation outside of the body) and rhythm (no intercourse during ovulation).

“Since when did the term abstinence change to include the two most ineffective forms of birth control possible?” said Cindy Richards of Potomac. “Here we have been teaching our kids that abstinence means not having sex, period. What kind of message is this [chart] sending?”

Sees, also of Potomac, first became aware of the chart while helping her son study for health class in late October. She said she immediately e-mailed her son's health education teacher about her concerns.

“I'm all for teaching sex education, but I want it to be accurate information,” she said. “I was told by my son's health teacher that withdrawal and rhythm are considered abstinence because [sexual partners] are refraining from what they want to do.”

Both Planned Parenthood of Maryland and the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington agreed with the parents that the definition was faulty.

“Abstinence is when you're not having sex, as simple as that,” said Wendy Royalty of Planned Parenthood.

And Susan Gibbs, archdiocese spokeswoman, also suggested another correction for the chart.

“The use of the word ‘rhythm’ went out about 40 years ago when it was replaced with the term natural family planning,” she said.

The MCPS chart dates back to the early 1990s, said Barbara Pearlman, MCPS coordinator for health education.

It lists a dozen methods of contraception with columns for how the method works, its effectiveness in preventing pregnancy, side effects, if it protects against sexually transmitted diseases and how it is obtained.

Each method falls under one of four categories: permanent (vasectomy), mechanical (condoms), chemical (birth control pills) or abstinence.

Earlier this month, Richards and Sees began calling and e-mailing various school officials about their concerns.

Sees asked that more emphasis be placed on teaching students the pregnancy risk involved in withdrawal.

“I was told [by MCPS staff] that it's too complicated to explain to kids that you could get pregnant [from withdrawal]. I said, ‘Too complicated? It's one sentence, easily understood,’” Sees said.

Far more complicated was determining who within MCPS could authorize the change, she said.

“The [Hoover school staff] told me only the county could make that decision. Then the county [MCPS officials] told me they set the curriculum but have no control over how the schools implement it,” Sees said.

But changes to the chart are in the works, said Brian Edwards, MCPS spokesman.

“It's a clarification we think is important to make,” he said. “In fact, many health teachers have already crossed out the word [abstinence] on the chart.”

A memo directing health teachers to revise the chart is now working its way through MCPS channels. Withdrawal and rhythm will now be listed under a new category of “no method.”

This change comes as the school system is in the process of revising its sex education curriculum. In May, a federal judge blocked revisions to the curriculum that included a controversial video demonstrating condom use and a discussion of homosexuality after two groups sued. Last month, the school board appointed a new advisory committee to review curriculum being developed by county health teachers, administrators and outside consultants.

The definition of abstinence may well be in the eye of the policy maker, judging from the Web site of Office of Women's Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

It defines “continuous abstinence” as not having vaginal, anal or oral sexual intercourse at any time. But then there's “periodic abstinence” or “fertility awareness methods,” where sex is either avoided on days when a woman is fertile or a “barrier,” such as a condom, is used to help prevent pregnancy.

from the Christian Science Monitor, 2005-Aug-25, by Amanda Paulson and Daniel B. Wood:

California court affirms gay parenting

Ruling sets responsibilities, rights of homosexual parents but spurs backlash by same-sex marriage opponents.

CHICAGO AND LOS ANGELES -- Defining parenthood is far less simple than it used to be.

That fact was made abundantly clear by the California Supreme Court's ruling this week in three cases involving reproductive technology and lesbian relationships.

In California, the landmark decisions - which granted full parenthood to former partners despite the absence of legal adoption or, in two of the cases, a biological connection - have made the terrain a little clearer and solidified the direction in which many courts are moving: conferring the rights and responsibilities of parenthood based on intent and psychology rather than biology, adoption, or marriage.

But as the decisions have been lauded and decried across the country, they've also underlined the vastly different patchwork of how states handle the often-murky relationships at the nexus of reproductive technology and shifting family structures.

"I regard these three decisions as unprecedented because they go so far toward protecting children without regard to marital status or biology or gender of the parent, but at the same time they're not unique," says Joan Hollinger, an adoption and parentage law expert at the University of California in Berkeley. "They're part of the quest on the part of so many states to figure out how to define parentage when sex is separated from reproduction."

At least nine states officially allow second-parent adoption - often sought by gay couples - and several confer visitation rights or have ordered child support from nonbiological or nonadoptive parents.

But the California cases are the first in which such individuals have been declared full legal parents, with the rights of, say, inheritance or social-security benefits.

The rulings also affect heterosexual couples who use reproductive technology but this week, much of the reaction has focused on the court's statement that "We perceive no reason why both parents of a child cannot be women."

"Same-sex couples are now able to procreate and have children, and the law has to catch up with that reality," says Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Like many gay-rights advocates, he applauded the decision for recognizing parental bonds outside of gender or marital status.

The three decisions, while all involving reproductive technology, addressed very different situations. In one, a woman was ordered to pay child support for the biological children of her former lesbian partner, who has relied on welfare since the two split up.

In the second, a woman who years earlier had gotten a court order - and birth certificate - declaring both herself and her partner to be parents, was told she could not terminate her former partner's rights.

Perhaps the most unusual case involved a couple in which one woman donated an egg to her partner, who bore the twin children. At the time of donation the woman, whose initials are K. M., signed a form giving up parental rights, although both women cared for the twins for six years.

Two dissenting judges in that opinion noted that ignoring the release form might hold implications for other sperm and egg donors who sign waivers believing they've relinquished their obligations. But the majority felt that the intent and act of par- enting were sufficient to grant K.M. the rights she sought.

"As the only existing precedent on the issues that it covers, it will be a significant point of reference" for other states, notes Jill Hersh, K.M.'s lawyer.

While these three rulings apply only in California, the state is often at the forefront of reproductive-technology decisions, and may give guidance to other states that increasingly are faced with complex family structures.

Technology outpaces law

"I tell my students I couldn't invent the kind of family situations in which people actually live," says Nancy Polikoff, a professor at the American University Law School. "And it's the job of the courts to resolve these disputes with the law they have at their disposal."

Such law, formed decades before sperm donors, surrogate parents, and same-sex parents were common concepts, is often hardly adequate. But increasingly, say experts, courts are ruling based on the individuals' intent to act as parents and principles like parenthood by "estoppel" - in which an acting parent-child relationship creates legal parenthood.

Resolving conflicting state laws can be tricky, however. In one much-publicized case, a couple who had a civil union in Vermont and had a daughter through artificial insemination is battling in courts in both Vermont and Virginia, where the biological mother now lives with her child.

A Vermont court awarded the former partner visitation rights, but the other mother is now hoping to use Virginia's Affirmation of Marriage Act - which declares that the state does not recognize civil unions - to declare her the sole parent.

"It's an example of a situation where the fact that different states have different laws can cause a problem," Professor Polikoff says.

Critics of the California rulings warned of a "slippery slope" in which biology is ignored and the number of parents a child has keeps growing.

Developing backlash

"This blows apart the definition of family more than ever," says Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families in California. "It's about the courts pushing social engineering on the unsuspecting public."

Meanwhile, California opponents of gay marriage are pressing to put constitutional amendments on the June 2006 ballot that aims to push back currently recognized domestic partnership benefits and ban gay marriage.

But even as advocates on both sides debate repercussions of the court's rulings, K.M. is thrilled just knowing that she'll soon be reunited with her twin daughters, who have been living in Massachusetts with their other mother for several years.

"I am just like over the moon," she says. "I woke up today for the first time in four years and looked at the photos of my daughters by the bed and could do it without any pain or sadness.... I hope this means that all children and families will be protected from here out."

from the Washington Post, 2005-Sep-2, p.A2, by Joe Dignan and Amy Argetsinger:

Calif. Senate Passes Gay Marriage Bill
Move Is the First by a State Legislative Body Without a Court Order

SACRAMENTO, Sept. 1 -- The California Senate voted Thursday to allow gay couples to wed, becoming the first legislative body in the nation to approve same-sex marriage without a court order.

The bill would recast the state's legal definition of marriage as a union between two people rather than one between a man and a woman.

Yet it faces an uncertain future: The California Assembly narrowly rejected similar legislation in June, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has given mixed or ambiguous responses on whether he would support or veto such a bill.

Still, its passage, on a vote of 21 to 15, was hailed by advocates as a breakthrough for gay rights.

"It will totally take away the argument that it is just 'activist judges' who are finding for marriage nondiscrimination," said Geoff Kors, the head of Equality California. "It's the people's representatives in the largest state in the nation doing this."

Opponents deemed it an "arrogant" move in defiance of a voter-approved law limiting marriage rights to male-female couples. "Twenty-one Democrats in the Senate took it upon themselves to redefine marriage," said Benjamin Lopez, a lobbyist for the Traditional Values Coalition, "and they're saying that 4.6 million Californians are wrong."

The vote is distinct from those in such states as Connecticut and Vermont, which more narrowly crafted the right to "civil unions" for same-sex couples while reserving the word "marriage" for heterosexuals. Massachusetts this year became the only state to grant full marriage rights to gay or lesbian couples, but only after the state's courts ruled bans on such unions unconstitutional.

California has emerged as a key battleground in the debate over same-sex marriage. In 2000, the state's voters approved the referendum defining marriage as a union between two members of the opposite sex. But early last year, San Francisco officials issued marriage licenses to more than 4,000 gay couples, arguing that state law banning such unions violated the state's constitution.

The state Supreme Court nullified those unions, citing state law. In March, a San Francisco judge hearing lawsuits from activists and city officials declared the law unconstitutional, setting up a battle that will eventually be heard again in the state's highest court.

In the state capital Thursday, an emotional debate erupted, with proponents calling same-sex marriage a civil rights issue. Sen. Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) likened arguments in favor of the state's current marriage laws to those used to intern Japanese Americans during World War II and to justify slavery. "History has shown that that was wrong," she said.

Republican opponents said marriage between a man and a woman is a building block of society, and argued that the institution was created by God.

A "higher power created the institution of marriage," said Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth (R-San Diego). "We should protect traditional marriage, and we should uphold all of those values and institutions that . . . keep our society together today."

Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) said that "marriage is fundamentally different from a civil contract. It's the way we bring new life into the world." He called it a "natural institution," which "we've done a lot to undermine."

Sen. Martha M. Escutia (D-Montebello) responded: "My higher power tells me: Love one another . . . When you look at the Judeo-Christian principles, the main principles have been equality and tolerance."

Lawmakers said the issue had generated more attention than any other this session. "I've had 4,000 calls," Ortiz said.

Margita Thompson, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, said the governor believes "the issue should be decided by the ballot box or the courts," and would not comment on whether he would sign or veto the bill if it passes.

Thompson made a point of saying that the issue "has been decided by the people." But she added that the governor "will uphold whatever the court decides."

She said that "the governor does not believe in gay marriages, but he supports the current domestic partnership laws." Those in California grant gay couples many of the same privileges as married heterosexuals except the right to file taxes together.

First, though, the bill will likely move to the Assembly next week. A similar version was defeated by the larger legislative body in June, by a 41 to 37 vote, but its sponsor believes it may fare better this time.

Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) noted that in recent months, Canada and Spain have adopted same-sex marriage. The United Farm Workers endorsed the bill, as did Los Angeles's new mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa.

"This is not radical. This is not vanguard," Leno said. "We're part of something bigger than ourselves now."

Argetsinger reported from Los Angeles.

from the San Francisco Chronicle, 2005-Sep-7, p.A1, by Lynda Gledhill:

Legislature approves gay marriage
Gender-neutral legislation in hands of Schwarzenegger, who hints at veto

Sacramento -- The state Assembly, in a stunning victory for the gay rights movement, approved a landmark bill allowing same-sex marriage Tuesday night and sent it to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The measure, which passed with no votes to spare, marks the first time that a legislative body in the United States has approved a bill that legalizes gay marriage. Schwarzenegger has not taken an official position on the legislation but has hinted that he would veto it.

Just three months after the Assembly defeated an identical bill, 41 Democrats voted to approve the measure. Three Democrats who had abstained on the previous measure changed course and voted for the bill.

"It's always a dilemma whether to follow or lead. This is one of those times history is looking to us to lead," said Assemblyman Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, one of the swing votes, during more than an hour of debate. The final vote was 41-35, with all Republicans and a handful of Democrats opposed.

The bill, AB849, does not require any religious organization to recognize or perform marriages for same-sex couples. The bill makes the law defining marriage gender-neutral. California state law did not place gender into the marriage code until 1977.

Opponents have promised to go to court if the bill becomes law, saying it violates the spirit of Proposition 22, a 2000 ballot initiative that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. They also say they will go to the polls next year with proposed constitutional amendments that would ban same-sex marriage.

"What about Prop. 22? What about the 62 percent of Californians who supported it? What about their will?" asked Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy, R-Monrovia (Los Angeles County). "If this legislation doesn't subvert the will of the people, I don't know what does."

Schwarzenegger's office has repeated that he believes the issue should be decided either by a vote of the people or a court decision. He has said he supports the state's current domestic partnership laws.

"The governor believes the people spoke with Prop. 22, and that is now in the courts," said Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson. "The governor believes that is where it belongs and will uphold any decisions the courts make."

Massachusetts became the only state that allows same-sex marriage after a court ruling. Vermont permits civil unions.

Supporters and opponents of the bill focused on a handful of moderate Democrats who had abstained on the measure previously. Their offices reported getting a huge influx of calls and letters on the issue from both sides.

San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno, the Democrat who wrote the bill, said reaching the benchmark of 41 votes was difficult. When the final vote was called, there was a moment of stunned silence before supporters broke out in cheers. Leno grabbed Assembly Speaker Fabian Nüñez, D-Los Angeles, in a bear hug and lifted him off the floor with glee.

"He was resolute in his leadership," Leno said of the speaker. "He always said civil rights is civil rights."

Leno said momentum has been building in favor of same-sex marriage, and several events in the past few months helped to turn the tide in the Assembly. Those include endorsements from the United Farm Workers Union and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa along with the nation of Spain approving marriage for same-sex couples.

Umberg said that of all the constituents who contacted him on the bill, he had ultimately looked to his three children.

"I wanted them to look back and see where I was when we could make a difference, if I stood with those who took a leadership role in terms of tolerance, equity and fairness," he said. "And I'll be proud to say I did."

Assemblywoman Gloria Negrete McLeod, D-Chino (Santa Barbara County), was another swing vote. She said she was convinced listening to the words of the Declaration of Independence that demanded "justice for all." Assemblyman Simon Salinas, D-Salinas, was the third member who had previously abstained to vote "aye" and push the bill to victory.

Opponents said Democrats who voted for the bill are not leaders.

"I say you are betraying the people of California," said Assemblyman Jay La Suer, R-La Mesa (San Diego County). "You are not leading. You have gone astray."

The Capitol rotunda was a scene of cheers, hugs and tears of joy as ecstatic supporters of the bill streamed out of the Assembly gallery after the 41st vote was recorded.

"I kept telling myself it wouldn't pass because I didn't want to get my hopes up,'' said Suzanne Neilsen of Sacramento, her arm wrapped tightly around her partner, Jan Roberts.

Neilsen and Roberts were married in San Francisco on Valentine's Day 2004 and were crushed when the state Supreme Court declared their wedding invalid.

"We're regular people like everyone else,'' said Roberts, fighting off tears. "Now, our rights are there. Even filling out our taxes every year will be easier.''

Hanus Jelinek of San Francisco said that far from threatening marriage, the bill would allow him to live the same life as anyone else.

"I can settle down with my beloved, and the government will just leave us alone,'' he said.

Focus now turns to Schwarzenegger.

"Schwarzenegger can't afford to sign the 'gay marriage license' bill," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, which helped lead the statewide battle against AB849. "He'll actually become a hero to the majority of Californians when he vetoes it. The Terminator should announce without delay that this bill is dead meat."

But Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, said the governor would be deciding his legacy when he decides whether to sign or veto the bill.

"He will determine whether he will be the first governor to do a little heavy lifting and support equality for all or whether he will become the first governor to terminate our rights," he said. "We know in his heart he wants to do the right thing."

from the San Francisco Chronicle, 2005-Sep-29, by Lynda Gledhill:

Schwarzenegger vetoes gay marriage bill as promised

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today delivered on his promise to veto legislation that would have given same-sex partners the right to marry, but said he would not support any rollback of the state's current domestic partner benefits.

That stance would put him at odds with two initiatives being pursued by conservative groups for the ballot next year. Those measures would not only prevent gay marriage, but also eliminate rights domestic partners currently enjoy.

"I am proud California is a leader in recognizing and respecting domestic partnerships and the equal rights of domestic partners," Schwarzenegger said in his veto message. "I support current domestic partnership rights and will continue to vigorously defend and enforce these rights and as such will not support any rollback."

But that position did not placate the author of the same-sex marriage bill, Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.

"The governor has failed his test of leadership and missed a historic opportunity to stand up for the basic civil rights of all Californians," Leno said. "He cannot claim to support fair and equal treatment for same-sex couples and veto the very bill that would have provided it to them."

Schwarzenegger's strong stance in favor of domestic partner rights, along with his signature today on four bills strengthening protections for gays and lesbians was clearly meant to temper the outpouring of criticism he had received for saying he would veto the bill.

In 2000, voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 22, an initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California. Several court cases on the constitutionality of banning same-sex marriage are making their way through the court system.

Schwarzenegger said the ultimate decision will be made by a court.

The legislature's passage of AB 849 marked the first time that a legislative body in the United States has approved a bill that legalizes gay marriage. Support from the United Farm Workers helped to push the bill to the governor's desk.

The bill would not have required any religious organization to recognize or perform marriages for same-sex couples. The bill makes the law defining marriage gender-neutral. California state law did not place gender into the marriage code until 1977.

Conservative groups had warned Schwarzenegger that he needed to take a strong stand against the bill.

Massachusetts became the only state that allows same-sex marriage after a court ruling. Vermont and Connecticut permit civil unions.

from the Associated Press, 2005-Sep-14, by Steve LeBlanc:

Mass. Lawmakers Reject Gay Marriage Ban

BOSTON - The Massachusetts Legislature rejected a proposed change to the state constitution Wednesday aimed at banning gay marriage, a striking reversal that preserves the state's status as the only place in the nation where same-sex couples can wed.

A year after Massachusetts politicians appeared destined to undo a court order that has allowed thousands of same-sex couples to marry since May 17, 2004, the Legislature voted 157-39 against the proposed constitutional amendment.

It was the second time the Legislature had confronted the measure. Lawmakers were required to approve it in two consecutive sessions before the proposal could move to the statewide ballot in 2006 for a final decision by voters.

The measure, which would have allowed Vermont-style civil unions, won passage by a 105-92 last year. But the political and social landscape had changed dramatically since then.

Gone was the intensity, the seemingly endless debate and, in some quarters, the taste for stripping away the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples.

``Gay marriage has begun, and life has not changed for the citizens of the commonwealth, with the exception of those who can now marry,'' said state Sen. Brian Lees, a Republican who had been a co-sponsor of the amendment. ``This amendment which was an appropriate measure or compromise a year ago, is no longer, I feel, a compromise today.''

The proposal also was opposed by critics of gay marriage, who want to push for a more restrictive measure.

``The union of two women and two men can never consummate a marriage. It's physically impossible,'' said state Rep. Phil Travis, a Democrat. ``The other 49 states are right and we are wrong.''

Lawmakers already are preparing for a battle over another proposed amendment that would ban both gay marriage and civil unions. The earliest that initiative could end up on the ballot is 2008.

``We're excited. We're pumped. This is great. This is exactly what we wanted,'' said Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute.

The state's highest court ruled in November 2003 that same-sex couples had a right under the state constitution to marry. Now, more than 6,100 couples gay and lesbian couples have been wed in Massachusetts, though officials have barred out-of-state couples from getting married here, citing a 1913 law that prohibits couples from marrying in Massachusetts if their union would be illegal in their home states. A lawsuit challenging the legality of that law is pending.

Within a year of the first Massachusetts marriages, 11 states pushed through constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, joining six others that had done so earlier.

The Connecticut Legislature approved civil unions in April, joining Vermont in creating the designation that creates the same legal rights as marriage without calling it such. Earlier this month, California lawmakers passed a measure legalizing same-sex marriage, though Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has promised to veto it.

from BBC News online, 2005-Feb-14:

Gay outrage over penguin sex test

Humboldt penguins are threatened with extinction

Gay rights activists have protested at a north German zoo's plans to test the sexual orientation of six male penguins which have displayed homosexual traits.

Bremerhaven's Zoo am Meer said it would introduce four extra female penguins from Sweden to the group to see if the males really were gay.

But zoo director Heike Kueck said "gay groups worldwide have been cursing us since that announcement".

The zoo says it just wants to encourage the rare Humboldt penguins to breed.

The males have been observed trying to mate with each other and trying to hatch offspring out of stones.

"We don't know whether the three male pairs are really homosexual or whether they have just bonded because of a shortage of females," said Mrs Kueck, quoted by Germany's Der Spiegel news magazine.

Gay groups insisted that penguins had a right to form couples without human interference, she said.

"Nobody here wants to forcibly separate homosexual couples," she said.

Only one baby Humboldt penguin has been born at the zoo, which has six males and four females, Der Spiegel reports.

(The following item also appears in the European Socialism chapter.)

from the Telegraph of London, 2005-Jan-30, by Clare Chapman:

'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners — who must pay tax and employee health insurance — were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job — including in the sex industry — or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.

"There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry," said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits."

Miss Garweg said that women who had worked in call centres had been offered jobs on telephone sex lines. At one job centre in the city of Gotha, a 23-year-old woman was told that she had to attend an interview as a "nude model", and should report back on the meeting. Employers in the sex industry can also advertise in job centres, a move that came into force this month. A job centre that refuses to accept the advertisement can be sued.

Tatiana Ulyanova, who owns a brothel in central Berlin, has been searching the online database of her local job centre for recruits.

"Why shouldn't I look for employees through the job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said Miss Ulyanova.

Ulrich Kueperkoch wanted to open a brothel in Goerlitz, in former East Germany, but his local job centre withdrew his advertisement for 12 prostitutes, saying it would be impossible to find them.

Mr Kueperkoch said that he was confident of demand for a brothel in the area and planned to take a claim for compensation to the highest court. Prostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links to organised crime.

Miss Garweg believes that pressure on job centres to meet employment targets will soon result in them using their powers to cut the benefits of women who refuse jobs providing sexual services.

"They are already prepared to push women into jobs related to sexual services, but which don't count as prostitution,'' she said.

"Now that prostitution is no longer considered by the law to be immoral, there is really nothing but the goodwill of the job centres to stop them from pushing women into jobs they don't want to do."

from the Hindustan Times, 2005-Mar-31, by Sidhi Chadha:

Now learn prostitution in school

A Diploma in Sex Trade? That will be among the several qualifications on offer when a government-sponsored school for prostitutes opens in the capital on Friday.

The move to encourage sex workers who are fully trained in their craft comes just days after the US threatened to impose sanctions unless the administration did something to regulate the flesh trade in the country.

Giving details of the scheme, Kamal Kishore, spokesperson for the Ministry of Human Resource & Development says only those who received training at the Institute for Carnal Studies (ICS) would be granted a license to operate legally. The government, he claims, would be providing the best infrastructure possible at the Institute.

"We have decided to hire sex workers with at least 10-12 years of experience as teachers. They will give students a first-hand account of how they made their way in the trade. Besides modern-day porn, the Institute will also have lessons from the Kamasutra so that lovemaking is pleasurable rather than being just about money," he says.

The girls will learn everything from seduction to handling finances. "It will be an honour to teach. Besides giving the girls useful tips about sex, we will also tell them how to seduce clients and extract maximum money. I am glad that the government is finally thinking about our needs," says Kamala, one of those on the ICS faculty.

While the Institute will offer a basic two-year degree programme for just Rs 2000, there will be advanced courses for those wishing to specialise as high-society call girls. With a growing demand for same-sex partners, ICS also has an option six-month crash course in 'Lesbian Relationships and Practices.' Special classes for gigolos could begin as early as next year.

"The students will get a lot of practical exposure. They will do a month-long internship in various red light areas of the country where they will practice what they have learnt. We also expect them to produce feedback from clients. The student who scores the highest in terms of client satisfaction will get a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh and also a chance to represent India at an international meet in Phuket, Thailand," says Kishore.

According to a senior official in the HRD Ministry, there could be a number of spin-offs from a bold initiative like this. "Look, we have failed to clamp down on prostitution despite our best efforts in the past. Doesn't it make better sense to open a school and bring the flesh trade out in the open? It will help us in many ways - first, prostitution will become a legitimate profession; the girls in the trade will no longer be looked down upon and ostracized from society. Second, ICS will produce highly trained individuals who will know all about safe sex, hygiene and the use of condoms. Our biggest hope is that the school will play a pivotal role in the fight against AIDS. Lastly, it is also our intention to eliminate pimps and others who exploit sex workers. Those found operating outside the purview of the ICS will be prosecuted," he says.

Application forms will be available from April 10 at select government offices. The forms can be also be downloaded from the ICS website (www.indianprostitute.org).

In its 2005 session, the legislature of the state of Oregon is considering a bill that “Permits issuance of teaching, personnel service or administrative license or registration to person convicted of prostitution who meets certain requirements. Allows school district to employ or contract with person convicted of prostitution if person meets certain requirements.” As of this writing, the most recent action on the bill was “4-4 Public Hearing and Work Session held.” According to John Gibson of Fox News Channel, reporting on 2005-Apr-13, no one spoke against the bill at the public hearing.

from the New York Times, 2005-Jun-30, by Renwick McLean:

Spain Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage

MADRID - The Spanish Parliament gave final approval today to a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, making Spain only the second nation to eliminate all legal distinctions between same-sex and heterosexual unions, according to supporters of the bill.

The measure, passed by a vote of 187 to 147, establishes that couples will have the same rights, including the freedom to marry and to adopt children, regardless of gender.

"Today, Spanish society is responding to a group of people who have been humiliated, whose rights have been ignored, their dignity offended, their identity denied and their freedom restricted," Prime Minister José Luis Rodíguez Zapatero told Parliament.

Spain is the fourth country to legalize gay marriage, after Canada, Holland and Belgium.

But only Canada's law, which was extended nationwide by Parliament this week, contains language as liberal as Spain's, according to gay marriage advocates.

The Spanish measure simply adds one sentence to existing law: "Marriage will have the same requirements and results when the two people entering into the contract are of the same sex or of different sexes."

The laws in Holland and Belgium, by contrast, create a separate category of rights for same-sex couples that fall short of full equality on issues like adoption, these advocates say.

"Spain is talking about total equality," said Kursad Kahramanoglu, the secretary general of the International Lesbian and Gay Association. "The only other place in the world where this has actually happened is Canada."

The Canadian House of Commons voted Tuesday on its measure to change the traditional definition of marriage, and once the Senate formally approves it, gay marriage will be legal throughout the land.

Today's vote in Spain had been widely expected, since the bill had already been approved convincingly in a preliminary vote in April.

The bill then went to the Senate, where it was rejected in a non-binding vote, before going back to the lower house for today's final approval.

Although it had no practical effect, the Senate vote indicated the sharp opposition to the bill that has emerged in Spanish society, particularly among religious conservatives.

Some two weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of people marched through downtown Madrid in protest against the bill, saying it was an assault on the institution of marriage.

The mayor of Valladolid, Francisco Javier León de la Riva, has said that he will not carry out the new law, and Catholic leaders have called on government officials to become conscientious objectors and to refuse to participate in any events involving the marriage of homosexual couples.

Shortly after the preliminary vote in April, the archbishop of Barcelona, Cardinal Ricard María Carlés Gordó, , compared government workers opposing the law but agreeing to carry it out to the Nazis at Auschwitz, who "believed that they had to obey the laws of the Nazi government before their own conscience."

Despite the intensity of the opposition, polls show that most Spaniards, between 55 and 65 percent, support gay marriage. Even many of those who oppose the bill passed today say they agree with allowing same-sex couples to marry but feel they should not be able to adopt children.

The law will go into effect immediately after it is published in Parliament's official bulletin, which is expected to occur within a couple of days.

from Reuters, 2005-Jun-29, by David Ljunggren:

Gay marriage cements Canada's liberal reputation

OTTAWA - The Canadian Parliament has approved legislation to allow same sex marriages, helping cement Canada's image as one of most socially liberal nations in the world.

"We are affirming once again our world-wide reputation as a country that is open, inclusive and welcoming," Alex Munter, a spokesman for Canadians for Equal Marriage, said after Parliament voted late on Tuesday to make gay marriages legal across the country.

Canada is only the third country after Belgium and the Netherlands to permit such unions.

Canada generally leans more to the left on social issues than the United States, where President Bush wants Congress to pass an amendment to the constitution banning gay marriages.

Canadians are proud of their state-funded health care system, while aware that it is tarnished by long waiting lines and a shortage of doctors in some parts of the country.

The government is considering decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, although the legislation is stalled in parliament, and gun control is much tougher than in the United States.

"Congratulate yourself. You are part of the most diverse, tolerant and open-minded place on earth. And yesterday proved the thesis once again," wrote John Ibbitson, columnist for the Globe and Mail newspaper, which traditionally backs the ruling Liberal party.

But the gay marriage debate is likely to rumble on, and Canada's opposition Conservatives expect to make the issue a key one in the next election campaign, likely early next year.

Conservative critics complain that the Liberals are using the Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- designed to prevent discrimination against minorities -- to impose minority beliefs on the majority, and say the document gives too much power to the courts rather than to Parliament.

"We don't believe this is a good law or a just law for the nation of Canada. It's a law that was imposed on a majority of Canadians," said Reverend Tristan Emmanuel of the Equipping Christians for the Public Square Center.

"Now we have to focus on the federal election. We need to engage that same base we've been mobilizing, we need to add to it ... this certainly is a very important issue for a significant body of Canadians," he told CBC television.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2005-Jan-14, by Bret Stephens:

Honestly, Abe Is Still One of All of Us
The gay community lays claim Lincoln.

Sometimes one event triggers thoughts about a very different one. So it is for me with the death last month of Susan Sontag and the publication this month of "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," in which author C.A. Tripp argues that our 16th president was a homosexual.

Why this connection? As far as I know, Ms. Sontag never wrote anything about Lincoln, nor, despite her own lesbianism, did she have much to say directly on the subject of homosexuality. But Ms. Sontag did write "Notes on Camp" (1964), basically a manifesto, masquerading as an analysis, of one type of homosexual sensibility. Camp, she wrote, was disengaged, apolitical, ironic, lighthearted, extravagant, a "solvent of morality," the antithesis of tragedy. "The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious," wrote Ms. Sontag. "One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious." In other words, gay.

In retrospect, "Notes" turned out to be a founding document of the counterculture: not of its earnest Port Huron or outraged Stonewall sides but rather of the Studio 54, Moon and the Spoon variant. As Hilton Kramer recalled years later: "'Notes' achieved something radical and incendiary in offering its readers. . .a moral holiday. 'Notes' spoke for fun, for frivolity, for a wholesale release from the burdens of seriousness."

---

Now turn to Mr. Tripp, who died in 2003, leaving his book in manuscript form. Like Ms. Sontag, Mr. Tripp, a former Kinsey researcher, was homosexual. Unlike Ms. Sontag, he was a leaden writer, and dreadfully in earnest. His thesis rests on a sequence of dubious contentions. The first is that Lincoln allegedly went through puberty earlier than most boys. According to Kinsey, early puberty is sometimes correlated with early homosexual experience, though today we know that Kinsey's methodology and conclusions were badly flawed. Another of Mr. Tripp's claims is that, in his days on the Illinois prairie, Lincoln shared a bed with two men, one so snugly that (in the words of Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon) "when one turned over the other had to do likewise." Most historians see this as a fact of hardscrabble life in the America of the 1830s; Mr. Tripp detects evidence of "femoral intercourse."

A third piece of "evidence" is that, in 1829, Lincoln wrote a comic poem about "Biley" (Billy), who, after failing to woo the girls, marries a boy named Naty. Apparently, this poem is really about anal sex. A fourth is that Lincoln was reluctant to marry his wife, the emotionally unstable Mary Todd, and that he signed letters to his friend Joshua Speed "Yours Forever." A fifth is that, as president, Lincoln became close to the captain of his bodyguard, David Derickson (married twice and the father of 10), and might have slept in the same bed with him.

And that's mostly it for this 300-page opus. Yet the significance of the book does not lie in its perceptions of the 19th century but rather in its significance to the 21st. "Why does it matter?" asks blogger Andrew Sullivan. Because, among other things, Lincoln's example is needed today, Mr. Sullivan writes, "when so many of [his] Republican successors are intent on reimposing the agony and the misery of the closet today."

I don't speak for the gay community, but it seems to me there's a risk in using the Gay Lincoln thesis as a political cudgel. After all, the most likely homosexual president wasn't Lincoln but his infamous predecessor, James Buchanan. Are contemporary political conclusions to be drawn from that? Nor, I think, do gays do themselves any political favors by staking such an assertive historical claim on the basis of such a weak book. Memo to Mr. Sullivan: Just because some of Lincoln's behavior "rings a bell" with you doesn't mean that Mr. Tripp's conclusions are justified.

---

Still, there's something to be said for the gay community's embrace of Lincoln. Mr. Tripp's book treads a well-worn path of various social and political movements in America that have claimed Lincoln as one of their own: Christian evangelicals, temperance societies, progressives, socialists. The historical claims made on Lincoln were almost always false, but the spirit animating them was usually decent. By contrast, the worst political movements in America have been the ones that rejected Lincoln's legacy, such as Southern segregationists and the Black Power movement, and the trends that ignored his legacy altogether--like Camp.

Which brings me back to Ms. Sontag. Though she presented herself as the consummate voice of intellectual seriousness, she was, in fact, a popularizer of her generation's worst ideas, a champion of all its wrong impulses. And these ideas and impulses were ones that, sadly, characterized much of the gay movement for almost 40 years. Mr. Tripp is wrong to insist that Lincoln was gay. But gays are right to insist that Lincoln belongs to them as much as to anyone else.

Mr. Stephens is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

from the Associated Press, 2005-Mar-15, by Lisa Leff:

Gays gain victory

SAN FRANCISCO - A judge ruled Monday that California's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional - a legal milestone that, if upheld on appeal, would open the way for the most populous state to follow Massachusetts in allowing same-sex couples to wed.

Judge Richard Kramer of San Francisco County's trial-level Superior Court likened the ban to laws requiring racial segregation in schools, and said there appears to be "no rational purpose" for denying marriage to gay couples. The ruling came in response to lawsuits filed by the city of San Francisco and a dozen gay couples a year ago after the California Supreme Court halted a four-week same-sex marriage spree started by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

The opinion had been eagerly awaited because of San Francisco's historical role as a gay rights battleground.

Gay marriage supporters hailed the ruling as a historic development akin to the 1948 state Supreme Court decision that made California the first state to legalize interracial marriage.

"Today's ruling is an important step toward a more fair and just California that rejects discrimination and affirms family values for all California families," San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said.

At issue were a 1977 law that defined marriage as "a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman," and a voter-approved measure in 2000 that amended the law to say more explicitly: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

The state maintained that tradition dictates that marriage should be limited to opposite-sex couples. Attorney General Bill Lockyer also cited the state's domestic-partners law as evidence that California does not discriminate against gays.

But Kramer rejected that argument, citing Brown v. Board of Education - the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down segregated schools.

"The idea that marriage-like rights without marriage is adequate smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts - separate but equal," the judge wrote.

It could be months or years before the state actually sanctions same-sex marriage, if ever.

Robert Tyler, an attorney with the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, said the group would appeal. And Lockyer has said in the past that he expected the matter eventually would have to be settled by the California Supreme Court.

Last winter, nearly 4,000 gay couples got married after Newsom instructed the city to issue them licenses. The California Supreme Court later declared those marriages void, saying the mayor overstepped his authority. But the court did not address the underlying issue of whether the law against gay marriage violates the California Constitution.

Two bills now before the California Legislature would put a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the November ballot. If California voters approve such an amendment, as those in 13 other states did last year, that would put the issue out of the control of lawmakers and the courts.

The decision is the latest development in a national debate that has been raging since 2003, when the highest court in Massachusetts decided that denying gay couples the right to wed was unconstitutional.

In the wake of the Massachusetts ruling, gay rights advocates filed lawsuits seeking to strike down traditional marriage laws in several other states. Opponents responded by proposing state and federal constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.

Around the country, Kramer is the fourth trial court judge in recent months to decide that the right to marry and its benefits must be extended to same-sex couples.

Two Washington state judges, ruling last summer in separate cases, held that prohibiting same-sex marriage violates that state's constitution, and on Feb. 4, a New York City judge ruled in favor of five gay couples who had been denied marriage licenses by the city.

Just as many judges have gone the other way in recent months, however, refusing to accept the argument that keeping gays from marrying violates their civil rights.

California has the highest percentage of same-sex partners in the nation, and its Legislature has gone further than any other in providing gay couples the benefits of marriage without being forced to do so by court order.

from the Associated Press, 2005-Feb-4, by Samuel Maull:

N.Y. Ban on Same-Sex Marriage Struck Down

A judge declared Friday that a law banning same-sex marriage violates the state constitution, a first-of-its-kind ruling in New York that would clear the way for gay couples to wed if it survives on appeal.

Gay rights activists hailed the ruling as a historic victory that "delivers the state Constitution's promise of equality to all New Yorkers."

"The court recognized that unless gay people can marry, they are not being treated equally under the law," said Susan Sommer, a Lambda Legal Defense Fund lawyer who presented the case for five couples who brought the lawsuit. "Same-sex couples need the protections and security marriage provides, and this ruling says they're entitled to get them the same way straight couples do."

State Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan ruled that the New York City clerk could not deny a license to any couple solely on the ground that the two are of the same sex.

The city Law Department issued a statement saying only, "We are reviewing the decision thoroughly and considering our options."

Mary Jo Kennedy and Jo-Ann Shain, one of the couples in the case, said they were thrilled by the ruling and believed it would offer their family increased legal protection. They have been together 23 years and have a 15-year-old daughter.

"We're just overjoyed," said Shain. "We didn't think it would ever happen.

Kennedy said she wants to marry Shain as soon as possible. "I can't wait," she said. "We went to buy a (marriage) license in March 2004 and couldn't get it. That's what started this whole thing."

The judge noted that one plaintiff, Curtis Woolbright, is the son of an interracial couple who moved to California in 1966 to marry. She said California then was the only state whose courts had ruled that interracial marriage prohibitions were unconstitutional.

from the Associated Press via the Boston Herald, 2004-Nov-3:

Gay marriage banned in 11-for-11 state sweep

In a resounding, coast-to-coast rejection of gay marriage, voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments yesterday limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

The amendments won, often by huge margins, in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Utah and Oregon - the one state where gay-rights activists hoped to prevail. The bans won by a 3-to-1 margin in Kentucky and Georgia, 3-to-2 in Ohio, and6-to-1 in Mississippi.

``This issue does not deeply divide America,'' said conservative activist Gary Bauer. ``The country overwhelmingly rejects same-sex marriage, and our hope is that both politicians and activist judges will read these results and take them to heart.''

The Ohio measure, considered the broadest of the 11 because it barred any legal status that ``intends to approximate marriage,'' gathered equal support from men and women, blacks and whites.

In Georgia, Ohio and Mississippi, gay-rights activists were considering court challenges of the newly approved amendments.

Conservatives had expected all along that the amendments would prevail in at least 10 of the states, thus demonstrating widespread public disapproval of court rulings in favor of gay couples. National and local gay-rights groups campaigned vigorously in Oregon, where polls had showed a close race, but they failed to prevent a sweep.

None of the 11 states allow gay marriage now, though officials in Portland, Ore., married more than 3,000 same-sex couples last year before a judge halted the practice.

from National Review, 2004-Feb-27, by David Frum:

EIGHT QUESTIONS FOR ANDREW SULLIVAN

On his website today, Andrew Sullivan proclaims his support for the concept that a same-sex marriage license issued in Massachusetts could be void in the other 49 states. That would be a welcome compromise, especially if the Massachusetts courts ever managed to persuade the voters of Massachusetts to approve their judicially imposed social experiment - but let's first test Andrew with some practical questions that follow from his idea.

1) A Massachusetts man buys a condo in Miami. He marries another Massachusetts man. The condo purchaser dies before he can write a new will. Who inherits the condo?

2) Two Massachusetts women marry. One of them becomes pregnant. The couple split up, and the woman who bore the child moves to Connecticut. The other woman sues for visitation rights. What should the Connecticut courts do?

3) A Massachusetts man is accused of stock fraud. The federal Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenas his spouse. The spouse claims marital privilege and refuses to answer the SEC's questions. May the SEC compel him to answer anyway?

4) A Massachusetts woman marries another Massachusetts woman. The relationship sours. Without obtaining a divorce, she moves to Texas and marries a man. Has she committed bigamy?

5) Two married Massachusetts men are vacationing in another state. One of them has a stroke. The hospital concludes he will never recover. Local law requires the hospital to ask the next of kin whether to continue treatment. Whom should it ask?

6) A Massachusetts man marries a foreign visitor to the United States. Should the foreigner be entitled to US residency?

7) A Delaware family set up a trust for their son. The son moves to Massachusetts, marries a man, and then gets divorced. The trust is the son's only financial asset. Should the Massachusetts take the trust into account while dividing up the couple's possessions? If yes, what happens when the Delaware trustees refuse to comply?

8) A Massachusetts woman married to another woman wins a lawsuit against a California corporation. She dies before she can collect her debt. Her closest blood relative demands that the corporation pay the relative, not the surviving spouse. Who should get the money?

I ask these questions to drive home this point: Americans may live in states, but they conduct their financial and legal lives in a united country bound by interstate institutions.

If a couple gets married in Massachusetts and that marriage goes truly unrecognized by any entity outside the state — well then the Massachusetts wedding ceremony is just a form of words, as meaningless as the illegal weddings now being performed in San Francisco. If you're not married outside Massachusetts, then you are not really married inside Massachusetts either.

Somehow I cannot imagine Andrew and those who think like him reconciling themselves to that outcome. I suspect that ?letting the states decide? will over time gradually evolve into a demand to allow the most liberal states to impose their social values on the others through the mechanism of a million petty lawsuits on a thousand different issues. That is why it is necessary and proper to settle this issue on a national basis. And since the proponents of same-sex marriage have chosen 2004 as the year in which to bring matters to a head, they have no fair complaint if the opponents of same-sex marriage choose make their reply in that same year.

from City Journal, 2004-Autumn, by Robert P. George and David L. Tubbs:

Why We Need a Marriage Amendment
An imperial judiciary won't leave same-sex marriage to the states.

When President George W. Bush declared his support for a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, his most vitriolic critics, such as Senator Edward Kennedy, accused him of playing a divisive, mean-spirited political game. The New York Times and Washington Post, supporters of the idea of same-sex marriage, raised a more sophisticated objection to the amendment: it betrays, they claim, the venerable principle of American federalism that respects states' relative autonomy in setting marriage policy. Interestingly, some prominent conservative opponents of same-sex "marriage," including California congressman Christopher Cox, were also skeptical about the amendment on federalism grounds. State voters could and would prevent the imposition of same-sex marriage, these critics argued. There was no need to nationalize the issue.

Despite its widespread appeal, the states' rights solution won't work. Without a federal marriage amendment, we're going to wind up with same-sex marriage in all 50 states. And here's why.

The federalism proposed by the liberal opponents of a constitutional amendment is in fact a sham. It is a contrivance for permitting liberal state judges, abetted by sympathetic justices on the Supreme Court of the United States, to foist same-sex marriage upon the whole nation.

In the traditional or classic understanding of American federalism—expressed in the Federalist Papers and reflected in the design of the Constitution—democratically elected state legislators represent the citizens who elect them. Those legislators enjoy wide authority to make laws relating to marriage and family life, and promoting public health, safety, and morals. Because the U.S. Constitution vests state lawmakers with such wide-ranging powers in these areas, on the classic view, courts must defer to state legislatures. Such deference is no mere courtesy or convention, but a constitutional duty. A judge may invalidate state legislation relating to marriage and family life or on public health, safety, and morals only if it conflicts with norms fairly derived from the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the state or the federal constitution. As private citizens, judges may object to a law or policy on prudential or moral grounds, but as judges, they must distinguish the desirability—even the justice—of a policy from its constitutionality. Virtually all judges still pay at least lip service to this obligation.

Even so, state judges today ignore or circumvent it in practice with alarming frequency, so that the kind of federalism we increasingly have is not one of state legislatures but of state judiciaries. For this, the late U.S. Supreme Court justice William Brennan bears considerable blame. In an influential 1977 article in the Harvard Law Review, Brennan noted that state constitutions, like the U.S. Constitution, include provisions that convey important legal norms and principles in abstract-sounding language. Such provisions sometimes admit of multiple interpretations, especially when jurists ignore the relevant history and precedents. Brennan urged state appellate judges to interpret the state constitutional provisions expansively to secure individual rights, just as the Supreme Court had done under Chief Justice Earl Warren.

It was advice that many state-level judges proved eager to heed. In the years since Brennan wrote, state supreme courts—among them California's, Kentucky's, and Georgia's—have coined new rights or enlarged the scope of rights promulgated by the Warren and Burger Courts. Nowhere have the state courts run amok more wildly, however, than on same sex-marriage, an idea opposed by a sizable majority of Americans. In Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont, and now Massachusetts, judges have sought to redefine marriage, against the voters' will.

Can't states just deal with this judicial arrogance themselves, by flexing their federalist muscles? One prominent advocate of redefining marriage, Andrew Sullivan, says it's already happening (to his regret). He cites the following facts: 38 states have passed legislative bans on same-sex marriage; four states have already amended their constitutions to the same end (with an overwhelming 70 percent of Missouri voters endorsing a state constitutional ban this past August); and roughly a dozen states have scheduled referenda to consider similar amendments. It's just Republican scare tactics to say that any state that doesn't want same-sex marriage will have to accept it, claims Sullivan. Representative Cox also cites these numbers in an effort to convince the American public that the proposed amendment is unnecessary.

Regrettably, these state-level political efforts ultimately won't stop the march to redefine marriage. The reason: the Supreme Court is almost certain to nationalize the issue and make same-sex-marriage legal from coast to coast. Everybody knows about the Court's judicial activism in recent decades. That activism has reached its highest pitch in promoting the agenda of the sexual revolution. Same-sex marriage is merely the latest goal in that revolution.

As the self-appointed enforcer of elite opinion in sexual matters, the Court will have several means at its disposal to impose its views. First, if a state irrevocably establishes same-sex marriage, homosexual couples from states that don't permit such unions will flock there to obtain marriage licenses, and then sue to have them recognized by their home states. To resolve the conflict, the Supreme Court might apply Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution, setting forth that "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State." The Court could read that clause to override the authority of the states and to invalidate the federal Defense of Marriage Act (1996)—even though that legislation passed with huge congressional majorities (342 to 67 in the House and 84 to 15 in the Senate).

A second possible route to same-sex marriage follows the line of privacy decisions that began with Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, striking down a Connecticut anti-contraception statute. The statute, it's worth recalling, was actually an example of federalism at work. Despite the efforts of zealous pro-contraception lobbyists, the Connecticut legislature chose not to repeal the state's legal restrictions on birth control pills and devices. Other states had laxer laws, but according to the old federalism, each state could decide for itself what was required to uphold the public interest in a decent local moral ecology. In Griswold, the Court said no, every state must permit contraception. The Court nationalized the issue and dictated a uniform policy for the states.

The Court held that the Connecticut law violated an "unenumerated" right to marital privacy. Bizarrely, this right was said to reside in "penumbras formed by emanations" from specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights. The justices knew that this type of quasi-metaphysical claim was unprecedented, and they knew, too, that critics would see it as a mere rationalization for the judicial usurpation of state legislative authority. In powerful dissents, Justices Hugo Black and Potter Stewart accused their colleagues of just such usurpation. Nevertheless, seven justices, determined to strike down a law that they believed was out of line with enlightened opinion about sex, conjured up a new constitutional formula to do so, even as they still pretended to respect traditional norms of constitutional interpretation.

Within a decade, the Supreme Court lost its remaining inhibitions about making policy, especially when it came to sexual and "life-style" matters. Notoriously, the justices transformed the right of "marital privacy" in Griswold into an individual privacy right encompassing both contraception and abortion. Even a liberal legal thinker like Jeffrey Rosen acknowledges that the Court's abortion decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) was a bridge too far, indefensibly contorting the Constitution to nationalize an issue and take it out of voters' hands. In the 1992 Casey decision reaffirming Roe, the Court went even further in its defense of "life-style" freedoms: "At the heart of liberty," wrote Justices Souter, O'Connor, and Kennedy, "is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

Will a Supreme Court capable of such reasoning—a Court that has refused to accept state differences in laws on contraception or abortion—indefinitely tolerate a federalist approach to marriage policy? It's extremely unlikely. On the "modern" view, after all, shouldn't one's choice of whom to marry be considered a fundamental privacy right like abortion, protected from government meddling? If a man wants to wed a man, or a woman a woman, what right do other people have to deem that unacceptable? Isn't same-sex marriage a concept of "existence" or "meaning," and thus, on Casey's view, a right?

Perhaps the Court will be reluctant to impose same-sex marriage at the first chance. For various reasons, including the strong public resistance to redefining marriage, it may temporize. But temporizing isn't principled self-restraint or a forthright acknowledgment of constitutional boundaries. The Court might just bide its time until more of the public becomes receptive to the idea of same-sex "marriage"—something that might occur after a few other state supreme courts mandate it.

Were it not for judicial overreach, we would not be having a national debate on same-sex marriage. That we are having one raises troubling questions about the condition of democratic self-government in America today. For defensive reasons, therefore, we need a federal marriage amendment.

But one can also make a strong positive case for an amendment. After all, the idea of same-sex marriage would have seemed outlandish only a few years ago, and today only a minority, led by an elite of academics, journalists, entertainers, and, of course, state and federal judges and their clerks, gives the idea any credence. The vast majority of Americans holds as self-evident the truth that marriage between a man and a woman is a fundamental institution of a free and democratic society. And in a free and democratic society, they have the right to enshrine that truth in their constitution.

from the Associated Press, 2005-Feb-3, by Travis Reed:

Supreme Court questions Utah bigamy law in case against officer

SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah Supreme Court justices pounded state attorneys with questions Thursday in a convicted polygamist's appeal, suggesting at least some doubt over the state's 100-year-plus ban on the practice of plural marriage.

Rodney Holm, a former police officer in the polygamous community of Hildale, was convicted of bigamy and illegal sex with a teenage girl that he had taken as a third wife. His lawyer, Rodney Parker, argued Wednesday that polygamy is essential to Holm's religion, and barring him from practicing it violates his First Amendment rights.

Polygamy is among the teachings of Mormon church founder Joseph Smith. But the practice was abandoned by the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1890 as the Utah territory sought statehood.

Still, it remains a prickly issue. It's believed that tens of thousands in Utah and more than 30,000 across the West continue the practice, which the religion canonizes as the highest form of religious exaltation.

Many of them are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who live in the isolated twin border towns of Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz.

"It's a large group of people, and your decisions in this case should not be based on stereotypes and anecdotal evidence ... . That's all the state has," Parker told the court.

Besides simply banning bigamy, as most states do, Utah law allows prosecutors to file bigamy charges when people are spiritually, but not legally, married and cohabitating.

Parker said that makes the law unconstitutionally vague, because it could subject roommates to criminal prosecution.

To at least some degree, several of the five Supreme Court justices seemed to agree.

Justices grilled Assistant Attorney General Laura Dupaix on the constitutionality and fairness of Utah's bigamy law, which Chief Justice Christine Durham said could be endangered by a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down statutes against gay sex as a violation of an individual's right to sexual privacy.

She also said the law as written would subject a person to criminal charges if they were separated, but not divorced, and seeing someone else.

"How could you avoid ... the statute would apply to people who are shacking up?" Durham asked.

And the century-old debate over polygamy could have a new twist since voters passed a constitutional amendment in November to ban gay marriage and limit the institution to "one man and one woman."

"If it's one man and one woman, doesn't that mean a man and three women isn't marriage?" Justice Michael Wilkins asked.

Dupaix said Holm "did everything to make it a marriage except get a license," and insisted the state was not persecuting Holm for his religious beliefs.

Instead, she said he was prosecuted because he was a 32-year-old man having sex with a 16-year-old girl. She also argued that the state didn't violate Holm's religious freedom by prohibiting polygamy because he can believe whatever he wants, but can't act on those beliefs is they counter state law.

She likened it to white supremacist groups, whose members have the right to hold racist views, but not harm minorities because of them.

"Nobody's telling Mr. Holm he can't be in a church that believes in polygamy," Dupaix said.

Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has vowed a get-tough attitude toward polygamists who engage in abuse or illegal sexual behavior, but said outside the courtroom Thursday his office doesn't have the resources or inclination to prosecute cases in which there's no child abuse.

"And if we were to convict all of them, what does the state do with their tens of thousands of children?" he said.

Durham also rejected Dupaix's arguments that allowing polygamy could put the state in muddy legal water if couples divorce and end up in fights over custody and property.

"I see no difference in kind, and I suspect no difference in quantity, than lots of other relationships," she said. "The notion that these problems are exacerbated based on religious beliefs instead of individual desire is a peculiar one for me."

Shurtleff said he was undeterred by the court's tough questioning of his assistant, and didn't think it meant they would toss out Utah's bigamy law.

"I saw that as a real good intellectual exchange," he said.

from the Associated Press via the Houston Chronicle, 2004-Nov-16, by Bobby Ross Jr.:

Texas school district nixes 'cross-dressing day'

Note to boys in the tiny Spurger, Texas, school district: Put away those high heels and pleated skirts. Instead, wear black boots and Army camouflage to school Wednesday.

A parent's concerns prompted the district 150 miles northeast of Houston to scrap its annual "TWIRP Day" -- when boys dress like girls and girls dress like boys-- in favor of "Camo Day."

TWIRP stands for "The Woman Is Requested to Pay," and for years Spurger schools hosted the day during Homecoming Week to give boys and girls a chance to reverse social roles and let older girls invite boys on dates, open doors and pay for sodas.

Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute issued a news release Tuesday reporting that it "came to the aid of a concerned parent requesting an excused absence for her children on official cross-dressing day in her children's elementary school."

"It is outrageous that a school in a small town in East Texas would encourage their 4-year-olds to be cross-dressers," Liberty Legal Institute attorney Hiram Sasser said in the release.

Tanner T. Hunt Jr., the school district's attorney, called Sasser's statement "inflammatory and misleading." Hunt said the district never planned or conducted a "cross-dressing day."

"They are a tiny little East Texas school district," said Hunt, a Beaumont attorney. "It never occurred to them that anyone could find anything morally reprehensible about TWIRP Day. I mean, they've been having it for years, probably for generations, and it's the first time anybody has complained."

Delana Davies, a 33-year-old mother of three, said she contacted Superintendent Angela Matterson on Tuesday after reading a school notice about "TWIRP Day."

Davies, whose 9-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter attend Spurger Elementary, said she viewed the day not a silly Homecoming Week activity, but as an effort to push a homosexual agenda in a public school.

"It's like experimenting with drugs," said Davies, who also has a 2-year-old daughter. "You just keep playing with it and it becomes customary. ... If it's OK to dress like a girl today, then why is it not OK in the future?"

After speaking with the Liberty attorney, Matterson agreed to exempt Davies' son and older daughter from attending school on Wednesday. However, district officials later decided to scrap "TWIRP Day" altogether and replace it with "Camo Day," where students will wear camouflage clothing.

"I just think it's unfortunate," Hunt said. "It was just never intended to be anything other than just an innocent, fun day for children."

Matterson did not return telephone messages from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The Spurger event is not the first to cause controversy in a school district.

In Illinois, parent Laura Stanley complained this month about an "opposite sex" dress-up day at Carrier Mills-Stonefort Elementary School.

Stanley said the activities sent a message of gender confusion and risked subjecting her young daughters to sexual harassment by "a bunch of adolescent boys who have suddenly grown breasts and are groping themselves."

"I don't think it was a liberal agenda," said Stanley, a 35-year-old mother of eight biological and foster children. "I think it was just foolishness, just being funny, being silly, but it opens the door for other things to happen."

In New York, officials at Hastings High School put a stop to Cross-Dressing Day in October after school officials suggested guys in chiffon skirts and brassieres and gals with painted-on mustaches were distracting and disrespectful to transgender people.

In Spurger, Davies said she will dress her son in camouflaged overalls and her daughter in a camouflaged T-shirt and denim skirt for "Camo Day."

"I'm happy that it's turned out like it has," she said. "But I don't want them pushing it on me again in a few years."

------

On the Net:

Liberty Legal Institute: www.libertylegal.org

Spurger School District: www.spurger.k12.tx.us

from the New York Post, 2004-Jul-9, by Deborah Orin with additional reporting by Jennifer Fermino:

Celebs Turn Out for Kerry-Edwards

NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Whoopi Goldberg delivered an X-rated rant full of sexual innuendoes against President Bush last night at a Radio City gala that raised $7.5 million for the newly minted Democratic ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards.

Waving a bottle of wine, she fired off a stream of vulgar sexual wordplays on Bush's name in a riff about female genitalia, and boasted that she'd refused to let Team Kerry clear her material.

"I Xeroxed my behind and I folded it up in an envelope and I sent it back with a big kiss mark on because we're Democrats -- we're not afraid to laugh," she said.

She addressed fresh-faced vice-presidential candidate Edwards as "Kid," and "young Mr. Edwards" and cracked, "He looks like he is about 18 "

"I'm going to card his ass tomorrow."

Other celebs also competed to bash Bush. Singer John Mellencamp sang a specially written song that called the president "just another cheap thug" and ridiculed him as the "Texas bambino."

Kerry could be seen laughing uproariously during part of Goldberg's tirade -- and neither he nor Edwards voiced a single objection to its tone when they spoke to the crowd.

They hailed the fund-raiser as a great event.

Edwards said it was "a great honor" to be there and insisted, "This campaign will be a celebration of real American values."

Kerry thanked all the performers for "an extraordinary evening," hailed the "great producers" -- Harvey Weinstein of Miramax and Jann Wenner - and said "every performer tonight ... conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country."

Last fall, Howard Dean ran into a similar problem when a New York fund-raiser turned into a stream of ugly racist jokes and X-rated Bush-bashing -- but Dean instantly came out and said he didn't like the tone of some of the jokes.

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt noted that Kerry is claiming to share "conservative values" and said, "Sitting there while the vitriol and venom spew forth demonstrates [Kerry's] lack of leadership and how far he is from mainstream America."

Schmidt added, "It's no surprise that a group of Hollywood celebrities would be so excited to support the most out-of-the-mainstream ticket in Democratic Party history."

Also on the Bush-bashing team was comedian Chevy Chase, who claimed the president is dumb as "an egg-timer" and said Edwards will make Vice President Dick Cheney look "as bright as a bundt cake" when they debate next fall.

Latin comedian John Leguizamo said he refuses to believe there are any Hispanic Republicans, claiming that's "an oxymoron," because "Latins for Republicans -- it's like roaches for Raid."

Leguizamo added that he made sure to get there early to clear security because "I kind of look Arab -- that's why I don't wear underwear anymore, just to make the searches go faster."

Screen legend Paul Newman blasted the Bush tax cuts, saying, "I am a traitor to my class. I think that tax cuts to wealthy thugs like me are borderline criminal -- I live very high off the hog."

Actress Jessica Lange dismissed Bush as "our so-called president" to the fat-cat crowd and afterward said, "I'll do everything that I can possibly do, short of selling my children," to beat Bush.

from Bloomberg Radio via NewsMax.com, 2004-Jul-14, by Edward I. Koch:

Kerry-Edwards Wrong, Cheney OK

On Friday, July 9, the Kerry-Edwards campaign held a fund-raising concert at Radio City Music Hall. By general agreement - I was not there - several of the performers, Whoopi Goldberg in particular, engaged in unprintable sexual references to President Bush, combining the president's family name with references to the female anatomy. They did the same with Vice President Dick Cheney's first name, this time referring to the male anatomy.

John Mellencamp sang a song, probably one he wrote, referring to the president as a "cheap thug" and a "Texas bandito." We are told by reporters who were present that other performers joined the chorus with other personal attacks on Bush.

Both John Kerry and John Edwards were present in the theater and sitting through the crude, obscene attacks without protest and, I assume, applauded generously each of these performers. At the end of the show, Kerry and Edwards appeared on stage and Kerry thanked all of the performers, saying they conveyed "the heart and soul of our country."

Heart and soul of our country? Whatever happened to fundamental standards of conduct and the values that both Kerry and Edwards surely exhibit in their own lives and refer to in their campaign speeches? Were they embarrassed for themselves, their wives and, more important, the country? Did they simply lack the integrity to stand up and say to the foul-mouthed Whoopi Goldberg, "Stop"?

For the sake of argument, if any of these performers had engaged in racial jokes or anti-Semitic references, would the candidates have felt compelled to stop the show? If they could not summon the courage to bring the show to a halt, shouldn't they have, at the very least, at the end of the show noted what happened and disassociated themselves from the performers?

In response to reporters' questions, spokespeople for John Kerry later said, "John Kerry disagrees with some of the performers' comments, just as he disagrees with Vice President Cheney's unrepeatable, unacceptable and unapologetic insult to a U.S. senator."

The latter comment deserves a derisive response. It is an outrage to compare what happened at the Kerry-Edwards fund-raiser with the incident involving Vice President Cheney's obscene remark on the Senate floor, which occurred after the Senate had gone out of session and was made directly by Cheney to Sen. Pat Leahy.

The unrepeatable expression in polite society was "Go expletive yourself." The apparent reason for the three-word insult was Cheney's belief that he had been unfairly attacked by a friend and colleague who at the time of the exchange was fawning and engaging in hypocritical conversation.

Cheney told Leahy what he really thought of him in private, in a one-to-one conversation, not on the public stage used by Whoopi Goldberg and the other performers intending to reach the thousands in the auditorium and the millions of Americans who would surely learn of it. I believe Sen. Leahy or his staffers made the incident publicly known.

Vice President Cheney summed up his feelings later, remarking, "Ordinarily, I don't express myself in strong terms, but I thought it was appropriate here."

Cheney's behavior is acceptable, while Kerry's and Edwards' is not. Are there many of us, on being insulted and speaking directly to the insulter, with the latter adding to the injury with his fawning behavior, who has not felt the urge to respond using an obscenity and given into it? I have. Let me recount the incident.

A week after I left office on Jan. 1, 1990 - having lost the Democratic primary in September 1989 to David Dinkins - I went shopping. My destination was Balducci's, a food market on Sixth Avenue and Ninth Street. On the way, a number of neighbors welcomed me back to the neighborhood with generous comments like "You were a good mayor, welcome back, we really like you, we will miss you as mayor."

As anyone can appreciate, I felt good at being so well received. Then I arrived at Balducci's and there at the door was a young man in his 30s sitting on a bicycle, looking a bit disheveled. He saw me and wagging his finger at me said, "You were a terrible mayor." Without hesitation, I responded, "Expletive you!" I felt liberated.

Sixteen years earlier, in 1974, I similarly gave vent. I was a congressman at the time and acting as an advance man for Robert Morgenthau, who was running for the first time for Manhattan district attorney. I was introducing him on a hot August Saturday morning to my constituents walking down Lexington Avenue from 86th Street to Bloomingdales on 59th Street.

As we got within a half block of the store, I heard the strident call, "Here they come, the two war criminals, Morgenthau and Koch." The reference was to the Vietnam War and was repeated by the four young men several times, using megaphones.

Finally, one approached me and yelled close to my ear, "War criminal, war criminal." I turned to him and said, "Expletive off!" He, about 25 years old, was startled by my reply and cried to the now sizable crowd standing at the corner, "Congressman Koch just told me to 'expletive off.'" The crowd burst into applause.

Kerry's and Edwards' silence when their voices should have been heard deserve condemnation.

Edward I. Koch is the former mayor of New York City. His commentary for Bloomberg radio is republished here. You can hear his weekly radio show by going to www.bloomberg.com/radio.

from the Associated Press via the Portsmouth Herald, 2004-Sep-14, by Lindsey Tanner:

More TV, more sex - Correlation found between teens viewing shows with sexual content, their sexual activity

Children who watched a lot of TV with sexual content were about twice as likely to start having intercourse during the subsequent year as those with little exposure to televised sex, researchers found.

High exposure to TV sex among those age 12 to 17 also was linked with a lower but still substantially increased risk of starting non-intercourse behavior, including passionate kissing and oral sex, the researchers found. Even shows that only refer to sex but don't depict it had the effect, they found.

"Exposure to TV that included only talk about sex was associated with the same risks as exposure to TV that depicted sexual behavior," said Rand Corp. behavioral scientist Rebecca Collins and colleagues.

From innuendoes to depictions of intercourse, sex is pervasive on TV, present in about two-thirds of all shows other than news and sports, and teens watch an average of three hours of television daily, previous research has shown.

Television thus "may create the illusion that sex is more central to daily life than it truly is and may promote sexual initiation as a result," the researchers said.

"When they're watching it for three hours a day, it really does become their social world. Those characters are people they identify with and pay attention to," said Collins, the lead researcher.

TV sex rarely deals with negative aspects most teens aren't prepared to deal with, including unwanted pregnancy, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, she said.

That "sends kids the message that everybody's having sex and nobody's thinking about responsibility and nothing bad ever happens," Collins said. "You don't see the fade to black, the couple has sex, and the next morning says, `You gave me an STD.'''

The study appears in September's Pediatrics, released Tuesday.

The results are based on nationwide telephone surveys of 1,792 adolescents queried in 2001 and again in 2002. Parental consent for participation was obtained before the interviews.

The researchers devised a list of 23 popular shows that on average featured abundant sexual content. Programs the researchers considered high in sexual content included "That '70s Show," "Friends" and "Sex and the City" - all popular with teens.

Participants then were asked how often they watched those 23 shows. They also were asked whether they engaged in various sexual activities; results were compared from the two surveys.

The number of teens who reported having had intercourse climbed from about 18 percent to 36 percent. The number who'd had sexual experiences other than intercourse climbed from 62 percent to 75 percent, Collins said.

Factors that increased the likelihood of having intercourse included being older, having older friends and getting poor grades. But even considering those factors, television still remained a strong influence, the researchers said.

Many youngsters start having sex during their teen years, and previous data show that 46 percent of high school students say they've had intercourse. But many say they wish they'd waited longer to have sex, and television might be among factors influencing them to become sexually active too soon, the researchers said.

Liliana Escobar-Chaves, a researcher at the University of Texas School of Public Health, said the findings illustrate the importance of parents viewing and discussing TV with their kids, and of encouraging TV writers to depict sex responsibly.

The latter effort is a focus of The Media Project, a Los Angeles-based advocacy program that works with TV networks to include accurate and responsible sex images in programming.

"We want kids to look at television with an educated eye," said Melissa Havard, the group's director.

One example is an HIV/AIDS effort the group has collaborated on with media giant Viacom, whose properties include CBS and MTV. In the past year and a half, Viacom has produced 22 shows with positive HIV messages, including a "Star Trek" episode in which Vulcans had to deal with the stigma of having an AIDS-like disease, said Viacom spokesman Carl Folta.

But while acknowledging that television "certainly can make an impact," Folta was skeptical of the study results.

"I don't think television makes anybody do anything," Folta said. It's just one of many factors that influence young people's lives, he said.

from WorldNetDaily, 2004-Jul-22:

Teacher has kids tasting flavored condoms
Government agency backs instructor over 9th-grade girl's mom

The New Mexico Health Department is standing behind a sex-education teacher in Santa Fe who encouraged ninth-graders to taste flavored condoms.

According to a report in the Santa Fe New Mexican, parent Lisa Gallegos said that when her 15-year-old daughter balked at putting a condom in her mouth, instructor Tony Escudero told her, "Come on, sweetie, have a little fun."

Also, Gallegos quotes her daughter as saying when a male student expressed his disgust with homosexual activity, Escudero said, "Never say never, because you never know. Someday you might like it that way."

"I agree with sex ed 100 percent," Gallegos, whose daughter attends Santa Fe High School, told the paper. "I also teach it here at my home. But I think that was inappropriate and wrong 100 percent."

According to the report, Dorothy Danfelser, deputy director for the public-health division of the state Health Department, said she wrote Gallegos last week to say Escudero did nothing wrong.

"It had been investigated," Danfelser told the New Mexican. "There was no wrongdoing. I have no more comment. ... (Gallegos) may or may not agree with that, but that's her prerogative."

Both Danfelser and Escudero claim this was the first complaint he has received about his presentation, which he has been doing for years.

"He didn't really tell them to just put (condoms) in their mouth," Danfelser said. "What he does, basically, in his classes, depending on the age appropriateness of the class, is to try to get them ... used to condoms and kind of destigmatize them.

"He tells them, if they're comfortable, they can open up the packages, they can touch them, they can stretch them out and those kind of things. And he has told them, if they're the flavored kind, they can go ahead and taste them if they want to. But it's generally to desensitize the whole stigma of 'Oh my God, it's a condom.'"

from Fox News Channel, 2004-Jul-14, by Liza Porteus, with Molly Hooper, and the Associated Press contributing

Senate Rejects Bid for Marriage Amendment

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday against moving on a proposed constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Bracing for defeat on one of President Bush's campaign-season priorities, Republicans vowed earlier Wednesday that a Senate setback would not halt their drive to enact the amendment.

The amendment proposal comes on the heels of a Massachusetts high court ruling allowing same-sex couples to marry and subsequent decisions by various cities and towns to perform gay marriage ceremonies.

Measures involving hot-button issues often don't have enough votes when they first come up for a vote, whether it be at the federal or state level, noted Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

But "then the people look at it and say, 'wait a minute, I think a marriage should be between a man and a woman' … and they pass it" on the state level, Brownback told FOX News Wednesday before the procedural vote on the amendment. "So this is not an unusual scenario we're in."

"It really takes the American public a long time to deal with, and it should," he continued. "It's an important issue and I think you'll see this issue around for a long period of time."

The Senate GOP needed 60 votes to end debate on the measure before the actual amendment could even be voted on. The final vote on the proposal to vote on the amendment was 48-50 — far from the two-thirds majority needed to continue debate. Six Republicans joined dozens of Democrats in virtually defeating the amendment.

The Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 currently doesn't bar states from legalizing gay marriages within their borders, but they're not obligated to recognize gay marriages performed in other states.

It also explicitly defines "marriage" as a "legal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife" and states that "spouse" refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.

"What is overlooked by many is that [the Defense of Marriage Act] has never been challenged in court successfully. Not once. That is the law of the land," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., noting that in 217 years, the Constitution has only been amended 17 times, although there have been 11,000 separate attempts.

"Is there some urgent need now … to amend the United States Constitution?" Daschle continued. "We have differences of opinion but there can be no difference in opinion in regards to how extraordinary a step there is  … this fundamental responsibility lies with the states, it has for two centuries."

But Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said it's "only a matter of time" before the Defense of Marriage Act will be struck down, and that's cause for alarm and quick action. The Massachusetts high court has already said it's OK for gay couples to marry there.

"We are simply trying to preserve more than a 5,000-year old institution," Hatch said before the floor vote. "The most fundamental of all of our society that a few activist judges are trying to radically change … if such a foundation as this is not deserving of our protection … then I don't know what is."

An Election-Year Hot Potato

There were signs that supporters of the amendment intended to use it in the campaign already unfolding.

Senate Democrats had argued that politics prompted Bush and fellow Republicans to advance the issue to the top of the legislative agenda.

"We have something else going on here ... none of the various proposed constitutional amendments have gone through the judicial process to help the Senate determine whether a proposed amendment is necessary … changing the fundamental charter of our nation should not be proposed in a haphazard manner," Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

"We all know what this is ... it's a political exercise being carried out on the fly," Leahy continued. "Those trying to make this an election year issue see nothing out of bounds ... not even the Constitution."

Republicans protested, saying they are merely trying to preserve the sanctity of marriage.

The amendment "is to provide moms and dads for the next generation of our children. Isn't that important? Isn't that the ultimate homeland security — standing up, defending marriage, defending the right for children to have moms and dads, to be raised in a nurturing and loving environment? Isn't that what this debate is all about?" asked Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., on the Senate floor Wednesday.

"I would ask them this question: What harm would this amendment … that simply restates the law of every state in this country and protects them from judicial tyranny … do?"

"It's not about hate, it's not about gay bashing," Santorum continued. "It's simply about what's doing the right thing for the basic glue that holds society together."

At issue is an amendment providing that marriage within the United States "shall consist only of a man and a woman."

A second sentence says that neither the federal nor any state constitution "shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman." Some critics argue that the effect of that provision would be to ban civil unions, and its inclusion in the amendment complicated efforts by GOP leaders to gain support from wavering Republicans.

But gay-marriage supporters say Congress shouldn't even be playing such a role in the debate.

"Marriage has always been left to the states to regulate and govern within the context of the federal Constitution — we don't begin the process with asking Congress to change the Constitution," Evan Wolfson, author of "Why Marriage Matters," told FOX News.

Bush urged the Republican-controlled Congress last February to approve a constitutional amendment, saying it was needed to stop judges from changing the definition of the "most enduring human institution."

The Kerry, Edwards Factor

Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry and his vice presidential running mate, John Edwards — both current U.S. senators —  released statements saying that had the amendment reached a vote, they would have voted against it.

Back on the campaign trail in Des Moines, Iowa, Wednesday, Edwards also said: "The Constitution should never be used as a political tool to divide Americans."

"The floor of the United States Senate should only be used for the common good, not issues designed to divide us for political purposes," Kerry added after the vote. "Even Republicans concede that this amendment is being offered only for political gains. The unfortunate result is that the important work of the American people — funding our homeland security needs, creating new and better jobs, and raising the minimum wage — is not getting done."

Edwards was the guest speaker at the House Democrat's weekly caucus Wednesday but didn't stay for the vote.

When asked if Edwards should have cast his vote, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the vote "is a procedural vote one where the vote of Senator Edwards will not make a difference."

"I think Senator Edwards should be taking his voice to the American people as to why we need change in this country," she added.

On the issue of Congress' taking time to debate same-sex marriages, Pelosi said that regardless of how members feel on the issue, Congress is "wasting the public's time when we have important business to deal with."

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday was debating a measure to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act; the full House may consider the legislation next week.

Other bills have been under consideration, although officials said it was unclear whether they would seek a vote on one of them. GOP aides said the leadership might schedule a vote on the House floor on a constitutional amendment closer to the elections.

from the Associated Press via Fox News Channel, 2004-Jul-14:

Raw Data: Marriage Amendment Votes

WASHINGTON -- The 50-48 roll call by which the Senate blocked a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Sixty votes were needed to advance the bill.

On this vote, a "yes" vote was a vote to advance the measure and a "no" vote was a vote to stop it.

Voting "yes" were 3 Democrats and 45 Republicans.

Voting "no" were 43 Democrats, 6 Republicans and 1 Independent.

X denotes those not voting.

Democrats Yes

Byrd, W.Va.; Miller, Ga.; Nelson, Neb.

Democrats No

Akaka, Hawaii; Baucus, Mont.; Bayh, Ind.; Biden, Del.; Bingaman, N.M.; Boxer, Calif.; Breaux, La.; Cantwell, Wash.; Carper, Del.; Clinton, N.Y.; Conrad, N.D.; Corzine, N.J.; Daschle, S.D.; Dayton, Minn.; Dodd, Conn.; Dorgan, N.D.; Durbin, Ill.; Feingold, Wis.; Feinstein, Calif.; Graham, Fla.; Harkin, Iowa; Hollings, S.C.; Inouye, Hawaii; Johnson, S.D.; Kennedy, Mass.; Kohl, Wis.; Landrieu, La.; Lautenberg, N.J.; Leahy, Vt.; Levin, Mich.; Lieberman, Conn.; Lincoln, Ark.; Mikulski, Md.; Murray, Wash.; Nelson, Fla.; Pryor, Ark.; Reed, R.I.; Reid, Nev.; Rockefeller, W.Va.; Sarbanes, Md.; Schumer, N.Y.; Stabenow, Mich.; Wyden, Ore.

Democrats Not Voting

Edwards, N.C.; Kerry, Mass.

Republicans Yes

Alexander, Tenn.; Allard, Colo.; Allen, Va.; Bennett, Utah; Bond, Mo.; Brownback, Kan.; Bunning, Ky.; Burns, Mont.; Chambliss, Ga.; Cochran, Miss.; Coleman, Minn.; Cornyn, Texas; Craig, Idaho; Crapo, Idaho; DeWine, Ohio; Dole, N.C.; Domenici, N.M.; Ensign, Nev.; Enzi, Wyo.; Fitzgerald, Ill.; Frist, Tenn.; Graham, S.C.; Grassley, Iowa; Gregg, N.H.; Hagel, Neb.; Hatch, Utah; Hutchison, Texas; Inhofe, Okla.; Kyl, Ariz.; Lott, Miss.; Lugar, Ind.; McConnell, Ky.; Murkowski, Alaska; Nickles, Okla.; Roberts, Kan.; Santorum, Pa.; Sessions, Ala.; Shelby, Ala.; Smith, Ore.; Specter, Pa.; Stevens, Alaska; Talent, Mo.; Thomas, Wyo.; Voinovich, Ohio; Warner, Va.

Republicans No

Campbell, Colo.; Chafee, R.I.; Collins, Maine; McCain, Ariz.; Snowe, Maine; Sununu, N.H.

Others No

Jeffords, Vt.

from NewsMax, 2004-Nov-18:

Bill 'Captain Queeg' Clinton Threatens Peter Jennings

A paranoid-sounding Bill Clinton threatened ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings in an interview broadcast Thursday night, in a bizarre rant about his impeachment that laid bare the ex-president's persecution complex.

"You don't want to go here, Peter," Clinton warned after Jennings told him that historians ranked him second to last of all presidents in terms of moral authority.

Squinting his eyes, an angry Clinton seethed: "You don't want to go here. Not after what you people did. And the way you - your network - what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every little sleazy thing he did. No one has any idea of what that's like."

The amazing exchange came after Clinton at first claimed he didn't care about the verdict of historians.

"I had more support from the world when I quit than when I started," he claimed. "And I will go to my grave being at peace about it. And I don't really care about what [the historians] think."

Immediately, Jennings challenged Clinton, all but calling him a liar.

"Oh, yes you do. ... Excuse me, Mr. President. I can feel it across the room. You care very deeply."

Jennings' challenge sent Clinton into a thinly veiled rage, prompting him to threaten, "You don't want to go here, Peter."

The full exchange went like this:

JENNINGS (Discussing rankings by presidential historians]: They gave you a forty-first in terms of moral authority - after Nixon.

CLINTON: They're wrong about that. You know why they're wrong about it? They're wrong about it.

JENNINGS: Why, sir?

CLINTON: Because we had $100 million spent against us in all these inspections. ... In spite of it all, you don't have any example where I ever lied to the American people about my job, where I have let the American people down. And I had more support from the world when I quit than when I started. And I will go to my grave being at peace about it. And I don't really care about what they think.

JENNINGS: Oh, yes you do.

CLINTON: They have no idea ...

JENNINGS: Excuse me, Mr. President. I can feel it across the room. You care very deeply.

CLINTON: No, no. I care. I care. You don't want to go here, Peter. You don't want to go here. Not after what your people did. And the way you - your network - what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every little sleazy thing he did. No one has any idea of what that's like.

from the Associated Press via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2004-Jun-18, by Hillel Italie:

Book: Clinton recalls sleeping on couch

NEW YORK -- Bill Clinton says in his new autobiography that his wife looked as if he had punched her in the gut when he finally confessed to his affair with Monica Lewinsky, and he slept on the couch for at least two months after that.

In "My Life," a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, the former president wrote that the affair with the White House intern revealed "the darkest part of my inner life."

The book, published by Alfred A. Knopf, comes out Tuesday with a first printing of 1.5 million in what is expected to be one of the biggest publishing sensations in years. It is almost certain to outsell his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoirs, published last year.

The former president wrote that after he finally confessed to Mrs. Clinton and daughter Chelsea after months of public denials, she appeared stricken, and the couple started going to counseling one day a week for about a year.

Similarly, Mrs. Clinton said in her own memoir, "Living History," that she "wanted to wring Bill's neck" upon learning the truth and that at one point, Buddy the dog was the only member of the family willing to keep the president company.

On other topics in the book, Clinton said he met with President-elect George W. Bush and told him that the biggest threat to the nation's security was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. According to Clinton, Bush said little in response, and then switched subjects.

Clinton, 57, received a reported $10 million advance for "My Life," a 957-page book edited by Robert Gottlieb, who has worked with such authors as Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Robert Caro.

Unlike other recent presidential memoirists, Clinton is believed to have written his own book, in longhand.

Advance orders of "My Life" exceed 2 million. Mrs. Clinton's book, by contrast, has about 2.3 million copies in print, including both hardcover and paperback editions, according to publisher Simon & Schuster.

The former president's autobiography has been at or near the top of Amazon.com's best-seller list for the past month, holding on despite a wave of Ronald Reagan books that became best sellers after the former president's death. Bids for a signed first edition already have topped $300 on eBay.

In "My Life," Clinton wrote that he came to learn that his upbringing had made certain things more difficult for him than for other people, and that he was particularly prone to self-destructive behavior when he was tired, angry or feeling lonely.

Clinton's father was killed in a car accident shortly before he was born, and the man his mother remarried was an alcoholic who frequently abused her and Clinton's half-brother, Roger.

Clinton wrote that the violence and alcoholism of his home left him with persistent feelings of shame and fear and a lifelong habit of secrecy. At 13, he said, he underwent a major spiritual crisis in which he questioned his belief in God.

Writing about his 1998 impeachment, Clinton said Republican leaders were not punishing him for dishonesty or immoral conduct in having an affair with Lewinsky and lying about it under oath. He said he believed the reason was power, and because his political goals were different from theirs.

He said he was able to withstand the ordeal and concentrate on his job because of the support of the White House staff and Cabinet - even those who felt betrayed by his behavior - numerous world leaders, and encouraging words from both friends and strangers.

He even expressed gratitude to his political enemies for bringing he and his wife closer together. And once the impeachment process was over, his banishment to the couch in a living room next to the bedroom ended, too, he said.

In an interview to be broadcast Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes," Clinton called the Lewinsky affair "a terrible moral error."

"I did something for the worst possible reason. Just because I could," he said in the interview. "I think that's just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing anything."

Clinton also said of the impeachment process: "The whole battle was a badge of honor. I don't see it as a stain, because it was illegitimate."

Barnes & Noble announced Friday that one store each in New York and in Washington will stay open late Monday night and begin selling the book at midnight. Next week, Clinton begins a one-month, cross-country promotional tour.

"This is the biggest author event I've ever seen," said Clara Villarosa, owner of the Hue-Man Bookstore, a Harlem-based store where Clinton will appear Tuesday night.

Clinton has said that writing a "great" book has been a longtime goal, although the history of presidential memoirs works against him.

The only highly regarded book in this genre is by Ulysses Grant, who devoted most of his memoirs to his triumphant Civil War military leadership and wrote virtually nothing about his often-disastrous presidency.

from Aftenposten, 2004-Jul-16:

Outdoor sex craze spreads

More Norwegians seem to be engaging in sex outdoors, after a couple made headlines for coupling on the stage of a live music festival last week. On Monday afternoon another couple got into the act outside a public library, but they were clearly intoxicated.

Police in Larvik, south of Oslo, received several calls Monday afternoon from startled passersby who came upon the couple in broad daylight, just outside the public library downtown.

The couple, in their late 40s, were quickly interrupted by police officers who arrived on the scene. The man was fined NOK 8,000 while the woman was fined more, NOK 8,500, because she attempted to give police a false name.

Meanwhile, in Halden near the southern Swedish border, another couple was fined after having sex outside a nightclub in town.

from the Washington Post, 2004-May-17, p.A2, by Jonathan Finer:

Gay Couples Line Up for Mass. Marriages
At Midnight, Cambridge Becomes First to Issue State-Sanctioned Licenses

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 16 -- After months of eager anticipation mixed with nagging worries that this day may never come, gay couples across Massachusetts and beyond converged on Cambridge on Sunday night to apply for the nation's first state-sanctioned, same-sex marriage licenses.

At 12:01 a.m. Monday in this city across the Charles River from Boston, the first of several dozen couples who had lined up outside City Hall in the rain early Sunday was called into a basement corridor to declare their intention to marry.

Marcia Hams, 56, and Susan Shepherd, 52, of Cambridge, who have been together for 27 years, were the first couple to line up, at midnight Saturday, and were the first to apply for a marriage license before a crush of cameras.

"I feel real overwhelmed, real happy," Shepherd said. "I could pass 0ut at this point." Hams and Shepherd plan to marry next Sunday.

By 10 p.m. Sunday, more than 1,000 people -- including couples waiting in line and their supporters throwing rice and confetti -- were gathered outside City Hall, along with fewer than a dozen protesters. At 10:30 p.m., couples began receiving numbers to determine the order in which their applications would be processed, and an hour later 230 couples had passed through the front doors.

The city also organized a celebration, complete with live music and speeches from activists, and a giant wedding cake that was cut after the stroke of midnight.

An interfaithservice called "Blessings on the Eve of History" to commemorate the start of gay weddings was held Sunday evening in Cambridge's Christ Church.

During a sermon praising what he called "the triumph of freedom over oppression," the Rev. Steven Charleston said opponents of gay marriage say it will end civilization as they know it. "Perhaps they're right," he said to wild applause.

After he spoke, Jewish and Christian clergy fanned out to bless dozens of same-sex couples in the pews.

Cambridge Mayor Michael A. Sullivan, whose city was the only one in the state that started the license-application process the minute it became legal, said: "We're a diverse and accepting community, and this is a way to welcome the couples and their families. That's what it's all about. It's not a race. It's about fairness and equality."

The landmark 4 to 3 ruling by the state Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) in November deemed unconstitutional a ban on gay marriage. It was stayed for 180 days to give the state time to prepare.

In recent months, a host of challenges to the decision have been beaten back in the courts, including a request for a federal injunction that the U.S. Supreme Court denied Friday. An appeals court will hear the matter in June.

Lawmakers who opposed the SJC's ruling have begun amending the state's constitution to outlaw gay marriage, giving preliminary approval in March to a measure that could be on the ballot by November 2006.

On Monday morning, the state's other 350 city and town clerks will begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and weddings will be held throughout the state.

"It's been an emotional roller coaster," said Marianne Duddy-Burke, 43, of the period since the SJC decision. She plans to be married to her partner of 10 years at a Boston hotel in June, but added a clause to the reservation contract so she would not lose her deposit if legal circumstances change.

Gloria Bailey of Orleans, Mass., said that Monday would be "the culmination of a lifelong dream." She and Linda Davies, her partner of 33 years, were among the couples whose lawsuits led to the November court decision. They gathered with the six other plaintiff couples for a "rehearsal brunch" Sunday in Brookline, Mass., and plan to be married on Cap Cod's Nauset Beach.

All couples planning to marry Monday must have submitted their applications, then paid a fee to waive the required three-day waiting period before picking up their licenses. There is no way of knowing how many couples will be married here in the coming weeks, or who will be first.

As of Friday afternoon, Fenway Community Health, a Boston health center that caters to gay patients, had conducted more than 450 premarital blood tests. More than 100 others had been scheduled.

Towns with large gay populations, such as Northampton and Provincetown, also expected many applicants.

Even harder to predict is how many couples from outside Massachusetts will be traveling here to marry. Invoking a 1913 statute that has rarely been enforced in recent years, Gov. Mitt Romney (R) declared that same-sex couples who live in other states are ineligible to marry in Massachusetts because they cannot legally marry in their own states.

Calling that interpretation discriminatory, officials in Provincetown voted last week to marry out-of-state couples, and clerks in Worcester and Somerville have indicated they also will. Other cities, including Boston and Cambridge, have said they will follow Romney's guidelines, but will not require proof of residency.

Romney has threatened legal consequences against clerks who do not follow his guidelines. He said licenses issued to out-of-state couples would be "null and void," a stance that is expected to be challenged in court.

At least two gay couples traveled from New York to Boston last weekend, as part of a group organized by the Civil Marriage Project, which last year arranged similar trips to Canada. Robin Goldman and Cris Beam said they plan to apply for a marriage license Monday in Somerville and to marry there May 20.

"I certainly don't discourage couples from out of state from coming here, I just tell them what the consequences are," said J. Mary Sorrell of Amherst, Mass., who became a justice of the peace in February because she wanted to help gay couples marry. She said she expects to officiate at 24 same-sex weddings in the next two weeks, including five for out-of-state couples.

Staff writer Alan Cooperman in Cambridge contributed to this story.

from the Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, NC, 2004-Feb-15, via The Ornery American, by Orson Scott Card:

Homosexual "Marriage" and Civilization

A little dialogue from Lewis Carroll:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

The Massachusetts Supreme Court has not yet declared that "day" shall now be construed to include that which was formerly known as "night," but it might as well.

By declaring that homosexual couples are denied their constitutional rights by being forbidden to "marry," it is treading on the same ground.

Do you want to know whose constitutional rights are being violated? Everybody's. Because no constitution in the United States has ever granted the courts the right to make vast, sweeping changes in the law to reform society.

Regardless of their opinion of homosexual "marriage," every American who believes in democracy should be outraged that any court should take it upon itself to dictate such a social innovation without recourse to democratic process.

And we all know the course this thing will follow. Anyone who opposes this edict will be branded a bigot; any schoolchild who questions the legitimacy of homosexual marriage will be expelled for "hate speech." The fanatical Left will insist that anyone who upholds the fundamental meaning that marriage has always had, everywhere, until this generation, is a "homophobe" and therefore mentally ill.

Which is the modern Jacobin equivalent of crying, "Off with their heads!"

We will once again be performing a potentially devastating social experiment on ourselves without any attempt to predict the consequences and find out if the American people actually want them.

But anyone who has any understanding of how America -- or any civilization -- works, of the forces already at play, will realize that this new diktat of the courts will not have any of the intended effects, while the unintended effects are likely to be devastating.

Marriage Is Already Open to Everyone.

In the first place, no law in any state in the United States now or ever has forbidden homosexuals to marry. The law has never asked that a man prove his heterosexuality in order to marry a woman, or a woman hers in order to marry a man.

Any homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law. And, in fact, many homosexual men have done precisely that, without any legal prejudice at all.

Ditto with lesbian women. Many have married men and borne children. And while a fair number of such marriages in recent years have ended in divorce, there are many that have not.

So it is a flat lie to say that homosexuals are deprived of any civil right pertaining to marriage. To get those civil rights, all homosexuals have to do is find someone of the opposite sex willing to join them in marriage.

In order to claim that they are deprived, you have to change the meaning of "marriage" to include a relationship that it has never included before this generation, anywhere on earth.

Just because homosexual partners wish to be called "married" and wish to force everyone else around them to regard them as "married," does not mean that their Humpty-Dumpty-ish wish should be granted at the expense of the common language, democratic process, and the facts of human social organization.

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were.

Marrying Is Hard to Do.

Men and women, from childhood on, have very different biological and social imperatives. They are naturally disposed to different reproductive strategies; men are (on average) larger and stronger; the relative levels of various hormones, the difference in the rate of maturity, and many other factors make it far, far easier for women to get along with other women and men to get along with men.

Men, after all, know what men like far better than women do; women know how women think and feel far better than men do. But a man and a woman come together as strangers and their natural impulses remain at odds throughout their lives, requiring constant compromise, suppression of natural desires, and an unending effort to learn how to get through the intersexual swamp.

And yet, throughout the history of human society -- even in societies that tolerated relatively open homosexuality at some stages of life -- it was always expected that children would be born into and raised by families consisting of a father and mother.

And in those families where one or both parents were missing, usually because of death, either stepparents, adoptive parents, or society in general would step in to provide, not just nurturing, but also the appropriate role models.

It is a demonstrated tendency -- as well as the private experience of most people -- that when we become parents, we immediately find ourselves acting out most of the behaviors we observed in the parent of our own sex. We have to consciously make an effort to be different from them.

We also expect our spouse to behave, as a parent, in the way we have learned to expect from the experiences we had with our opposite-sex parent -- that's why so many men seem to marry women just like their mother, and so many women to marry men just like their father. It takes conscious effort to break away from this pattern.

So not only are two sexes required in order to conceive children, children also learn their sex-role expectations from the parents in their own family. This is precisely what large segments of the Left would like to see break down. And if it is found to have unpleasant results, they will, as always, insist that the cure is to break down the family even further.

The War On Marriage

Of course, in our current society we are two generations into the systematic destruction of the institution of marriage. In my childhood, it was rare to know someone whose parents were divorced; now, it seems almost as rare to find someone whose parents have never been divorced.

And a growing number of children grow up in partial families not because of divorce, but because there never was a marriage at all.

The damage caused to children by divorce and illegitimate birth is obvious and devastating. While apologists for the current system are quick to blame poverty resulting from "deadbeat dads" as the cause, the children themselves know this is ludicrous.

There are plenty of poor families with both parents present whose children grow up knowing they are loved and having good role models from both parents.

And there are plenty of kids whose divorced parents have scads of money -- but whose lives are deformed by the absence of one of their parents in their lives.

Most broken or wounded families are in that condition because of a missing father. There is substantial and growing evidence that our society's contempt for the role of the father in the family is responsible for a massive number of "lost" children.

Only when the father became powerless or absent in the lives of huge numbers of children did we start to realize some of the things people need a father for: laying the groundwork for a sense of moral judgment; praise that is believed so that it can instill genuine self-confidence.

People lacking in fundamental self-esteem don't need gold stars passed out to everyone in their class. Chances are, they need a father who will say -- and mean -- "I'm proud of you."

This is an oversimplification of a very complex system. There are marriages that desperately need to be dissolved for the safety of the children, for instance, and divorced parents who do a very good job of keeping both parents closely involved in the children's lives.

But you have to be in gross denial not to know that children would almost always rather have grown up with Dad and Mom in their proper places at home. Most kids would rather that, instead of divorcing, their parents would acquire the strength or maturity to stop doing the things that make the other parent want to leave.

Marriage Is Everybody's Business.

And it isn't just the damage that divorce and out-of-wedlock births do to the children in those broken families: Your divorce hurts my kids, too.

All American children grow up today in a society where they are keenly aware that marriages don't last. At the first sign of a quarrel even in a stable marriage that is in no danger, the children fear divorce. Is this how it begins? Will I now be like my friends at school, shunted from half-family to half-family?

This is not trivial damage. Kids thrive best in an environment that teaches them how to be adults. They need the confidence and role models that come from a stable home with father and mother in their proper places.

So long before the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided to play Humpty Dumpty, the American people had plunged into a terrible experiment on ourselves, guided only by the slogan of immaturity and barbarism: "If it feels good, do it!"

Civilization depends on people deliberately choosing not to do many things that feel good at the time, in order to accomplish more important, larger purposes. Having an affair; breaking up a marriage; oh, those can feel completely justified and the reasons very important at the time.

But society has a vital stake in child-rearing; and children have a vital stake in society.

Monogamous marriage is by far the most effective foundation for a civilization. It provides most males an opportunity to mate (polygamous systems always result in surplus males that have no reproductive stake in society); it provides most females an opportunity to have a mate who is exclusively devoted to her. Those who are successful in mating are the ones who will have the strongest loyalty to the social order; so the system that provides reproductive success to the largest number is the system that will be most likely to keep a civilization alive.

Monogamy depends on the vast majority of society both openly and privately obeying the rules. Since the natural reproductive strategy for males is to mate with every likely female at every opportunity, males who are not restrained by social pressure and expectations will soon devolve into a sort of Clintonesque chaos, where every man takes what he can get.

Civilization Is Rooted in Reproductive Security.

There is a very complex balance in maintaining a monogamous society, with plenty of lapses and exceptions and mechanisms to cope with the natural barbaric impulses of the male mating drive. There is always room to tolerate a small and covert number of exceptions to the rule.

But the rule must be largely observed, and must be seen to be observed even more than it actually is. If trust between the sexes breaks down, then males who are able will revert to the broadcast strategy of reproduction, while females will begin to compete for males who already have female mates. It is a reproductive free-for-all.

Civilization requires the suppression of natural impulses that would break down the social order. Civilization thrives only when most members can be persuaded to behave unnaturally, and when those who don't follow the rules are censured in a meaningful way.

Why would men submit to rules that deprive them of the chance to satisfy their natural desire to mate with every attractive female?

Why would women submit to rules that keep them from trying to mate with the strongest (richest, most physically imposing, etc.) male, just because he already has a wife?

Because civilization provides the best odds for their children to live to adulthood. So even though civilized individuals can't pursue the most obviously pleasurable and selfish (i.e., natural) strategies for reproduction, the fact is that they are far more likely to be successful at reproduction in a civilized society -- whether they personally like the rules or not.

Civilizations that enforce rules of marriage that give most males and most females a chance to have children that live to reproduce in their turn are the civilizations that last the longest. It's such an obvious principle that few civilizations have even attempted to flout it.

Even if the political system changes, as long as the marriage rules remain intact, the civilization can go on.

Balancing Family and Society

There's a lot of quid pro quo in civilization, though. Not all parents are good providers, for instance. So society, in one way or another, must provide for the children whose parents are either incapable or irresponsible.

Society must also step in to protect children from abusive adults; and the whole society must act in loco parentis, watching out for each other's children, trusting that someone else is also watching out for their own.

The degree of trust can be enormous. We send our children to school for an enormous portion of their childhood, trusting that the school will help civilize them while we parents devote more of our time to providing for them materially (or caring for younger children not yet in school).

At the same time, parents recognize that non-parents are not as trustworthy caretakers. The school provides some aspects of civilization, but not others. Schools expect the parents to civilize their children in certain ways in order to take part safely with other children; parents expect to be left alone with some aspects of child-rearing, such as religion.

In other words, there are countless ways that parents and society at large are constantly negotiating to find the best balance between the parents' natural desire to protect their children -- their entrants in the reproductive lottery -- and the civilization's need to bring the greatest number of children, not just to adulthood, but to parenthood as committed members of the society who will teach their children to also be good citizens.

America's Anti-Family Experiment

In this delicate balance, it is safe to say that beginning with a trickle in the 1950s, but becoming an overwhelming flood in the 1960s and 1970s, we took a pretty good system, and in order to solve problems that needed tweaking, we made massive, fundamental changes that have had devastating consequences.

Now huge numbers of Americans know that the schools are places where their children are indoctrinated in anti-family values. Trust is not just going -- for them it's gone.

Huge numbers of children are deprived of two-parent homes, because society has decided to give legal status and social acceptance to out-of-wedlock parenting and couples who break up their marriages with little regard for what is good for the children.

The result is a generation of children with no trust in marriage who are mating in, at best, merely "marriage-like" patterns, and bearing children with no sense of responsibility to society at large; while society is trying to take on an ever greater role in caring for the children who are suffering -- while doing an increasingly bad job of it.

Parents in a stable marriage are much better than schools at civilizing children. You have to be a fanatical ideologue not to recognize this as an obvious truth -- in other words, you have to dumb down or radically twist the definition of "civilizing children" in order to claim that parents are not, on the whole, better at it.

We are so far gone down this road that it would take a wrenching, almost revolutionary social change to reverse it. And with the forces of P.C. orthodoxy insisting that the solutions to the problems they have caused is ever-larger doses of the disease, it is certain that any such revolution would be hotly contested.

Now, in the midst of this tragic collapse of marriage, along comes the Massachusetts Supreme Court, attempting to redefine marriage in a way that is absurdly irrelevant to any purpose for which society needs marriage in the first place.

Humpty Has Struck Before.

We've already seen similar attempts at redefinition. The ideologues have demanded that we stop defining "families" as Dad, Mom, and the kids. Now any grouping of people might be called a "family."

But this doesn't turn them into families, or even make rational people believe they're families. It just makes it politically unacceptable to use the word family in any meaningful way.

The same thing will happen to the word marriage if the Massachusetts decision is allowed to stand, and is then enforced nationwide because of the "full faith and credit" clause in the Constitution.

Just because you give legal sanction to a homosexual couple and call their contract a "marriage" does not make it a marriage. It simply removes marriage as a legitimate word for the real thing.

If you declare that there is no longer any legal difference between low tide and high tide, it might stop people from publishing tide charts, but it won't change the fact that sometimes the water is lower and sometimes it's higher.

Calling a homosexual contract "marriage" does not make it reproductively relevant and will not make it contribute in any meaningful way to the propagation of civilization.

In fact, it will do harm. Nowhere near as much harm as we have already done through divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing. But it's another nail in the coffin. Maybe the last nail, precisely because it is the most obvious and outrageous attack on what is left of marriage in America.

Supporters of homosexual "marriage" dismiss warnings like mine as the predictable ranting of people who hate progress. But the Massachusetts Supreme Court has made its decision without even a cursory attempt to ascertain the social costs. The judges have taken it on faith that it will do no harm.

You can't add a runway to an airport in America without years of carefully researched environmental impact statements. But you can radically reorder the fundamental social unit of society without political process or serious research.

Let me put it another way. The sex life of the people around me is none of my business; the homosexuality of some of my friends and associates has made no barrier between us, and as far as I know, my heterosexuality hasn't bothered them. That's what tolerance looks like.

But homosexual "marriage" is an act of intolerance. It is an attempt to eliminate any special preference for marriage in society -- to erase the protected status of marriage in the constant balancing act between civilization and individual reproduction.

So if my friends insist on calling what they do "marriage," they are not turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no court has the power to change what their relationship actually is.

Instead they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected status of our, and every other, real marriage.

They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents' clothes.

The Propaganda Mill

What happens now if children grow up in a society that overtly teaches that homosexual partnering is not "just as good as" but actually is marriage?

Once this is regarded as settled law, anyone who tries to teach children to aspire to create a child-centered family with a father and a mother will be labeled as a bigot and accused of hate speech.

Can you doubt that the textbooks will be far behind? Any depictions of "families" in schoolbooks will have to include a certain proportion of homosexual "marriages" as positive role models.

Television programs will start to show homosexual "marriages" as wonderful and happy (even as they continue to show heterosexual marriages as oppressive and conflict-ridden).

The propaganda mill will pound our children with homosexual marriage as a role model. We know this will happen because we have seen the fanatical Left do it many times before.

So when our children go through the normal adolescent period of sexual confusion and perplexity, which is precisely the time when parents have the least influence over their children and most depend on the rest of society to help their children grow through the last steps before adulthood, what will happen?

Already any child with any kind of sexual attraction to the same sex is told that this is an irresistible destiny, despite the large number of heterosexuals who move through this adolescent phase and never look back.

Already any child with androgynous appearance or mannerisms -- effeminite boys and masculine girls -- are being nurtured and guided (or taunted and abused) into "accepting" what many of them never suspected they had -- a desire to permanently move into homosexual society.

In other words, society will bend all its efforts to seize upon any hint of homosexuality in our young people and encourage it.

Now, there is a myth that homosexuals are "born that way," and we are pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody, somewhere, must have proved it.

In fact what evidence there is suggests that if there is a genetic component to homosexuality, an entire range of environmental influences are also involved. While there is no scientific research whatsoever that indicates that there is no such thing as a borderline child who could go either way.

Those who claim that there is "no danger" and that homosexuals are born, not made, are simply stating their faith.

The dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name -- is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.

It's that desire for normality, that discontent with perpetual adolescent sexuality, that is at least partly behind this hunger for homosexual "marriage."

They are unhappy, but they think it's because the rest of us "don't fully accept them."

Homosexual "marriage" won't accomplish what they hope. They will still be just as far outside the reproductive cycle of life. And they will have inflicted real damage on those of us who are inside it.

They will make it harder for us to raise children with any confidence that they, in turn, will take their place in the reproductive cycle. They will use all the forces of our society to try to encourage our children that it is desirable to be like them.

Most kids won't be swayed, because the message of the hormones is clear for them. But for those parents who have kids who hover in confusion, their lives complicated by painful experiences, conflicting desires, and many fears, the P.C. elite will now demand that the full machinery of the state be employed to draw them away from the cycle of life.

Children from broken and wounded families, with missing parents, may be the ones most confused and most susceptible. Instead of society helping these children overcome the handicaps that come from a missing or dysfunctional father or mother, it may well be exacerbating the damage.

All the while, the P.C. elite will be shouting at dismayed parents that it is somehow evil and bigoted of them not to rejoice when their children commit themselves to a reproductive dead end.

But there is nothing irrational about parents grieving at the abduction-in-advance of their grandchildren.

Don't you see the absurd contradiction? A postulated but unproven genetic disposition toward homosexuality is supposed to be embraced and accepted by everyone as "perfectly natural" -- but the far stronger and almost universal genetic disposition toward having children and grandchildren is to be suppressed, kept to yourself, treated as a mental illness.

You're unhappy that your son wants to marry a boy? Then you're sick, dangerous, a homophobe, filled with hate. Control your natural desires or be branded as evil by every movie and TV show coming out of P.C. Hollywood!

Compassion and tolerance flow only one way in the "Wonderland" of the politically correct.

Loss of Trust

The proponents of this anti-family revolution are counting on most Americans to do what they have done through every stage of the monstrous social revolution that we are still suffering through -- nothing at all.

But that "nothing" is deceptive. In fact, the pro-family forces are already taking their most decisive action. It looks like "nothing" to the anti-family, politically correct elite, because it isn't using their ranting methodology.

The pro-family response consists of quietly withdrawing allegiance from the society that is attacking the family.

Would-be parents take part in civilization only when they trust society to enhance their chances of raising children who will, in turn, reproduce. Societies that create that trust survive; societies that lose it, disappear, one way or another.

But the most common way is for the people who have the most at stake -- parents and would-be parents -- to simply make the untrusted society disappear by ceasing to lift a finger to sustain it.

It is parents who have the greatest ability to transmit a culture from one generation to the next.

If parents stop transmitting the culture of the American elite to their children, and actively resist letting the schools and media do it in their place, then that culture will disappear.

If America becomes a place where the laws of the nation declare that marriage no longer exists -- which is what the Massachusetts decision actually does -- then our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to a society that does protect marriage.

We will teach our children to have no loyalty to the culture of the American elite, and will instead teach them to be loyal to a competing culture that upholds the family. Whether we home school our kids or not, we will withdraw them at an early age from any sense of belonging to contemporary American culture.

We're already far down that road. Already most parents regard schools -- an institution of the state that most directly touches our children -- as the enemy, even though we like and trust the individual teachers -- because we perceive, correctly, that schools are being legally obligated to brainwash our children to despise the values that keep civilization alive.

And if marriage itself ceases to exist as a legally distinct social union with protection from the government, then why in the world should we trust that government enough to let it have authority over our children?

They Think They Have the Power.

The politically correct elite think they have the power to make these changes, because they control the courts.

They don't have to consult the people, because the courts nowadays have usurped the power to make new law.

Democracy? What a joke. These people hate putting questions like this to a vote. Like any good totalitarians, they know what's best for the people, and they'll force it down our throats any way they can.

That's what the Democratic filibuster in the Senate to block Bush's judicial appointments is all about -- to keep the anti-family values of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in control of our government.

And when you add this insult onto the already deep injuries to marriage caused by the widespread acceptance of nonmonogamous behavior, will there be anything left at all?

Sure. In my church and many other churches, people still cling fiercely to civilized values and struggle to raise civilized children despite the barbarians who now rule us through the courts.

The barbarians think that if they grab hold of the trunk of the tree, they've caught the birds in the branches. But the birds can fly to another tree.

And I don't mean that civilized Americans will move. I mean that they'll simply stop regarding the authority of the government as having any legitimacy.

It is the most morally conservative portion of society that is most successful in raising children who believe in loyalty and oath-keeping and self-control and self-sacrifice.

And we're tired of being subject to barbarian rules and laws that fight against our civilized values. We're not interested in risking our children's lives to defend a nation that does not defend us.

Who do you think is volunteering for the military to defend America against our enemies? Those who believe in the teachings of politically correct college professors? Or those who believe in the traditional values that the politically correct elite has been so successful in destroying?

Let's take a poll of our volunteer military -- especially those who specialize in combat areas -- and see what civilization it is that they actually volunteered to defend.

Since the politically correct are loudly unwilling to fight or die for their version of America, and they are actively trying to destroy the version of America that traditional Americans are willing to fight or die to defend, just how long will "America" last, once they've driven out the traditional culture?

Oh, it will still be called America.

But out of the old American mantras of "democracy" and "freedom" and "home" and "family," of "motherhood" and "apple pie," only the pie will be left.

And even if few people care enough to defend the old family values against the screaming hate speech of the Left -- which is what they're counting on, of course -- the end will be the same. Because with marriage finally killed, America will no longer be able to raise up children with any trust in or loyalty to or willingness to sacrifice for that society.

So either civilized people will succeed in establishing a government that protects the family; or civilized people will withdraw their allegiance from the government that won't protect it; or the politically correct barbarians will have complete victory over the family -- and, lacking the strong family structure on which civilization depends, our civilization will collapse or fade away.

Remember how long Iraq's powerful military lasted against a determined enemy, when the Iraqi soldiers no longer had any loyalty to the Iraqi leadership. That wasn't an aberration. It's how great nations and empires fall.

Depriving us of any democratic voice in these sweeping changes may not lead to revolution or even resistance. But it will be just as deadly if it leads to despair. For in the crisis, few citizens will lift a finger to protect or sustain the elite that treated the things we valued -- our marriages, our children, and our right to self-government -- with such contempt.

---

After the above essay was published in the Rhinoceros Times, the paper received a letter to the editor criticizing it. This is OSC's response. (To see the text of the letter, visit http://www.rhinotimes.com.)

I toyed with publishing, along with my essay, a mock letter listing all the cliche "arguments" against it. I'm glad I didn't; Mr. Herman saved me the trouble. I'll take his points in reverse order:

My column made it very clear that homosexual "marriage" is merely the latest, not the worst, damage done to marriage in America; thus his penultimate paragraph, far from refuting my essay, reinforces my main point and suggests possible topics for public debate - if debate is still allowed in Mr. Herman's anti-democratic America.

"Inclusion" is an empty word when used as a general virtue. Its value depends entirely on what is and is not included. Every inclusion of one group is an exclusion of another. I think even Mr. Herman would agree with me that there are certain groups that should be perpetually excluded from civilized society. Where we differ is only on our list of those groups, not on the principle.

As for what "studies have shown," I'll pit my "studies" against Mr. Herman's "studies" and see who can outvague the other.

I already conceded the point that society must compensate for bad parenting. But this is not done by institutionalizing the absence of heterosexual role models, especially since this would result in the schools relentlessly propagandizing all children toward homosexual "marriage" as a desirable choice.

All heterosexual marriages, with or without children, present normalizing role models that affirm the institution of marriage; childless people can still function as effective surrogate parents in society at large, encouraging children to remain within the cycle of life. It is absurd to claim that homosexual "marriages" are in any way parallel to childless marriages in their effect on society in general.

Woman suffrage? Abolition of slavery? You can bet that I approve of those changes. But Mr. Herman, those social revolutions were introduced by the constitutional process of amendment. It took long public debate and national struggle - including civil war - before a consensus emerged.

The real precedents for what we're getting now are judicial diktats that imposed the view of an elite group on the whole nation without democratic process. One thinks of Plessy vs. Ferguson and Dred Scott. Wow. The courts do such a good job of inventing new constitutional laws when they don't have to wait for democracy.

Since the 1970s, judges have been bolder and bolder about inventing new laws and forcing them on the American people. Mr. Herman is content with this, because he is part of the elite that has seized control and agrees with the forced experiments. But I'm quite sure that if a different group were using the same mechanism to force social experiments on an unwilling people, he would have a very different opinion.

Courts that follow their own conscience instead of the letter of the law are an appalling form of government, however noble their intent. If Mr. Herman is so sure gay "marriage" is a good idea, then why doesn't he want us to reach that result by national debate and legislative process? Why does he despise the principle of majority rule? Why does he regard democracy with such distrust?

His entire attitude can be summed up by his closing paragraph, which ends with telling me: "Stick to what you know." So much for inclusion, eh?

What is it that disqualifies me to enter the public debate? The fact that I reach conclusions different from him and the rest of the current dictatorial elite.

In Iran, people whom the ayatollahs don't approve of are barred from running for office or taking part in public discussion. The ayatollahs have the right to impose their ideas on the whole nation because they're really really really sure that they are correct about everything. All their friends agree with them, and anybody who disagrees with them is obviously evil or stupid.

Apparently, as long as he and his friends get to be the ayatollahs, Mr. Herman thinks that's a good system.

Me, I prefer democracy - even if it means letting dumb people like me have our say - and our votes. Studies have shown that when you let dumb people vote, it works out way better than letting experts make all the political decisions.

from the Associated Press via the Boston Globe, 2004-Feb-4, by Jennifer Peter:

Supreme Judicial Court rules civil unions aren't enough, same-sex couples entitled to marriage

BOSTON -- The Massachusetts high court ruled Wednesday that only full, equal marriage rights for gay couples -- rather than civil unions -- would meet the edict of its November decision, erasing any doubts that the nation's first same-sex marriages would take place in the state beginning in mid-May.

The court issued the opinion in response to a request from the state Senate about whether Vermont-style civil unions, which conveyed the benefits -- but not the title of marriage -- would meet constitutional muster.

The much-anticipated opinion sets the stage for next Wednesday's Constitutional Convention, where the Legislature will consider an amendment that would legally define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Without the opinion, Senate President Robert Travaglini had said the vote would be delayed.

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled in November that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, and gave the Legislature six months to change state laws to make it happen.

But almost immediately, the vague wording of the ruling left lawmakers -- and advocates on both side of the issue -- uncertain if Vermont-style civil unions would satisfy the court's decision.

The state Senate asked for more guidance from the court and sought the advisory opinion, which was made public Wednesday morning when it was read into the Senate record.

from the Washington Post, 2004-Aug-13, p.A8, by Joe Dignan, special to The Washington Post:

Fate of Tangible and Intangible Benefits a Concern

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 12 -- Molly McKay was confused when she got the first copy of the California Supreme Court's decision. She was the first to get one. Standing on the courthouse steps across the plaza from City Hall where she was married exactly six months before, McKay flipped through the half-inch of paper, while news crews and other couples swarmed around her.

"It looks like they left the marriages alone," she announced, hesitantly, but she was reading the minority opinion. When she got to the part that read "same-sex marriages that have been performed in California are void from their inception and a legal nullity," she began to weep.

McKay, a longtime gay marriage advocate and head of California's Freedom to Marry coalition, was dressed in one of the five wedding dresses she has worn to demonstrations over the years. "It's what we've been bracing ourselves for," she said after composing herself.

Like many other same-sex marriage advocates, McKay said she expected that the court would rule that Mayor Gavin Newsom had exceeded his powers in allowing the marriages but that the court would leave the licenses in place, in part because of the practical problems of nullifying them. Some of the couples, for example, have applied for insurance together and have sought other benefits available to married couples. "I wonder what happens to our car insurance?" she asked. McKay and her partner, Davina Kotulski, had received a $316 reduction in their car insurance premiums.

However, California has a Domestic Partnership registry, and many domestic partners already receive benefits similar to what married couples get from their employers. Kristen Montan, who stood on the courthouse steps with her partner, Emily Nalven, works for the University of California system. Even before their San Francisco wedding, Nalven enjoyed UC's benefits as if they were married.

Joe Alfano, who was part of the gathering, said that being married has had few practical benefits, except for a change in the attitude of the grandparents of his partner, Frank Capley.

"The wedding put our love in terms they could understand," he said. Before they were married, Alfano said, Capley's relatives had spurned them. "And then they sent a very nice wedding gift."

At City Hall, Newsom held a news conference. "We decided to put a human face on discrimination," he said. "It's not about discrimination in the abstract. It's about these people and their lives."

Jerry Threet, who works for San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano, said he was extremely let down. The insurance rates on the house he owns with his partner, Seth Ubogy, had gone down several hundred dollars a year, he said, "and a lot of little things, like our AAA membership, got less expensive." Threet said he went on a trip in May to visit Ubogy's family in Texas, and there was no question about a charge for an extra driver on the rental car.

But, like Alfano, Threet said the biggest practical impact for him was acceptance. Threet said he and Ubogy are planning to adopt a child in a year or two.

"My family has never treated Seth like my life partner," he said. "Six years ago, my father wouldn't meet Seth. After we got married, that all changed. It made a big difference to them. That's more important than all those little things."

from the Associated Press, 2004-Feb-26, by Lisa Leff:

Rosie O'Donnell Weds Longtime Girlfriend

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Rosie O'Donnell married her longtime girlfriend Thursday, taking what she called a proud stand for gay civil rights in the city where more than 3,300 other same-sex couples have tied the knot since Feb. 12.

"I want to thank the city of San Francisco for this amazing stance the mayor has taken for all the people here, not just us but all the thousands and thousands of loving, law-abiding couples," the former talk show host, holding a large bouquet, said after she and Kelli Carpenter emerged from their brief ceremony inside Mayor Gavin Newsom's office.

The couple were married by Treasurer Susan Leal, one of the city's high-profile lesbian elected officials.

The newlyweds walked hand in hand down the grand marble staircase in the rotunda to thunderous applause from hundreds of spectators who came to witness the city's first celebrity same-sex wedding.

As the San Francisco's Gay Men's Chorus serenaded the couple with a few bars of "Going to the Chapel," O'Donnell smiled and said: "We really did. We got married."

O'Donnell told the crowd that she and Carpenter, who have been together six years and are raising four children, decided to dash to San Francisco after hearing President Bush endorse a proposed constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage Tuesday.

"We were both inspired to come here after the sitting president made the vile and hateful comments he made," O'Donnell said.

The couple left New York at 5 a.m in order to make their 1 p.m. appointment in San Francisco to pick up their marriage license.

"One thought ran through my mind on the plane out here - with liberty and justice for all," O'Donnell said, drawing even more cheers as she held up her hand in a peace sign. She and Carpenter then kissed for the cameras.

The couple were flying back to New York later in the day to attend parents' day at their children's school Friday, O'Donnell said. She joked that with four children under the age of 8, they hadn't planned a honeymoon.

City Hall, which has been transformed into a virtual wedding chapel since the city began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, was packed with spectators hoping to catch a glimpse of the most famous couple to be married there so far. Tourists, reporters and couples there for their own weddings vied for space on all three levels of the ornate building, while the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus serenaded the crowd with renditions of "The Star Spangled Banner" and "We Shall Overcome."

In an interview, Leal said she wished others could have seen O'Donnell and Carpenter as they took their vows to be "spouses for life."

"There was not a lot of ad-libbing even though Rosie is a comedian. They smiled a lot, they had a lot of tears in their eyes," Leal said. "It was like any people who know they are entering into a solemn commitment."

The couple brought a friend from New York to serve as one of their witnesses and recruited Joe Caruso, the mayor's director of neighborhood services, to be the other.

"It is a great pleasure and privileged to be part of history," Caruso said.

Earlier, on ABC's "Good Morning America," O'Donnell said she decided to marry Carpenter, a former dancer and marketing director at Nickelodeon, during her recent trial in New York over the now-defunct Rosie magazine. During the case, she referred to Carpenter as her wife.

"We applied for spousal privilege and were denied it by the state. As a result, everything that I said to Kelli, every letter that I wrote her, every e-mail, every correspondence and conversation was entered into the record," O'Donnell said. "After the trial, I am now and will forever be a total proponent of gay marriage."

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer will ask the state Supreme Court on Friday whether San Francisco's issuing of same-sex marriage licenses violates state law, which designates marriage as only between heterosexual couples.

from the Belfast Telegraph, 2004-Aug-13, by Sean O'Driscoll in New York and David Gordon:

SF ally quits in gay affair scandal
Governor had been embroiled in Ulster trip expenses row

A US politician is resigning over a gay extra-marital affair - two years after a scandal involving personal expenses on an Ulster trade mission.

Sinn Fein ally James McGreevey is standing down as New Jersey Governor after disclosing that he had been in a relationship with another man.

McGreevey has family links to Banbridge, Co Down, and was in trouble in 2002 over spending $$70,000 of US taxpayers' money on an official visit here.

The expenditure included $3,178 on a family reunion for his relatives in a Banbridge restaurant.

He also hired a Mercedes Benz for himself and his wife to tour on both sides of the border, and stayed in a $$720 per night suite at the Berkeley Court Hotel.

Announcing his resignation last night, father-of-two McGreevey said: "My truth is that I am a gay American.

"Shamefully, I engaged in adult consensual affairs with another man, which violates my bonds of matrimony. It was wrong, it was foolish, it was inexcusable."

The Democrat said he was leaving because his secret - both his sexuality and his affair - had left the Governor's office vulnerable.

The 2002 expenses controversy led to him agreeing to refund the Banbridge restaurant spending.

He said he had been mistaken to charge US taxpayers for the Ulster visit which included meetings with the then Belfast Lord Mayor Alex Maskey and representatives from Queen's University.

McGreevey also faced criticism in 2002 for holding a New Jersey state reception for Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams.

The New York Post accused him of helping to collect "blood money" for a fundraising tour by Mr Adams.

from OpinionJournal.com, 2000-Nov-10, by Pete du Pont:

Gore Carries the Porn Belt
This election was about culture above all.

Pretty much everyone guessed wrong on the election results. The professors with their economic prediction models had Al Gore at 55% to 60% of the popular vote. Most of the national pollsters had George W. Bush leading by two to nine points. The anti-Clintons, who said Mr. Gore would pay the price for Bill Clinton's misdeeds, could see no evidence of backlash.

But in the Oct. 23 New York Times appeared a shaded map of the United States that bore an eerie resemblance to Tuesday night's results. In an article headlined "Technology Sent Wall Street Into Market for Pornography," the map shows by region the percentage of sex movies in the home-video market. Mr. Gore carried the areas with the highest percentages (40% on the West Coast and 37% in New England and the Middle Atlantic states); Mr. Bush carried the area with the lowest percentage (14% in the South), and they split the rest of the country that had middling sex movie percentages.

It sounds ridiculous, but there's a grain of truth in those comparisons. Mr. Bush carried married voters 53% to 44%, led by a similar margin in homes with children under 18, and won the "religious right," 79% to 18%. He won the South 54% to 44% and lost the Northeast 37% to 56%. His was a culturally conservative vote. And character did matter: Among voters who said they wanted an honest and trustworthy president, Mr. Bush won 80% to 15%. People who attend church weekly backed Mr. Bush 57% to 40%.

A few other patterns emerged: Mr. Gore ran strongly with the quarter of the voters with incomes under $30,000: Mr. Bush ran better than Mr. Gore with the other three-quarters. Democrats voted for Democrats and Republicans for Republicans in overwhelming percentages. And the "gender gap" is real and very deep. According to exit polls Mr. Gore won women 54% to 42%, and Mr. Bush won men 52% to 43%.

Other comparisons paint a murkier picture. Consider three important quality-of-life indicators measured state by state: five-year per capita income growth, the crime rate and the percentage of births to teenage mothers. List the 50 states and the District of Columbia in order for each, and we see that economic growth seemed to matter: Messrs. Bush and Gore evenly split high-growth states, while Mr. Bush carried 11 of the 15 low-growth ones. The crime rate didn't seem to matter: Higher-crime states favored Mr. Bush, but not by very much. More puzzling, he also won 20 of the 25 states with the highest percentage of births to teen mothers.

---

In short, the 2000 election was not primarily about "the economy, stupid," nor the efficiency of government, nor the number of programs proposed or their cost, nor just how government should be reinvented. It was about values like the quality of education, family and ethics, and the character and trustworthiness of the man who will next lead us. Those are not bad ways to pick a president.

It is also clear that these concerns are not evenly spread across the country. There are indeed two Americas, one bicoastal, urban, industrial, and politically very liberal; the other rural, with smaller cities and towns, traditional beliefs about family and morality, and a moderate-to-conservative political outlook.

Regardless of whether Mr. Gore is successful in his attempt to overturn the result in Florida, this basic division is going to bedevil American society for some years to come. The Democratic Party is being pushed left. Mr. Gore, as either president or leader of the party, is more liberal than Mr. Clinton; newly elected senators like Hillary Clinton and Jon Corzine are very left. People in the rural center will not take kindly to this leftward tilt and will be in continual tension with the other America.

The fate of Republicans, now holding even slimmer and more difficult margins in the House and Senate, lies almost wholly in the hands of Mr. Bush. Assuming he becomes president, the Republican majorities may yet meld into an effective fighting force in the major political battles for the commanding heights of public policy--Medicare drug benefits, Social Security reform, tax reduction and a better education for children in catastrophically poor schools. If the courts make Mr. Gore president, congressional Republicans will need to rally around a strong leader to craft a strategy and seize the high ground, never an easy thing for legislative bodies to do.

Even to take small steps regarding these issues, the election of Mr. Bush is essential, for he at least will command a majority in the Congress that he can use to accomplish policy changes. Mr. Gore, constantly pressed by liberals, unions, and minorities to move left, and with a Congress of the other party, would have a much more difficult time.

The voters on Tuesday did not signal that they want massive new government programs, but they do want some things accomplished--help with their drug bills, a way out of the bad schools their kids are trapped in, or a chance to save for a better retirement. The next president had better accomplish them, and in a way that doesn't disgust that great middle America that we saw voting across our television screens on Tuesday evening.

Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column will appear Wednesdays.

from the Associated Press via the Portsmouth Herald, 2003-Nov-18, by Jennifer Peter:

Mass. Court Strikes Down Gay-Marriage Ban

BOSTON (AP) -- Massachusetts' highest court ruled 4-3 Tuesday that the state's ban on same- sex marriage is unconstitutional and gave lawmakers 180 days to come up with a solution that would allow gay couples to wed.

The court did not issue marriage licenses to the seven couples who sued and left the details to the Legislature.

"Whether and whom to marry, how to express sexual intimacy, and whether and how to establish a family - these are among the most basic of every individual's liberty and due process rights," the majority opinion said. "And central to personal freedom and security is the assurance that the laws will apply equally to persons in similar situations."

"Barred access to the protections, benefits and obligations of civil marriage, a person who enters into an intimate, exclusive union with another of the same sex is arbitrarily deprived of membership in one of our community's most rewarding and cherished institutions," the opinion said.

Legal observers said the case took a significant step beyond the 1999 Vermont Supreme Court decision that led to civil unions in that state.

This decision, lawyers said, rules that gay couples are entitled to all the rights of marriage and that creating a separate class of marriage - such as civil unions - would not be acceptable.

Attorney Mary Bonauto, who represented the seven gay couples who sued the state, said the only task assigned to the Legislature is to come up with changes in the law that will allow gay couples to marry at the end of the 180-day period.

"This is a very good day for gay and lesbian families in Massachusetts and throughout the country," Bonauto said.

But the issue may find a hostile audience in the Massachusetts Legislature, which has been considering a constitutional amendment that would legally define a marriage as a union between one man and one woman. The state's powerful Speaker of the House, Tom Finneran of Boston, has endorsed this proposal.

And Republican Gov. Mitt Romney criticizing the ruling, saying: "Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman. I will support an amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution that makes that expressly clear. Of course, we must provide basic civil rights and appropriate benefits to nontraditional couples, but marriage is a special institution that should be reserved for a man and a woman."

A key group of state lawmakers also has recently been working behind the scenes to craft civil union legislation similar to the law passed in Vermont.

Gay and lesbian advocates had been cheered by a series of advances this year, including a U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down anti-sodomy laws, the ordination of an openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, and a Canadian appeals court ruling that it was unconstitutional to deny gay couples the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples. Belgium and the Netherlands also have legalized gay marriage.

In addition to Vermont, courts in Hawaii and Alaska have previously ruled that the states did not have a right to deny marriage to gay couples. In those two states, the decisions were followed by the adoption of constitutional amendments limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. No American court has ordered the issuance of a marriage license - a privilege reserved for heterosexual couples.

The U.S. House is currently considering a constitutional ban on gay marriage. President Bush, although he believes marriage should be defined as a union between one man and one woman, recently said that a constitutional amendment is not yet necessary.

The Massachusetts case began in 2001, when seven gay couples went to their city and town halls to obtain marriage licenses. All were denied, leading them to sue the state Department of Public Health, which administers the state's marriage laws.

A judge threw out the case in 2002, ruling that nothing in state law gives gay couples the right to marry. The couples appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court.

The plaintiffs argued that barring them from marrying a partner of the same sex denied them access to an intrinsic human experience and violated basic constitutional rights.

The state's Attorney General's office argued that neither state law nor its constitution created a right to same-sex marriage. The state also said any decision to extend marriage to same-sex partners should be made by elected lawmakers, not the courts.

excerpt from Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House, a Wall Street Journal Book, published by Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc., edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo, authored by Paul Johnson, received via OpinionJournal.com's Best of the Web 2004-Jun-24:

42. William Jefferson Clinton
Survey ranking: 24
Born: August 19, 1946, Hope, Arkansas
Wife: Hillary Rodham
Religion: Baptist
Party: Democrat
Military experience: None
Other offices held: Attorney general of Arkansas (1977-79), governor (1979-81, 1983-92)
Took office: January 20, 1993
Vice president: Albert Gore
Left office: January 20, 2001

Presenting a just estimate of the Clinton presidency will pose perhaps insoluble problems to historians. The printed record of his doings, misdoings, and omissions is unarguably deplorable from start to finish. Yet he was reelected without difficulty, and some would argue that, had it been constitutionally possible for him to run for a third term, he would have been elected again. It is a fact that historians will have to take into account, for it is central to the success he enjoyed that William Jefferson Clinton was a formidable personality, at least in one sense: Face-to-face, it was almost impossible to dislike him. Indeed it was difficult not to like him very much. As Tony Blair put it to me: "I found I had to like him, despite all the evidence."

Yet who, or what, was one liking? Other men who have gotten into trouble in the White House--one thinks of Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, Richard Nixon--were distinctive personalities, to be made the subject of deeply etched portraits. They could be grasped. Clinton was, is, elusive. Like Ronald Reagan he was a consummate actor. But whereas Reagan devised his own part, wrote his own lines, and passionately believed in both, Clinton ad-libbed. He believed in nothing, or perhaps one should say in anything, since most positions received his fleeting endorsements at one time or another.

He certainly believed in himself, that is, in his capacity to occupy high office, and this self-justification by faith carried him through all the embarrassments and humiliations to which he was subjected during his eight vertiginous years of power. One minute he would (as in 1994) be answering questions on TV from a silly teenager about his underpants; the next he would pick up the phone and speak to the Russian president, seemingly unaware of any incongruity.

This confidence in his star and his survival was not attended by arrogance. There was nothing subjectively arrogant about Clinton; had there been, he would have been much easier to destroy. His power, rather, lay in his capacity to edit unwelcome reality out of his life. This may have been hereditary. Clinton's family background was unfortunate, to put it mildly, and there is no more to be said about it other than to applaud his strength in rising above it. His mother, Virginia Kelley, provided a clue in explaining how she survived her rackety life: "I construct an airtight box. I keep inside it what I want to think about, and everything else stays beyond the walls. Inside is white, outside is black. . . . Inside is love and friends and optimism. Outside is negativity, can't-doism, and any criticism of me and mine." Bill Clinton would not have been able to describe his defensive technique so clearly. But that is what he did, with great success. As a result, while never arrogant, he was always secure.

He was clever, quick, and capable of huge efforts over short time spans. He has been compared to a geyser. From a marshy launching pad in Arkansas he got himself to Georgetown, to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, to Yale Law School, and to a law professorship at the University of Arkansas. This quickly propelled him into the attorney general's chair in Little Rock, then to the governorship. He was barely thirty-two when first elected governor in 1978 and, though he lost his reelection bid in 1980--his only defeat at the hands of the voters--he thereafter served another ten years, 1983--92, relinquishing power only to take up the presidency.

This performance can be taken either way. When he ran for the presidency, one commentator noted: "Anyone who has been elected governor of Arkansas five times cannot be an entirely honest man." On the other hand, his record in winning and holding voters was there for all to see. In particular he learned exactly how to nurse the local opinion-formers--"the car salesman if white, the funeral parlor owners if black." He was affable, easygoing, uncontentious, friendly to all. It is true that as governor he accomplished little or nothing. But there were advantages in inactivity: Clinton got to Washington with few enemies and virtually no intellectual baggage, other than a bland support for all progressive causes, veneering over the innate conservatism of a man who knows he can always persuade voters to give him good jobs.

Such baggage as he did possess was the property of the clever woman he met at Yale and married for better or for worse. Hillary Rodham, a year younger, came from Chicago and quickly became a fierce Democratic courtroom fighter, her first significant job being as counsel on the staff formed to impeach President Nixon in 1974.

Hillary gave an ideological edge to Clinton's general fuzziness when he got to the White House. She also stuck a feminist finger in appointment pies, especially of women, sometimes with embarrassing, indeed hilarious, results. Thus Tara O'Toole, nominated assistant secretary of energy, turned out to be a member of a Marxist women's reading circle. Roberta Achtenberg, assistant secretary for fair housing, revealed herself as a militant lesbian who persecuted the Boy Scouts for not allowing homosexuals as scoutmasters. Joycelyn Elders, made surgeon general, after many public rows, had to go when she advocated masturbation.

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It has to be said that, from start to finish, there was always a comic aspect to the Clinton presidency. Funny things happened to him on his way to the White House, and in it, and wherever he went. The scandals began early in his first term and never let up, some trivial, even surreal. You had to laugh. Clinton was accused of holding up traffic for an entire hour at Los Angeles International Airport, one of the world's busiest, while a barber came on board Air Force One to give him a haircut. When he stayed on the supercarrier George Washington, members of his staff were accused of carrying off embroidered bathrobes and fancy towels as souvenirs. Clinton said it was an outrageous lie and blamed the media for the thefts, but a White House payment of $562 told a different story.

Also comic, but to many Americans shocking, was the news that Clinton had agreed to let celebrity seekers sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House in return for hefty donations to Democratic Party campaign funds. More serious, indeed deeply serious, was the allegation that campaign contributions had been accepted from communist China.

There were also, as the Clinton presidency progressed, endless stories of business corruption involving Clinton and his wife in their Arkansas days, senior staffers in conflict-of-interest accusations, and White House people who went off to become lobbyists. But most of these stories were complex and dreary to follow, hopelessly enmeshed in contradictory evidence. And there were too many of them. One clear, deadly bullet is more likely to finish off a president than a scattering of shrapnel coming from all directions.

Moreover, scandals about money had to compete with sex--a topic that eventually came to dominate the Clinton presidency. Indeed, it could be said to have been Clinton's salvation. His womanizing cropped up early in the presidency when it was revealed that, as governor, he had used state troopers to round him up partners. This was nothing, especially to Democrats hardened by covering up for John F. Kennedy. Presidential illicit sex in the White House, which gradually emerged, albeit of an uncomfortable, hurried, and furtive kind, might have been another matter if Hillary had taken offense and begun divorce proceedings. But she kept her eye on the real ball: Each presidential peccadillo led her to demand and get more political say, with her own future political career in mind. So long as Hillary was forgiving, the nation could be too.

That Clinton covered up his womanizing by lying on oath was dangerous, of course, because perjury and obstruction of justice might be construed as "high crimes and misdemeanors." Indeed they became the engine of the eventual impeachment proceedings. The trouble, however, was that the independent counsel made them the sole engine--China, for instance, was left out.

Clinton clearly lied, glibly and easily, unselfconsciously and gaily--even unnecessarily--all his political life, often justifying his deception by legal quibbles on words, a skill he honed to perfection; his admission that he "smoked" marijuana but "never inhaled" was a characteristic distinction. Clinton, then, was a liar. But to try to nail him for lying about sex was a tactical, indeed a strategic, error. Most men, including most members of the Senate, have lied about sex at some time. Of all the different kinds of lies it is the one that carries the least opprobrium, either among colleagues or with the public. This was probably the real or main reason why the impeachment proceedings, though serious enough to clear the House, could not succeed in the Senate.

But in the meantime, the Clinton presidency had come and gone. It is most improbable that it could ever have been a success story, even on Clinton's own terms. He was indeed a fountain of energy, a geyser, but a spasmodic and uncontrolled one, propelled by galvanic appetites and generating chaos. Aides testified: "He reads half a dozen books at a time." "He relaxes not by watching a basketball game on TV or reading or picking up the telephone or doing crossword puzzles, but doing all simultaneously, while worrying an unlit cigar." "When he would eat an apple, he would eat the whole thing, core, stem, and seeds. He would pick up a baked potato in his hands and eat it in two bites."

---

The womanizing fitted in well with this galvanic, incoherent approach, but careful, systematic policy planning did not. Indeed to the question "Did Clinton have a strategy in the White House?" the answer must be no. His foreign policy was a long list of failed, aborted, or abandoned initiatives, punctuated by bouts of somnambulation, which, in the case of international terrorism, was to have serious consequences. However, most of Clinton's time and energy as president were spent not on policy or executive activity but in defending himself against accusations. The theme of his presidency might be described as "The Inconvenience of Sexual Appetites." Clinton in fact did nothing. It was not so much masterly inactivity as mistressly inactivity.

That had one outstanding virtue. It turned the Clinton years into one of the longest periods of laissez-faire in U.S. history. If Clinton had been a continent man, and so with time to be an activist president, the consequences would almost certainly have been disastrous for the American economy. As it was, with the president busy elsewhere, the nation thrived mightily, as always when the White House does nothing. The stage had already been set by the Reagan years, but under Clinton all surged forward. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, more than $5 trillion in real terms was added to America's gross domestic product. This was the central paradox of the Clinton presidency, and of course one reason why he remained popular.

Not even Clinton's notorious end-of-term list of pardons for notorious gangsters and former pals could quite extinguish popular support for the man. The charm continued to work, not only in America but abroad. I last saw Clinton near my own house in the celebrated Notting Hill district of London in 2002. He decided to do a walkabout, and plunged into the crowd, an activity he enormously and palpably enjoyed, and which delighted everybody. No one ever matched him as a simple campaigner. It was the thing he did best--perhaps the only thing he did well. It might be said, indeed, that he never did anything else.

In Notting Hill he was not running for office. The locals were not his voters. But he behaved as if they were and they loved it. The old con master was in his element. He found himself in a pub and ordered drinks all round. All cheered. The news spread to the vast crowd outside, and it cheered too. Adrenaline racing, fists thumping chests, hugging and handshaking, wisecracking and slogan swapping, Clinton worked that crowd for twenty minutes, leaving it hoarse and exhausted, delighted and deeply impressed when he swept off in his limo. The only unhappy man was the bartender, who was never paid for ol' Bill's round.

Mr. Johnson is author, most recently, of Art: A New History (HarperCollins, 2003).

from the Wall Street Journal, 2004-Jun-22, p.A18:

A Bill for the 1990s

This is Bill Clinton week, as the former President and CBS launch his $10 million memoirs. Though some people seem eager to refight the ethics wars of the 1990s, it strikes us that the news is how much smaller his Presidency looms in historical terms a mere three years after it ended.

The early reviewers report that the bulk of Mr. Clinton's 957-page tome is personal, and perhaps that's of necessity. Even during the 1990s, questions about his personal and public character dwarfed debates over policy, and time has only accentuated this disparity. Compared to the achievements of Ronald Reagan that we have just celebrated -- ending the Cold War in victory, breaking inflation and slowing the growth of government -- Mr. Clinton's Presidency seems far less consequential.

Future historians may well find his eight years in office to have been a parenthesis between two greater political eras. After his attempts to expand the government were rebuffed by voters in 1994, Mr. Clinton settled for consolidating the political gains of the Reagan years. His greatest achievement -- welfare reform -- had been percolating on the political right for a generation. Certainly he deserves credit for pushing that, as well as Nafta, despite opposition from his fellow Democrats.

The years have not been as kind to some of Mr. Clinton's other claims to posterity. The economic boom of the 1990s proved to be partly a financial bubble that we now know began to burst with the stock market break in April 2000. The growth that was real resulted less from any specific policy than from the gridlock between Mr. Clinton and the GOP Congress that kept government from doing much at all after 1994. No period since the 1920s was as free of new federal intrusion.

We now know that the relative peace of the 1990s was also part illusion. The rapid decline in defense spending after the end of the Cold War helped balance the federal budget. But as we learned on 9/11, the 1990s were years in which we stored up foreign-policy trouble.

Mr. Clinton says in his book that he warned the new President Bush that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were our gravest national threat. But even if we take him at his word, that leaves the question of why he did so little to counter that threat as it was gathering. The entire political class shares the blame here, but Mr. Clinton manifestly did not use his Presidential platform to educate or warn the public about the rising dangers. Bin Laden was barely mentioned during the election campaign of 2000, and today's resurgent deficits result in part from the need to make up for money that wasn't spent on defense during our holiday from history in the 1990s.

Historians will no doubt ask why a man of such prodigious, indeed prodigal, talents would end up with such a thin record. This is where the question of character will intrude. Any Presidency has only so much energy and capital to spend, and Mr. Clinton's ethical travails frittered away much of his.

Mr. Clinton is now saying that one of his largest regrets is not doing more to reform Medicare and Social Security, a regret we share. With a willing GOP Congress, he had a unique opportunity in his second term to do both. Democratic Senator John Breaux had forged a bipartisan consensus on Medicare, and then-Senators Robert Kerrey and Daniel Patrick Moynihan were willing to cover his Democratic flank on Social Security. But Mr. Clinton gave in to his party's status-quo left on both issues in return for its support against impeachment. So lying under oath had policy, not merely political or personal, consequences.

Let's be clear: We are not saying, as some Clinton defenders still insist, that the ethical debates of the 1990s were trivial. Presidential honesty and the rule of law are fundamental questions in any democracy. The voters seem to agree, since in 2000 they elected a President who campaigned largely on "restoring dignity and honor" to the White House. We wish Mr. Clinton well with his book promotion. But we suspect the judgment of many readers will be the one that the late TV commentator Eric Sevareid once made, for very different reasons, about Harry Truman: "It's character, just character."

from the Washington Post, 2004-Jun-23, p.A20:

Alternate Universe

IT IS THE prerogative of former presidents to write self-serving memoirs casting themselves in heroic terms. We don't begrudge Bill Clinton, who presided over an administration of significant accomplishments in many areas, a book-length (or even a two-book-length) highlighting of the ups, and a breezing-over of the downs, of his presidency. Yet Mr. Clinton's new book, "My Life," is also part of a long effort on its author's part to deny, and not just breeze over, his profound disrespect for the law when it inconvenienced him.

In Mr. Clinton's alternate universe, in which many Democrats have also decided to live, his impeachment reflects nothing bad on him but is -- as he put it recently -- "a badge of honor," a defense of the Constitution against the ravages of his Republican enemies. So even as Mr. Clinton's book overflows with apology for his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, the former president still seems indignant that anyone would have investigated his public misconduct -- that is, his lies under oath, including to a grand jury, and other affronts to the justice system. In fact, you wouldn't know from reading Mr. Clinton's book that he had lied under oath, much less that he had at least tacitly encouraged others to as well.

The matters leading to impeachment aren't the only ones where Mr. Clinton veers from the nonfiction category. The tangled real estate investments that became known as Whitewater merited investigation, and the inquiry produced numerous convictions. The campaign finance scandal involved substantial questions as well. Mr. Clinton dismisses as "ridiculous," for example, the "implication . . . that I had been selling overnights in the White House to raise money for the DNC," insisting that "I would never have used the White House in that way." This from the man who scrawled on a proposal from his chief fundraiser, Terry McAuliffe, outlining the plan to entertain contributors at the White House: "Yes, pursue . . . get other names at $100,000 or more, $50,000 or more . . . Ready to start overnights right away."

Most fundamentally, Mr. Clinton showed contempt for the law. You can conclude, as we ultimately did, that impeachment was not justified; you can acknowledge the rank partisanship that helped fuel impeachment; you can criticize Mr. Starr for excesses, as we also did. Mr. Clinton had powerful and committed political enemies who waged a well-financed campaign against him throughout his presidency.

But you can't, as Mr. Clinton seems to hope, erase the facts. The day before he left office, Mr. Clinton acknowledged, in a deal that allowed him to avoid indictment, that "certain of my responses to questions about Ms. Lewinsky were false." He surrendered his law license for five years and paid a fine. Months earlier, a judge had held him in contempt for what she called his "intentionally false" testimony. Buyers of Mr. Clinton's book should beware of the version of history he is selling.

from The Telegraph, 2004-Jun-20, by Chris Hastings and Charles Laurence:

Clinton rages against Dimbleby in Panorama confrontation over Lewinsky

Bill Clinton loses his temper with David Dimbleby during a BBC television interview to be broadcast this week when he is repeatedly quizzed about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The former American president, famed for his amiable disposition, becomes visibly angry and rattled, particularly when Dimbleby asks him whether his publicly declared contrition over the affair is genuine.

His outrage at the line of questioning during the 50-minute interview, to be broadcast on Panorama on Tuesday night, lasts several minutes. It is the first time that the former President has been seen to lose his temper publicly over the issue of his sexual liaisons with Ms Lewinsky.

The President initially responds to Dimbleby's questions by launching a general attack on media intrusion. When the broadcaster persists with the question of whether the politician was truly penitent, Clinton directs his anger towards Dimbleby.

The atmosphere, which was initially warm, then turns decidedly chilly. One BBC executive who has seen the interview, which took place in a New York hotel last Wednesday, said: "He is visibly angry with Dimbleby's line of questioning and some of that anger gets directed at Dimbleby himself. As outbursts go, it is not just some flash that is over in an instant. It is something substantial and sustained.

"It is memorable television which will give the public a different insight into the President's character. It will leave them wondering whether he is as contrite as he says he is about past events. Dimbleby manages to remain calm and order is eventually restored."

Mr Clinton agreed to speak to Panorama as part of the publicity campaign for his autobiography My Life.

from the Associated Press, 2004-Feb-27, by Rachel Zoll, AP Religion Writer:

Catholic Panel Rebukes Bishops for Abuse

WASHINGTON (AP)--A panel of prominent Roman Catholics rebuked U.S. bishops Friday for failing to stop widespread clerical sex abuse over the last half-century, calling the leaders' performance ``shameful to the church.''

The comments came as the National Review Board, a lay watchdog panel formed by the bishops, issued two highly anticipated studies documenting the molestation problem from 1950 to 2002.

One report is the first church-sanctioned tally of abuse cases: It found there have been 10,667 abuse claims over those 52 years. More than 80 percent of the alleged victims were male and over half said they were between ages 11 and 14 when they were assaulted.

About 4 percent of all American clerics who served during the years studied--4,392 of the 109,694 priests and others under vows to the church--were accused of abuse.

The second report examines the causes of the molestation crisis and puts much of the blame on American bishops for not cracking down on errant priests.

``This is a failing not simply on the part of the priests who sexually abused minors but also on the part of those bishops and other church leaders who did not act effectively to preclude that abuse in the first instance or respond appropriately when it occurred,'' the review board said in a summary of its findings.

``These leadership failings have been shameful to the church.''

The John Jay College of Criminal Justice conducted the tally of abuse claims for review board, receiving survey responses from 97 percent of the nation's 195 dioceses, plus 142 religious communities.

It found that, of the 10,667 reports of assaults on minors, more than 10 percent were unsubstantiated and roughly 20 percent were not investigated because the priest accused was dead or inactive when the allegation was received. The Diocese of Yakima, Wash., said in a news release that approximately 6,700 claims were substantiated.

The John Jay report also calculated abuse-related costs such as litigation and counseling at $572 million, and noted that the figure does not cover settlements within the past year including $85 million in Boston.

The abuse tally also shows that the number of reported cases grew through the 1950s and '60s and peaked in the 1970s, then began to drop off--slipping notably in the last decade. Victims' advocates say that's because there is a reporting lag; they say abuse victims often do not come forward for years or even decades.

The report on the causes of the crisis was based on interviews with clergy, victims, experts on sex offenders and others who have studied molestation.

The findings are sure to fuel debate among Catholics on two controversial issues: whether the church should try to screen out gay priests and whether celibacy for clergy should be optional.

The board said celibacy was not a cause of the scandal, but that the celibacy requirement may have attracted candidates for the priesthood who were seeking an escape from their sexual problems.

The board came to no direct conclusions about whether gays should be ordained. However, it noted that ``any evaluation of the causes and context of the current crisis must be cognizant of the fact that more than 80 percent of the abuse at issue was of a homosexual nature.''

The board acknowledged that some bishops recognized the gravity of the problem early on, and spent years lobbying the Vatican to change church law so they could move faster against abusers.

The study also said the bishops were sometimes ill-served by the therapists and lawyers they sought out for guidance. Yet the board still called the prelates to task for what it said were a ``significant and disturbing'' number of cases.

The bishops have apologized repeatedly for any wrongdoing and have enacted several reforms to protect children since the long-simmering abuse problem erupted more than two years ago in Boston. The discipline policy they adopted in June 2002 bars sex offenders from all public ministry.

And the bishops authorized the landmark studies to restore trust in their leadership. No other profession or religious group has exposed itself to such scrutiny on the abuse issue, even though molestation is an acknowledged problem among coaches, teachers and clergy of other faiths.

Estimates of the number of guilty clerics have varied dramatically over the years. Church officials have said anywhere between 1 percent and 3 percent of clergy abused minors, while projections by outside experts ranged from 4 percent to 5 percent.

Experts say there's no way to know whether priests are more or less likely to abuse minors because studies of society at large are deeply flawed.

___

On the Net:

Bishops' conference: http://www.usccb.org

from the Associated Press, 2004-Feb-27, by Denise Lavoie:

Boston archdiocese releases abuse report

BOSTON - Archbishop Sean O'Malley said the findings in the Boston Archdiocese report on clergy sex abuse were "truly horrific." But advocates for victims in Boston said the figures released as part of a nationwide accounting of clergy sex abuse accusations were unbelievably low.

The figures provided in Boston, the epicenter of the clergy sex abuse crisis that shook the Roman Catholic Church, showed about 7 percent of its priests were accused of misconduct between 1950 and 2003. The report showed that 815 children were abused by 162 of its priests since 1950.

That was a higher percentage than national figures released by another diocese late Thursday. The national church-sanctioned study documenting sex abuse by U.S. Roman Catholic clergy found that about 4 percent of clerics have been accused of molesting minors since 1950.

The Diocese of Yakima, Wash., said in a news release that the survey compiled by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice found 4,392 of the 109,694 clergy who served over that five-decade period faced allegations of abuse.

The raw numbers of abuse claims and accused clergy are higher than previous attempts by the media and victims groups to tally them, though slightly lower than figures in a draft report viewed by CNN earlier this month.

Estimates of the number of guilty clerics have varied dramatically over the years. Church officials have said anywhere between 1 percent and 3 percent of clergy abused minors.

The survey was overseen by the National Review Board, a lay watchdog panel the bishops formed at the height of the abuse crisis. The review board had a Friday morning news conference scheduled in Washington to discuss the report and a companion study on how the abuse crisis developed.

In Boston, abuse victims and their advocates immediately assailed the report, saying the numbers were remarkably low, given the hundreds of victims who have come forward since the scandal first exploded in Boston two years ago.

"These numbers need to be taken with a mountain of salt," said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

"We'll never know the full truth because victims don't tell, and only the most naive would assume that church officials have done a complete 180-degree turn and are now telling everything they know."

Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who has represented hundreds of clergy sex abuse victims, called the report "an insult to victims everywhere."

Although the national John Jay report contains figures from 1950 through June 2003, the Boston archdiocese's figures include allegations made through December 2003.

Of the 815 allegations of sexual abuse by priests reported since 1950, more than half took place between 1965 and 1982, but nearly 500 of the reports of abuse came in since the scandal broke in 2002, the report said.

Fifty-eight of the 162 accused priests are now dead, the report said.

The report did not identify the seven priests linked to more than half the incidents. But the late defrocked priest John J. Geoghan and the Rev. Paul Shanley were among the priests named in dozens of lawsuits filed over the last two years.

"It's still very painful to look at these numbers and to realize the great pain inflicted on so many youngsters, and all that this represents," O'Malley said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's alarming and very discouraging."

Since 1950, the archdiocese has paid out $120.6 million to settle abuse claims, the report said. The national report also tallied abuse-related costs at $533.4 million.

O'Malley said he takes "some consolation" that the incidents of abuse appeared to decline over the past 20 years, a remark that angered some victims' advocates, who also complained that the archdiocese appeared to be trying to downplay the numbers by saying that just seven priests were responsible for much of the abuse.

"The suggestion that this was only a small group of bad apples and that the numbers have gone way down is an embarrassment to the archdiocese. When did these people become experts on child abuse?" said Boston attorney Roderick MacLeish Jr., who represented more than half of the 552 victims who reached a record-setting $85 million settlement with the archdiocese last year.

The scandal began after internal church files revealed that Geoghan and many other priests were transferred from parish to parish rather than removed from ministry after they were accused of abusing children.

In December 2002, Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as archbishop of Boston _ the nation's fourth-largest diocese _ amid a storm of criticism over his handling of the crisis.

Alexa MacPherson, 29, who said she was molested by a Boston priest for six years, beginning when she was just 3, flatly rejected the archdiocese's numbers.

"They're wrong. I don't care what that document says. They're 100 percent inaccurate and they're low-balled, and they need to be adjusted to a true figure," she said.

But former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, who also served as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, praised the report as an important attempt by the church to publicly acknowledge the extent of the problem.

"The openness here now that is being exhibited is an opportunity for lay Catholics to understand the problem and commit themselves to being active so that what happened in the past never happens to another child in the future," Flynn said.

Dioceses nationwide received 10,667 abuse claims since 1950, according to the news release. Of those, claims by 6,700 were substantiated. Another 3,300 were not investigated because the accused clergymen were dead.

Another 1,000 claims proved to be unsubstantiated, the Yakima diocese said.

from Nettavisen (Norway), 2004-Jan-26, by Øyvind Ludt and Carin Pettersson:

Swedes have more and more animal sex

Animal sex is not illegal in Sweden, and every year between 200 and 300 pets are injured because of sexual assaults.

The estimate was presented by Svenska Veterinärforbundet, the Swedish veterinary organization, and it is now trying to make the authorities and the public more aware of animals? suffering. The organization claim the problem has increased during the last couple of years, even if most people are unaware of it.

``We have seen an increase since 1999 when child pornography became illegal,'' said Johan Beck-Friis. ``It appears, in other words, as there are some people who have replaced children with animals. In both circumstances, it is sex with defenceless individuals.''

The injuries inflicted on animals after sexual assaults are of the same character of those children get. Beck-Friis said that the most common injuries are wounds on the sex organs and blisters.

Animal porn

The fact that animal sex is becoming an increasing problem can be indicated by the mere fact that there is an increasing selection of animal porn at video rentals and there an increasingly number of websites with animal pornography is surfacing.

No one knows for sure how many animals that are abused, but a British study from 2001 indicates that every 20th dog or cat that receives treatment at veterinaries, the injuries are not a result of a direct accident, but the animal has been inflicted the injury as a result of a sexual assault.

According to the Swedish paper Expressen, if the same estimate can be used in Sweden that will indicate that 200 to 300 dogs and cats every year are injured as a result of sexual assaults.

Not illegal

In contrast with most other countries, animal sex is not illegal in Sweden. It was decriminalized in 1944 in connection with the decriminalization of homosexual sex.

from Independent.co.uk, 2004-Feb-20, by John R Bradley in Jeddah:

Saudi gays flaunt new freedoms: 'Straights can't kiss in public or hold hands like us'

In the glass and marble shopping malls of this cosmopolitan and comparatively laid-back city on the Red Sea, young Saudi Arabian men are taking advantage of the emergence of an increasingly tolerated Western-oriented gay scene.

Certain malls are known as cruising areas, and there are even gay-friendly coffee shops. A big gay disco takes place at a private villa in the north of the city once a week. And young Saudis who frequent these venues, many returnees from the United States after the 11 September 2001 attacks, say that they get to know one another through the internet.

The paradox of Saudi Arabia is that while the executioner's sword awaits anyone convicted of the crime of sodomy, in practice homosexuality is tolerated.

"I don't feel oppressed at all," said one, a 23-year-old who was meeting in one of the coffee shops with a group of self-identified "gay" Saudi friends dressed in Western clothes and speaking fluent English. "I heard that after 11 September, a Saudi student who was going to be deported on a visa technicality applied for political asylum because he was gay," he added, provoking laughter from the others. "What was he thinking of? We have more freedom here than straight couples. After all, they can't kiss in public like we can, or stroll down the street holding one another's hand."

Saudi Arabia's domestic reform initiative, combined with the kingdom's eagerness to shed an international reputation for fostering extremism and intolerance, may even have some benefits for this strict Islamic society's gay community. Shortly after the attacks on America - most of the suicide-hijackers were Saudi nationals - a Saudi diplomat in Washington denied that the kingdom beheads homosexuals, while openly admitting that "sodomy" is practised by consenting males in Saudi Arabia "on a daily basis". Even the head of the notorious religious police has since acknowledged the existence of a local gay population.

The treatment of gay men here received international attention when an Interior Ministry statement reported in January 2002 that three men in the southern city of Abha had been "beheaded for homosexuality". The report provoked widespread condemnation from gay and human-rights groups in the West - and a swift denial from an official at the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC. Tariq Allegany, an embassy spokesman, said the three were beheaded for the sexual abuse of boys. He said: "I would guess there's sodomy going on daily in Saudi Arabia, but we don't have executions for it all the time."

A Riyadh-based Western diplomat, aware of the details of the case, confirmed the men were beheaded for "rape". "The three men seduced a number of very young boys and videoed themselves raping them. Then they used the recordings, and the fear the boys had of being exposed, to get the youngsters to recruit their friends," he said. While homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia, doubt surrounds specific punishment for it. Some gay foreigners were deported in the 1990s, "but no Saudi has ever been prosecuted for 'being a homosexual'. The concept just doesn't exist here," the Western diplomat said. Since the uproar over the beheadings, the kingdom's Internet Services Unit, responsible for blocking sites deemed "unIslamic" or politically sensitive, unblocked access to its home page for gay Saudi surfers after being bombarded with critical e-mails from the US.

A S Getenio, manager of GayMiddleEast.com, said Saudi Arabia seemed concerned about the bad publicity blocking the site would bring, "at the time it was involved in a multi-million dollar advertising campaign in the US to improve its image".

Ibrahim bin Abdullah bin Ghaith, the head of the religious police (the Committee for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue) acknowledged, in unusually tempered language, that there are gay Saudis, while also speaking of the need "to educate the young" about this "vice". But he denied media reports that gay and lesbian relationships were the norm in the strictly segregated schools and colleges, that homosexuality "is spreading".

In an unprecedented two-page special investigation, the daily newspaper Okaz said lesbianism was "endemic" among schoolgirls. It justified the article with a saying of the Prophet's wife Ayeshathat "there should be no shyness in religion". The article told of lesbian sex in school lavatories, girls stigmatised after refusing the advances of their fellow students, and teachers complaining that none of the girls were willing to change their behaviour.

Mr Ghaith dismissed a suggestion that he should send his "enforcers" to investigate. Armed with sticks, they routinely hunt down men and women in public they suspect may not be directly related. "This perversion is found in all countries," he toldOkaz. "The number [of homosexuals] here is small ..." That assessment is contradicted by teachers and students who say that, in the absence of other outlets, a "gay" subculture has inevitably flourished among youth.

"A particularly beautiful boy always gets top marks in the exams because he's some teacher's favourite," said Mohammed, an English teacher in a government high school in Riyadh. "On the other hand, I know many older boys who deliberately flunked their final exams so they can stay ... with their younger sweethearts."

Ahmed, 19, a student at a private college in Jeddah, said there was no shame in having a boyfriend in his private high school. Although he firmly rejected the label "gay", he admitted that he now has a "special friend" in college, too. "It's those who don't have a boy who are ashamed to admit it. We introduce our boy to our friends as 'al walid hagi' [the boy who belongs to me]. At the beginning of term, we always check out the new boys to see which are the most 'helu' [sweet] and think of ways to get to know them."

from the Aspen Times, 2005-Jan-16, by Janet Urquhart:

Gay Ski Week causes stir in Telluride
Resort officials to check out Aspen's event

Several Telluride representatives are expected in Aspen this week to check out the goings-on at Gay Ski Week with an eye toward the future of their resort's fledgling ski week.

Telluride is expecting perhaps 500 attendees for its second Gay Ski Week - as opposed to the 2,000 to 3,000 or so participants who are expected for the 28th annual Gay Ski Week in Aspen - but the Telluride event has not gone unnoticed.

A letter to the editor of the local newspaper, the Telluride Daily Planet, questioning why Telluride Mountain Village would sponsor the gay-oriented event, sparked a flood of replies in support of the village's involvement. Mountain Village is located on the opposite side of the ski area from the historic town of Telluride. The resort is located in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado.

Further stirring the controversy there was the posting of a cautionary note regarding the event on Telluride Cyberguide, a website that offers vacation-planning information for the resort.

The furor made the pages of the Rocky Mountain News last week and prompted a slew of e-mails to Telluride Mountain Village - many of them lambasting the village and threatening to keep their family at home.

Kerri Cardin, public relations and communications manager for Mountain Village, said she doubts many of the e-mails came from individuals who were actually planning a ski vacation to Telluride.

"To think you're going to change your family's vacation plans just doesn't make sense to me," said Tracee Hennigan, events coordinator for Mountain Village.

Still, the extent of the controversy took both women by surprise. The flurry of e-mails dropped off only last week.

"What we're surprised about is the quantity - and the length of time it's gone on," Hennigan said.

Both Cardin and Hennigan said they plan to visit Aspen this week for a closer look at what has made the original Gay Ski Week so successful. A representative of the Telluride AIDS Benefit is expected to come to town, as well.

Though Cardin and Hennigan both resided in Aspen previously, they'll be paying much closer attention to Gay Ski Week now that they're involved in organizing a similar event.

"It was always a blast," Cardin recalled. "I'll bet a lot of the people and merchants in town look forward to Gay Ski Week. It's lucrative and a lot of fun people come to town."

The Telluride Ski Co. sponsored the inaugural Telluride event last year, which attracted 250 to 300 people, Cardin said. Scheduled Feb. 26-March 6 this year, it coincides with the Telluride AIDS Benefit, an annual fashion show that precedes the resort's Gay Ski Week.

A family warning

Once the controversy over the event erupted in the pages of the local newspaper last month, Telluride Cyberguide, operated by a local resident, offered this advice on its website: "Although this week should be fun for those not offended by alternative lifestyles ... we are strongly suggesting that families concerned with exposing their children to the homosexual lifestyle and homosexual behavior schedule their vacations another time.

"Events are planned throughout the week in both towns celebrating and promoting the homosexual lifestyle.

"Due to the intense controversy this year in regards to this week, the public display of homosexual pride and behavior will most likely be greater than last year. If this offends you, this is not the time to visit Telluride."

Al Heirich, who operates the cyberguide, told the Rocky Mountain News that he posted the alert after visitors to the site asked about the controversy. He said the ski resort responded by asking him to remove a link to its website, which he did.

His website defends the caution, noting it has offered a similar warning to families about College Ski Week, when public drunkenness and other raucous behavior may be prevalent.

The site also offers this disclaimer: "The Official Cyber Guide to Telluride has no opinion on the issue of homosexuality."

On another site, which Heirich calls Telluride Gay Ski Week and The Non-Controversy, he indicates the cyberguide may have to shut down as a result of the blow-up.

from Cybercast News Service, 2004-Jan-8, by Susan Jones:

Second Homosexual Event Scheduled at Disney World

(CNSNews.com) - The Family Pride Coalition announced it has picked Father's Day weekend, June 17-20, for its first-ever gathering at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.

"This official Family Pride event...has been specially designed for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) parents and their families," the group said in a press release.

The Family Pride gathering will take place two weeks after "Gay Days" at Disney World -- an annual June event since 1991.

Family Pride said its weekend will include a welcome reception, educational workshops presented by the Family Pride Coalition, a family dance, a kids' night out, family brunches, the Family Pride Coalition's 25th anniversary gala dinner, and all the fun of the Walt Disney World Parks and Resorts' attractions.

"Disney has been a wonderful support in the planning of a very special and exciting weekend for our families," said Aimee Gelnaw, executive director of the Family Pride Coalition.

The Family Pride Coalition, an advocacy group, says it is dedicated to advancing the well-being and the equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered parents and their families through mutual support, community collaboration, and public understanding.

Conservative groups have long blasted Disney World for its annual Gay Day event, which is not sponsored by Disney World, but which is implicitly endorsed by the Disney people, conservatives complain.

Critics are troubled that Disney allows its name to be used in connection with the "Gay Days" event.

"Let's be honest," Christian Action Network President Martin Mawyer told CNSNews.com last year. "Disney would never allow an event to be called 'KKK Days at Walt Disney World...Disney would use every legal muscle within their power to have their name removed from that event."

from OpinionEditorials.com, 2004-Jan-13, by Erin Brown:

Disney's Eye for the Queer Guy

Planning a trip to Walt Disney World early this June? If you're one of those types who still subscribes to traditional family values, you may want to reschedule. That is, unless you want little Jimmy and Susie to develop a more ``progressive'' understanding of what marriage, family, and conjugal love really mean.

The Family Pride Coalition has announced that it will hold its first-ever Walt Disney World gathering and convention on the weekend of June 17-20 (Father's Day Weekend) within the two-week wake of Walt Disney World's annual ``Gay Days'' event, a time-honored, and Disney-approved, tradition since 1991. Coincidence? Hardly. The Coalition, a grassroots group whose mission is ``to advance the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered parents and their families through mutual support, community collaboration, and public understanding,'' has followed suit to the fanciful kingdoms of Walt Disney World in the spirit of alternative lifestyle hoe-downs.

And why shouldn't it? The Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered (GLBT) community has garnered considerable support for these events since their original inception despite mounting opposition from conservative groups, and all with the Walt Disney Company's blessing.

Though Disney spokespersons repeatedly insist that they do not ``endorse'' these events, it is clear that the company is more than accommodating to members of the GLBT special interest machine who organize and participate in these events. One website, www.gayday.com relates that, in comparison with its conservative past, ``The Walt Disney Company is more likely to stand up to zealots who decry any nod toward fairness to gays and lesbians, sponsor fundraisers for AIDS-related charities, and will even roll out the welcome mat to the annual Gay Day revelers (without officially endorsing the events).''

A ``nod toward fairness'' is one thing, but preferential treatment is another. The Christian Action Network (CAN), a conservative values group who spearheads the opposition to Disney Gay Days has launched a campaign bent on exposing the acts of public lewdness and illegal activity they encountered during last year's Gay Days event. The campaign features numerous pictures and a video displaying men kissing, groping and simulating sex acts with one another, often sans clothing. Not to mention gender-bending individuals bizarrely and suggestively costumed enough to strike fear into any small child's heart - - and I'm not talking about Goofy, Donald Duck, or Tarzan!

Disney maintains that it upholds a policy that guests must at all times wear shirts and shoes, except of course in the water parks, and refrain from acts of public lewdness. Perhaps the security corps at Disney suffers from temporary blindness once a year.

CAN has requested of the Walt Disney Company's Chairman, Michael Eisner, that Disney ``arrest any Gay Days participant who engages in an unlawful display of public lewdness.'' In other words, Disney should enforce its fundamental policies prohibiting aberrant public behavior consistently 365 days of the year without making exceptions for select individuals. Consistency in the law's moral treatment of individuals is what fairness is all about.

The GLBT community is overtly antagonistic in its choice of Walt Disney World as the locale of what may be its largest worldwide circuit party. One of the CAN campaign's photos features the slogan on a popular tee-shirt for the event: ``Tickets... $200. Hotel Room... $75 a night. Dinner for Two...$60. All the shock and scared looks... Priceless.'' Slogans of this nature demonstrate that Disney Gay Day organizers and participants are scarcely within the realm of intelligent debate - - shock factor and arrogance are their ammunition. Besides, what could be a more effective choice for them to make a brazen statement than the number one travel destination in the U.S. for families with children? What date could be more conducive to the Family Pride Coalition's agenda of redefining the family than Father's Day? Sure, Disney is fun - - fun and full of impressionable young minds.

Maybe what it all boils down to for men like Eisner is money. Sadly, the resignation of Roy Disney, Walt's nephew, last month is a sign of the times for the Walt Disney Company. Any company that forfeits its integrity to the degree of losing the man closest to its heart and vision - - in this case Roy - - is headed for dark days.

The text of Roy Disney's regretful resignation letter has been publicly disclosed, detailing his displeasure with Eisner's handling of the company. Among his list of reasons for this, Disney writes, ``The perception by all of our stakeholders - - consumers, investors, employees, distributors and suppliers - - that the Company is rapacious, soul-less, and always looking for the `quick buck' rather than the long-term value which is leading to a loss of public trust.'' Well said, Roy. As long as Gay Days continue, and proliferate in the form of the Family Pride Coalition's convention, Walt Disney World will increasingly sully its reputation as the ``happiest place on earth.'' Well, maybe it all depends on what you mean by ``happy.''

###

Erin Brown is a graduate of Mary Washington College and has recently joined Frontiers of Freedom as a research and special projects associate. She has spent the last several months conducting research in the Heritage Foundation's Domestic Policy Department with a particular focus in Family and Society issues, Education, Poverty, and Welfare and Social Security reform. She is also part-time literature teacher at a private Christian High School in Centreville, VA.

from the New York Times, 2001-May-21, by William Safire:

A Polyandry Solution

[HARPERS FERRY, W. Va.] For the first time in a half-century, the State of Utah - eager to polish its image before it hosts the winter Olympics - decided to crack down on publicized polygamy.

Last week a man who lived in a trailer community with 5 wives and 25 children, and proudly boasted of his lifestyle on television, was convicted of the crime of bigamy. An estimated 30,000 other clandestine bigamists in Utah and neighboring states took that as a message to keep their multiple marriages to themselves.

Place that event next to another sociological development recently revealed by the U.S. Census. The old "nuclear family" - a married couple living together with one or more children - is no longer the norm in the U.S. In two generations, it has plunged from one in two to one in four. That means three-quarters of our households are people living alone, or with only one parent minding the kids, or couples - straight or gay - just hanging out together.

Throw three other facts into the pot. More married couples are splitting up than ever before. Scientific advances in nutrition and genetics, along with cures for diseases, are helping us stay alive longer. And with women living years longer than men, widowhood is increasingly a part of geezerhood.

What does this combination of events and social trends tell political economists? Because the graduating class of 2001 faces a future of later and ever-shorter family liaisons, it can expect that its grandchildren - the class of 2050 - will have their hands full visiting, much less paying taxes to support, a dozen or more direct and step-grandparents. Government will be the transfer agent of wealth, not from rich to poor so much as from young worker to middle-aged retiree.

And here's another probable outcome: a population out of the habit of lifelong marriage partnerships will likely be made up of old people living alone or forced into some kind of commune or group home. The bleak Hobson's choice will be isolation or regimentation.

Cheer up; there is a way out of tomorrow's brave new bind. Nobody is talking yet about the most sensible, least costly solution to the long-term loneliness of unchosen singlehood. It has been too revolutionary for the liberals, too offbeat for conservatives, too radical for feminists, too libertine for libertarians.

No, polygamy is not the answer. Not only has the harem lifestyle too often been associated with physical coercion, but the welfare system would soon be bankrupted. Government would have to step in because it's hard for any ordinary patriarch with 25 kids to make ends meet.

What is to be done? Time to break the taboo. If present trends continue - that is, if lifelong marriage further falls from fashion, the population ages and a pervasive societal loneliness becomes the New Great Depression - will the moment not come for the world to consider the legalization of polyandry?

As every bigamist should know, polygamy is the condition of having more than one spouse at the same time, while polyandry is sex-specific - the marriage of a woman with more than one man.

I estimate that 98 percent of the 30,000 bigamists are males with plural wives, which means that there are probably fewer than 600 polyandrists in active practice today, presumably in a conservative ratio of one woman to two men. These 200 women and their 400 husbands (whose identities are unknown to snooping neighbors) deserve a discreet salute for quietly pioneering America's future lifestyle.

One woman, in the security of being doubly beloved and beneficiaried, can surely provide life-extending companionship to two men. And when one husband passes on, either to his Maker or to some gold-digging bimbo, the long-lived polyandrist would still have the remaining man for mutual comfort and support.

The Polyandry Movement, first espoused in this space five years ago, met an underwhelming response. Aberrant fogies like me, married nearly 40 years to one woman, are selfishly disinclined to share, but two generations from now - given the woeful diminution of exclusive marriage commitment and the lengthening of life - the two-husband home may be the bedrock of the newest morality and the salvation of what's left of the American family.

from the New York Times, 2003-Aug-31, by Clifford Krauss:

Free to Marry, Canada's Gays Say, 'Do I?'

TORONTO, Aug. 30 -- When David Andrew, a 41-year-old federal government employee, heard that the highest Ontario court had extended marriage rights to same-sex couples two months ago, he broke into a sweat.

"I was dreading the conversation," he said, fearing that his partner would feel jilted when he told him that he did not believe in the institution. "Personally, I saw marriage as a dumbing down of gay relationships. My dread is that soon you will have a complacent bloc of gay and lesbian soccer moms."

When he moved in with David Warren, a 41-year-old software company project officer, he wrote up a set of vows that remains above their bed, seven years later. They promise "a confidant, playmate, partner in crime, biggest fan and protector." But they stop short of monogamy, which is something Mr. Andrew also says he does not believe in.

His skepticism about marriage is a recurring refrain among Canadian gay couples, who have not rushed to marry in great numbers in the weeks since June 10, when they became eligible. Rather, the extension of marriage rights has thrown gays here into a heated debate, akin to the one that embroiled the American civil rights movement in the 1960's, over how much "integration" is a good thing -- and what gay marriage should consist of.

How marriage affects gay and lesbian life in Canada, and wider society, is an issue being closely watched by gays in the United States, who see what is happening in Canada as a harbinger for American society.

In Canada, conservative commentators worry aloud that gay marriage will undermine society, but many gays express the fear that it will undermine their notions of who they are. They say they want to maintain the unique aspects of their culture and their place at the edge of social change.

It is a debate that pits those who celebrate a separate and flamboyant way of life as part of a counterculture against those who long for acceptance into the mainstream. So heated is the conversation that some gay Canadians said in interviews that they would not bring up the topic at dinner parties.

"Ambiguity is a good word for the feeling among gays about marriage," said Mitchel Raphael, editor in chief of Fab, a popular gay magazine in Toronto. "I'd be for marriage if I thought gay people would challenge and change the institution and not buy into the traditional meaning of `till death do us part' and monogamy forever. We should be Oscar Wildes and not like everyone else watching the play."

It is too soon to draw conclusions about how widespread gay marriage will become in Canada over time. Many same-sex couples say they need time to consider so basic a commitment, or are waiting for the anniversary of their first dates or of their commitment ceremonies to tie the knot.

Gay men seem more apprehensive about marriage than lesbians, and generally, couples with children, or thinking of having children, express more interest in marrying.

The ambivalence is reflected in the numbers of gay couples who have chosen marriage so far. While members of Toronto's gay population, by far Canada's largest, express support of the Ontario court's ruling and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's decision to introduce legislation to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide, they have not mobilized to defend the change. Even as some churches and conservative politicians have begun to mobilize against the legislation, demonstrations for it have been few and mostly small.

Between the June 10 court ruling and last Monday, 590 gay and lesbian couples had taken out marriage licenses in Toronto's city hall, out of a total of 5,500 couples receiving licenses. And more than a hundred of the gay couples were American who crossed the border to marry.

A total of 6,685 same-sex Toronto couples registered as permanent partners in the 2001 census, about one-fifth of the total across Canada.

Still, the numbers are enough to have spawned the beginnings of a gay marriage industry. The magazine Fab published a guide to Toronto's new gay marriage scene, with tips on bridal harnesses and blue leather garters, bachelor party strippers and where to find counterculture bouquets of green roses and black magic flowers.

But the issue also included an essay by Rinaldo Walcott, a sociologist at the University of Toronto, warning that marriage could be an agent of homogenization.

"I can already hear folks saying things like: `Why are bathhouses needed? Straights don't have them,' " he wrote. "Will queers now have to live with the heterosexual forms of guilt associated with something called cheating?"

Many gays and lesbians who celebrate their new rights view such thinking as retrograde.

"It's the vestiges of a culture of victimization, of a culture that's tied to being in a ghetto," said Enrique Lopez, 38, an investment banker who has been in a steady relationship for two years but says he is not ready to marry.

"The vast majority want to live innocuous, boring lives, and the option of marriage is part of that dream."

The ambivalence toward marriage is not confined to gays and lesbians, on either side of the border. Common-law arrangements represent 14 percent of all households in Canada, according to the 2001 census, considerably more than the figure for unmarried households in the United States, which the census of 2000 put at 9.1 percent.

All told 1,158,410 couples live in common-law arrangements throughout Canada, according to the 2001 census, which found 34,200 self-identified same-sex couples.

"So many of our American gay friends are so pro-marriage and excited that marriage is happening here," said Peter Blanchet, a 46-year-old opera singer. His partner, Brad Eyre, a 35-year-old senior Toronto city manager, interrupted, "The Canadians less so."

The two have been together for eight years and share a house, and they are thinking about marriage. Nevertheless, Mr. Eyre added, "I don't see the need to rush."

Because common-law couples have most of the same rights and obligations in Canada as married couples -- from jointly filing tax returns to spousal support after a breakup -- many gay couples here do not see much reason to marry.

"Physically, legally, emotionally, we don't feel the need to have a piece of paper to prove our union," said Penny Gyokeres, 30, an unemployed warehouse manager, who has lived for four years with Cheryl Fulcher, 44, a retail merchandise analyst.

But there are benefits for those who want to have children and share parental rights.

Rachel Hesson-Bolton, a 33-year-old driving instructor, said she was eager to be able to share the parenting responsibilities with her spouse, Katherine Hesson-Bolton, a 41-year-old fund-raiser, who recently gave birth to a boy with the help of a sperm bank. "I will be his mom, not his guardian," she said.

But Rachel said their marriage was more than about parenthood, adding: "I love the stability of our relationship. If there is one thing I can count on it's my family. We are so mainstream."

With her mohawk hairdo and her wedding band tattooed on her right biceps, Rachel looks anything but mainstream. The two are also an interracial couple who were married by a gay rabbi even though neither is Jewish. To Rachel, they also typify the melding of the married world with the gay and lesbian world.

"It's the people sitting home with their cats who are going to get married," she said. "They are already in the mind-set."

Tricia Lewis, a 42-year-old legal assistant, said she relished the mundane things that went along with her new marriage to Tanya Gulliver, a 34-year-old social justice worker at an Anglican church. She recalled entering a pharmacy near their home in Hamilton, Ontario, the other day to sign for a prescription for Tanya, who was waiting in their car.

"When I said to the pharmacist, `I'll sign for it because we're married,' he laughed his head off," she said.

"I said, `Dude, I hope you are laughing at something else.' He didn't know what to do, but I got the prescription," she said with a triumphant laugh.

from the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com, Best of the Web 2001-May-29:

Protection for Pedophiles?
A murder in Baraboo, Wis., where 17-year-old David Vaughn allegedly went to 49-year-old Kevin McCarthy's house, knocked on his door and beat him to death. WISC-TV reports Vaughn has confessed to the homicide, spurred, he said, by rumors that McCarthy "liked boys." Pat Barrett, the district attorney of Sauk County, tells the station that Vaughn will be charged with murder and with a hate crime. "One of the areas for the hate crime is sexual orientation, and certainly an allegation that someone is a child molester goes to their sexual orientation," Barrett says. "We believe that may support a hate-crime enhancer."

Before we remark on how ludicrous this is, some caveats are in order. McCarthy may well have been an innocent victim; as our Dorothy Rabinowitz has shown, phony allegations of child molestation are frighteningly common. Even if the rumors of pederasty were true, that would not justify Vaughn's alleged actions. This is America, not Afghanistan; a civilized society has no place for freelance executioners.

All that said, this case is the reductio ad absurdum of hate-crime laws. Child molestation, after all, is no "orientation"; it is a despicable crime. Vaughn's alleged crime is more shocking to the conscience if the victim was not, in fact, a member of the "group" in question, something that can't be said of hate crimes against, say, blacks, Jews or homosexuals. Gay-rights activists, who've struggled to win society's respect, should be especially outraged at Barrett's labeling of pedophilia as a "sexual orientation."

from the Associated Press, 2001-Mar-18:

Simi Valley church's program shocks some in community

SIMI VALLEY - A church is shocking some people in this conservative town by sponsoring sex education for high school-age youngsters that includes topics ranging from masturbation to whipped-cream fantasies.

"Oh my God," said Michelle Scharf, a mother of two.

The weeklong course, part of a sex education series called Our Whole Lives, will be offered next month by the United Church of Christ in this Ventura County town about 20 miles north of Los Angeles.

"It's a house of truth, a place where people can explore any topic," said the Rev. Bill Greene, head of the 80-member congregation. "Pleasure and being sensual and being aroused is part of being human."

The curriculum was developed through a national collaboration of the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association. The Our Whole Lives series, which includes lessons geared for kindergarten students to adults, stresses self-worth, sexual health, responsibility and "justice and inclusivity," according to the program's Web site.

Each Simi Valley class for teen-agers will be limited to 16 people. Students will be taught about abstinence but also about safe-sex methods, including how to use condoms.

Other topics range from homosexuality to building relationships. Exercises will include having participants create gay pride slogans and describe sexual fantasies involving whipped cream or other items.

Scharf said she is especially concerned about the lessons on condom use.

"I think the more you introduce to them, the more curious they become," she said. "It's just asking for trouble. It's condoning kids to have sex at a high school age."

Supporters say the program is designed to allow youngsters the freedom to ask frank questions about sex and obtain information they cannot get from school sex-ed programs.

"The decisions people make about sexuality are among the most important decisions they'll make," said Stuart Bechman-Besamo, who will lead the program along with his wife, Jeanie Mortensen-Besamo. "We want to help these people be well prepared through providing them accurate and full information."

"I think they go too far," said the Rev. Dave Wilkinson of Sonrise Christian Fellowship. "As a church we need to provide a very biblical, healthy view of sex, but I don't think showing kids how to put a condom on a banana is going to teach that."

"There's no data that this kind of information is dangerous or encourages kids to have sex," said Claire Brindis, an adolescent health professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who evaluates sex education programs. "It's the kids growing up in ignorance who make the poor mistakes."

from nerve.com, 2001-Mar-1, by Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University:

Heavy Petting

Not so long ago, any form of sexuality not leading to the conception of children was seen as, at best, wanton lust, or worse, a perversion. One by one, the taboos have fallen. The idea that it could be wrong to use contraception in order to separate sex from reproduction is now merely quaint. If some religions still teach that masturbation is "self-abuse," that just shows how out of touch they have become. Sodomy? That's all part of the joy of sex, recommended for couples seeking erotic variety. In many of the world's great cities, gays and lesbians can be open about their sexual preferences to an extent unimaginable a century ago. You can even do it in the U.S. Armed Forces, as long as you don't talk about it. Oral sex? Some objected to President Clinton' choice of place and partner, and others thought he should have been more honest about what he had done, but no one dared suggest that he was unfit to be President simply because he had taken part in a sexual activity that was, in many jurisdictions, a crime.

But not every taboo has crumbled. Heard anyone chatting at parties lately about how good it is having sex with their dog? Probably not. Sex with animals is still definitely taboo. If Midas Dekkers, author of Dearest Pet, has got it right, this is not because of its rarity. Dekkers, a Dutch biologist and popular naturalist, has assembled a substantial body of evidence to show that humans have often thought of "love for animals" in ways that go beyond a pat and a hug, or a proper concern for the welfare of members of other species. His book has a wide range of illustrations, going back to a Swedish rock drawing from the Bronze Age of a man fucking a large quadruped of indeterminate species. There is a Greek vase from 520 BC showing a male figure having sex with a stag; a seventeenth-century Indian miniature of a deer mounting a woman; an eighteenth-century European engraving of an ecstatic nun coupling with a donkey, while other nuns look on, smiling; a nineteenth-century Persian painting of a soldier, also with a donkey; and, from the same period, a Japanese drawing of a woman enveloped by a giant octopus who appears to be sucking her cunt, as well as caressing her body with its many limbs.

How much of this is fantasy, the King Kong-ish archetypes of an earlier age? In the 1940s, Kinsey asked twenty thousand Americans about their sexual behavior, and found that 8 percent of males and 3.5 percent of females stated that they had, at some time, had a sexual encounter with an animal. Among men living in rural areas, the figure shot up to 50 percent. Dekkers suggests that for young male farm hands, animals provided an outlet for sexual desires that could not be satisfied when girls were less willing to have sex before marriage. Based on twentieth-century court records in Austria where bestiality was regularly prosecuted, rural men are most likely to have vaginal intercourse with cows and calves, less frequently with mares, foals and goats and only rarely with sheep or pigs. They may also take advantage of the sucking reflex of calves to get them to do a blowjob.

Women having sex with bulls or rams, on the other hand, seems to be more a matter of myth than reality. For three-quarters of the women who told Kinsey that they had had sexual contact with an animal, the animal involved was a dog, and actual sexual intercourse was rare. More commonly the woman limited themselves to touching and masturbating the animal, or having their genitals licked by it.

Much depends, of course, on how the notion of a sexual relationship is defined. Zoologist Desmond Morris has carried out research confirming the commonplace observation that girls are far more likely to be attracted to horses than boys, and he has suggested that "sitting with legs astride a rhythmically moving horse undoubtedly has a sexual undertone." Dekkers agrees, adding that "the horse is the ideal consolation for the great injustice done to girls by nature, of awakening sexually years before the boys in their class, who are still playing with their train sets . . . "

The existence of sexual contact between humans and animals, and the potency of the taboo against it, displays the ambivalence of our relationship with animals. On the one hand, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition - less so in the East - we have always seen ourselves as distinct from animals, and imagined that a wide, unbridgeable gulf separates us from them. Humans alone are made in the image of God. Only human beings have an immortal soul. In Genesis, God gives humans dominion over the animals. In the Renaissance idea of the Great Chain of Being, humans are halfway between the beasts and the angels. We are spiritual beings as well as physical beings. For Kant, humans have an inherent dignity that makes them ends in themselves, whereas animals are mere means to our ends. Today the language of human rights - rights that we attribute to all human beings but deny to all nonhuman animals - maintains this separation.

On the other hand there are many ways in which we cannot help behaving just as animals do - or mammals, anyway - and sex is one of the most obvious ones. We copulate, as they do. They have penises and vaginas, as we do, and the fact that the vagina of a calf can be sexually satisfying to a man shows how similar these organs are. The taboo on sex with animals may, as I have already suggested, have originated as part of a broader rejection of non-reproductive sex. But the vehemence with which this prohibition continues to be held, its persistence while other non-reproductive sexual acts have become acceptable, suggests that there is another powerful force at work: our desire to differentiate ourselves, erotically and in every other way, from animals.

Almost a century ago, when Freud had just published his groundbreaking Three Essays on Sexuality, the Viennese writer Otto Soyka published a fiery little volume called Beyond the Boundary of Morals. Never widely known, and now entirely forgotten, it was a polemic directed against the prohibition of "unnatural" sex like bestiality, homosexuality, fetishism and other non-reproductive acts. Soyka saw these prohibitions as futile and misguided attempts to limit the inexhaustible variety of human sexual desire. Only bestiality, he argued, should be illegal, and even then, only in so far as it shows cruelty towards an animal. Soyka's suggestion indicates one good reason why some of the acts described in Dekkers book are clearly wrong, and should remain crimes. Some men use hens as a sexual object, inserting their penis into the cloaca, an all-purpose channel for wastes and for the passage of the egg. This is usually fatal to the hen, and in some cases she will be deliberately decapitated just before ejaculation in order to intensify the convulsions of its sphincter. This is cruelty, clear and simple. (But is it worse for the hen than living for a year or more crowded with four or five other hens in barren wire cage so small that they can never stretch their wings, and then being stuffed into crates to be taken to the slaughterhouse, strung upside down on a conveyor belt and killed? If not, then it is no worse than what egg producers do to their hens all the time.)

But sex with animals does not always involve cruelty. Who has not been at a social occasion disrupted by the household dog gripping the legs of a visitor and vigorously rubbing its penis against them? The host usually discourages such activities, but in private not everyone objects to being used by her or his dog in this way, and occasionally mutually satisfying activities may develop. Soyka would presumably have thought this within the range of human sexual variety.

At a conference on great apes a few years ago, I spoke to a woman who had visited Camp Leakey, a rehabilitation center for captured orangutans in Borneo run by Birute Galdikas, sometimes referred to as "the Jane Goodall of orangutans" and the world's foremost authority on these great apes. At Camp Leakey, the orangutans are gradually acclimatised to the jungle, and as they get closer to complete independence, they are able to come and go as they please. While walking through the camp with Galdikas, my informant was suddenly seized by a large male orangutan, his intentions made obvious by his erect penis. Fighting off so powerful an animal was not an option, but Galdikas called to her companion not to be concerned, because the orangutan would not harm her, and adding, as further reassurance, that "they have a very small penis." As it happened, the orangutan lost interest before penetration took place, but the aspect of the story that struck me most forcefully was that in the eyes of someone who has lived much of her life with orangutans, to be seen by one of them as an object of sexual interest is not a cause for shock or horror. The potential violence of the orangutan's come-on may have been disturbing, but the fact that it was an orangutan making the advances was not. That may be because Galdikas understands very well that we are animals, indeed more specifically, we are great apes. This does not make sex across the species barrier normal, or natural, whatever those much-misused words may mean, but it does imply that it ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings.

from Salon magazine, 1999-Jul-29, by Bill Wyman:

Woodstock 99: Three days of peace, love and rape
Rape accounts emerge in wake of music festival.

The Washington Post reports that police say at least four rapes occurred at Woodstock 99, held in upstate New York last weekend. The Post story includes one disturbing eyewitness report of a body-surfing woman pulled down into the crowd and gang-raped during Limp Bizkit's set.

"There clearly wasn't anything I could do," the Post reported counselor David Schneider as saying. "They're big brawny people and it seemed like most of the crowd around them were cheering them on ... It was so disturbing. You're thinking, if this girl was being raped, wouldn't all these people try to stop what was going on?"

Police confirmed four rape reports, but say that it might be difficult to prosecute offenders, given the dispersal of the crowd. The stories say others at the site reported "many more." Said the Associated Press: "Crisis intervention workers said they witnessed many more sexual assaults, some taking place in the mosh pit."

Another woman said she was raped -- apparently by more than one person -- in a wooded area; police said her inebriation made it difficult to get a clear story, however.

AP reports that festival organizers will turn over camera footage of the crowd to police. The three-day concert was already marred by a riot that occurred in the early morning hours Monday. Bands of concert-goers tipped over cars, looted and burned concession and souvenir trailers and destroyed ATM machines. Five were reported hurt, seven arrested.

Note: the mass media carpet bombing of the Clinton sex scandal, and the impeachment proceedings based on it, constitute a campaign of psychological warfare orchestrated by the establishment elite. The effect is to divide the public in a socially destructive manner, and to display gross degradation of the President cum king. This latter effect is a variation of the "Killing of the Divine King" mass trauma - as played out either deliberately or incidentally in the 1963 assassination of Clinton's hero, John Kennedy (and later, with RFK and MLK). The goal with the Clinton campaign is to demoralize and politically disempower the population, heightening their intellectual and moral stupor, further securing their obedience and manipulability.

For detailed coverage of the Juanita Broaddrick story, read The Broaddrick Files.

For a marvelous, incisive, thorough treatment of Bill Clinton's psychopathy, read Toward a Unified Theory of Clinton, by Chris J Barr, 1999-Mar-11

Read here Clinton's October 2000 interview with Michael Paterniti of Esquire Magazine.

from Jay Leno's monologue of 1999-Jan-5, c/o Washington Times/Woody West:

"Today the White House said [Bobbie Ann Williams] must have just sat on Monica's dress. ... That's what happened. I mean, who do you believe, a hooker or President Clinton? For most Americans, that's a tough one. ... Imagine if President Clinton does have an illegitimate son. I didn't even know he played in the NBA. ... Only President Clinton could distract people from a sex scandal with another sex scandal. ... Of course, the White House is still trying to put a positive spin on the whole thing. Like today the White House said, 'Hey, at least he didn't have oral sex with that woman.'... Despite all of this, according to the latest Gallup poll, President Clinton is still the most admired man in America. ... You can see why guys admire Clinton. You have sex on the job, you tell lies, you cheat on the wife and you get away with it. Most guys can only dream about this."

The following documents are in PDF 1.3 format (read with e.g. xpdf 0.90 or Adobe Acrobat reader v4.x):

Complete transcript of "In Camera Hearing Before the Honorable Susan Webber Wright, United States District Judge", 1997-Jan-12, in Paula Corbin Jones vs. William Jefferson Clinton, et al., LR-CV-94-290

Complete transcript of "Videotaped Oral Deposition of William Jefferson Clinton", 1998-Jan-17, in Paula Corbin Jones vs. William Jefferson Clinton and Danny Ferguson, LR-C-94-290, Judge Susan Webber Wright presiding

Affidavit of Paula Corbin Jones, 1997-Sep-29

Email from "CTConway" to Matt Drudge detailing the "distinguishing characteristic that Paula Jones says she believes she saw", 1997-Oct-8

Raw transcript of an interview of Juanita Broadrick by private detectives Beverly and Rick Lambert, 1997-Nov-13

Affidavit of Arkansas State Police officer Ronald R. Anderson, in camera, in the court of Judge Susan Webber Wright, 1998-Jan-12

Note on the following story: this is the leading edge of a length back-and-forth on the issue. In the end, the GAO reported that these accusations were well-founded.

from the Washington Times, 2001-Jan-26, by Joseph Curl with John McCaslin:

Clinton aides accused of theft, vandalism

What began three days ago as a story about "pranks" blossomed yesterday into an account of serious vandalism and thievery at the White House by embittered Clinton administration employees.

Bush administration officials said they are "cataloging" incidents that could constitute crimes, including the theft of china and silverware from the presidential Boeing 747 that took President Clinton and his party to New York after the inauguration of George W. Bush as president.

Before Clinton workers left the White House, someone cut telephone lines, overturned desks, littered offices with trash and scribbled lewd graffiti on office walls, say those with firsthand knowledge of the vandalism.

Faceplates identifying extensions from one telephone to another were switched, pornographic images were loaded into computer printers and filing cabinets were glued shut.

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer declined to answer repeated questions yesterday about exactly what the Bush people found when they arrived at the White House.

He denied a report that "an official investigation" is under way, but that might be a matter of what the meaning of "investigation" is.

"There is no investigation," he said. "What we are doing is cataloging that which took place."

The "cataloging" will not be the basis for criminal charges, but rather "just to figure out what took place."

Nevertheless, the Bush administration asked staffers to report any vandalism they find to superiors. Mr. Fleischer said the administration is not looking to cast blame.

"The president understands that transitions can be times of difficulty and strong emotion. And he's going to approach it in that vein. The question is, do you have [to] blame somebody in this town? . . . President Bush is not going to come to Washington for the point of blaming somebody in this town. And it's a different way of governing; it's a different way of leading."

That sentiment differed sharply from expressions of the day before, when Mr. Fleischer expressed concern about computer keyboards that were missing the letter "W," taken by some Clinton staffers as a gibe at the new president.

"If they're not found, the computer doesn't work. That's government property that is now going to have to be replaced or fixed" at taxpayer expense, he said.

That concern also prompted an angry response yesterday from a government-watchdog group as reports of more widespread vandalism grew.

"This is an outrage for taxpayers," said Sean Rushton, media director for Citizens Against Government Waste. "We should not be using general revenue to pay for vandalism. The individuals who did this should pay."

Mr. Rushton said the "unprecedented" trashing of the White House "surpasses even the normal excesses of the Clinton administration. What a gross ending."

Reports of vandalism escalated yesterday after Matt Drudge posted an item on his Internet site titled "White House offices left 'trashed': Porn bombs, lewd messages." And while top Bush officials deflected questions, others in the White House confirmed the reports, which grew as the day went on.

Sources told Reuters news agency that some offices were emblazoned with makeshift signs. One said "Office of Strategerie," a reference to a "Saturday Night Live" television skit, in which Mr. Bush is portrayed as someone who speaks poorly. Another said "Office of Subliminable Cyber Space." Paper in a Xerox machine had an unflattering picture of Mr. Bush printed on it.

Mr. Fleischer also acknowledged "there was a phone call made to the office of the vice president," but refused to say who placed the call.

There were reports that the vice president's offices in the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, had trash everywhere and that Tipper Gore had called Lynne V. Cheney, wife of Vice President Richard B. Cheney, to apologize.

Said Mr. Fleischer: "You know, I really stopped paying attention to all the different places."

The Bush officials are "cataloging" items missing from the president's airplane, dispatched by President Bush to take Mr. Clinton and his party to the Clintons' new home in New York.

Missing from the plane on arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport, The Washington Times was told by crewmen earlier this week, were all the porcelain china, silverware, salt and pepper shakers, blankets and pillowcases - most of it bearing the presidential seal.

Even a cache of Colgate toothpaste, without the presidential seal, was taken from a compartment beneath the plane's sink.

Former Clinton staffers discounted the reports.

"I was one of the last Clinton folks to check out on our final day and I did not see any vandalism or even problems with computers," said Mark Lindsay, who was head of the White House Office of Administration.

"Obviously, there are people who have strong feelings and there are people who have messy offices -you grow comfortable in an office that you have worked in for eight years. But since we were working up to the last minute, there was not a lot of time to move people in and out.

"But I did not see one instance of vandalism and it's unfortunate this is getting attention."

Karen Tramontano, the counselor to Mr. Clinton's chief of staff, John Podesta, told the Associated Press she was in the West Wing and adjacent office buildings late the night before Mr. Clinton left office, and also saw no vandalism.

"We left everything in good condition," she said. "We all left our offices intact."

from the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal, 2001-Jan-26, "Best of the Web":

Gary Aldrich Was Right

Everyone knows by now about the missing W's on White House computer keyboards, but the truly destructive "pranks" of departing Clinton staffers, first noted here Wednesday, are only now making it into the papers. The Washington Times reports:

Bush administration officials said they are "cataloging" incidents that could constitute crimes, including the theft of china and silverware from the presidential Boeing 747 that took President Clinton and his party to New York after the inauguration of George W. Bush as president.

Before Clinton workers left the White House, someone cut telephone lines, overturned desks, littered offices with trash and scribbled lewd graffiti on office walls, say those with firsthand knowledge of the vandalism.

The Washington Post adds that "a high-ranking Bush campaign official accused some Clinton staffers of taking White House paintings and trying to have them shipped to themselves" and that "a Clinton official confirmed that glassware was missing from the jet that flew Clinton and his staff out of Washington on inauguration day, but said the glass had shattered accidentally."

But the Post also claims that "a little tomfoolery is typical in transitions between presidents." The Los Angeles Times goes even further in playing down the story, carrying a report with the subheadline: "Rumors abound about pranks or malicious mischief Clinton staffers left in their wake, such as graffiti and unflattering pictures of Bush. Renovation work is to blame for some of the chaos" [emphasis ours].

The Drudge Report, which broke the Monica Lewinsky story back in 1998, was well ahead of the papers again: It posted a detailed report on the damage Wednesday evening and a follow-up last night, which noted that "President Bush told senior advisers on Thursday that he would not be inclined to order any prosecution." Bush's impulse is probably the right one: He has a country to run and an agenda to further, and prosecuting vandals from a defunct administration would be a distraction. Still, it would be deeply satisfying to see someone teach the miscreants a lesson.

The whole episode reminds us of Gary Aldrich, the much-maligned former FBI agent whose 1996 book, "Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House," was in large part an aesthetic critique of the Clinton White House's "Animal House" atmosphere. One anecdote from the book has particular resonance today:

Melba was our office's GSA cleaning lady. She was almost always cheerful, but for the past several weeks she'd seemed sad or depressed.

"Melba, I don't mean to pry, but is there something wrong, something I can help you with?"

Melba thought for a moment, and a worried look crossed her face before she blurted, "Mr. Aldrich, sir, no harm intended, but these new people are terrible! Every day we go into their offices and clean up after them, and the very next day it's as if we had never been there before. They're messy people, Mr. Aldrich. These people are sloppy. Some are real slobs, sir! They throw garbage on the floor, or they throw cups of coffee and miss the waste can and it splashes all over the wall. And they don't clean it up!

"It's as if they don't care, Mr. Aldrich, and I hate to say this, and you must never repeat this as long as I'm here, but sir, President Bush's people were much neater and much nicer to us. And that's the God's honest truth, sir." . . .

It wasn't long before Melba told me she was taking early retirement. She didn't want to go, but she couldn't bear to stay; watching the White House deteriorate was just too hard.

from The Drudge Report, 2001-Jan-24, by Matt Drudge:

WHITE HOUSE OFFICES LEFT 'TRASHED': PORN BOMBS, LEWD MESSAGES; LEGAL PROBE CONSIDERED

**Exclusive Details**

The Bush Administration has quietly launched an investigation into apparent acts of vandalism and destruction of federal property -- after incoming Bush staffers discover widespread sabotage of White House office equipment and lewd messages left behind by previous tenants!

Harriet Miers, 55, Assistant to President Bush and staff secretary will be investigating possible legal ramifications of the White House trashing and possible theft, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

"Miers is just beginning her investigation," a well-place source said late Wednesday from Washington. "The level of the trashing is very troubling, this is not just 'W' keys missing from keyboards."

The damage left by departing Clintonites goes "way beyond pranks, to vandalism", said a close Bush adviser.

White House employees aren't waiting to be interviewed by Miers. They are providing names of the worst malefactors, previous occupants of specific offices.

Photographic and audio evidence is being collected -- as the full scope of the damage becomes clear.

Bush's staff has been cautioned not to go public with the extent of the damage and the worst is being closely held among very top staffers for fear of leaks. But, according to sources, so far Bush officials have found:

* Phone lines were cut, rendering them inoperable.

* Voice mail messages were changed to obscene, scatological greetings. One Bush staffer had his grandmother call from the Midwest. She was horrified by what she heard on the other end of the line.

* Many phone lines misdirected to other government offices.

* Desks found turned completely upside down and trash deliberately left everywhere.

* Computer printers that were filled with blank paper but interspersed with pornographic pictures and obscene slogans that would be revealed only as items were run off the computer.

* 'W' keys weren't just pried off more than 40 keyboards, some were glued on with Superglue; some were turned upside down and glued on.

* Filing cabinets glued shut.

* VP Office space in the Old Executive Office Building found in complete shambles. Mrs. Gore had to phone Mrs. Cheney to apologize, first reported by Rich Galen's Mullings.

* Lewd MagicMarker graffiti found on one office hallway.

Separately, the WASHINGTON TIMES reported that Air Force One was "stripped bare" during the former president's "official" farewell flight to New York on Inaugural Day.

All the plane's porcelain china, silverware, salt and pepper shakers, blankets and pillow cases - most of it bearing the presidential seal -- were taken by Clinton staff, a military steward told the paper.

Developing...

from The Drudge Report, 2001-Jan-25, by Matt Drudge:

WHITE HOUSE TRASHING: BUSH ORDERS 'NO PROSECUTIONS'; DAMAGE ESTIMATES TOP $200,000

**Exclusive**

President Bush told senior advisers on Thursday that he would not be inclined to order any prosecution for acts of vandalism and destruction of federal property caused by previous tenants at the White House, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The damage to White House facilities is now estimated to top $200,000, according to insiders, with senior staffers now expressing concern that computer viruses may have been planted by bitter Clinton/Gore workers.

"We have reason to believe that some computers may have been infected," said a White House source.

The source indicates that new computers will likely be purchased for incoming staff.

The DRUDGE REPORT on Wednesday published details of the alleged damage to the White House compound. Harriet Miers, long time associate and assistant to President Bush, was tapped to investigate possible legal ramifications of the trashing.

The damage left by departing Clintonites goes "way beyond pranks, to vandalism", said a close Bush adviser.

The message "Bush Licker" written in magic marker was left in one hallway, according to an insider.

New White House press spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that officials were "cataloging that which took place."

When asked to describe what was done, Fleischer moved into spin cycle: "I choose not to describe what acts were done that we found upon arrival because I think that's part of changing the tone in Washington. I think it would be easy for us to reflect and to discuss these things and to be critical. President Bush chooses to set a different tone. The president understands that transitions can be times of difficulty and strong emotion. And he's going to approach it in that vein."

Developing...

from TPDL 2001-Oct-23, from the New York Post:

HOLLYWOOD'S TIN EAR

October 23, 2001 -- The widespread booing of Sen. Hillary Clinton at Saturday night's Madison Square Garden mega-benefit for the World Trade Center victims was regrettable - well, sort of - but hardly surprising.

After all, New York police and firefighters were given prime seats for the all-star concert, and they remember all too well what the state's junior senator has had to say about New York's Finest - pre-Sept. 11, that is.

Her husband, the former president, also took his share of jeers from the crowd, which apparently considered him an inappropriate choice to deliver a tribute to heroism (or even speak of it).

Once again, the booing was a little tacky - yet entirely understandable.

Besides which, we have to wonder: Why do the Hollywood types have to turn even an event like this one into a celebration of Bill and Hillary?

Miramax Films honcho Harvey Weinstein, who organized the concert with Paul McCartney, is one of the Clintons' closest friends and was perhaps their biggest Hollywood benefactor - and his devotion to the former First Couple is legendary, as is his role as one of Tinseltown's top Democrats.

Which may also explain why Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle were featured - while not a single member of the Bush administration appeared, even by remote video.

Even on a fabulous night like this one, the Hollywood types couldn't leave their partisanship at home.

How sad.

from Fox News, 2003-May-15, by Neil Cavuto:

Enough Already

Have any of you been following the latest on JFK? It seems he had his way with a 19-year-old intern named "Mimi," and now "Mimi" has spoken out.

Marion Fahnestock, now 60 years old, tells the New York Daily News it's all true. That while she couldn't type, she could indeed do other things to catch the commander-in-chief's attention.

No offense to Mimi, but please, stop. I don't care. I don't want to know.

I hear you've moved on, great. Now I want the rest of us to do the same. I mean, the guy's been dead for nearly 40 years.

Don't get me wrong. He was personable and smart, charismatic and engaging. But he is gone.

You know, my mother, being of Irish descent, loved Kennedy. I was only five years old at the time, but I still vividly recall her crying for days after he was killed. But we have to move on, people.

This national fixation with this guy is over-the-top. To this day Democrats clamor over whether they've got that Kennedy flare. To this day, candidates vie for who can seem the most Kennedy-esque. And to this day, media pundits obsess over that Kennedy ease with the press, even though this guy clearly bamboozled the press and us, and in some cases, the press happily, albeit quietly let him bamboozle away.

Stop it. Please. We have bigger things to worry about "now" than obsess over what intern was servicing the president "then."

It's a pity we remember more about Kennedy now by the company he kept than the things he did.

It's natural to fixate on such things. But it's weird, and it's not healthy.

We all need a 12-step program to de-Camelot ourselves.

He's dead. Marilyn Monroe is dead. Judith Exner is dead. Sam Giancana is dead.

Most of the cast of characters who dominated the scene then are long gone now, save Castro, and of course, Mimi.

The less I hear about either or both, the better.

from TPDL 2001-Jan-8, from the Wall Street Journal, by Dorothy Rabinowitz:

The Clinton Years

A decade ago it would have been hard to imagine a program like the five-part "Nightline" series beginning tonight (11:35 p.m. EST, on ABC), but then, the Clinton years have made much imaginable that was inconceivable before. By the time it ends viewers will have heard unvarnished opinion, and data such as no former staffers have ever before publicly uttered about any outgoing president and first lady -- a first lady fearfully volatile and punishing when challenged, as Bill Clinton's former press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, is not alone in noting. Mr. Clinton had a temper of his own -- a legendary one -- but it is clear, both from the "Nightline" series and from its companion report airing on "Frontline" next week (Tuesday, Jan. 16, at 9 p.m. EST on PBS) that it is Hillary Clinton's accusatory rages that remain unforgiven and unforgotten.

After "Troopergate" (the charges that when he was governor of Arkansas Mr. Clinton used state troopers to arrange amorous liaisons) and the Paula Jones charges, and the stonewalling on Whitewater, then senior White House adviser George Stephanopoulos recalls concluding that it was necessary for the president to appoint an independent counsel, and advising that there was no longer any choice but to do so. Mrs. Clinton responded with accusations of disloyalty, telling him "You never stood for us."

Anyone who stood up and tried to tell her that her policy was a bad idea was, says Dee Myers, "smashed down" and belittled "very personally." Ms. Myers, who suffered severe dressings down of her own at Mr. Clinton's hands, one of which she describes in detail, nevertheless announces that, in the end, she still feels a certain affection for him, for reasons she doesn't quite comprehend. Neither she nor any other of the commentators here seem inclined to any similar expression of affection for Mrs. Clinton -- not altogether surprising, given the portrait of the first lady that emerges in these anecdote-rich productions. They feared her in a way they never feared the president, their huggy scamp in the White House whose misadventures caused them nightmares and tears and regular bouts of fury.

Mr. Stephanopoulos couldn't believe his ears when he heard Mr. Clinton's voice on the telephone tapes that Gennifer Flowers recorded -- how stupid can you be, to make such a call in the middle of a campaign, he wants to know, now. He would have roughly the same response just after the state trooper stories emerged and the president began calling the troopers. It infuriated him, it was just like the calls to Gennifer. All the trouble came from "this maneuvering," he tells "Frontline." And this time it was worse -- calling these people from the Oval Office. "Just nuts."

The "Nightline" series (which offers roughly the same material as the somewhat more detailed "Frontline" documentary) takes us through the Clinton presidency chronologically, beginning with the 1992 campaign. A lot of years have passed since Bill and Hillary Clinton confronted their first nationally publicized crisis. Who knew -- as they testified to their mutual devotion on "60 Minutes" and Mrs. Clinton declared, in accents that have since lost a certain heartland twang, that she wasn't Tammy Wynette standing by her man -- what was yet to come? The troopers, maybe, and a few others, but surely not the core staffers who had come, as "Nightline" reports, trembling over the prospect that this scandal might destroy the campaign. James Carville cried a river. And all for nothing. The team had not yet learned what the comeback kid could do -- though not, to be sure, without the help of his wife.

"Nightline" delivers a vast amount of material in shapely fashion, capturing, in one vivid scene after another, almost every key drama of the Clinton years. There is the first great issue, summed up in Brit Hume's semi-question, hurled during a raucous press conference, in which he pointed out that instead of an instant laser focus on the economy, as the president had promised, he was busy leading gays-in-the-military week. It wasn't that they wanted this entanglement just then, Ms. Myers observes, they simply didn't know how to get out of it.

In due time, the problem of Whitewater came knocking and the Washington Post wanted documents. Republican David Gergen, who had come on to help out in what had begun to be perceived as a failing presidency, had some advice for Mr. Clinton which was, in brief, that the documents should be handed over. As far as he was concerned that was fine, the president said -- now all that was necessary was to convince Mrs. Clinton. An impossible task since, as Mr. Gergen relates, the first lady simply refused to return any of his phone calls. She had already made up her mind; no one was turning any papers over.

If Mr. Gergen's arrival disturbed the core Clinton team, Dick Morris's entry was cause for hair-tearing. The group's detestation of him is visceral. He isn't one of them, politically. Robert Reich complains that he was a cabinet member after all, and he had to tolerate submitting ideas to Mr. Morris, who would then take a poll to see if they flew. Mr. Morris himself relates, with relish, how he wrote the State of the Union address in secret. Such was his power, for a time, that every important plan and strategy the other staffers developed could all be upended by a single phone call between the president and Dick Morris. No doubt they all felt immensely superior to him, for all the reasons Messrs. Stephanopoulos and Reich and the rest describe -- but it's hard to avoid the feeling that he was also the handiest vessel for frustration in the hotbed of paranoia that was the Clinton White House.

Still, they had periods of pride and triumph. With Mr. Clinton's victory in the face-off over the government shut-down, Leon Panetta, for one, felt powerfully reassured in all the reasons he'd come to work for this president. In the midst of calamity, they found causes for pride, none of them enough, in the end, to make any one of these witnesses to the Clinton presidency look other than grim, or confused, or both, as they try to assess Mr. Clinton's works and his place in history. There is, on the other hand, nothing confused or grim about these extraordinary documentaries.

from TPDL 2000-Dec-12, from NewsMax, by Carl Limbacher et al.:

Liberal Press Continues Sex Investigations of Bush Boys, Harris

The election nightmare may soon be over.

But the liberal press outlets may be seeking retribution.

One victim of their vengeance has been Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

She has been accused of everything to tar her reputation.

The New York press mentioned weeks ago that investigations were under way involving an alleged romance between her and Gov. Jeb Bush.

The irreverent, liberal CounterPunch newsletter, edited by Jeff St. Claire and Alex Cockburn, report that the media have no plans to let Harris and the Bush boys go once the election thing is over.

CounterPunch says in its most recent edition that reporters have been tipped off by "Tallahassee sources" who are now alleging that Harris never had an affair with Jeb Bush.

Instead, the newsletter says, reporters are investigating gossip that W. and Harris had a long-standing relationship.

Reportedly, some press have already started comparing travel and other records, trying to show the pair were in the same cities together.

Does it matter that as high-ranking state officials the pair may have been in the same cities for official conferences?

The press doesn't think so.

The lengths the big media are taking to discredit the Bush family doesn't stop with W. and Jeb.

CounterPunch says the press has also focused on the sons of Jeb.

Jeb's son, George, is one target.

In 1994, he had a bad breakup with a girlfriend and ran his Ford Explorer over the young lady's front yard.

More "scandal" being peddled by the media: Jeb's other son was discovered by police in a car with a girlfriend, windows fogged, and not fully clothed.

With Gore the apparent loser, the media-backed vendettas will continue. The politics of personal destruction are alive and well.

from TPDL 2000-Jul-31, from the Boston Globe 1999-May-27, by John Ellis:

Dangerous lies

As a first-time presidential candidate, he lied about how he avoided military service, lied about drug usage, lied about his extramarital affair with a former state government employee, lied about his role in Arkansas real estate transactions, lied about his accomplishments as governor and lied about what he would do if elected president. But that was OK because things would be different when he took the oath of office.

The day before he was sworn in as president, Clinton told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that he planned to change US policy toward Iraq. The very next day, he denied saying any such thing, which was a lie. He lied when he took the oath of office (saying that he would see to it that the laws were faithfully executed) and there followed a torrent of lies, half-truths and outright falsehoods that have since made it impossible to take anything the president says at face value.

Looking back over the last 6 1/2 years, the collected lies of William Clinton test the hard drive of memory.

He lied about Whitewater. He lied about Castle Grande. He lied about the firing of the White House travel office personnel. He lied about his staff's mishandling of FBI files. He lied about the circumstances surrounding the suicide of White House counsel Vince Foster. He lied about a vast White House effort to hush up former assistant attorney general and convicted felon Webster Hubbell.

He lied to his friends, and he told lies about his adversaries. He lied on policy matters big and small. He lied on political matters big and small. And when it came time to gear up for his reelection campaign in 1996, he lied with renewed and reckless abandon.

He lied about Democratic Party fund-raising efforts in 1995-96. He lied about his own fund-raising on behalf of the Clinton-Gore Committee. He lied about the involvement of the Riady family and Chinese operatives in these fund-raising efforts. He lied about the damage done to the national security as a result of those efforts.

After he was reelected in 1996, he lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He lied about his efforts to cover up that relationship. He lied to his wife, his daughter, his staff, his Cabinet, and his constituents and authorized a vast public relations campaign to slander duly appointed officers of the US Department of Justice charged with investigating many of the lies listed above.

He lied in a federal civil suit, and he lied to the federal judge who presided over that case. He lied, repeatedly and under oath, to a grand jury in a federal criminal investigation. And along the way he engaged his minions to lie about Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones, who accused him of sexual harassment and about Juanita Broaddrick, who accused him of rape. He brushed the rape charge aside, using his lawyer as a mouthpiece, but the charge stands uncontested on any important detail.

So it should come as no surprise that Clinton's contention that ''to the best of my knowledge no one has said anything to me about any espionage, which occurred by the Chinese against the labs, during my presidency'' is a lie. Or that ''I can tell you that no one has reported to me that they suspect such a thing has occurred'' is also a lie. These lies concern the largest spy scandal since the Rosenbergs.

On Monday, New York Times columnist William Safire expressed puzzlement as to why the president would lie about something he really didn't have to lie about.

After all, Chinese espionage at US nuclear weapons facilities began during the Carter administration and continued through the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton presidencies. Surely there was enough blame to go around. Surely the national security interests of the United States superceded the presidents need to prevaricate.

It was a wonderfully naive column, assuming as it did that Clinton could make the distinction between lying about unimportant matters (as his lying was characterized during the impeachment hearings) and lying about matters of state. But there is no distinction. Clinton lies because he is a pathological liar.

In the wake of the Cox Report, which details the wholesale theft of America's most precious nuclear secrets and the Clinton administration's stunning indifference to its discovery, nothing will change. No one will resign in disgrace. No one will be fired. And the president and his handlers will continue to lie about what happened, when it happened, and why it was allowed to continue to happen.

All these lies, and hundreds more like them, have made liars of us all. We allowed them. We have accepted them. We are now complicit in them. [Not me! -AMPP Ed.]

There was a time when Clinton's lying was his problem, but that time has long passed. Clinton's lying is our problem now. We ignore it at our peril.

from TPDL 2000-Oct-31, from the Washington Times, by Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder:

Lying is an art

Lying definitely should not be left to amateurs. It is a serious business best left to professionals. Some entire professions, like law and accounting, are based on lying. "Your Honor, my client (a mass murderer, privately thinks the lawyer) is better than a Boy Scout; he is actually a Girl Scout who spends his days looking for old women to help cross the street." An accountant devotes his entire life trying to figure out how to cheat the government and prepare tax returns to show a loss for businesses that earn 10 million dollars a year. Some occupations are not wholly based on lying, but a little lying helps matters. What hair dresser, after messing around for an hour on a customer's hair, producing a result that looks like a Brillo pad that fell into a Mixmaster, would not tell his customer that her hair looked great?

All presidents lie. Richard Nixon had the decency to twitch and sweat when he lied. President George Bush was uncomfortable with his lying so when he lied he never was able to make his hands move in unison to reflect the lies that came out as he spoke. When he said taxes would go "down," he indicated "up" with his hands. Mr. Clinton, on the other hand, was comfortable with lying. But don't get us wrong - he doesn't lie all the time - only when he talks.

One of the problems with Vice President Al Gore is that he lies even when he doesn't have to, and in a way that the press has, because they are now on a lie alert, been able to pin down, literally, in minutes. Mr. Gore is egalitarian in his lies, whether they are about creating the Internet, discovering the Love Canal, serving as the basis for the novel, "Love Story," authoring the Earned Income Tax Credit, a story about a particular crowded Florida class room, an old lady collecting tin cans, a Buddhist temple, or listening to songs that were not written until after he said he heard them - to name a few examples. Ordinarily in such a case you would not send a man to the White House - you would send him to the nut house.

The voting public should not have to become psychoanalysts to figure out Mr. Gore's complexes and the insecurities that might cause him to lie. He apparently has his own remedy to his "truth problem" in Joseph Lieberman, or at least he would have access to one of Mr. Lieberman's rabbis, who seem available to give exceptions and dispensations whenever necessary. Mr. Lieberman had the attention of the world when he fearlessly stood before the Senate and lectured for 20 minutes that Mr. Clinton was the worst lowlife to ever hold national office. But, at the end of the speech, he indicated that maybe Mr. Clinton wasn't that bad, and just because he was a degenerate doesn't mean he still couldn't be a good president.

There is another kind of lying which Hillary Clinton and O.J. Simpson have in common. This is to distort a fact in order to give it an acceptable interpretation. O.J. Simpson was found, in his criminal case, to be not guilty of murder. He and his lawyers immediately declared he was found to be "innocent." Not so. The jury never found that he was innocent, but rather found his guilt was not proved "beyond a reasonable doubt." This is quite different from O.J. Simpson's position, and as a matter of fact he was found to be "responsible" in a later civil trial, which used a different standard of proof.

Three months ago Independent Counsel Robert Ray, in his report to the three federal judges that supervise his office, concluded that, all things considered, a criminal case could not be successfully brought against Mrs. Clinton. Details of that report were just released. It seems that Mrs. Clinton, under oath, totally denied any role in the Travel Office dismissals. However, Mr. Ray showed that she had eight conversations with White House staff on the subject.

Thomas McLarty, former White House chief of staff, and David Watkins, a senior White House aide, appeared before a federal grand jury and refuted Mrs. Clinton's story. Mrs. Clinton's lawyer, David Kendall called the whole thing a "semantic quibble" which is a little like saying World War II was a dispute with a little man with a mustache over a parking space.

American children have, until now, been brought up with the story of George Washington and the cherry tree and told that the only way to get ahead in life is not to lie. Perhaps it is more realistic to tell them that the only way to get ahead in life is to learn how to lie.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-29, from FrontPageMagazine.com 2000-Aug-24, by Christopher Hitchens:

Dr. Strangelove in the White House

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS was the guest speaker at our Wednesday Morning Club luncheon last week. The relentless Clinton critic and author of No One Left to Lie To lashed into the Clinton regime before an appreciative audience of Hollywood conservatives at the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel. Here is a full transcript of his remarks.

Introduction by Ann Coulter

Thank you. It's an honor to introduce Christopher Hitchens. I actually wasn't prepared for this. I'm just Chris's stalker. I just show up wherever he's speaking, because he'll call the President a rapist, and that always perks me up.

I don't actually have any biographical information for you, but I know he writes for Vanity Fair, and he exposed the President not only as a rapist but a murderer in the bombing of the aspirin factory and many other foreigners that Clinton was willing to kill in order to distract from his personal problems. I will say that the first time I met Christopher Hitchens was not when we were smoking in a non-smoking area - though we've done that a lot. We were supposed to be having a debate. I attacked Clinton from the right, then he stood up and attacked Clinton from the left. So I thought it was a really, really excellent debate. But I really don't think you want to hear any more from me. Let me introduce the wonderful Christopher Hitchens.

[Applause]

Remarks by Christopher Hitchens

Thank you very much, Ann, and thank you very much David [Horowitz].

I'm here to try to make trouble for the Democratic Convention. I was at the independent media center for the "Shadow Convention" last night when the forces of law and order came to close it down and the riot police came to move people out of the building on the spurious pretext that there was a bomb scare. We didn't get to make our point against the platform. And for a while out there on the streets, it looked quite crunchy and tasty and promising and menacing. I'm in favor of polarization and always have been. There was something rather meek, still, about the liberals in the crowd. I remember thinking, "What we need here is a couple of hardened street fighters." And I thought, "I wish I had Horowitz's cell phone number at that exact moment." Strange how these things come to you.

I have the sensation that at a meeting like this, people come with the intention of speaking as well as listening. So I'll condense, as best I can, what I have to say, and then we'll be together.

We have an eyewitness account of Benjamin Franklin leaving the meeting at Philadelphia, where the Constitutional discussions were concluded. And as he came out into the street, an old lady with the last name Griffith - it was certainly a Welsh name - came up to him and said, "Well doctor, what have you given us?" And Franklin turned to her and said, "Madam, we have given you a republic - if you can keep it.

Now, I don't know how many of you watched the speech last night, but I watched it twice because an addiction to polarization is an indicator - the leading indicator - of masochism. And I thought, "Yes, I know what kind of republic this is. It's a banana republic.

You have to recall to your minds that fair, complacent, contented face - the face that says, "I got away with the whole thing and there's nothing you can do about it." And he's reading to you - I don't know if it reminds me more of Huey Long or George Orwell - but it is said of Huey Long that when he first meditated his campaign for running, he called all the fat cats of his state together and said, "Those who come in with me now will get big pieces of pie. Those of you who delay and come in later, you get smaller pieces of pie. Those of you who do not come in at all will get... good government. Fine government."

Well, there's the implicit moral blackmail of that, and then of course, there's the 1984 moment where the audience listens helplessly while the radio produces endless statistics about how everybody's life is better all the time. Idiotic statistics about greater prosperity, greater production, greater fulfillment of norms. Everything. Women will soon cease to menstruate, there'll be five crops a year, and we're on the road to conquering all known diseases. We have a happiness pill already in production, and you're supposed to listen and be grateful to the government for its ceaseless work on your behalf.

There's always a sinister downside to the reeling off of statistics like that by the great leader, from whom all blessings flow, the fountainhead of all this prosperity which he's done nothing himself to generate -- in fact, having done, to my knowledge, not a day's work in his entire life. And having no skills, except the obvious ones of the huckster, there's a sinister implication to this. That is that, given that this cornucopia, this Niagara of blessings and prosperity is being showered upon you by the agency of your Federal Government and its plump spokesman, you should be grateful enough to not ask too many questions. That's the sinister downside of these idiotic implications of prosperity and happiness, this Brave New World.

One of the legacies of Clintonism is that a large number of our citizens, I fear, have become accustomed to the idea of saying, "Yes, you may be right about, say, the rule of law" - just to take an example at random, which appears to be extensively trampled - "but the Dow Jones is doing pretty well." Now, that's a legacy of a sort. The question is what Dr. Franklin and Mrs. Griffith would have thought about such a tradeoff - especially in a country where you can't be forced to make such a tradeoff, and in point of fact, you can have democracy and the rule of law, and still enjoy the fruits of your own labor without presidential permission. But the syllogism doesn't quite run that way. Or does it?

Now among the people who work hard and play by the rules - of whom, I'm sure, no one here would exempt themselves - let me ask you to consider two people who have had a real share in this cornucopia of prosperity whose names were not mentioned last night and whose names will not be mentioned all this week: James Riady and Roger Tamrez. Mr. James Riady is the front man for the Indonesian dictatorship and also for the Chinese military-industrial complex. We don't know anything like enough about him, and we hope and I intend to find out a lot more. But I can tell you two things about him right now. One: he has no vote in any United States election, not being a citizen. The second thing is that he easily outvotes all of you in this room and all your families and all your friends. He has far more political power than you do. He outvotes you all the time. That's because he can meet President Clinton in the back of a limousine and hand him a personal check, which he did, to the sum of perhaps a million and a half - maybe more - dollars.

Some of Mr. Riady's generosity was also showered on Mr. Webster Hubbell, Mr. Clinton's choice - after all, he wanted a Cabinet that looked "more like America" - for the post of Deputy Attorney General. Is your image of America a place where the Justice Department is run by Webster Hubbell? I don't know. It wouldn't be mine. The sweepings of the criminal class in Arkansas are promoted to the Department of Justice. And the man is hardly in town before he's going straight to jail. It's an indoor record for a Deputy Attorney General to go to jail.

As a jailbird, he's not much good as anybody's legal advisor. Let's stipulate that as uncontroversial. But he might be induced, perhaps, to testify against his boss. So on the very day that he's going to jail, he receives a very large subvention of money retaining his legal services from Mr. James Riady who, two days ago, met the President in the Oval Office-the center of your democracy. The ventricle chamber of the heart of your democracy, the presidency. Now it's considered a "private question" where events that go on in it are "matters of privacy." Let that pass. At that meeting, Mr. Clinton meets Mr. Riady. Mr. Riady then gives Mr. Hubbell lots of money. Mr. Hubbell then goes to jail and keeps his mouth shut. Mr. Hubbell's telephone conversations from jail are legally monitored and he's heard to say, "I guess I'll have to roll over one more time."

This is a banana republic, ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends. The Mexican electorate has stopped putting up with this kind of thing. And they've stopped putting up with it, by the way, because they're more prosperous. So the argument that prosperity means you should keep your mouth shut and still your critical faculties is an even more degenerated one than looks at first sight.

So there's Mr. Riady, and when Mr. Clinton is asked by Justice Department investigators last month, "You met Mr. Riady and you took a large check from him?"

"Yes I did."

"What was it for?"

"I don't remember."

"You met him again in the Oval Office. Wasn't that the case?"

"Yes I did."

"Do you remember what you talked about?"

"No, I have no recollection of the subject of the conversation."

"You accept that Mr. Riady gave a large sum to Webster Hubbell the following Tuesday?"

"Yes, That I now understand to be true."

"Was there anything in your conversation that might have led Mr. Riady to have made this donation?"

"I have no recollection of that, Your Honor."

This is Mr. Briefing Book, Mr. Details now. The man who knows every clause of the Family and Medical Leave Act. A man of very potent recall has acquired amnesia syndrome when these matters come up. This too, and the insult that's implied in it to those who have to listen these answers, are the signs and symptoms of a banana republic.

Now Mr. Tamrez I needn't waste much time on. He's a man who, in the Lebanese business community, is slightly [unintelligible]. [Laughter] And I mean no slur on the Levantines, of whom are a number of my friends. But the Beirut business community has, in the past - their Chamber of Commerce, let's say - has often been forced to blush at its own excesses. Roger Tamrez is thought of as a rank outsider in those circles. We have a video of him turning up also in the White House-in a public room of the White House, in the Map Room of the White House. We don't know if he could ever afford the rent for the Lincoln Bedroom. But we do know that unmarried couples were not allowed to use the Lincoln Bedroom because, after all, this is an ethical administration, possibly the most moral one, in fact, in history. But he said he got into the Map Room for a White House coffee, and the video tape shows him greeting the President and the President saying, "Nice to see you again, Mr. Tamrez." Suddenly the memory is terrifically good.

He knows him right away and knows what name to call him and knows that they've met before. Which means he's met him at least twice, which was more times than Mr. Clinton met with his cabinet that year. He only met his cabinet twice: once to lie to them about Monica Lewinsky, and send them out into the Streets. Miss Albright, Mr. Gore, all of them, every one of them with no resignation, no protest and no demur, out into the street to bleat like sheep the party line and to disgrace themselves, and yes, to make it look like a banana republic. That was the first meeting of his cabinet that year. The second was a few months later to tell them, "Sorry about that. We're having to modify the line. Now, I lied, but I'm a victim of a right- wing conspiracy." And you know what? They swallowed that too. And nobody resigned. And nobody walked. There isn't a single person left, therefore, in this administration - and that includes the top of its ticket - who can claim to look on you, or at you, or should be allowed to address you with a shred of self- respect or pride or manhood about them. These are people who have lowered themselves, disgraced themselves - for nothing - and who now dare to come before you as "reformers." This is not conscionable. And though, of course I like it when you laugh, I hope you may at least consider weeping or puking as well.

I go back a long way with this. I covered Mr. Clinton during the New Hampshire primary in 1992, and I formed the opinion then - and wrote and published the opinion then - that there was something monstrous about him, that it was not true that you just had to expect a certain amount of corruption and deceit and mendacity and ruthlessness and want of scruple from any candidate. Everyone is familiarized by now to that idea. We're all encouraged -- as citizens of a banana republic, as we are -- to think "They all do it." That, by the way, is a banana republic by definition. Members of the male sex in this audience are encouraged to believe and are told all the time by the media that they're all the same when it comes to women. But any man who can look at Bill Clinton and say, "Yeah, we're all like that" is degrading himself and abandoning his self-respect. It's an insult to be told that everybody's like this. There wouldn't be a woman left standing in America if it were true, of course, but there are other reasons to know it's not. There are reasons in your own dignity to know that that's a degrading thing to let go unanswered.

[Applause]

So I thought, "Well this guy, I can prove, is unusually squalid about money, unusually nasty about women, and unusually - unusually - committed to lying, even when the truth would do - which by the way, is a bad sign: the sign of a pathological liar. So that's what I thought of him in New Hampshire. And you know what? I haven't had to take back a word of what I said then. And I have to say this for myself, because I don't have a witness to say it for me - I could find one - but the other members of my profession wouldn't want to read what they were writing about the New Democrat, "Morning in America," "A Fresh, New Approach," "the liberated and open culture of the 1960s at last gets its chance." They didn't know what they were getting, some of them. But some of them did, and they just wrote the party line story.

Why did I think, potentially, that he was monstrous? It's a mistake, often, to say "I've got three points," because then people start counting as you make them. And then they don't just start looking at their watches, but start shaking them. So I know I'm taking a bit of a risk, but I will give you three reasons why this President is not like all the rest, hasn't been like all the rest, why his legacy, therefore won't be like all the rest.

The first one is this: Faced with the lies that he had told about a woman who loved him named Gennifer Flowers, who he's since had grudgingly to admit under intense legal pressure to one sexual contact with - not knowing, incidentally that it's the height of bad manners to sleep with someone only once - that admission was grudgingly rung from him. He lying about all that and trashing her. He doesn't just lie about the encounter. He has to lie about the women. The women have to be trashed. This is not what all men do. This is not what all men do. If men will lie about a sexual indiscretion - if I can say it without having too stormy a rebuttal - it should be partly to protect the lady. At least partly. And that's part of what a gentleman may be said to do. You don't do that by trashing the woman herself - saying she's a gold-digger, a liar, a slut, and the rest of the business.

Anyway, caught this way, and sinking in the opinion polls, he flew back to Arkansas, his home state - itself a micro-banana republic - and plucked from death row a mentally disabled and retarded black defendant named Ricky Ray Rector and snuffed him - to show that he, Clinton, could be tough, and was a hands-on guy, and was not a bleeding heart. Now, I could have devoted my entire speech to an account of what happened to Mr. Rector and how people in the Arkansas prison system resigned over what happened. And I could harrow up your soul and freeze your blood in telling you how revolting that episode was. But suffice it to ask this: Can you imagine what would have happened to a conservative Republican governor who, in the middle of a tough race, had decided to snuff a mentally retarded black defendant? Yeah, you can. Ricky Ray Rector's name, which is not a very widely known name, would be known to all of you. You wouldn't be able not to hear it. And rightly so. I noticed that did not happen. The other thing I noticed with alarm was that the liberal intellectuals and journalists and academics who would normally make the running on such a thing had decided to keep quiet - had made a deal, made a pact, had, in effect, sold their principles already to a politician of unusual ruthlessness and unscrupulousness. And that was a lesson worth learning back then, because it prepared me for what was coming down the track.

The second reason why I think Mr. Clinton is an unusual and potentially monstrous politician is the incident that Ann briefly mentioned and I've written about at great length in my book is the decision to destroy a pharmaceutical plant on the outskirts of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan on the day before Monica Lewinsky returned to the Grand Jury. Again, I could harrow up your soul and freeze your blood by giving you the full details of that. I can give them to you for ten dollars even. [Laughter] But I can tell you also - and Washington now does not dispute it: I had a very tough series of arguments with people at the time, but now it has all gone away. They've folded, they know that was "Wag the Dog." People from the National Security Council, people from the CIA, from the State Department, the Defense Department have all come forward to testify that everybody knew at the time that was a bogus target. It was, in fact, the only plant making medicine in the whole of that benighted country. So the number of people who died to save that beautiful face, that gorgeous face - who's got a copy of my book - someone hold one up - [shows book] THAT face - how many people do you say should die to save that face? Or the one next to it? So that's what you are asked to do, ladies and gentlemen. That's what he believes you would do. That's what he believed he could get from you. He thought he could get - from you -- a bounce in the polls by killing people to save his face.

Now listen: I was as critical as many people and maybe more than some about Ronald Reagan's gunboat diplomacy in Beirut and even Grenada. But when you said the worst you could say about that, you could not say that Ronald Reagan had committed the armed forces of his country and used cruise missiles against civilians and civilian targets because he recently had had a row with Nancy. In other words, this was a Strangelove moment. This was the moment all the liberal intellectuals had been ready for since Stanley Kubrick first began using celluloid. The Strangelove moment had come. It had really happened. A President had really, in a psycho manner, deployed the armed forces of his country and been prepared to shed blood, for his own face and his own distraught personality. But where were the people who would normally find such a thing so funny? Or so apt? Or so ironic? Once again, the whole of that community of ironic intellectuals and liberal commentators and investigative journalists was completely silent and complicit. And once again, it had been shown, as with Flowers and Rector that there's something really unpleasant in the mind of this man: some really revolting, deep, reptilian connection between sex and death - it's no exaggeration to say. This is twice now that he's snuffed people to cover the filth of his sex life. This is an extraordinary thing. This has never happened before in the history of the United States.

Nor has my third and closing example. Al Gore was asked in New Hampshire at a Town Hall meeting during the primary by a woman - a civilian, a volunteer, a voter named Katherine [unintelligible] - a question that has never been asked before in the history of the republic: "Mr. Vice President, is there a rapist in the Oval Office?" Is there a rapist in the Oval Office? Katherine [unintelligible] would be very impressed by the taped, transmitted testimony of Juanita Broaddrick who claims, in my opinion, completely convincingly, to have been raped by the then-Attorney General of Arkansas. I have in my book two other women who had exactly similar experiences with him. They have in common with Juanita Broaddrick several things. One, they're liberal Democrats. Two, they're political supporters of the President. Three, all have since, are happily married with children and wish to keep it as far as possible a secret - none of them wanting a book contract, none of them wanting any money, none of them wanting any reward, none of them wanting any publicity, all of them reporting the same tactics: being battered and bitten hard on the face in order to secure their compliance. When I see Clinton biting his own fat lip, I think that's bad enough. When I think of him sinking his teeth into a woman's lip and telling her, "Bitch, be quiet," then I think a country that puts up with it is in some kind of desperate trouble. A culture that turns away from the stories of these women is in real trouble.

All of this was done in plain sight; all of it, or most of it in the evidence room during the President's trial. Not one Democrat went to see it. Not one Congressman went to visit that evidence room. Not the ethicist Mr. Lieberman. Not the moral prince and moral tutor from Connecticut. [He] didn't go and look at the evidence on Juanita Broaddrick.

We have to ask ourselves what it is that makes people want to look away, because it's been a very skillful legacy - a very skillful mixture and mingling of three or four volatile and contradictory ingredients: A great alliance between privatized, corporate-based political corruption, combined with a very careful use of political correctness as a defense. Quite an ingenious combination. Mention the donations that have come from shady sources in China, and you are told from the White House, "Well, we don't want any Asian-bashing." I have the memo from the DNC that says "Democratic National Committee Official Memo" - they didn't think I'd get it - "If this comes up, say people are Asian-bashing." That's the standard routine. If feminists thought of squeaking about the rape questions and the harassment matter - not that many of them did - you can say, "Well you owe us, darling, because you might not be able to get your next abortion without me." It's a tradeoff of a kind. It's an appeal to correctness of a sort. And then, when all else fails, and when practically all else had, you claim that the President is black. Which, I had to admit, I wasn't ready for when it first happened, but I realized that, having covered Mayor Marion Barry in my home town of Washington for four years before that happened, I was ready for it. On the understanding that he is Marion Barry, I am ready to concede that the President is an African-American. But I'm very amazed that anyone else would want to insult and degrade our African-American brothers and sisters to that extent.

So, it's this mixture of lying and of corruption and of bullying and intimidation of witnesses, and the circumventing of the rule of law, and the willingness of those who defy those who tried to investigate it, that did take a Protean character-obviously someone of almost psychopathic, almost sinister skills in deception of others and in self-deception. Now we have a situation where here's the legacy: the next bad president will be able to claim that if Wall Street is up, he has a Dow Jones defense. If the opinion polls can be manipulated - and by the way, I believe they can. Has anyone here ever been questioned about a presidential approval rating? No. Does anyone know anyone who has? I do this everywhere I go, and haven't met anyone yet. I think the polls can be fixed. Suppose they can. You have an opinion poll defense. You have a privacy defense if you're a bad president and you can include in your list of crimes -- crimes against the opposite sex or indeed, your own, if they're sexual crimes - they're "private." And the Special Council Law has been destroyed, so there'll be no other means of getting after this sort of thing. What you've been left with as a legacy is not just the memory of eight years of banana republican government, but the institutionalizing of those techniques of manipulation, those techniques of distortion, and corruption for the foreseeable future.

It's time to reconsider what it means to have a republic - if you can keep it.

from TPDL 2000-Oct-31, from the Washington Times, by Bill Sammon:

Clinton miffed remarks released before election

President Clinton yesterday complained that his demand for an apology from Republicans who impeached him was not meant to be published until after the election, when he calculated that it could do no harm to Al Gore's presidential campaign.

But the president's discussion of impeachment in an interview with Esquire magazine was distributed over the weekend, infuriating both the Clinton and Gore camps because it reminded voters of Clinton scandals in the final days of the vice president's struggling campaign.

"I was promised faithfully that that interview would be . . . released after the election," Mr. Clinton snapped with obvious irritation in the Rose Garden. "And I believed it."

The magazine's editor-in-chief, David Granger, strongly disputed the president's assertion.

"Esquire violated no agreement with the White House," Mr. Granger said last night. "As for the timing of its release, there was no embargo requested by the White House."

Mr. Granger said Esquire "had no formal agreement with the White House regarding either the interview or the article accompanying it, other than that the president would be the cover subject of the magazine's December issue."

Mr. Clinton, who was further criticized for posing for a provocative photograph, with his legs spread apart and a mischievous smile on his face, was asked by a reporter why he thinks "congressional Republicans should apologize to the country about impeachment."

"I doubt if you've read the whole interview, or you wouldn't have asked the question in that way," he said. "I would just urge the American people, if they're hearing all this talk, to read exactly what was said."

Mr. Clinton did not say he had been misquoted in his sharp scolding of the Republicans in the House who voted to impeach him.

"Unlike them, I have apologized to the American people for what I did wrong, and most Americans think I paid a pretty high price," the president said. "They never apologized to the country for impeachment. They never apologized for all the things they've done."

Asked about the Esquire article on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," the Republican presidential nominee, George W. Bush said last night that his party does not owe Mr. Clinton an apology.

"I think we ought to move on," the governor said.

Yesterday, Mr. Clinton was clearly eager to change the subject.

"I don't think it's appropriate for me to discuss any of this until I'm doing the wrap-up on my administration," he said. "Right now I think the American people should be focused on this election."

To that end, Mr. Clinton continued to stump enthusiastically for Mr. Gore, urging 250 black religious leaders to get out the vote during a speech last night at the White House.

The president returned Mr. Gore's compliment from the day of impeachment, when the vice president pronounced his boss "one of our greatest presidents."

"The vice president has demonstrated conclusively since the convention that he is an independent person, that he will be his own president," Mr. Clinton said last night. "But I can tell you what I know from eight years: He is a good person who will be a great president."

Mr. Clinton warned that failure to elect the vice president could result in a Republican sweep of the federal government.

"What about the role of the president that is not just the doer, but the stopper?" he said. "Would it be a good thing if the Republican Party had the White House and the Senate and the House, with no one there to say no?"

Mr. Clinton made clear his belief that voter turnout could determine the result of the election.

"We've got to go out and whip people up," he said. "Make no mistake about it: Not voting is a decision. That's a decision to let somebody who disagrees with you have their way."

Mr. Clinton is making an all-out, weeklong effort to rally the black vote for the vice president. Earlier yesterday, he joined black entertainers Queen Latifah, Sinbad and Will Smith and Hispanic star Jimmy Smits on a 45-minute radio show to encourage a heavy vote.

On Sunday, Mr. Clinton rallied voters from the pulpits of two black churches.

Asked yesterday about Mr. Clinton's warning to black churchgoers that electing Mr. Bush would be a "terrible mistake," Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes responded that it was "an offensive thing to have said in a church. It doesn't sound like a very appropriate thing to have said in a house of love."

from TPDL 2000-Aug-8, from the Orlando Sentinel, by Charley Reese:

Book details the long, national nightmare of the Clinton years

If you are into scary books, or horror stories, put aside Stephen King and try James Bovard.

His newest book, Feeling Your Pain -- The explosion and abuse of government power in the Clinton-Gore years, is a scary book.

Published by St. Martin's press, the book -- in a calm, judicious non-ideological manner -- lays out the crimes against liberty, the abuse of due process, the deceptions and intimidations that the government under William Jefferson Clinton has practiced against the American people.

It's scary because it's true.

I think the majority of Americans, conservative or liberal, wants to believe in and to trust the government. It is, after all, our government, and we are taught from childhood that its purpose is to protect and serve. I certainly am in that category.

Perhaps that's what is so disconcerting about Bovard's book. If he were a right-wing opinion writer, we could brush it off; if he were just another Clinton hater stringing together old allegations and innuendoes, we could discount it. But Bovard is that rarity in today's journalism--an objective, disinterested reporter. A digger of facts, a revealer of sources. Unlike Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, who writes books based on anonymous sources, Bovard does not say, "Trust me." He says see the footnote for the record or the source.

A government, with its huge power and enormous resources, presents a fightening spectre when it is directed by corrupt people to do harm to innocent people. Sadly, Bovard catalogues examples of the government destroying lives, depriving people of their liberty, obliterating their businesses, confiscating their property despite the fact they were innocent of any wrongdoing. While the Washington press made much of Richard Nixon's enemies list, Nixon was an altar boy compared to Clinton and to the constant stream of malice that flows out of the Clinton-Gore administration.

It's clear that not only will the White House need a thorough disinfecting, the Justice Department is going to need a top-to-bottom cleaning out. I doubt if ever in American history has there been a Justice Department more contemptuous of the Constitution and of the rights of American citizens than Janet Reno's.

The point of the book is not to indict Clinton per se but to lay out the case against government abuse.

I will indict Clinton. Everything in government starts at the top and flows downhill. If you have a morally disadvantaged president elected by a morally disadvantaged campaign staff, you will have a morally disadvantaged administration of morally disadvantaged appointees who will corrupt their own departments.

Character counts more than anything else in a public official. Positions on issues can be constructed out of expediency. Intelligence can be directed to do evil as can charm and charisma.

The basic mistake the American people made was to believe that if the economy was good (or at least if they were told incessantly that it was good) that morality and character didn't matter.

This book shows in terrible detail exactly what the evil results of that mistake are.

Americans should never forget that when we elect a man or woman to public office, especially the presidency, we are entrusting that person with tremendous power. The only protection we have against abuse of that power is largely the person's integrity.

If there is no integrity, then there's big trouble in River City.

One lie should be a permanent disqualifier for anyone seeking public office. Bovard's book is a reminder of what's at stake in an election.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-15, from the Wall Street Journal 2000-Aug-14, by Robert L. Bartley:

Titan of the Media Age

LOS ANGELES -- When Bill Clinton strides out on the podium at Staples Center tonight, we will all be witnessing a figure of historical fascination -- a media-age Napoleon, perhaps, or Alexander.

Mr. Clinton's gift to history is the "permanent campaign." As Napoleon taught the world to move beyond mercenary armies to the total mobilization of societies for war, President Clinton has transcended the old-fashioned political campaign. Under the precedent he has established, the campaign is no longer a few weeks every other fall. Instead, campaign tactics and campaign mores suffuse every moment, every act of governance. And, like Alexander severing the Gordian Knot, for him it has worked. He won a second term as president, overcame suspicions and scandals that would topple other mortals, fought off an attempted impeachment. Tonight he appears as a victor.

In the media age battles are not waged with bayonets, of course, but with spin. Yet in his arena, President Clinton has been cool and decisive in the heat of combat. Long-time Washington hands were agape with awe when he seized the opportunity to rout the Gingrich Republicans by vetoing an emergency resolution to keep the government open, then blaming them for closing the government. During this crisis he also first met Monica Lewinsky, but when her crisis eventually struck he was bold. "We'll just have to win it, then," he declared when Dick Morris reported that polls showed an apology would not wash. He called up the heavy Hillary artillery, which had already dispatched Gennifer Flowers in the 1992 campaign, to propound a "vast, right-wing conspiracy." He reacted to a House impeachment vote with a rally on the White House lawn, with Vice President Al Gore proclaiming that his boss "will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents."

While the President took some hits, the success of his campaign is measured in the currency of a new household word, "Clinton-haters." No one has ever suggested a "Gingrich-hater," a "Bork-hater" or a "Nixon-hater." Yet even those adult enough to know better readily accept an elocution designed to suggest that criticism of Mr. Clinton is motivated by "hate." The phrase adroitly changes the subject from Mr. Clinton's alleged transgressions to the motives of his critics. Republicans in impeachment are "partisan," while Democratic defenders are not. Kenneth Starr is animated by animus against Mr. Clinton's libertine habits, not by devotion to the rule of law. By contrast, I suppose, James Carville's $100 bill in the trailer park was motivated by "love."

So as the nation prepares to watch Mr. Clinton tonight, let me say for the record that I and my colleagues on the editorial page of The Journal do not hate Mr. Clinton. We have of course covered his scandals exhaustively; our "Whitewater" books reprinting our Clinton coverage now total five volumes; choice excerpts are currently posted on OpinionJournal.com.

Our motivation has been simple: We early on decided that Clinton character was the big story of the 1990s, as President Reagan's rescue of the economy and triumph over Communism was the big story of the 1980s. So we set out to cover the story in a way that most of our competitors have not; Mr. Clinton and his supporters do not appreciate this, but the reaction suggests that a good many readers do.

That said, I certainly agree with Sen. Bob Kerrey's observation that Mr. Clinton is an "unusually good liar, unusually good." The capacity to lie without shame has been this president's most powerful weapon, the key to his dominance of the spin wars. The lies have served him well on big things. In 1992 he campaigned as a New Democrat, by the way evincing some sympathy from our columns. In 1993, he and his wife proposed to socialize 14% of GDP. By 1996 he was running for re-election on welfare reform. By 1999, he was rejecting the centrist medicare reforms proposed by his own Breaux Commission, better to keep the issue alive for this fall. A seamless morph.

The Clinton lies have been even more central on the small things -- personal scandals such as the draft, the $100,000 commodities coup, the Whitewater land flips, the Travel Office firings, the Rose Law firm billing records, the 1992 tax return omitting the gift from Jim McDougal when he assumed the Whitewater debts, the solicitation of no-show jobs for Webster Hubbell. On such matters we've learned that the presidency is a powerful office, protected by layers of deniability, directions dispensed by winks and nods, the willingness of minions to sacrifice, in the case of Mr. Hubbell and Susan McDougal, even serving jail time.

If you click into OpinionJournal.com and read the reprint of Micah Morrison's 1997 article, "What Did the President Know When?", you will come away with little doubt that the Asian fund-raising scandal was hatched in an Oval Office meeting on Sept. 13, 1995. Here Mr. Clinton, James Riady and their top aides dispatched John Huang to his fund-raising post at the Democratic National Committee. FBI Director Louis Freeh and Justice investigator Charles La Bella recommended an independent investigation of this apparent conspiracy, but were rebuffed by Attorney General Janet Reno.

The damage to the Justice Department and rule of law has been staggering. There is said to be a pending indictment of Mr. Riady; I wonder if it includes the President as a co-conspirator? Yet in truth, at best it would be difficult to penetrate the walls of the Oval Office and prove this case in a court of law or even conclusively in the court of public opinion. In Watergate, it took the testimony of President Nixon's own counsel, John Dean, backed up by tape recordings.

So in the case of President Clinton, we are left with the sordid spectacle of Paula Jones, Monica, the $850,000 settlement, what the meaning of "is" is, a president found guilty of contempt by a judge and facing disbarment in his home state. It is "only sex," the president's defenders explain. No, it is about many other unbridled appetites and many other lies. It surfaces with sex because that's one area where he has to take direct and individual responsibility, one thing he could not delegate.

When the president speaks tonight, the real issue will be whether his success becomes the model for future American politics, whether the slash-and-burn permanent campaign is here to stay. Al Gore seems to have learned his lessons well; and Joseph Lieberman bids to become the latest in a long list of figures diminished by getting too close to the fire. Perhaps Bill Clinton will win his ultimate vindication with the triumph of Al and Hillary. But then, Napoleon and Alexander, despite their splashing successes, did not fare well in the end.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-16, from the Wall Street Journal:

No John Kennedy

We remember John F. Kennedy.

Bill Clinton is no John Kennedy.

Whatever JFK's personal flaws, there is not a snowball's chance in L.A. that the famous Democrat would have permitted the images that Bill Clinton allowed his production team to project onto TV screens as he shoulder-rolled through the concrete corridors of the Staples Center. "Hey, look," someone in the arena said, "it's 'Eddie Murphy Raw.'" It wasn't classy. It was cheesy. It certainly wasn't Churchillian.

It must be taken as a given of political genetics that at the highest elevations of what we call "public life" one always finds large egos. A certain, high self-regard is the fuel reserve for public figures; it propels them onward and upward when mere mortals would drop from doubt or the hard reality of very bad odds.

What we saw Monday night, however, reminded us more than anything of the Energizer Bunny, the little pink rabbit with the drum who keeps going and going and going.

In the last major speech of his time as President of the United States, Bill Clinton credited himself, as one might expect, with policies that, as he says, both "grew the economy" and left the country's social texture richer than it was when he entered office. From any leader, these claims are normal. Ronald Reagan did it on departing, Franklin Roosevelt would have done it.

But somewhere in the middle of a self-guided tour through his achievements, right after he'd bragged about the ethnic diversity of his Cabinet and just before "helping to end a generation of conflict" in Northern Ireland and Kosovo, Bill Clinton said, "And, and we created AmeriCorps, which already has given more than 150,000 of our young people a chance to earn some money for college by serving in our communities." Oh yeah, AmeriCorps. Also, "terrorism, narcotrafficking, biological and chemical warfare, the trafficking of women and young girls and the deadly spread of AIDS "

These aren't achievements; this is just the stuff that this or any administration spends its days with. Like Mr. Clinton's 1996 acceptance speech in Chicago, Monday's speech was a gargantuan grab-bag of achievements, dreams and policy detritus. These speeches, like this presidency, are the product of an undisciplined mind, a mind incapable of distinguishing between what is worthy of a President's time and what is unworthy of it. In this mind, Monica and Bosnia would receive equal attention, simultaneously.

The paradox of Bill Clinton, and his presidency, is that his compulsive self-inflation left him diminished. Monday's performance, few would disagree, was about, above all, Bill Clinton. Not the presidency, not the Democratic party, or Al Gore or America's place in the world today. Mainly, it was about him. All the other presidents who we now call great -- Lincoln, Jefferson, Reagan -- understood, and made it clear they understood, that the reasons for their greatness resided in a much, much larger world. Bill Clinton conveys no such understanding. The speech's final, bizarre ad-libbed non-sequitur went: "And remember, whenever you think about me, keep putting people first."

For all the pumped-up bonhomie the retiring President conveyed to the L.A. crowd, the speech was relentlessly and aggressively partisan. Nothing he described in the speech, such as the claims of prosperity, was allowed to stand as a singular achievement; it was all a refutation of this or that critic: "Here's what their leaders said." In Bill Clinton's reading of history, the opposition is virtually evil: "And then we had an election in 1968 that took America on a far different and more divisive course, and you know within months after that election the last longest economic expansion in history was itself history." The "permanent campaign" extended all the way back to his high-school years.

The President held nothing back Monday night, driving himself and the delegates over the top, laying claim to every conceivable Democratic agenda item of the past seven years and explicitly claiming credit for the future if we "feel deeply and choose wisely."

Poor Al Gore. He got less than he deserved from the speech; he had to give back equal time to the long-planned Clinton dynasty. Al Gore will thus walk onto the stage Thursday night with so much subtracted by Bill Clinton's farewell to himself, smaller than he might have been. His agenda is Bill Clinton's agenda. His audience in the arena is the audience that loves Bill. Al Gore couldn't decouple from Bill Clinton if his life depended on it.

Back in 1996, after the Clinton-Gore victory, a group of conservatives gathered over dinner in New York to be grumpy about it. The one optimist in the room was Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention. Not to worry, he said: "No one will understand just how good Bill Clinton is at what he does until they watch Al Gore try to do the same thing."

from TPDL 2000-Aug-16, from the Washington Post p.A35, by Michael Kelly:

The Joyful Clinton Nation

The steel beneath the bubbles of the long, warm bath of self-praise that Bill Clinton presented Monday night was presented as a stark and brutal choice.

America, Clinton said over and over again, could choose to continue the unprecedented glory--the peace, the prosperity, the greatness and goodness--of the Clinton era. Or it could return to a life of poverty, backwardness and unhappiness under Republican rule.

The high point came when Clinton painted a picture of modern history in America. In 1964, he said, with Democrats running the country, all was milk and honey. But then there was the election of 1968, and the country chose, tragically, "a far different and more divisive course." Only months later, the nation's then-longest economic expansion ended. The good times did not return until Bill Clinton took the White House.

So: Republican rule equals national misery (never mind Reagan), Democratic rule equals national joy (never mind Carter). And not just fiscal joy. Under his guidance, said Clinton, the nation had become "a better country" all around, "more confident, hopeful and just." So now, "our people face a fundamental choice--are we going to keep this progress and prosperity going?"

This is actually a reasonable framework in which to view the election--as long as you factor in what Clinton left out. Give Clinton his share of credit for the great boom in national wealth, for "ending welfare as we know it," for the reductions in crime, for balancing the budget. [Under Clinton, real national wealth (particularly, accessible resources and means of production) has declined and corporate and government corruption (criminality) has increased. -AMPP Ed.]

But there is another side to the choice. This may be summed up in a question: Did the Clinton administration leave the nation worse off as well as better?

The subject here is corruption. In the view desperately favored by Clinton and Gore, scandal in the Clinton years should be viewed as essentially one (admittedly large) "mistake," involving one White House intern, an isolated event having nothing to do with Clinton's overall performance in office or Gore's potential performance.

But of course, the scandalous nature of the Clinton administration (or Clinton-Gore, as they used to like to say) was not limited to Lewinsky. It was structural, systemic; and it was rooted in a deep conviction of the moral superiority of Democrats and in the propriety, therefore, of employing any means necessary to perpetuate Democratic power. The Clinton administration ran government as a permanent war room. It polarized Congress and the nation; it openly sold access to the president, the vice president and other high officials to favor-seekers from around the world; it helped destroy (to be fair, Republicans helped too) the good government reforms that liberal Democrats had spent lifetimes building; it openly worked to subvert the law in matters small (the travel office) and large (the Starr investigation); it politicized policy more thoroughly than any administration since that of Richard M. Nixon.

In 1998, addressing the bipartisan fundraising corruption of 1996--a corruption that gave rise to the most significant Clinton scandal--a thoughtful judge of these matters wrote:

"The fund-raising scandal of 1996 was a very real tragedy, with very real consequences for our democracy. People at the highest levels in both parties did more than just strain credulity; they betrayed the public trust. In their breathless, unbounded rush to raise even more money for even more television advertising, they effectively hung a giant FOR SALE sign on our government and the whole of our political process. They also gave Americans, already beset by cynicism, good reason to doubt whether citizens have a true and equal voice in their own government. The dangers here must not be dismissed; corruption is a great killer in experiments in self-government."

Recalling the nakedly favor-seeking exploits of Clinton-Gore donors such as Johnny Chung and Roger Tamraz, the writer noted that, while "it has yet to be proved that any U.S. policy . . . was altered by any of the hustlers and opportunists who bought access to some of our top leaders, we cannot deny that the potential existed for this kind of purchase. Nor can we ignore the dangers inherent in the simple appearance of influence-peddling." We are left, he said, with "a system that suggests to the public that power will be exercised chiefly in behalf of those who pay top dollar."

That was Sen. Joseph Lieberman, writing in the July 1998 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The questions now for Lieberman, and for voters, are these: Was Al Gore one of those "people at the highest levels" who "betrayed the public trust"? And was the harm thus done to the nation of at least equal importance to any benefits of Clinton-Gore government? And why should we reward with the presidency someone who played a major role in this harm?

Clinton is right: There is a fundamental choice here.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-16, from the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, by Cal Thomas:

Clinton doesn't deserve credit

LOS ANGELES (August 15, 2000 4:48 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) -- How strange that on opening night the Democratic National Convention chose an actor portraying Harold Hill to follow Bill Clinton's valedictory speech. "Hill" sang "76 Trombones," the song he used in "The Music Man" to sucker the good folks of River City, Iowa, into buying musical instruments for their children in order to save them from the pool hall. Hill was the "Slick Willie" of his time, though Al Gore might call the trombone ploy a "risky scheme."

The Democrats appropriately selected this symbolic character to follow a man whose entire life has been built on fooling a lot of the people most of the time.

President Clinton would have us believe that his "economic policies" are responsible for the prosperity of the last eight years. What economic policies? Though he acknowledged the contribution of the people, he seemed to take all of the credit himself. Other than keeping Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve, Clinton's biggest economic decision was his 1993 retroactive tax increase, eagerly approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress. Does he mean to suggest that a huge tax increase was responsible for the prosperity? If he does, Gore should be promising a tax increase to make everyone even more prosperous.

Clinton ignores the fact that the expansion began when Ronald Reagan cut marginal tax rates from Jimmy Carter's near garnishment level to a top bracket of one-third of a taxpayer's income. And he continues the canard that Reagan was responsible for the deficits, when it was a Democratic-controlled Congress that couldn't stop spending the new resources. When government allowed people to keep more of their money, many invested it, producing profits for themselves and new tax revenue for the government.

Clinton claimed credit for welfare reform, though he kept vetoing reform measures Congress sent him until his then-advisor, Dick Morris, told him the poll numbers had shifted. The president then signed the GOP measure, promising his fellow Democrats he would change it within a year. When more people started working, he claimed he was for welfare reform all along.

Clinton said he has promoted peace around the world and specifically mentioned the Middle East, the Balkans and Northern Ireland, not one of which is seeing lights at the end of the tunnel. He took credit for more adoptions, while supporting abortion policies that will limit the number of babies available to be adopted. But as Professor Hill said, "I can deal with the trouble here with a wave of my hand, this very hand." And wave his hands, Bill Clinton did.

Empowerment zones? A Republican idea first championed by Jack Kemp. New jobs? Government doesn't create jobs; people do. No, the progress of the last eight years was no accident. It was made possible not because of government, but in spite of government.

When Clinton finally got around to talking about Gore, he spoke of him only in terms of his own success. Gore isn't independent of Clinton. He owes everything to Clinton. And Gore had better not forget it, just in case Clinton should need a pardon.

If Clinton gets any credit, it's for not messing things up, which he surely would have if his Democratic Congress had nationalized Hillary's health care plan in 1993 (now there was a really risky scheme) and Republicans had not captured numerical control of Congress in 1994. His appetite was far bigger, but Congress partially reined him in.

Clinton was right about one thing. The coming election is important and represents two distinctly different visions of the future. One spells trouble-trouble-trouble (as Harold Hill chanted in another song) with greater regulations, more taxes, bigger government, higher spending and less freedom. Anyone who believes more government will further prosperity may want to buy a trombone from Harold Hill, or Clinton's version of his seriously flawed administration.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-16, from the Washington Times, by Tony Blankley:

Swinging Democrats

The Democrats are putting on a wonderful party. It is not a party likely to win in November, but it is great fun in August. At The Mondrian - one of the trendy West Hollywood hotels where the best after-hours Democratic parties are being held in the hotel's Skybar - the management optimistically passes out intimacy kits consisting of: two Durex lubricated, spermicide (Nonoxynol-9) prophylactics, two obstetrical towelettes - and one package lubricating jelly. In my hotel in Philadelphia I got a sewing kit and a shower cap.

While the Democrats are not technically responsible for the kit's distribution, there is something symmetrical about discovering this fact after watching Bill Clinton give his long-awaited farewell speech to his party faithful.

The first thing that has to be said about Mr. Clinton's speech is that inside the Staples Center, here in Los Angeles, this is Bill Clinton's party. These are the people who actually agree with Al Gore's much-ridiculed claim the day that Mr. Clinton was impeached that he is one of the greatest presidents in history. I assume the rest of the watching world was giggling as Mr. Clinton marched portentously down unending corridors (like a deranged version of David Letterman entering his studio). But inside the hall, Mr. Clinton's Charlie Chaplinesque Great Dictator-style lonely march only built the dramatic tension, until, when he finally entered the room, the crowd erupted with uncontrollable cheering and yelping.

Mr. Clinton succeeded in matching the longest exit in American politics with the longest entrance. It was definitely an Il Duce moment. The speech itself was a masterpiece of self-adoration. Mr. Clinton, ever the narcissist, described a pre-world that was dark and in chaos until his arrival. He said he knew well what had to be done to bring order out of the chaos. While conceding that the public had a role in the prosperity, he explained that it didn't just happen. Only with the shrewd hands of the great helmsman on the tiller was our economic world made right. To arrive at this conceit, Mr. Clinton had to edit and paste our recent history. He had to forget that he didn't inherit a slumping economy. Even the Clinton Office of Management and Budget concedes that in the last quarter of the Bush administration the economy was growing at over 5 percent. And, he had to completely fabricate the claim that he was immediately possessed of the goal to balance the budget. But in fact, it wasn't until the winter of 1995 that Mr. Clinton, under pressure from a Gingrich-led Republican Congress, begrudgingly submitted a budget that would be in balance by 2002. Until then, he had consistently submitted budgets that projected $200 billion or larger deficits forever.

His primary economic action was to raise taxes over $300 billion in 1993, which did not succeed in reducing the deficit below $200 billion, but did slow the economy to 2 percent growth.

One could quibble about his misrecounting of the decline of interest rates, or his credit-taking for declining crime rates that were merely part of a larger trend - or his greedy grab at Newt's welfare reform (which he vetoed twice before signing under electoral duress.) Perhaps Mr. Clinton's oddest claim was that he lowered the rate of teen pregnancy (whether this was the result of government policy or presidential self-restraint was never made clear).

I will leave to experts in the healing arts whether Mr. Clinton actually believed this fairy tale version of recent history. But he demonstrated the most sincere-seeming emotional depth to its description. He is the master at weaving together faux facts with false emotions to genuinely win over his audience's compliant and malleable minds and hearts.

But, if my conversations with several delegates and party activists Monday night are any indication, Mr. Clinton did not succeed at passing the magic and passion on to Gore/Lieberman. The general sentiment was that they didn't envy poor Al Gore having to follow Mr. Clinton's act - both at the convention and in the remainder of the campaign. The view of Mr. Lieberman was less charitable. One major party donor with whom I bummed a limo ride from the convention to the pre-parties was particularly blunt. In his experienced view, the Lieberman selection assures Mr. Gore's loss of states in a southern arc from Virginia to New Mexico, and in a northern arc from Illinois to Wisconsin. He attributed this to hidden and unmeasurable anti-Semitism combined with a lack of appeal to the unions. According to this view, Mr. Gore not only foolishly risked his own candidacy, but also reduced the Democrats' chance of taking back Congress.

Two other inside players I talked with over a few tumblers of whisky were openly scornful of the argument apparently being put forward by those who recommended Mr. Lieberman that his selection assures a dramatic increase in big dollar fund-raising.

Party activists - both Republican and Democratic - are a curious breed. They are their party's most ardent supporters, but they can also be its sternest critics. They admire political skill, but are repulsed by political incompetence. Mr. Gore had better rally this convention in its remaining days, or his activists' building scorn will drag down his candidacy.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-18, from the Washington Times, by R. Emmett Tyrrell:

Preposterous convention posing

Once again, the Democrats at their quadrennial national convention sweat and heave to achieve the preposterous. And once again, they have achieved that weird goal. The United States, the world's economic marvel, is, according to them, on the hem of catastrophe. All that can save us is four more years of the Democrats.

That suggests two questions. Have the Democrats not already had eight years to save us from our misery? And do they not simultaneously claim economic crisis and economic boom?

As I say, the Democrats thrive on the preposterous. Since 1983 the country has been humming along on the longest and most widely distributed period of economic growth in world history. In early 1992, a brief and shallow slowdown gave way to renewed growth. In the first two years of the Clinton administration, it continued at the cyclically modest rate of 2.3 percent. Then the 1994 Republican Congress came in and markets bloomed, the economy took off and eventually Alan Greenspan went on the alert.

President Clinton and Al Gore have been patting themselves on the back through it all, congratulating themselves for the Republican Congress' ability to stifle their spendthrift and high-tax impulses.

Now their fellow Democrats have convened another hysterical national convention. So what is the theme of this idiotic assemblage of charlatans, dolts and Hollywood jesters? It is American misery, namely poverty (particularly child poverty and women's poverty; no gay poverty yet), pollution and bigotry of the most imaginative variety.

That the Democrats do not even attempt to resolve the contradiction between their wails of misery and Mr. Clinton's boasts of economic bliss testifies to how stupendous their hypocrisy has become - and how they relish the preposterous. Surely, the boy president's entry into Staples Center the other night was preposterous. As I watched his interminable solitary strut (Tom Wolfe would identify it as a modified pimp roll) televised through the garishly lit corridors proceeding toward the arena, I thought that at some point he was going to disrobe.

Possibly it was the setting, so reminiscent of a prize fighter's entrance. Possibly it was the lewdly pursed lips. Whatever, as he tramped alone up one corridor, down another, a turn to the left and straight ahead into the delirious crowd, the thought occurred: He is going to unknot his tie and heave it over his shoulder. He is about to unbutton his shirt. His step quickens. The smile radiates from ear-to-ear ecstasy. Another Democratic convention first. The president, stripped to the waist, is on the podium. He is taking credit for every good bit of news, even the weather report.

Actually,he did take credit for every good thing that has taken place during his administration and for some good things that have yet to take place. He took responsibility for it all, except in one category, scandals. Those were the responsibility of that vast right-wing conspiracy - called by the wags the white-ring conspiracy.

Truth be known, they were the one thing he was responsible for. No one forced him to lie, obstruct justice and abuse power. For years, friends and enemies alike have claimed that Mr. Clinton is an unusually good liar. I have remained a dissenter. After all, a good liar would not gain a reputation for being a liar. A good liar's lies are not detected. This president's lies are a matter of public record. For one set of lies he has actually been cited by a judge and may be indicted. He is only esteemed a good liar by those who do not mind being lied to or who are too doltish to recognize his lies.

Most Americans have come to suspect Mr. Clinton of lying every time he opens his mouth. Does that suggest that he's an unusually good liar, or rather a shameless liar with a large audience of credulous followers and a larger audience wise to his ways? Polls of the public's perceptions of his character suggest that he is a failed liar.

Most Americans recognize that the United States is prosperous and at peace. Its citizens disapprove of bigotry and meanness. They are increasingly impatient with lies and humbug. The columnist Morton Kondracke tells us that polls indicate that voters would re-elect President George Bush over Mr. Clinton if the 1992 election were run today. I hope he is right, but I do hope the Democrats will continue to yearn for the preposterous. Their conventions are my favorite. I even prefer them to the conventions of the Reform Party.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-17, from the Sacramento Bee 2000-Aug-16, by William F. Buckley:

Thank you. Thank you very much.

A television director spoke of the entrance of President Clinton to the stage. "That required very intricate work. You could see there were four alleyways, maybe even five, and he had to turn the corner to go down each one. The camera had to precede him, step by step, alleyway by alleyway, a long, long walk until he debouched onto the stage."

But that's good theater, never mind that it's expensive -- Barbra's guests paid $10 million dollars the day before to share an hour with Bill. The Entrance can be a very big deal. Hitler liked it when a German division was to the right of him, a division to the left of him, and he marched between them in silent illumination toward the stage. When Johnny Carson retired, the cameras were prepared to take him from his arrival in his Porsche, through the studio hall, into makeup, to the conference with the producer, and finally to the "Heeeere's Johnny!" moment. And of course at the State of the Union addresses, the presidents walk down the aisle of the House shaking hands to right and to left, everyone standing and applauding.

Good stuff, but peanut-gallery compared to the long, lonely walk through narrow passageway after passageway, a travel shared by the television audience with the 10,000 worshipers. What were the first words he spoke? "Thank you, thank you, thank you." What were the last words Hillary had spoken, moments before? "Thank you thank you thank you."

What ensued was, in the words of the headline, a speech "Extolling Eight Years of Change in America." What was not extolled, or even touched upon, was the most striking change of the decade, which was crystallizing public indifference to presidential conduct. This is a very important cultural development, bipartisan in impact. The president did not need to refer, in his valedictory, to the momentous proceedings of the impeachment years, which he got away with. And two weeks earlier, in Philadelphia, the Republicans did not mention what they did or tried to do to register constitutional disapproval of perjury and extra-constitutional big-lying ("I never had sexual relations with that woman").

There are always changes, with the passage of eight years, and Mr. Clinton asked the viewers to take his word for it that the reason for the prosperity that took hold in 1993 was his presence at the helm. He did tip his hat to Mr. Greenspan, and well he might have, inasmuch as it was Greenspan's tightening of the credit reins in 1992 that precipitated the heavy drain to Clinton from President Bush. He moved then, as any Hollywood director would have approved, to the single event that gave theatrical measure to Vice President Gore -- who cast the deciding vote on the 1993 tax bill, to which Mr. Clinton proceeded to refer as one might to the Magna Carta. The font of economic progress, racial reconciliation, educational advance and world peace. He shouldn't have thanked us; we should thank him.

He has many gifts, the outgoing president. One of them is his quite natural capacity to smile just a little as he talks. This faculty leaves the dew of geniality over the whole of what he does and says. Then there is the slight crack in the voice. For some years we all worried that it was a laryngitical lesion of some sort, that probably it would get worse unless he held his tongue. But it was manifest that no such reversal of primal energy was possible. Before long, the little rasp became ingratiating, and now one would not be surprised if it transpired that junior politicians are practicing both the smile and the slightly strained voice.

And indispensable to the public impression is the upswept hair. How can anybody, any thing, be decrepit when the whole top of the head rises in celebration of perpetual youth and energy? The posture permits him to transcend the groin-and-eyeball idiom of politics he might engage in in different company. Joe Eszterhas, in his book "American Rhapsody," gives us his version of Hillary on the subject of the editors of The Wall Street Journal, "those motherf---ing, racist, Neanderthal, troglodyte, right-wing creeps."

But put that in the blender a few times and you get, arms outstretched, a bid to all America to believe the Clintons, and to believe in them. ... A fine performance.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-16, from the Wall Street Journal opinion pages, from John Fund's political diary:

Party of One
Enough about me. Let's talk about my presidency.

LOS ANGELES--A Democratic pollster left the "Mr. Bill Show" last night and commented sardonically, "The entire Clinton speech was all about, 'I.'" Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report quickly corrected his grammar: "No, it was all about 'me.'"

Bill Clinton is clearly one of those larger-than-life figures who find it difficult to leave the stage. He retired from his rhetorical presidency last night as he began it--using the signature lines of his 1992 campaign ("Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow") in a version of Bill's Greatest Hits.

The speech was clearly effective with a partisan crowd. The Staples Center roared when Mr. Clinton turned back on the Republicans one of Ronald Reagan's famous lines by asking, with obvious delight, whether Americans were better off today than they were eight years ago.

But the speech fared less well outside the convention hall. MSNBC and Speakout.com used interactive dial technology to create a "fever chart" of responses from convention watchers who logged on to a Web site. The results were then adjusted to include a proper mix of Democrats, Republicans, independents, men and women.

Both Mr. Clinton's speech his wife's received a tepid response. On a 100-point scale, Hillary's Stepford Wife-like delivery scored 47, with women liking her less than men did. Mr. Clinton got a 52, with the respondents highly polarized--Republicans giving him a 29, independents 48 and Democrats 75. Viewers were not excited by the odd prespeech scenes of Mr. Clinton striding down a narrow hallway to the arena like some sort of conquering hero. The meters registered the Clinton-as-Caesar walk at 48.

True, Mr. Clinton left the convention on a high note, the roar of the crowd ringing in his ears. But if he intended to pass the torch to Al Gore, he failed. His speech was largely a self-congratulatory rebuttal to Republican criticisms of his administration, with less than a quarter of it mentioning Mr. Gore. Mr. Clinton made a great case for himself as a political showman but not as a salesman for another candidate. Mr. Gore will now step into the spotlight in Los Angeles, but he must have ambivalent feelings about how his boss has set the stage for him.

The evening ended on an appropriate note: Right after Mr. Clinton's speech, a Broadway troupe strutted on stage to perform a number from "The Music Man," the classic play about a con artist who tries to corrupt a community.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-16, from the New York Times, from Maureen Dowd's "Liberties" column:

All Shook Up

LOS ANGELES -- Only a man with an impressive wingspan could have done it. And only a man who had lassoed Arafat and Barak, and Gerry Adams and David Trimble, would have tried.

But the president was determined.

On stage in Monroe, Mich., yesterday, Bill Clinton spread those long arms of his and firmly encircled the shoulders of Hillary and Tipper, who were doing their darndest not to look at each other or get anywhere near each other.

Like an accordion player squeezing out a mighty chord on "Lady of Spain," Mr. Clinton slowly pulled the two blondes into the TV frame -- as Al Gore growled at the crowd in a simulation of excitement -- to get that essential picture of One Big Happy Family. But in a moment, the two women managed to escape his embrace and sidle back as far stage right and stage left as they could manage.

Because of course this is not One Big Happy Family.

This quartet represents the most extraordinary collection of festering resentments and seething jealousies and co-dependent plotting that has ever darkened the White House -- with the possible exception of when Richard Nixon dined alone.

The miracle was not that the baton got passed, but that nobody got hit with it.

Those few moments on stage in Monroe took weeks to negotiate, with excruciating disagreements over the last few days about exactly how to choreograph the symbolic moment between the two couples.

The Gore team had nightmares that the president would do a fake handoff, and say "You got it!" when the crowd chanted "Four more years!"

Tipper, who, out of the four of them, always has the hardest time hiding what she is feeling, is clearly steamed that Elvis never had any intention of leaving the building, and that Hillary has turned Beverly Hills into the sixth borough.

The convention should be celebrating the vice president's role in creating a fat, happy country. But the undercurrents here could suck down a battleship.

Poor Gore.

For years, he paid a facilitator to come into his Senate office and the new Clinton/Gore White House and coach him and his staffers on "group dynamics."

But no New Age psychobabble, no touchy-feely sessions in group dynamics, can help you manage the tectonic plates of Bill and Hillary's dysfunction.

Just as Al Gore hits town to party, the trellis of competing ambitions and interlocking needs and dueling grievances has left everyone exhausted.

Bill's mad at Al because Al chose Joe Lieberman, a Democrat who outdid plenty of Republicans in sewing a scarlet "A" on the president's polo shirt.

Bill's also mad at Al because Al has been at his elbow for eight years and still can't give a speech. If Al can't give a speech, he can't beat W. And the Bushes as caretakers of the Clinton legacy is a chilling thought.

And Bill's also mad at Al because the vice president paid tribute Monday to the notorious monogamist Jimmy Carter, who never felt he got the respect from Bill he deserved, and was delighted to go on zillions of TV shows and wag a finger at Bill's "escapades."

As for why the vice president's mad at Bill, don't get Al started. Just consider Monday night's goofy W.W.F.-meets-Russell-Crowe moment, when Mr. Clinton had more cameras rigged up to capture every step of his stagey backstage stroll than you can find in the "Big Brother" house.

Al's mad at Hillary because she has turned his centrist convention into a liberal campaign rally for herself, even managing to "accidentally" maneuver her way onto prime time Monday night (pushing the President's scheduled prime-time paean to Al into Lenoland).

Hillary's mad at Bill. And you really don't want to get her started.

All of this familial angst is not what Al Gore needs. Because his problem is that he's so plodding, so insecure, always searching for the right look and sound, that it is tiring to watch him.

You just know that Mr. Gore, who has grown more stiff lately appearing with Mr. Clinton, left Monroe a nervous wreck. Mr. Clinton, on the other hand, stopped his motorcade on the way out of town at a McDonald's for a crispy chicken sandwich and french fries.

from TPDL 2000-Jul-15, from NewsMax [three typos fixed by the AMPP editor]:

Dear Mr. President, Thank You!

A wonderful, anonymous and open letter to Bill Clinton is circulating on the internet, and we thought of sharing it with our readers, especially as the Clinton administration draws to an end.

Dear Mr. President,

I recently saw a bumper sticker that said, "Thank me, I voted for Clinton-Gore." So, I sat down and reflected on that and I am sending my "Thank you" for what you have done, specifically:

1. Thank you for introducing us to Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Dolly Kyle Browning, Kathleen Willey, and, of course, Juanita Broaddrick who told NBC that you raped here. Are there any others that we should know about?

2. Thank you for teaching my 8-year-old about oral sex. I had really planned to wait until he was about 10 or so to discuss it with them, but now he knows more about it than I did as a senior in college. The cigar thing was also neat for the kids.

3. Thank you for showing us that sexual harassment in the work place (especially the White House) and on the job is OK, and all you have to know is what the meaning of "IS" is. It really is great to know that certain sexual acts are not sex and one person may have sex while the other one involved does NOT have sex. Monica said frequently while you were on the phone, she would work at one end, and you at the other. What productivity!

4. Thank you for reintroducing the concept of impeachment to a new generation and demonstrating that the ridiculous plot of the movie, "Wag The Dog", could be plausible after all. The people of the Sudan, Afghanistan and Serbia are all running to rent the video, now that you made them part of the story.

5. Thanks for making Jimmy Carter look competent, Gerald Ford look graceful, Richard Nixon look honest, Lyndon Johnson look truthful, and John Kennedy look moral.

6. Thank you for the 72 House and Senate witnesses who have plead the 5th Amendment and 17 witnesses who have fled the country to avoid testifying about Democrat campaign fund raising.

7. Thank you for the 19 charges, 8 convictions, and 4 imprisonment's from the Whitewater "mess" and the 55 criminal charges and 32 criminal convictions (so far) in the other "Clinton" scandals.

8. Thanks for remembering the families of many deceased people who once were your friends, who served you and died so young and suddenly: Vince Foster, Jerry Parks, Ron Brown, Admiral Boorda, Les Aspin, Barbara Alice Wiese, Mary Mahoney, Jim McDougal, et al.

9. Thanks also for reducing our military by half, "gutting" much of our foreign policy, and for providing no real missile defense system for the American people. Thank you for sharing with our Chinese friends all of our nuclear weapon designs, the supercomputer technology to build such weapons, the ballistic missile technology so they can have more accurate missiles, and the encryption technology so they can keep it all secret too.

10. You are amazing visiting all those countries! Thank you for flying all over the world on "vacations" carefully disguised as necessary trips. It's wonderful, too, how you have surpassed every other president in the size of your entourage on these trips: 75 jumbo jets, 2000 guests to China alone. Your Africa entourage also was remarkable and it was nice of you to bring Betty Currie. She needed a break from testifying before the grand jury.

Please give my regards to Hillary, when/if you see her. Tell her I'm working on a "Thank You" letter for her.

Looking forward to January 2001,

Average Joe

from TPDL 2000-May-10, from the Weekly Standard, by Andrew Ferguson:

Impeached--and Proud of It
Bill Clinton's History of Himself

President Clinton isn't often asked about his impeachment these days, for many reasons - the main one being, of course, that nobody cares about it. Another reason has to do with the president's own way of answering questions about unpleasant subjects, on those rare occasions when such questions arise. A little over a year ago, for instance, holding his first press conference in 12 months, the president was asked by Sam Donaldson about Juanita Broaddrick. News junkies and trivia enthusiasts may remember Mrs. Broaddrick. She says the president raped her in a hotel room, and nobody cares much about her, either, since the economy is performing so marvelously, and even to whisper her name nowadays, among journalists as elsewhere, is considered a gross violation of taste.

Taste is no big deal to Donaldson, as we know, and in this press conference, in March 1999, he made a remarkable discovery: The quickest way to get the president to talk about impeachment is to ask him about rape. At least I think that's what happened.

Q: Mr. President, when Juanita Broaddrick leveled her charges against you of rape in a nationally televised interview, your attorney David Kendall issued a statement denying them. But shouldn't you speak directly on this matter and reassure the public? And if they are not true, can you tell us what your relationship with Ms. Broaddrick was, if any?

A: Well, five weeks ago today, five weeks ago today, I stood in the Rose Garden after the Senate voted [in the impeachment trial], and I told you that I thought I owed it to the American people to give them 100 percent of my time and to focus on their business, and that I would leave it to others to decide whether they would follow that lead. And that is why I have decided, as soon as that vote was over, that I - would allow all future questions to be answered by my attorneys. And I think I made the right decision. I hope you can understand it. I think the American people do understand it and support it, and I think it was the right decision.

It is a lovely answer, encapsulating all the twists and back-bends and half-steps and evasions and assertions of rectitude that we expect from a genuine, meticulously formulated Clinton response. First of all, and most crucially, it doesn't answer the question. The question is simply blown back by a blast-furnace of hot air. Second, the ambiguity is impenetrable. "All future questions" about what? About everything? We know he doesn't want David Kendall answering questions about targeted tax credits and whatnot. About impeachment, then? Surely he isn't referring to "all future questions" about rape, since Mrs. Broaddrick's claim hadn't been publicly made at the time of his Rose Garden statement, when the president says he made this fateful decision. Then again, maybe he means to imply that he's expecting more rape accusations - there are a lot of women in Arkansas, after all - and that he doesn't want to answer them. Who knows? We can only hazard a guess. And here's mine: The president is saying that all future questions about impeachment will be answered by his lawyers.

And to top it off - what really seals this as a museum-quality Clinton answer - is that it turns out not to be true! When the president says he decided a while back to decline to answer "all future questions," he implies that he had been answering all previous questions up to that moment. But in fact the president had been declining to answer any questions for close to a year, always with the implication that he would be overjoyed to answer the questions at some future date. The untruth, in other words, is both prospective and retrospective, extending through time, comprehending the past and the future and folding over on itself like an M.C. Escher fantasy. One can only marvel. Is it any wonder that so many of Clinton's opponents have gone insane?

In the end, however, even the pledge not to answer questions was rescinded. After his March 1999 press conference, the president began, when asked, to comment on impeachment. As I say, he hasn't been asked terribly often. The White House press corps likes to think of itself as a kennel of pit bulls, but really most of the reporters there are quite domesticated, a bunch of pussycats. They much prefer asking questions like - well, like these, from that same press conference in March 1999, when the reporters confronted the president for the first time since the century's only presidential impeachment, with accusations of rape and Chinese espionage hovering over him and his administration: "Do you think your wife would be a good senator?" "How are the two of you doing in trying to strengthen your relationship, given everything you and she have been through over this past year?" "Do you consider it a betrayal for former aides to write books on the history of your administration while you're still in office?" "Sir, will you tell us why you think people have been so mean to you?" (This last was from the octogenarian Sarah McClendon. After the laughter died down, the president said: "Let me give you a serious answer," and then actually did.)

Even so, President Clinton has been asked a sufficient number of impeachment questions over the last year to begin to piece together how he sees this interesting chapter of his public life. Most recently he went before a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, who were permitted, following his address, to ask him three questions. The first two questions touched on impeachment. (That's how clueless these out-of-town editors are. They haven't figured out yet that nobody cares anymore.) One editor asked whether the president would "accept" a pardon from the next president. The next question was whether, or how, the Clinton presidential library will treat the subject of impeachment, and this allowed the president to reflect on the episode in all its historical grandeur. For the episode fairly drips with historical grandeur, in the president's view.

"On impeachment," the president said, "I am proud of what we did there, because I think we saved the Constitution of the United States." The transcript of the president's appearance is sketchy, but I have closely read contemporaneous news accounts, and astonishingly there is no evidence that following this remark any of the editors fell to the floor in a dead faint, clawed the air in a grotesque pantomime of terror, or even ran gasping from the room to the hotel bar. Apparently the president felt sufficiently encouraged by this to continue, which he did, saying, "I'm not ashamed of the fact that they impeached me. That was their decision, not mine, and it was wrong. As a matter of law, Constitution, and history, it was wrong."

It was, in fact, one in a series of wrongs that the president has had to take it upon himself to right. "I consider impeachment one of the major chapters in my defeat of the revolution Mr. Gingrich led, that would have taken this country in a very different direction than it's going today," the president went on. "And it also would have changed the Constitution forever . . ."

In its grandiosity, in its sheer ostentation, this view seems to have startled some people, but it conforms generally with the president's other pronouncements about impeachment. The pronouncements follow a format. When asked about the subject - or indeed whenever a questioner ventures into the general neighborhood of Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey (not a high-rent neighborhood) - the president first acknowledges, for the record, a mistake, and notes that he has apologized for it, although when precisely this apology took place is unclear. The mistake, further, is always a "personal mistake," a "self-inflicted" mistake in "private conduct." And what was that personal mistake, specifically? Was it the nailing of the intern, or was it the public denial of the nailing? Was it mobilizing his wife, the Office of the President, and several cabinet secretaries in furtherance of that denial for the better part of a year? Was it getting caught? We cannot know, and of course no one has dared to ask. In the president's account of impeachment there's just a nameless mistake, stark and naked and alone, unconnected to anything before or after.

The mistake marks a boundary, in other words, the point at which the president's culpability ends and beyond which the president stands blameless. Why then was there an impeachment? By his own account, as it happens, the impeachment was not a consequence of the president's misconduct but of his virtue. "In our country's history," he told a press conference last June, "the people who are progressive, the people who try to change things, people who keep pushing the envelope, have generally elicited very strong, sometimes personally hostile negative reactions. You read some of the things people said about President Roosevelt."

The president has discoursed frequently on Franklin Roosevelt since the impeachment, as another man whose greatness shines undimmed by his enemies' hostility. ("You say people say I parse words too close," he told Dan Rather last year. "That's what they said about President Roosevelt, too. And he made a pretty good president.") In describing his tribulations he has also invoked the experience of several biblical figures as well as Nelson Mandela - although he agrees that Mandela's 27 years at hard labor make his own year of discomfort seem like "peanuts." The president has his own kind of modesty.

His impeachment was thus a persecution whose roots lie exclusively in the perfidy of others - Republicans, actually. "They knew that the American people agreed with my ideas," he said last March, "and the direction in which I was taking the country." They were driven to extra-constitutional measures by his political success. "They did not agree with what I had done and they were furious that it had worked and that the country was doing well." Crazed by the unemployment figures, the lowered crime rates, and the soaring Dow Jones Industrial Average, Republicans saw impeachment as their only recourse. "They attempted to use what should have been a constitutional and legal process for political ends."

Now, this is a pretty serious charge - sedition, when you get right down to it - and you or I might think that the people who were guilty of it should face some kind of penalty. Many on the White House staff feel that way, according to the president. But he is a bigger man than you or I, bigger even than those on his staff. He has encouraged them in the art of forgiveness. "I keep telling everybody that works for me that we have no right to harbor anger," he said last June. "I have no lingering animosity. . . . I realized that if I wanted forgiveness, I had to extend forgiveness. If I wanted to be free to be the best president and the best husband and father and the best person I could be, I had to free myself of bitterness. And I've worked very hard at it."

No one should be surprised, in light of this, that the president believes his own interests and the interests of the Constitution are essentially the same; the president has an outsized view of impeachment because he has an outsized view of himself. He has always been a master of inversions - of turning the meaning of things inside out to his advantage. But here, as his presidency draws to a close, he has pulled off the grandest inversion of all. By his own telling he has emerged from the ordeal of impeachment not as a perjurer, not as an abuser of power, not even as a cad - but as a molder of character, a forgiver of sins, a saint.

from TPDL 2000-Apr-13, from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

Collecting Clintonisms
This'll keep you busy

NOW WE understand what Bill Clinton is going to do with his remaining days in office. He's going to provide comics with straight lines instead of punch lines.

Note his latest setup. Speaking of congressional Republicans, he says: "One of their great strengths is [that] they have no guilt and no shame. They'll say anything."

No guilt? No shame? They'll say anything?

He may be more right than wrong about the GOP in Washington, but when Bill Clinton lectures on guilt, shame and deception, the message could easily be confused with the messenger. The man seems oblivious to irony.

You ain't heard nothin' yet. A couple of weeks back, our oh-so-serious president observed of the Elian Gonzalez case: "They should observe the rule of law." Gosh, where to begin? Why begin? With a straight line like that, who needs a punch line? This president talking about observing the rule of law? Give us a break. Give us several. Didn't this guy just pay a $90,000 fine for his contempt for the courts and the rule of law?

Some of us were starting to think our long hobby and habit of clinton-watching would just fade away with his administration. But we've got a new charge now. It's time to start collecting these clintonisms for a bound edition. If not for the historical record--for who pays any attention to that any more?--then for one of those short, quickie joke books that don't have to be read all at one time, but just lets you nod off at night smiling about the vanity of man.

from TPDL 2000-May-1, from Capitol Hill Blue, by Doug Thompson:

It's all about selling the product, baby

When the all time scorer comes
To tally up your name.
He won't ask whether you won or lost,
But how you played the game.

Grantland Rice, the legendary sports writer who coined that idealistic little ditty, never played the Washington game of politics.

Janet Reno sends in the goon squad to snatch a six-year-old kid at gunpoint. Republican leaders of the House and Senate scream bloody murder and demand hearings.

Then the polls come in saying the public doesn't give a good damn about Reno's Raiders and the spineless leadership of both the bodies suddenly start looking for a place to hide.

We expect this kind of abdication of backbone by the Don at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but not from the leaders of the party that used to stand for something.

"Truth is, we don't want hearings now," said one GOP staff member Sunday night. "It's not in our party's best interests. The American public doesn't want hearings, so why should we?"

Why indeed. Why stop the cycle that began with Whitewater, criminal fundraising activities, sex with interns and God knows what else? Why hand another public relations victory to Bill Clinton?

Because in the end, that's all Washington and our political system has become -- a public relations machine where decisions rest not with the question of right or wrong or even with the question of law. It's who does the best job of selling their particular slant to the government. So far, Bill Clinton has won just about all of those public relations battles.

Bill Clinton lied to the American public and to a federal court but, in the end, he convinced that same American public that he was merely a victim of those bad old Republicans and conservatives who were all out to get him.

This past weekend, Clinton went before the Washington press corps and made fun of his many mistakes and faults and the assembled multitudes laughed and acted like this was not the same man who lied about letting a White House intern munch on the First Weenie.

They can laugh because polls show most Americans really don't care just how big a horse's ass the President of the United States is or how much he has lied, cheated, abused power and perverted justice.

Why should they care? Hey, the economy's good, they have money in the bank and a new SUV in the driveway. Besides, a middle-aged President getting it on with a young intern might be a hero to a middle-aged businessman who fantasizes about his teen-aged daughter's best friend.

This year's Best Picture Oscar (and a number of other awards) went to the film, American Beauty, a story about a middle aged man's obsession with his daughter's best friend. This is the same Hollywood that has contributed millions to Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns and his defense fund.

"Unfortunately, many men Bill Clinton's age have fantasies about sex with much younger women," says marriage counselor Tyler Cox. "They may claim publicly that they condemn his actions, but secretly they wish they could do the same thing. And those who yell the loudest may actually be doing the same thing."

But while Clinton may be safe with the nation's sex-starved middle-aged male population, why is he so popular with women? After all, this is a man who has admitted cheating on his wife, who has been accused of rape and who has a long history of sexual abuse of women.

"It's pure PR," says one Democratic activist. "The President wins women over because he is on the right side of many women's issues and has just enough of a rakish image to actually appeal to women. Republicans don't give a damn about women's issues and that's where the game is won."

The game is public relations. And in this game, it doesn't matter how you play.

It only matters if you win.

R.I.P. Grantland Rice.

from TPDL 2000-May-10, from Capitol Hill Blue:

When you lie down with dogs. . .

So, Bill Clinton finally admits he doesn't sleep alone when Hillary is out of town.

"He sleeps with me when Hillary's not here," Clinton told reporters a couple of days ago.

He?

Yes, he. Clinton was referring to his dog, Buddy.

No surprise here. Given Bill Clinton's preferences in women, we doubt this is the first time he's gone to bed with a dog.

What is surprising, though, is how easily a President who lied about sex with a White House intern and who is a known adulterer and sexual predator can joke so openly about who he sleeps with when wifey is out of town and everyone treats it as ordinary news.

The Associated Press headlined its feed "President Sleeps With Buddy." Other wire services followed suit. TV talking heads reported the story with a straight face. No smirks, no wisecracks. Nada.

It's all part of a disturbing trend in the press where reporters and editors let Clinton joke about his known weaknesses and get away with it. We saw it with the much-ballyhooed "I'm so lonely" video shown at the White House Correspondent's Association Dinner. And we see it when a man who's bedded or tried to bed every women who ever wondered near him (with the possible exceptions of Janet Reno, Madeline Albright, Betty Currie and Hillary) now jokes openly about who he sleeps with.

This is the mark of the consummate con man or at least a sick man in deep, deep denial.

Bill Clinton can now make fun of his predilection for various bedmates because he has taken on everyone who has tried to nail him for his many crimes and beaten them all. He can laugh at those who condemn his actions because he has won and they are, for the most part, tired of the chase.

Clinton won because the Republican Congress is so inept it couldn't get laid in a whorehouse and independent prosecutor Ken Starr lost perspective when he focused too much on the sex and not enough on the far greater crimes of the President and his wife (something Starr now admits).

Bill Clinton is slime, but he is smart smart slime. While those who pursued him may have had truth and morality on their side, they were downright dumb and stupid when it came to politics and manipulation of the legal system. Truth, a lawyer I know once said, is irrelevant in the American criminal justice system. Clinton knew that. His enemies didn't.

So Clinton can laugh while his opponents frown and hide. He who laughs last, someone once said, laughs best.

Yet there is another old saying that seems to apply here.

When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

Let this serve as a warning.

To Buddy.

from TPDL 2000-May-8, from Capitol Hill Blue:

Night of shame for the journalism profession

Some friends of mine went to the White House Correspondents Association dinner recently and came under fire from some at the event because they refused to stand up when Bill Clinton entered the room.

Seems some thought Bill Clinton - the self-admitted perjurer, self-confessed adulterer, known sexual abuser of women and favorite lollipop of a certain White House intern - was somehow worthy of respect because a bunch of idiots twice elected him President of the United States.

The position, they argued, should be respected even if the degenerate who currently occupies that position is not.

Bullcrap. Any respect due the Presidency of the United States evaporated on January 20, 1993, the day the Justice of the Supreme Court delivered the oath of office to the Arkansas trailer trash named William Jefferson Clinton.

Since taking that oath, and promising to give America the "most ethical administration in history," Bill Clinton has dishonored the Presidency in every way imaginable. By lying, stealing, cheating and debauching his way through the job, he has brought more shame on the office than any President in the history of the country.

Such a man does not deserve a crowd that is standing when he enters a room, unless they are getting up to go take a leak.

Which brings up a bigger question. Why in the hell was anybody in the room in the first place? For any journalist to attend an event that honors Bill Clinton appears, at least to us, to be the height of hypocrisy.

How can anyone claim to cover Bill Clinton with fairness if they pay money to attend a dinner that honors him (or in most cases go as the guest of someone else who does)? I get invited to that damn dinner every year and always decline. I've got better things to do than put on a penguin suit and sit in a room surrounded by a lot of people I don't particularly like or respect and honor a man I can't stand.

It is a crime against the journalism profession for any member of the fourth estate to socialize with participants of the Clinton administration. It's also a sad indication of the sorry state of the American media.

Reporters should be out covering the news, not hobnobbing with and honoring those whose misdeeds are - in fact - the news they should be reporting. Those who laughed at Clinton's lame jokes or gave undue coverage to a video that spoofed his waning days in office do not serve their profession. They dishonor it.

Bill Clinton shamed the Presidency. Such a man does not deserve to enter a room to a standing ovation.

But those who gave him that ovation shamed their profession as well.

from TPDL 2000-Jan-17, from the San Francisco Chronicle 2000-Jan-16, by Debra J. Saunders:

First Lady of Dieting

SURELY it says something about this country that so many people are irate because Monica Lewinsky has become a Jenny Craig weight-loss program spokesperson.

After all, her former beau -- a.k.a., The Big Creep -- is still president after he lied to the American public and a grand jury. Many of the folks complaining about Lewinsky's job aren't complaining about Clinton's tenure. You have to wonder: Do Americans have a higher standard for weight-loss spokespersons than the president? Or, for that matter, do Americans have a higher standard of conduct for Atlanta Brave relief pitchers than the commander in chief?

``She has never done anything,'' people say to me. Wrong, she did something. If the former White House intern hadn't done anything, there would have been no scandal.

David Lahey, an owner of Jenny Craig franchises in the Midwest, announced that he would not run the new Jenny Craig ads that show Lewinsky, minus 32 pounds. One of his managers explained, ``I think there was questioning if she's an appropriate role model.''

That's nice that people think a diet spokesperson is a role model. As I recall, during the scandal's heated moments, many Chronicle letter writers wrote to the paper to announce that they didn't think the president should be a role model. Surely, if the president's status as a role model is optional, the same can be said for diet-program spokespersons.

Of course, what really bugs people is that it doesn't look as if Lewinsky is suffering enough for her sins.

Which is crazy. She has lost her privacy. She can never go out on a date for the rest of her life without the guy expecting what the president got. The poor thing told CNN's Larry King, ``I've been lucky that I haven't gone out with a jerk yet.''

Like she would know.

During periods of more democratic fervor, Americans would argue that the little guy shouldn't be punished if the big guy skates. These days the people are not in a democratic frame of mind.

Clinton has paid the price of embarrassment, but what is embarrassment to a man who knows no shame?

If he can retain the sacred office he has stained, why can't she peddle low-carb diets? She's done the work for the position and meets the job description. She lost more than 30 pounds.

If Clinton's wife can use her role as doormat spouse as a platform from which to run for a U.S. Senate seat, why can't Lewinsky get a career jump out of this sordid episode?

It's so ironic that the three people who have suffered the most are the completely innocent Chelsea Clinton, and the far less innocent Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky. Neither Lewinsky nor Tripp has power or position. They don't enjoy cover-girl looks. Thus, their feelings, their status, are expendable.

The fact is that, unless she moves into a monastery, Monica Lewinsky is not going to enjoy her privacy for a long, long time. Whatever she does will make the papers. She has to make a living. If she is going to be the brunt of fat jokes and snickering -- if she's going to be subjected to far more scrutiny about her shape than that of her growing erstwhile boyfriend -- she might as well be paid for it.

She is an inconvenient woman. People want her to go away, to pull a Madame Butterfly and remove herself, by whatever means necessary, so that her presumed betters need not be reminded of her annoying existence.

Jenny Craig spokesman Brian Luscomb wouldn't disclose how many letters the company has received about Lewinsky or how many are positive or how many are negative. Also, many women have joined the program, perhaps because they identify with Lewinsky's lifelong battle with the bulge. Luscomb explained, ``Our mission statement is we change lives. Our number one objective is to help our clients achieve their goals. That's our first priority with Monica.''

In that event, the company might try to help Lewinsky improve her judgment along with her waistline. Dieting perhaps has taught her that the better way to get ahead is not by cavorting with a married biggie, but by hard work, determination, and, when necessary, saying no to what you want.

Not that Bill Clinton has suffered when he didn't follow that regimen.

Read about the secret world of constituent services, detailing the psychological strategizing of Congresscritter staffmembers.

Read George Stephanopoulos' memoir as it appeared in Newsweek 1999-Mar-15.

from PDL 1999-Mar-27, from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

Having read, no doubt out of a craving for sheer boredom, George Stephanopoulos' book by George Stephanopoulos on George Steph-anopoulos, here's our official review:

George likes power.

George likes money.

George likes George.

George doesn't like Bill much any more.

The end.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-9, from WorldNetDaily, by Paul Sperry:

Web-porn scandal rocks White House
West Wingers downloaded gay, bestial, teen sex videos, jamming firewall system

WASHINGTON -- A consultant hired last year to beef up security for the White House's computer network found massive pornographic video files passing through the system's Internet firewall, WorldNetDaily has learned.

Some of the downloaded files were traced back to West Wing officials as recently as the beginning of last year, during the height of the impeachment crisis, say sources who were involved in replacing the firewall system as part of Y2K security upgrades.

The real-time video files -- which came from hard-core porn sites featuring homosexual, farm-animal and teen sex acts -- were so large in byte volume that they accounted for most of the traffic coming into the firewall, sources told WorldNetDaily.

All Internet links and e-mail must first pass through the firewall before coming into the local area network for the Executive Office of the President and on to individual network users. The firewall system is designed to screen Internet traffic for messages containing network-crippling viruses.

A Y2K computer consultant in early 1999 discovered the unusually large volume of porn-site traffic coming into the White House while reviewing the firewall logs.

A White House computer specialist recalled the reaction of one of the contractors at the time.

"He started to laugh and said, 'It looks like the majority of traffic going through the firewall is pornography,'" said the White House employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Both President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore have denounced cyber-porn and have pushed so-called "E-chips" to block the Internet's "purveyors of pornography," as Gore called them last year.

White House cyber-security experts have asked WorldNetDaily to withhold the name of the Y2K contractor that upgraded the firewall system, arguing that disclosing the information would tip off hackers to the security software the White House is using and make it easier for them to breach the network. WorldNetDaily agreed to reveal only that the company is based in California. The firewall logs show the uniform resource locator, or URL (basically the Web zip code), of the porn sites from which the videos (MOVs) and still-graphics (JPEGs and GIFs) were downloaded.

"There were things that said 'teen,'" the White House computer expert said. "There was gay and bestiality stuff too."

Bestiality? "Donkeys, goats, dogs," explained the source, who later accessed some of the raunchier sites. "It's embarrassing."

Upon the discovery of the heavy XXX-rated traffic, White House security specialists undertook a "forensics" effort to ID the White House network users who were downloading -- and watching -- the videos on government computers and time.

Investigators, including White House Security Officer Charles Easley, looked at a number of variables to separate the habitual from the accidental Web-porn surfers. They scanned firewall logs over several weeks so they could see the repeat offenders. They also zeroed in on the large-byte files.

What they found was shocking.

"There were some significant names. I can say, yes, West Wing," said one White House source familiar with the investigation. "There were women too." Many of the offenders also officed out of the Old Executive Office Building, including presidential personnel, sources say. One was in national security.

One of the worst offenders, however, was a senior White House computer-systems manager, who was reprimanded but allowed to stay in the White House after being treated for an "addiction" to porn. Sources say the porn abuser is so sensitive to the possibility of public exposure that he would likely take his own life if his name were disclosed here.

Security experts weren't just worried about the bandwidth-eating Web videos slowing down the White House computer network for legitimate business, or bringing a "Trojan horse" virus into the system. They also feared they could open up White House officials to blackmail from outsiders looking to access the network.

"It's a potential security risk," said one White House insider. "A hacker could call up an official and say, 'I have evidence you've been downloading kiddy porn. Give me your network passcode, or else.'"

The Internet-linked network is unclassified (although another, classified network exists in the White House), but most everything on it is still sensitive.

At any given time it may contain secret agendas for high-level meetings over trade and other policies, for example, or advance data from unpublished economic reports. Such information is potentially valuable to anyone from foreign diplomats looking for geopolitical leverage to stock traders looking for an edge.

By February 1999, after the California contractor had replaced the old firewall and alerted officials to the cyber-porn problem, White House computer specialists set up filters to block employee access to the porn sites.

Officials could have installed filters on the old Internet firewall, but never did -- except in the case of one site, an X-rated spoof of the official White House site. (Last year, a New Jersey man who says he accidentally logged onto the unofficial White House site in a public library, was escorted off by police and banned from the library.) According to White House insiders, White House guidelines for proper computer use by employees prohibit using them for profit, but do not specifically restrict using them to access Internet pornography.

Last year an Internet porn policy was submitted to White House lawyers, but was not instated as part of any global policy, sources say. In 1997, Clinton and Gore announced a "strategy for a family friendly Internet" which included proposing the distribution of "E-chip" technology for filtering cyber-porn.

"We all know and we've heard the horror stories about the inappropriate material for children that can be found on the Internet," Clinton said during the July 16, 1997, press conference.

The event's press release said: "The president emphasized that government (has) an important role to play in achieving the goal of a family friendly Internet."

"The President made clear that the administration remains committed to the vigorous enforcement of federal prohibitions against the transmission of child pornography and obscenity over the Internet," the release added, "and the use of the Internet by pedophiles to entice children to engage in sexual activity."

Last year, Gore encouraged parents to "restrict their children's e-mail contact to keep the potential predators at bay -- purveyors of pornography." He said they must be protected from "red light districts in cyberspace."

The White House has resisted requests from Congress, a federal court and other investigators to turn over Internet firewall logs -- which are stored on emergency back-up tapes -- in response to subpoenas for missing e-mail sent to West Wing officials over the Internet. Incoming e-mail also travels through the firewall.

White House lawyers have argued that the logs don't include the contents of the e-mail, just the "to" and "from," and therefore would not be helpful to investigators. Besides, they claim, only the past several months worth of firewall logs are stored on back-up tapes; previous tapes of logs are recycled.

Besides incoming e-mails, the tapes of the 1998 and 1999 firewall logs also recorded the massive volume of porn traffic going into the White House network over that period, sources say.

from TPDL 1999-Aug-13, from the Washington Post 1999-Aug-11 p.A19, by Michael Kelley:

The Age of No Class

The Marxist ideal is at last reached. We live, finally, in a classless society: No one has any class at all.

There is a Gresham's Law in aesthetics as well as in economics, and it works with a breathtaking, ruthless rapidity. Remember the rosy-fingered dawn of the Lewinsky affair, that defining event of the Age of No Class? In those innocent days, we in the news 'n' chat biz worried whether "semen-stained dress" could be printed in a newspaper. Well, the president's precious bodily fluids made their first appearance in the New York Times on Jan. 24, 1998: "the dress contains a semen stain from President Clinton." All in all, the Stain made the Times 24 times in 1998.

Nothing is not fit to print, if not in the Times, then in some public place. The other day, I saw a man wearing a T-shirt in a restaurant. On the shirt were printed these words: "Surf Coed Naked . . ." I choose this example for two reasons: (1) because this particular T-shirt message is actually among the more mild of those that I have seen; and (2) because the man wearing it was a perfectly presentable, otherwise unexceptionable, elderly gentleman, holding in his arms a fat-cheeked toddler whom I took to be his granddaughter.

Grandpa is not alone, and he is not an anomaly. He is representative. Look around. Here, a late-middle-aged man, thick of middle and thin of hair, has wrestled the immensity of his paunch into a pair of leather pants and has tortured the paucity of his locks into a pony tail. He is riding a Harley. There, a woman of perhaps 19 has three tattoos, and she has pierced her ears (many times), her nose, her tongue, her navel and her left eyebrow. And this is only what you can see when she is dressed, which, thank God, she is, more or less.

Louting their way down a suburban street are a group of young men. They are shirtless, and the effect is not beautiful. They are also very nearly pantless; they are wearing trousers that sit so low upon their hips as to expose the upper cleavage of their bottoms. This embarrassment is not the accidental result of poverty-induced sartorial deprivation. It is purposeful and expensive. Incredibly enough, the young men are making a statement of wealth and style.

Yonder is an investment banker, or someone who inexplicably wishes to be mistaken for an investment banker, sitting down to dinner with friends in a restaurant where the entrees are priced at anywhere between four and eight times the minimum hourly wage, which is, as it happens, the wage earned by the busboy who is hovering with the bottled water. The busboy hovers because the investment banker cannot be disturbed right this second; he is arguing, loudly and profanely, on his cell phone, with his interior designer, or possibly his dealer.

What is interesting is that these people are not, to state the obvious, rebels. They are not revolting against society's norms; they reflect society's norms. They are not seeking to epater le bourgeois; they are the bourgeois. This is us. This is who we are. Impressive, ain't we?

The horror of it isn't that the sensibilities of the refined are offended. Americans have been offending refined sensibilities for going on three centuries now, and mostly this has been to the good. The horror is that we are fast approaching a culture where it is impossible to offend. This is a loss of great and innocent pleasure in life, and it affects us all, in one way or another.

I have always been, wherever I worked, among the three or four worst-dressed men. It was a small thing, to go to the office wearing an ill-fitting, secondhand sports coat and no tie, but it was not so small to me. And it was about as rebellious, really, as I cared to get; I never wanted to pierce a thing. In the new culture of no class, I cannot compete. No one can. What is an adolescent to do when even to enter the ranks of rebellion against the conventions of class requires an act of self-mutilation once reserved for the hardier of the Hell's Angels? Indeed, what are the Hell's Angels to do?

And it all marches on. I know that Casual Friday is only a stopping place. When they introduce Boxer Shorts Wednesday, I will have to go out and buy my first three-piece suit. In the end, we will all be driven to this. My sons will wear bowlers, and they will blame me.

from TPDL 2000-Jul-24, from NewsMax, by Carl Limbacher et al.:

Clinton Romance Began with Rub

For nearly eight years Bill and Hillary Clinton have insisted that they met under the most romantic of circumstances.

He eyed her across the Yale law library, the story goes. She eyed him back. And when Hillary finally introduced herself, Bill was so dumbstruck that he couldn't remember his own name.

But in fact, says author Jerry Oppenheimer in his book "State of a Union," the Clintons' first meeting was much more Monica-like.

Bill Clinton's 1974 campaign manager Paul Fray told Oppenheimer he got the story straight from Hillary:

"I asked her one day, 'Where were you when you met Bill?'

"She said, 'I was standing there in the registration line.'

"I said, 'Well, how did the conversation start?'

"She said, 'Oh, you know - he just sort of asked me where I was from and I told him I was from Illinois - and the next thing I knew, his leg was rubbing up against mine!' "

How was it that coed Hillary Rodham - by all accounts a plain Jane known for her drab outfits and unshaven legs - had Clinton panting away as if she were an Arkansas beauty queen?

Their class at Yale had 35 women and 230 men.

Talk radio host and film critic Michael Medved, then a classmate, told Oppenheimer, "Keep in mind, there were very few women, and they were taken. You took what you could get."

from the Evening Standard of London, 2000-Aug-7, by Molly Watson in New York:

Clinton aides tell of 'sham marriage'

Bill and Hillary Clinton's marriage is a sexless, cold sham punctuated by the American President's temper tantrums, according to revealing interviews with former White House aides published in the forthcoming issue of Talk magazine.

Mr Clinton is characterised as a brilliant politician with seemingly endless energy but also as an often lonely figure, isolated from his wife, who tended to spend his evenings in Washington playing cards on his own.

Matthew Miller, a senior adviser to the office of Management and Budget, told the magazine that it was the disastrous state of his marriage that drove Mr Clinton into his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Implying that Mrs Clinton denied her husband the physical affection most married men can expect, Mr Miller said: "If they had anything like what a healthy 50-year-old man with a presidential kind of libido would have had in a normal happy life, he would not have been reaching out to an intern down the hall."

But former political consultant Dick Morris said: "I have very rarely seen him express emotion or love towards Hillary. He's loyal to her in his way but the hand-holding and hugging are for public display. Hillary's not cold or remote. It's Bill who frosts the relationship."

Mr Morris describes Mr Clinton as a morose and affection-starved man who became increasingly paranoid and introverted as his presidency went on. "At night, the crowds go home, the Press leaves and the White House is empty," he said. "I have seen him stay up late into the night - many nights - playing solitaire, shuffling the cards as his mind goes blank."

Former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers said that breakfasting with the First Lady would put Mr Clinton in a vile mood. "You could always tell when he'd had breakfast with Hillary and been reading the papers because he would come in... and he would have a meltdown about usually some innocuous, stupid thing," she said.

But Ms Myers also viewed Mr Clinton the "most talented person I've ever been around... There's almost nobody he can't razzle-dazzle some of the time," she said. In contrast, she saw Mrs Clinton as "smart enough on a couple of things, but she's not in his league".

According to former adviser Abner Mikva, apart from the fact that "sex overwhelmed the presidency", Mr Clinton is a uniquely gifted leader. Even though he was capable of being "dour, surly, sullen, mopey and aloof", the President managed to keep his sense of humour throughout the impeachment scandal.

According to Mr Mikva, Mr Clinton "sort of liked" independent counsel Kenneth Starr and even offered to show him the White House's Lincoln bedroom before Mrs Clinton forbade it.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-11, from Scripps Howard News Service, by Betsy Hart:

Compare Hillary Clinton to Laura Bush

(August 11, 2000 1:00 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - This election season comparisons will inevitably be made between the wives of the two main presidential candidates, Laura Bush and Tipper Gore. But far more telling is the comparison between the sitting first lady and her potential successor from across the aisle.

The contrast here is great, overlooked and may speak volumes about how women and marriage are valued in 21st century America.

It's simply this: While Laura Bush is a wife who helped to civilize and encourage her husband to a higher moral standard, Hillary Rodham is a wife who enabled and encouraged her husband's debauchery. Perhaps that's because, according to all accounts, the former has never cared much about power, while the latter wanted it desperately from the time she could spell.

Forget the stylistic and political differences between the two women. Just consider how each has dealt with her husband's "weaknesses."

When George W. Bush was having trouble "growing up" long after he was grown-up, particularly when he was struggling with drinking, it was Laura Bush who more than anyone affected him for the better. The New York Times quotes a friend from George W.'s Yale days, who said simply, "Laura changed him." George W. told friends, according to the Times, that Laura forced him to choose: It was her and their family, or the bottle. He chose his family. And in the process he did grow up. He matured. He started pursuing a responsible professional and personal course. Laura Bush had begun the process of civilizing her man, calling him to aspire to better and more noble things, something honorable wives have been doing since the beginning of time.

Hillary could not possibly do the same because she, a woman hailed as an icon by many feminists, was committed to personal and political power at all costs, long the overriding goal of the Sisterhood. Bill's problem of course was not alcohol but repeated adultery, at least one case of harassment, and even an allegation of rape.

Hillary was well aware of her husband's extra-marital appetite. But each time these horrendous incidents became public she chose the most cynical path. Whatever may have been said in private, Hillary encouraged her husband's debauchery by going on the public relations attack and working to manipulate the press; by helping to rip apart the reputations of the women and others involved; by viciously painting as liars, as nothing more than a "vast right-wing conspiracy," those who were telling the truth; by working to smear independent counsel Ken Starr.

After years of such behavior it's clear this was no virtuous woman just "standing by her man," a concept she once ridiculed. So why did she conspire with Bill Clinton? Why did she agree to make a public mockery of her marriage vows?

Easy.

Hillary Rodham was a woman willing to aid and abet her husband's dissolution, even if she hated it, because as a true product of the worst of feminism she was that desperate to hang on to power. If instead she had put her family first, she might have also said long ago abut the other women, "them or me" - and meant it. Would it have changed Bill's Clinton's behavior? We'll never know.

Perversely, Hillary Rodham may have at some level relished it when her husband "got into trouble." Because as biographers have contended, that's when she was most triumphant - in those instances when she had the power to make or break Bill Clinton.

The Sisterhood must be proud.

George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are, of course, fully responsible for their own actions and moral choices. But it's also true that since time immemorial, civilized women have served as a civilizing influence on men, particularly their husbands.

Sure, many modern-day feminists have done just this in their own marriages (just as many women outside the Sisterhood have not) but they probably wouldn't admit it because as a principle, it drives feminists crazy. Nor is this to suggest that honorable women can't aspire to power and influence. It's just that at its core feminism has said this should be a woman's greatest goal, and we've seen that philosophy in all its ugly fruition in this White House.

All this means that ultimately, no matter what happens at the polls on election day, Laura Bush will be a winner - and Hillary Rodham won't be.

from TPDL 2000-Mar-21, from the Washington Times, by Woody West:

Indicting Hillary Clinton

Peggy Noonan does not dally in her demolition of the first lady. She labels "The Case Against Hillary Clinton" a polemic and bluntly dissects the woman who would be a U.S. senator - and whose ambition may well extend to the Democratic nomination for president in 2004.

This rather thin volume might be described as an extended op-ed piece, a journalistic form at which Miss Noonan is very good. It is crafted with the colloquial style that characterizes the former speech writer for President Reagan (her account of which was her book, "What I Saw at the Revolution"), and of President Bush's acceptance speech when nominated (that included the memorable and then often parodied "a thousand points of light").

"Hillary" - as the New York senatorial campaign now advertises her in the one-name apogee of celebrity - may ascend to the U.S. Senate, but she should not, Miss Noonan, a New Yorker, passionately believes. She is indistinguishable from the president, from "Clintonism," in the author's perspective:

"[T]hey have made the American political landscape a lower and lesser thing. They have left our political process distorted and misshapen; they have stopped good things from happening, and allowed bad things to occur; when caught they have covered-up and dissembled, which in turn has added a new level of sourness, cynicism and confusion to our politics and our culture."

In handing down this searing indictment, Miss Noonan reprises in detail the litany of mendacity that has infused the Clinton administration from early Travelgate, the health care fiasco, the missing Rose law firm records, to the Monica Lewinsky episode and the stouter and thinner fibs and dissimulations.

None of this is new. But there is so much of it, and this smooth recapitulation will not only ensure Miss Noonan's permanent inclusion in the first lady's "vast right-wing conspiracy" but elevate her to its Hall of Fame.

While she generally avoids psychobabble, Miss Noonan does excavate a bit of the respective neo-cortices of the first couple. "Often when I watch the Clintons I think I perceive a profound joylessness, an almost glassy-eyed containment, or distance. It's as if they don't have a facade, they've become a facade. You sense a depression on his part and an anger on hers." This, she contends, "makes their private plight our public problem."

Left to himself, Bill Clinton is bored and anxious and needs adulation or he will float away - while Hillary Clinton cannot live without power and admiration or would waft away "like an empty balloon."

What is fresh and imaginative in the book is, curiously, also somewhat annoying, at least to this reader. Miss Noonan declaims about what she calls a "culture of death" that has evolved in America, a time "unparalleled in history" (both assertions are Manhattan hyperbole, but never mind). After the horror of Columbine, Miss Noonan thought that Mrs. Clinton, with her constantly enunciated concern for children, might induce a new seriousness. Not so, writes Miss Noonan.

However, a few months later Hillary decided to meet with the heads of the big TV and movie studios and prominent other media poobahs. At her call, they assembled at the Hollywood home of Michael Eisner, the chief executive officer of Disney. David Geffen was there and Rupert Murdoch, Edgar Bronfman, Ted Turner, Gerry Levin of Time Warner - a roster of the most puissant callers of the cultural cadence. Miss Noonan then reports that "miraculously" she was there, too, with a tape recorder, because Mr. Eisner's housekeeper is a cousin of her best friend. She went unnoticed as Hillary began to speak.

Without equivocation, Hillary lectured that the "great unspoken fact" of American culture now is that the powerful, "those who write and edit Time and Newsweek, who produce the movies and talk about them on TV," all of them support pushing the envelope of standards. "But they make sure their own kids don't get cut and bleed from it." The shows they produce, she relentlessly went on, "teach kids to be materialistic, they teach them that the spiritual life is utterly absent from American life . . . Really, these shows are about sex and haircuts."

Hillary Clinton asked them "to change - to change utterly," and to do "the greatest patriotic act of our time" by cleaning up their acts. Astonishing speech, heartfelt and pungent. How in the world, one wonders (suspicion dawning), was it never at all reported in this Era of the Universal Leak? And with a high-octane journalist, Miss Noonan, present. Odd.

The answer is simple enough. It never happened. It never will, Peggy Noonan says of the "dream" from which she awoke. This is too cute.

The reservation aside, however, "The Case Against Hillary Clinton" is uncommonly powerful. "The Clintons have damaged our country. They have done it together, in unison, and with no apparent care or anxiety about what they have done. And for this reason, for all of these reasons, Clintonism should not be allowed to continue."

As the ultimate ironic thrust, Miss Noonan dedicates her book to Eleanor Roosevelt - the genuine article.

from TPDL 1999-Jun-13 (5-L990612), from the Boston Globe 1999-May-27, by John Ellis:

Dangerous lies

As a first-time presidential candidate, he lied about how he avoided military service, lied about drug usage, lied about his extramarital affair with a former state government employee, lied about his role in Arkansas real estate transactions, lied about his accomplishments as governor and lied about what he would do if elected president. But that was OK because things would be different when he took the oath of office.

The day before he was sworn in as president, Clinton told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that he planned to change US policy toward Iraq. The very next day, he denied saying any such thing, which was a lie.

He lied when he took the oath of office (saying that he would see to it that the laws were faithfully executed) and there followed a torrent of lies, half-truths and outright falsehoods that have since made it impossible to take anything the president says at face value.

Looking back over the last 6 1/2 years, the collected lies of William Clinton test the hard drive of memory.

He lied about Whitewater. He lied about Castle Grande. He lied about the firing of the White House travel office personnel. He lied about his staff's mishandling of FBI files. He lied about the circumstances surrounding the suicide of White House counsel Vince Foster. He lied about a vast White House effort to hush up former assistant attorney general and convicted felon Webster Hubbell.

He lied to his friends, and he told lies about his adversaries. He lied on policy matters big and small. He lied on political matters big and small. And when it came time to gear up for his reelection campaign in 1996, he lied with renewed and reckless abandon.

He lied about Democratic Party fund-raising efforts in 1995-96. He lied about his own fund-raising on behalf of the Clinton-Gore Committee. He lied about the involvement of the Riady family and Chinese operatives in these fund-raising efforts. He lied about the damage done to the national security as a result of those efforts.

After he was reelected in 1996, he lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He lied about his efforts to cover up that relationship. He lied to his wife, his daughter, his staff, his Cabinet, and his constituents and authorized a vast public relations campaign to slander duly appointed officers of the US Department of Justice charged with investigating many of the lies listed above.

He lied in a federal civil suit, and he lied to the federal judge who presided over that case. He lied, repeatedly and under oath, to a grand jury in a federal criminal investigation. And along the way he engaged his minions to lie about Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones, who accused him of sexual harassment and about Juanita Broaddrick, who accused him of rape. He brushed the rape charge aside, using his lawyer as a mouthpiece, but the charge stands uncontested on any important detail.

So it should come as no surprise that Clinton's contention that ''to the best of my knowledge no one has said anything to me about any espionage, which occurred by the Chinese against the labs, during my presidency'' is a lie. Or that ''I can tell you that no one has reported to me that they suspect such a thing has occurred'' is also a lie. These lies concern the largest spy scandal since the Rosenbergs.

On Monday, New York Times columnist William Safire expressed puzzlement as to why the president would lie about something he really didn't have to lie about.

After all, Chinese espionage at US nuclear weapons facilities began during the Carter administration and continued through the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton presidencies. Surely there was enough blame to go around. Surely the national security interests of the United States superceded the presidents need to prevaricate.

It was a wonderfully naive column, assuming as it did that Clinton could make the distinction between lying about unimportant matters (as his lying was characterized during the impeachment hearings) and lying about matters of state. But there is no distinction. Clinton lies because he is a pathological liar.

In the wake of the Cox Report, which details the wholesale theft of America's most precious nuclear secrets and the Clinton administration's stunning indifference to its discovery, nothing will change. No one will resign in disgrace. No one will be fired. And the president and his handlers will continue to lie about what happened, when it happened, and why it was allowed to continue to happen.

All these lies, and hundreds more like them, have made liars of us all. We have allowed them. We have accepted them. We are now complicit in them.

There was a time when Clinton's lying was his problem, but that time has long passed. Clinton's lying is our problem now. We ignore it at our peril.

For a thorough analysis of Clinton's psychopathy, read Toward a Unified Theory of Clinton, by Chris J Barr, 1999-Mar-11

from TPDL 1999-Apr-27, from the Eagle Forum via the Conservative News Service 1999-Apr-26, by Phyllis Schlafly:

I'm Fed Up

I'm fed up with the sanctimonious liberals imposing their values on me. Is this a free country, or isn't it?

I'm fed up with the liberals telling me that I can't be judgmental about crimes and sins, even when committed by the President. We have every right to be judgmental, and the liberals have their nerve trying to dictate a "Thou shalt not be judgmental" commandment.

I'm fed up with the liberals telling me I must be nonpartisan. Do we have political freedom in America or don't we? The liberals have their nerve trying to enforce a nonpartisan rule on Republicans, while at the same time winking at Democratic Senators who goosestepped to a unanimous partisan vote to save Bill Clinton from the fate he deserved.

Maybe it depends on what the meaning of partisan is. I guess, if you behave like a Republican, you are partisan, but if you behave like a Democrat you are nonpartisan.

The Democratic Senators knew that Clinton, like O.J., was guilty. The Democrats called his behavior "outrageous," "disgraceful," "dishonorable," "reckless," "contemptible," "shameful," "inexcusable," "sordid," "deplorable," "immoral," "debased," and "reprehensible." But all the Democratic Senators closed ranks to impose their values on the country by defeating what Alan Dershowitz called "the forces of evil" (i.e., Republicans and the so-called religious right).

I'm fed up with the liberals imposing the label "mean-spirited" on Republicans. Is it mean-spirited to criticize Clinton but not mean-spirited to criticize Ken Starr or Newt Gingrich (even though he was fully exonerated by the IRS investigation)?

I'm fed up with the liberals imposing their values on us about perjury, along with their absurd caveat that "everybody lies about sex." If it's just "he says, she says" and everybody lies, we should toss out all the sexual harassment cases, enjoy sex in the workplace, and then lie about it.

I'm fed up with the liberals blaming the Republicans for Clinton's impeachment and trial. The Independent Counsel law, which required Starr to investigate Clinton, and the law that allowed Paula Jones to have discovery rights against Clinton to prove a pattern of sexual harassment, were both Democratic laws signed by President Clinton.

I'm fed up with the liberals dictating their new moral imperative that we must "move on" and "become moderate," or else they will label us "extremist." Who gave them the right to enforce a new law of moderation and extremism and to brand people with their judgments? I thought we were supposed to be nonjudgmental, or does that rule depend on who is making the judgment? Or, maybe it depends on what the meaning of extremism is.

Let's try to understand the new moral code that the liberals are trying to impose. Is it "moderate" for a CEO (hypocritically posing for photo-ops carrying a Bible) to use an entry-level employee as his office sex toy, but it's "extremist" for observers to say he doesn't observe the Biblical moral code?

I'm fed up with the Clinton Administration telling us we have a moral obligation to spend American blood and money in ethnic wars all around the world. Where did the interventionist liberals get any authority to impose their foreign-policy morality on us? The fact is, the Clinton Administration doesn't have any moral authority to impose any "obligation" on us at all.

How dare the liberals impose their values on us by pretending that the way they spend our money is morally superior to the way individual Americans spend it! Bill Clinton says he won't refund the surplus tax revenues to the taxpayers because we might not "spend it right."

I'm fed up with the liberals saying it is our moral duty to spend our money for their pet projects (it's called taxes) in order to provide benefits to special constituencies that are expected to vote liberal. This endless stream of constituencies seeking handouts runs the gamut from illegal aliens, to the welfare bureaucracy, to the con artists peddling pornography in the National Endowment for the Arts, to the big bankers demanding that we finance their risky overseas investments through bailouts, the IMF and the OPIC.

I'm fed up with the liberals and the teachers unions imposing their Whole Language, School-to-Work, "comprehensive" sex education, and diversity curricula on other people's children. The educrats won't even allow parents a choice for phonics, abstinence classes, or traditional academic basics.

I'm fed up with the liberals telling me I have to respect their gods: the Presidency and his "wag the dog" foreign policy, the Imperial Judiciary and its activist decisions, and the public schools with their failed methods. Who gave the liberals the authority to substitute those gods for God and His Ten Commandments? [Well, the Ten Commandments were just discovered by people as universal moral primitives. God didn't hand them down except insofar as God created the universe and set it free. -Ed.]

I'm fed up with the liberals prescribing tolerance as the supreme moral value and imposing their notions of what is acceptable behavior. I'm fed up with the liberals telling us that we must show forgiveness about Clinton's perjury, peculiar sex, and perversion of justice at the same time that he spells reconciliation R-E-V-E-N-G-E.

I'm fed up with the liberals falsely accusing Republicans and the so-called religious right of imposing their values on society, when the evidence proves that the liberals have been using the full powers of government, the media and academia to impose their values on us. Their values, like Clinton's Presidency, are just as stained as the famous blue dress.

from PDL 1999-Mar-10, from the Wall Street Journal, by a member of the editorial staff:

The 'Commentraitors'

With impeachment concluded, a curious thing is happening among President Clinton's friends and allies. They are beginning to admit how little they believe or respect the man they helped elect to the world's most powerful job. Now that their man will be able to serve out his term, at least some of his defenders are publicly owning up to a kind of acquittal remorse.

The most notable guilty conscience belongs to George Stephanopoulos, in his new memoir out this week. The war room regular whose smashmouth campaign habits helped Mr. Clinton lie his way past Gennifer Flowers and the rest in 1992 now reveals that he had doubts about his boss's character and honesty all along.

In the Flowers furor, he reports, "Reading the story, Clinton seized on any detail he knew was wrong. I was happy to make a list of the details that were false, but I didn't press Clinton to say which ones were true." When tapes appeared of Mr. Clinton and Ms. Flowers talking "in intimate tones about their personal relationship and the presidential race," Mr. Stephanopoulos writes, "I was hit by a wave of nausea, doubt, embarrassment and anger. Mostly anger. He lied. Even if he didn't, what's he doing talking to her in the middle of the campaign?" (His emphasis.)

This story is pertinent even today, in the wake of Juanita Broaddrick's highly credible rape charge. Mr. Clinton and his spokesmen answer any query by referring to the one statement by the President's personal lawyer, David Kendall. It reads. "Any allegation that the president assaulted Ms. Broaddrick more than 20 years ago is absolutely false. Beyond that we are not going to comment."

We have learned that this President chooses his words carefully, and we note that 20 years ago no Ms. Broaddrick existed. Her name was Juanita Hickey. Per Mr. Stephanopoulos, it would fit the Clinton pattern to issue what normal people would interpret as a blanket denial, but was in Clintonspeak denying only a tiny fact, such as her name at the time. At the least, a member of the White House press corps ought to ask Mr. Clinton if the denial applies to Juanita Hickey. And was he ever in a hotel room with her 20 years ago?

All the more so after Kevin Hickey, Juanita's son, gave his own persuasive account to CNN's Larry King Monday night of how his mother told him about her rape. Mr. Hickey's credibility was such that two other former Clinton aides, Dee Dee Myers and David Gergen, followed up to say they found both son and mother believable. This startled CNN's Jeff Greenfield, who noted that this meant that two former aides were essentially saying they think Bill Clinton might be a rapist.

"As Jeff pointed out," said Mr. King to Ms. Myers, "you should be saying, well, no chance."'

Ms. Myers: "I did that for a while, Larry. I don't do that anymore."

Neither apparently does Betsy Wright, the former Arkansas intimate whose 1992 task was to put down what she once famously called "bimbo eruptions." In late January, she told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that regarding Bill, "I feel personally betrayed. I feel personally lied to. I feel that he was so stupid, to be such a smart man. And I think he's got a sickness. I'm serious about that."

The temptation among those of us who were there first is to say, Now they tell us! But we're willing to credit their sincerity because even now they pay a price for candor. Ms. Myers quipped on CNN that at the White House she's known as one of "the commentraitors." And Mr. Stephanopoulos reports in his memoir that after admitting his doubts about Mr. Clinton's Monica Lewinsky denials, "as far as the president was concerned, I was a nonperson--my name was not to be mentioned in his presence."

But far from a lesson in disloyalty, the news here is that even those who know him best now doubt Bill Clinton's fitness for office. Asked this question in December, former press secretary Mike McCurry said, "I have enormous doubts because of the recklessness of his behavior." Asked the same question by Newsweek, Mr. Stephanopoulos replied, "He's too fit to be removed, but knowing what we know now, I don't think he'd be fit enough to be elected." George and Henry Hyde aren't all that far apart.

Though it has 23 months to run, the Clinton Presidency increasingly resembles the life of another famous man who escaped official conviction. He is free to play golf and give speeches. He can plead that we all "put it behind us." But nobody believes him anymore. And he must avoid the press lest he be asked something he will have to lie about again. Bill Clinton has become our President O.J.

from TPDL 1999-Apr-8, from NewsMax:

Hitchens on Isikoff on Clinton

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff had some rather harsh words for President Clinton during an interview on Wednesday's night's "Dateline NBC". But they weren't quite as harsh as what Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens had to say, reacting to the tease of Isikoff's quote printed in Wednesday morning's papers.

After explaining his odyssey through the Clinton sex-scandalabra to "Dateline's" Stone Phillips, Isikoff offered his own assessment of the president he had come to know:

"(Clinton) is far more psychologically disturbed than the public ever imagined," Isikoff told the NBC audience.

"I think that's an understatement," Hitchens countered, when WOR radio's Bob Grant previewed the Isikoff remark to the left-leaning writer hours before the "Dateline" broadcast.

Hitchens, whose has his own upcoming Clinton book, "No One Left to Lie To", explained:

"The suggestion is that this guy is in terrible trouble mentally and psychologically and is a completely hollow narcissist and egomainiac. And he thinks that the best therapy for it is being president. My view is that presidential therapy hasn't worked for him and shouldn't have been tried. But he certainly does need professional help."

Hitchens described his own Clinton book to Grant as a reproach to the left for being taken in by "such a crook....and such a thug, I might add, and such a liar, rapist and war criminal, since I'm on the subject."

from National Review 1999-Feb-8, by John O'Sullivan, from http://www.nationalreview.com/08feb99/osullivan020899.html:

IS SEX STILL SEXY?

Big Sister

Orwell and Huxley foretell late-20th-century sexual mores.

THE moment I first heard the words "sexual McCarthyism," a thrill of horror did the rhumba up and down my spine. The headline-writer in me recognized at once that the phrase had the literary quality of being instantly memorable, like "radical chic," "manifest destiny," and "their finest hour." Yet I also sensed that this catchiness was quite unnecessary, since it was going to be endlessly drummed into me.

     And, sure enough, today it is unavoidable in newspapers, radio call-ins, TV talk shows -- even book titles (Alan Dershowitz). Its success is easy enough to explain. Like many ideological coinages, "sexual McCarthyism" is vivid but vague. It inspires the listener with the passion to resist, without explaining exactly what it is that should be resisted. Obviously, we are being mobilized to oppose a right-wing atrocity -- "McCarthyism" tells us that much. But what more specific form does it take?

     Does sexual McCarthyism mean opposition to sex with Communists? That would seem to be a largely redundant cause. There are not many Communists left outside China these days, and, as the late Arthur Koestler pointed out, most of the female ones were recruited "from the ranks of girls who have never been asked to dance."

     Or does it mean opposition to Communist sex? Krafft-Ebbing has no entry for this deviancy, but it presumably resembles an illicit version of a Moonie marriage in which one's partner is selected by a committee without regard to age, sex, or ability. Again, not even the notoriously gloomy Right sees that as an imminent threat.

     Or is the term an ignorant but imaginative attempt to unroll the meaning of S&M?

     Most of the mainstream media outlets were not especially helpful in clearing up these mysteries. They were not vivid, but they were vague. They treated S-M (as I shall now compress it) as a drive by anti-Clinton Republicans and Christian evangelicals to stigmatize those who are getting more sex than they -- an attitude that is not confined to right-wingers and does not require a new phrase to describe it, "human nature" being quite sufficient.

     It took the Village Voice, the Holy Inquisition of the Universal Church of Marx in New York, to develop a full theory of S-M. Richard Goldstein thought deeply and went into automatic writing mode thus:

From the lurid revelations and crude moralizing to the criminalization of a legal act (in this case, adultery) and the deliberate setting of a perjury trap, it all seems frighteningly familiar to historians of McCarthyism.

"There's a strand of Western culture that requires some kind of demonized enemy," says Ellen Schrecker, author of Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. "In the late '40s and '50s, it was Communists, but today it's operating in the realm of sexuality. We're obviously in the middle of a Red scare about sex."

     Wow. But wait. There's more of the same.

     "Back then," continues Goldstein, the danger was "belonging to a host of political organizations branded as Communist; now, it's having sex with someone other than your wife. Even the perjury trap that snared the president was a device used by the McCarthyites to destroy Alger Hiss, among others."

     And so on.

     There are some fascinating side-issues raised by Goldstein's exegesis. Its reference to Alger Hiss seems to imply that lying about treason, like lying about sex, is something to which only a bigot could conceivably object. And while decrying the criminalization of adultery (which, of course, is not a crime -- though lying under oath about it always has been), Goldstein effectively decriminalizes the perjury committed by President Clinton by describing it as "a trap." If there had indeed been a perjury trap, it would be entrapment and thus itself a crime. Far from entrapping Clinton, however, Republicans, Democrats, and the New York Times all warned him vociferously not to lie before the grand jury because that would constitute an impeachable offense. When he ignored those warnings, he walked into his own trap with his eyes open.

     But these issues shrink beside a gaping canyon in the logic underlying S-M. If sexual McCarthyism is a paranoid right-wing device to halt radical social change by restoring sexual repression and by stigmatizing liberals and Democrats as adulterers and sexual deviants, how come all of its victims (except one) have been Republicans? How come most of its practitioners are the Left's camp-followers in journalism and related trades? And how come the main instruments of this repression were invented by extreme feminists?

     It's a puzzle, isn't it?

     Consider Exhibit A: The victims of S-M before Clinton were John Tower, Clarence Thomas, and Bob Packwood; its victims since Clinton have been Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston, J. C. Watts, Dan Burton, Bob Barr, and whichever Republican Larry Flynt takes a dislike to in the coming months.

     And Exhibit B: The people outing politicians recently include the editors of Salon, Geraldo Rivera, and Flynt.

     And Exhibit C: Clinton committed his original perjury in the Paula Jones case in order to avoid honestly answering questions about a consensual sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky -- questions that feminists had succeeded in legitimizing for trials involving non-consensual sexual harassment in a bill that the president signed into law.

     In other words, pace Miss Schrecker, this is not a scare about sex by Reds, but a scare by Reds about sex.

     Yet there is a deeper intellectual puzzle here. The underlying assumption of S-M theoreticians is that politically repressive governments logically impose sexual repression too and that therefore the sex act is a kind of instinctive humanistic rebellion against totalitarianism. They occasionally refer to "The Junior Anti-Sex League" from Nineteen Eighty-four to show that they have read and thought seriously about this connection. And indeed Orwell's book advances just such an argument:

But a real love affair was an unthinkable event. The women of the Party were all alike. Chastity was as deeply ingrained in them as Party loyalty . . . They were all impregnable, as the Party intended that they should be. And what he wanted, more even than to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue, even if it were only once in his whole life. The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thoughtcrime.

     Orwell was a literary prophet who successfully predicted some of our present discontents: health fascism, "inclusive" language, and sensitivity training. But the main lines of Orwell's prophecy were derived from his criticism of the "hard totalitarianism" that dominated Europe from 1917 to 1989. The future he saw -- a boot stamping on the human face forever -- seems less inevitable, at least in its complete form, since the collapse of Soviet Communism. If totalitarianism is to make any sort of political comeback, it will be in its "soft" therapeutic form.

     The literary prophet of soft totalitarianism, of course, was an English contemporary of Orwell's, Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World. Huxley was even more uncannily prophetic than Orwell. Among the social and scientific developments he forecast in his bland dystopia were cloning, genetic engineering, social stratification based on IQ, widespread use of cosmetic surgery, the recreational use of mind-altering drugs, sex education designed to remove children's natural modesty and inhibitions, virtual-reality entertainment providing mainly pornography, multiculturalism, the cult of youth, and "death with dignity."

     But his great insight was that the total World State would rest on a stability far more reliable than oppression -- namely happiness. It would provide that happiness by shaping its citizens' minds and imaginations (and, incidentally, their bodies) so that they would want what they were destined to get. And it would deal with the irreducible minimum of discontent that remained by mood-altering drugs, pornographic entertainment, and, above all, officially encouraged, ever-available, promiscuous sex disconnected from both love and parenthood. As the World Controller, Mustapha Mond, puts it:

The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want and they never want what they can't get. They're well-off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about.

In other words, sex in Utopia is not Orwell's act of rebellion against totalitarianism, but Huxley's strategy whereby totalitarianism induces the passive consent of the people to itself. Or as Huxley himself wrote in his foreword to the 1946 edition: "As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase." Which Utopia now seems likelier? And to which political philosophy, liberalism or conservatism, does that Utopia most conform?

     If I were of a theorizing cast of mind, I might spin out a nice little thesis on "sexual McCarthyism" as a strategy of the therapeutic liberal elite to break down the moral resistance of Christians and traditionalists to its program of enfeebling distractions by discrediting their political leadership (and by extension their own beliefs) as at best setting unattainable standards, and at worst hypocritical.

     As it is, my common sense tells me that, as a man of low moral character, Bill Clinton naturally attracts the support of similar people, and that they in turn naturally employ low moral methods such as slander and the threat of blackmail to defend their champion. You can, of course, give these methods quasi-academic status by calling them something like sexual McCarthyism. But does even Joe McCarthy deserve to be put on the same moral level as Clinton, Geraldo, and Larry Flynt?

from TPDL 1999-Apr-17, from the New York Post:

THE SELF-AGGRANDIZER-IN-CHIEF

When the Monica Lewinsky mess was heating up, President Clinton tried to convince the American people that he was just a private citizen who deeply hurt his family and wanted to get back to work. Now, like James Cameron, he wants to raise his arms and shout, ''I'm King of the World!''

He's gross, is what he is.

After a recent speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Clinton was asked whether he has the moral authority to give orders to a pilot flying missions over Kosovo.

''Well, I don't have to address it to the Air Force pilot,'' he declared. ''I am his commander in chief, and they swore an oath to the Constitution, and they have performed admirably.''

Yeah? Well, if Clinton had always insisted on conducting himself as though his primary role were as commander in chief, he wouldn't be president any longer. He'd be lucky to stay out of the stockade, in fact,because the armed forces don't take kindly to adultery, abuse of power, obstruction of justice and perjury.

Lt. Kelly Flinn, the pilot who had an affair with the husband of a lower-ranked female pilot, left the Air Force before she could be court-martialed on charges of adultery, lying and disobedience.

Maj. Gen. David Hale was court-martialed by the Army for his failings, including adultery, obstruction of justice and lying.

Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston was denied the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because he had an adulterous relationship more than 10 years ago.

They, and others, were denied a place in the armed forces because their actions called into question their ability to lead with authority.

Clinton can play commander in chief all he wants, but the fact remains; If he had been judged according to the military code, he'd have been sent home to Arkansas. His self-aggrandizing strutting is appalling.

from MSNBC, 1999-Mar-6, by Richard Stengle:

The Republic of Feeling

Somewhere in the Dark Ages of the 1970's, Americans began responding to questions with the verb, ``I feel,'' rather than, ``I think.'' It marked the slow and sad shift that we have made from a Culture of Thought to a Republic of Feeling. One of the primary handmaidens of this change was Ms. Barbara Walters, who became the grand inquisitor of the heart, not the head. Monica is the Grand Canyon of emotional need, her face (minus the lip gloss, of course) should be carved on the Mt. Rushmore of Feeling. With Barbara, feelings always rule, emotions trumps thought, tears triumph over logic. Now we have the latest and most grievous child of the Republic of Feeling, Monica Samille Lewinsky, who can dissect the minutest shift of emotion in her heart but cannot define the separation of powers.

THE PRINCESS OF SENSATION

Every culture falls somewhere on the spectrum between emotion and thought, between the Classical and the Romantic, between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Greece of Aristotle was a model of intellectualism, the Italy of the Renaissance was enraptured by the sensuous.

Pre-millennial America, by contrast, is awash in mindless emotionalism, as evident in the kindergarten level of our political discourse, in our sappy movies and television and advertising, and in the painful spectacle of the Empress of Feeling, Barbara Walters, interviewing her symbolic daughter, the Princess of Sensation, Monica Lewinsky.

Would it have been possible for Ms. Walters at any point during the interview to say, ``Monica, you worked at the Pentagon, can you tell us what the War Powers Act is?'' Or, ``Monica, you worked at the White House, can you tell us what the Constitution says about the powers of the Executive branch?'' Or, ``Monica, you committed a number of felonies for which you received immunity, have you any explanation for your crimes?''

Remember, my fellow Americans in the Republic of Feeling, Ms. Monica was a public servant whose salary was paid by your tax dollars. Is it unfair to ask such questions? I know we would get a good answer to the query, ``Monica, what were you feeling on that day?'' but that's now what we were paying her for. As for the phone sex, that at least was after hours.

SELF-ESTEEM MOVEMENT

Monica Lewinsky is a creature of the modern self-esteem movement, which is a mammoth industry in our Republic of Feeling. Self-help gurus are a dime a dozen in a culture that no longer has public intellectuals. Anything that a child of a Beverly Hills doctor can do ``to feel better about herself'' is justified, including having affairs with powerful married men. Low-self esteem is not an enviable thing, but it cannot become the one-size-fits-all excuse for intolerable behavior. Nor should it become the more acceptable face of a narcissism that causes a White House intern to become a sociopath who cares more about getting her phone calls answered than what our troops are doing in Bosnia.

HIGH ORDER NARCISSIST

In ``Monica's Story,'' she reveals herself as a narcissist of the highest order, able to dissect her feelings on a sub-atomic level and justify her behavior on the basis of her fluctuating emotions. This seems entirely normal in our day and age, and no one questions it. Feelings are the V-8 engine of all of Monica's behavior, and no one seems to look askance at that.

How is it that someone with such low self-esteem can harass the President of the United States, pressure him for a job, ask him to have his friends help her, and make unending demands on his time in order to give him boxes of trinkets?

She frequently describes herself as an ``emotionally needy person'' - in fact, she is the Grand Canyon of emotional need, her face (minus the lip gloss, of course) should be carved on the Mt. Rushmore of Feeling. If, during all her suffering, Monica knew that she would someday be able to shed a tear under the video cossetting of Barbara Walters, perhaps she would have known it would all be worthwhile.

How is it, I wonder, that someone with such low self-esteem can harass the President of the United States, pressure him for a job, ask him to have his friends help her, and make unending demands on his time in order to give him boxes of trinkets or to explain about her emotional needs? That doesn't sound like low self-esteem to me. That sounds like someone whose emotions have turned her into an autocrat with delusions of grandeur.

THOUGHT NOWHERE INTRUDES

I don't for a moment excuse that sap Bill Clinton. He must and will shoulder the blame for this whole sorry spectacle. But he, more than Monica and Barbara, is at least a product of the conflict between head and heart. We can at least see a battle between the two, and in the end, his stunning lack of emotional discipline wins out. If only the policy wonk had been stronger [Would that have really been better? Hmmm... -Ed.]. But with Monica, there is no battle; the contest is between everyday emotional turmoil and complete emotional breakdown. Thought nowhere intrudes. And that's just the way Barbara likes it.

The British novelist E.M. Forster once made a chilling proposition. He wrote that if it ever came to betraying his country or betraying his friend, he hoped that he had the courage to betray his country. I assume that the Monica, Princess of Feeling, would agree, and I fear the country would do the same. Linda Tripp, for all her absurd psycho-drama and moralizing, essentially chose the opposite and she has been universally mocked for it.

This was a nation founded not on a common ancestry, a common religion, or even a common culture, it was a nation founded on ideas, not feelings, and the headlong, unthinking embrace of emotion betrays the ideas on which this country was founded.

from TPDL 2000-Mar-30, from the Washington Post p.A21, by George Will:

Sleaze, The Sequel

Clinton may not be the worst president America has had, but surely he is the worst person to be president. There is reason to believe that he is a rapist ("You better get some ice on that," Juanita Broaddrick says he told her concerning her bit lip) and that he bombed a country to distract attention from legal difficulties arising from his glandular life, and that. . . . Furthermore, the bargain that he and his wife call a marriage refutes the axiom that opposites attract. Rather, she, as much as he, perhaps even more so, incarnates Clintonism.

"To understand her you have to understand him" is the thesis of "The Case Against Hillary Clinton," Peggy Noonan's slender, scalding book--a broadside, as such polemics were called when Tom Paine and Emile Zola penned them. It answers with a resounding "No!" the question of whether the passions swirling around New York's Senate race are disproportionate.

Noonan, a speechwriter for President Reagan and now a Wall Street Journal columnist, calls Mrs. Clinton's candidacy an act of "mad boomer selfishness and narcissism" shocking even in a Clinton. Noonan concedes that there is something admirable in Mrs. Clinton's "toughness." But a Noonan compliment, like a scorpion, has a sting in its tail: "Never has the admirable been so fully wedded to the appalling, never in modern American political history has such tenacity and determination been marshaled to achieve such puny purpose: the mere continuance of Them."

There is an almost magnificent banality to Mrs. Clinton's campaign. ("Our children are our future." "Governments must put children first." "Every time we pay tribute to art, particularly to art in a public place, we know it will cause a lot of thoughts to be thought and words to be spoken and ideas to be sparked.") But the banality echoes the utter emptiness of the record of what she calls her lifetime of "public service."

The service includes being a rainmaker for a remarkably dodgy Little Rock law firm, representing interests in front of regulators appointed by her husband. Her "public service" does not include any public accomplishment other than making a baroque (600 people in 38 subgroups, operating in illegal secrecy) debacle of health care reform.

Noonan's diagnosis of Mrs. Clinton's emptiness (of everything but staggering self-importance) accords with Elizabeth Kolbert's unenthralled report in the New Yorker ("Running on Empathy," Feb. 7) in which Kolbert says Mrs. Clinton's "listening tour" of New York state "tried to elevate nodding into a kind of political philosophy." Her candidacy, Kolbert writes, is based on "the quality of her concern, the heartfeltness of her convictions, and the depth of her feelings." By basing her campaign on an attitude ("sincerity"), Mrs. Clinton reduces questions of policy to questions of her disposition.

Noonan's book is not "balanced" and does not contain fresh facts. But it is no more imbalanced than "Common Sense" or "J'accuse," and her worthy purpose is to distill the meaning of the acid rain of facts about the Clintons' behavior with which we have been deluged.

"This highly credentialed rube," says Noonan in summing up, is "too corrupt for New York; she is too cynical for the place that gave birth to Tammany Hall." Noonan is one angry New Yorker, and although anger can be, and in this case is, a whetstone for sharp writing, it can subvert judgment. Did Noonan's anger do so? Consider.

Mrs. Clinton (like her recently announced Jewish step-grandfather?) is a longtime Yankees fan. She did not even know who Craig Livingstone, keeper of the FBI files, was--although a White House intern told House investigators that he heard her address Livingstone by name, in a friendly manner. Never mind staff notes indicating otherwise, she had nothing to do with the travel office firings, smearings and groundless prosecutions. She says she talks to her husband about everything--but had no inkling of his offer of clemency, over the vehement objections of the FBI and Bureau of Prisons, to 16 Puerto Rican terrorists.

Like the photograph of two Clinton friends holding hands as they jump up and down on Lincoln's bed, images of Clintonian vulgarities are vivid, and more are being produced. Recently there was the sheer fakery of Mrs. Clinton's successful struggle to answer David Letterman's questions about New York--questions she had been told in advance. Today Mrs. Clinton, who put Chelsea's nanny on the Arkansas payroll as a security guard, is chiseling taxpayers by her use of government planes for campaigning.

Will it--Clintonism--ever end? As the song says, it's up to you, New York.

from PDL 1999-Mar-22, from the Manchester Union-Leader, by Richard Lessner:

Short Take -- Bill Clinton

Last week's disgusting Radio and Television Correspondents' Washington soiree, featuring a jocular Bill Clinton, called to mind Oscar Wilde's biting description of fox hunting: "The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible." There was a shameless Bill Clinton yuking about his sexcapades and impeachment, while the 2,200 assembled "journalists" guffawed. Gomorrah on the Potomac. Revolting. Mr. Clinton even cracked jokes about Red China's spying at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory, as though this breech of national security were a laughing matter. If any yet entertained doubts about Washington's isolation from the rest of the America or this President's moral flabbiness, then this was the occasion on which both were floridly on display.

from PDL 1999-Mar-21, from The Oklahoman, by John Ellis:

Believable Rape Story Changes Terrain

"YOU ought to put some ice on that," is what she says he said before he left, after he allegedly raped her.

If you believe Juanita Broaddrick's story about Bill Clinton, then the president is a monster. If you don't believe it or can pretend it's not on the table, then life goes on almost as before.

What's so amazing about the Broaddrick story is that most everyone in Washington believes it. Right-wingers have always believed the worst about Clinton. Left-wingers have long suspected the worst about Clinton. Everyone else has been hoping against hope that "it" would go away.

But "it" never goes away and "it" always comes back. Now, the political life support system that has enabled him for so long is coming apart. Loyalists are abandoning ship. They're starting to tell the truth or take action based on what they know of him. Their words and actions indicate that they believe that he should not be entrusted with the high office he now holds.

George Stephanopoulos, who joined the Clinton campaign in 1991 and rose to become one of his closest counselors, says that even he is no longer sure about Clinton. "He's too fit to be removed," said Stephanopoulos, "but knowing what we know now, I don't think he'd be fit enough to be elected."

Betsy Wright, who served as Clinton's principal political operative throughout his years as governor of Arkansas, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in late January that she believed her former boss was sick. "I feel personally betrayed," said Wright. "I feel personally lied to. I feel that he was so stupid, to be such a smart man. And I think he's got a sickness. I'm serious about that."

Mike McCurry, Clinton's press secretary for three years, has long let it be known (privately) that he harbored the gravest doubts about Clinton's character. Asked about Clinton's fitness by the BBC in late December, McCurry replied, "I have enormous doubts because of the recklessness of his behavior."

These people are not members of some right-wing conspiracy. They span 20 years across the spectrum of Clinton's political life. And the woman who spans his entire adult life in politics, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is reliably reported to be so unnerved that she may soon take leave of her marriage rather than continue its charade.

The Broaddrick allegations are changing the terrain. Prior to their publication in The Wall Street Journal and broadcast on NBC television, Vice President Gore trailed Texas Governor George W. Bush (my first cousin) in year 2000 trial heats by 5 to 10 points. In recent Gallup and NBC/Wall Street Journal polling, Bush's lead has doubled.

After the Senate acquitted the president of impeachment charges, the press was filled with "analysis" of Republican "demise." There were reports the GOP would lose control of the House in the next election and, perhaps, the Senate as well.

You won't read that now. Democratic strategists fear a loss of two to three seats in the year 2000 Senate contests. If the China scandal story is even half as bad as many suspect, some GOP strategists believe the party might run the table, winning the presidency and maintaining control of the Senate and the House.

The most startling impact of Broaddrick's allegations has been that they have rendered Democrats speechless. Senators and representatives avoid all mention of the subject. Members of Clinton's Cabinet have been struck dumb. The only one who has hazarded a response, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, said only that she took the charges "seriously."

The charges cannot be dismissed out of hand. They fit the Clinton modus operandi. His denial is almost as telling as the charges themselves. He lies about everything. Why would anyone think he's not lying about this?

Clinton may serve out his term, amid a swirl of mixed emotions. But the consequences of his acquittal are just beginning to be felt.

The charge of rape has changed the moral arithmetic. It will get worse before it gets better, because the truth is it will never get better until Bill Clinton is gone.

from PDL 1999-Mar-19, from the New York Times, by John M. Broder:

Clinton Playing Out His Presidency Into a Long Twilight

WASHINGTON -- The lights had dimmed, the band was packing up, the crowd of more than 2,000 in the cavernous convention hall had dwindled to less than two dozen.

But here was the President of the United States, still working the rope line, shaking every last hand, soaking up the last glimmering rays of Arkansas adulation.

The scene last weekend at the convention center in Little Rock, Ark., after a state Democratic fund-raising dinner captured a revealing moment as the blazing and bewildering political career of Bill Clinton enters its twilight.

More and more, the President looks and sounds like yesterday's man, spending large measures of his precious final days in office revisiting the scenes of yesterday's glories and trying to forget the pain of the humiliating impeachment battle he survived. He is clinging to his last hours on stage, as the spotlight shifts to the rising careers of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

Only a hundred yards from the convention hall where Clinton lingered in nostalgic reverie last Saturday sits Arkansas's Old State House, where Clinton and throngs of delirious thousands celebrated his two Presidential election victories on crisp November nights. The weekend trip to Arkansas included a visit to Hope, where he dedicated his boyhood home as a historical shrine.

Last month, Clinton took a sentimental journey to New Hampshire, not only to boost the candidacy of Vice President Gore, but also to relive his own triumph seven years ago over accusations of adultery and draft-dodging to place a respectable second in the New Hampshire primary. That near-win earned him the moniker of "Comeback Kid" and catapulted him to the Presidency.

In his public comments and his private ruminations, Clinton's mortality weighs heavily on him, as the poet John Keats put it, like unwilling sleep.

Though only 52 years old, Clinton has lived the equivalent of three lifetimes in politics and soon will be one of the nation's youngest ex-Presidents.

Clinton spoke last Saturday in Little Rock of his "imminent retirement" and reminded his audience that life and human accomplishment were fleeting.

"When you strip it all away," Clinton said as a cold March rain fell outside, "it comes down to that -- to humility, humanity, a sense of one's own mortality and one's own capacity for incredible dignity and glory."

But along with wistfulness there is remorse, too, and abiding anger. The time for public apologies is past -- Clinton issued near- weekly expressions of regret in the final months of the Monica Lewinsky episode -- but the President in private continues a campaign of seeking forgiveness from his family and his band of loyal followers.

There is no mistaking the sincerity of the President's regret about the foolishness of his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky and his efforts to conceal it, Clinton's friends say. He knows that he has brought pain to his family and has given license to former aides like George Stephanopoulos and Michael D. McCurry to question his fitness for office.

But his anger is as deeply felt as his remorse, associates say. He believes he has been the victim of a Republican plot to undermine his authority and destroy him personally, they say. He reserves particular venom for Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel, and the Republican leadership of the House who together branded him with the indelible stain of impeachment. It is they, not he, Clinton has told friends, that history will hunt down and condemn.

"That's how he internalizes it in his mind," said one close associate of the President. "Many will differ, but that's what keeps him going each day. He's got to get up each morning to run the world, and that's how he does it."

For most politicians, the impeachment inquiry and its revelations would have been devastating. But for Clinton, it was but the latest in a career of public indignities and embarrassing disclosures. Clinton has responded consistently -- with denial and denunciation of his opponents.

Stephanopoulos, in his new book about Clinton, "All Too Human," said Clinton saw himself as the "target of unscrupulous enemies who would try to destroy him personally because they opposed his policies."

That, in turn, justified everything the Clinton camp did in reply, Stephanopoulos wrote -- lying, intimidation, hitting back.

"In a weird way," another close Clinton ally said, "the excessive zealotry of his opponents is what helps him and his supporters sleep at night. If they hadn't used his behavior to try to take over the country, there'd be no defending it."

As time passes and the 2000 campaigns get under way, Clinton plays a less and less central role in the political world, except as the Democratic Party's most prodigious fund-raiser ever. The future of the First Lady is of much more interest in Washington and New York today than that of Clinton. And Gore is now chartering airplanes to accommodate the press contingent that has begun to follow him, while Presidential press charters are flying with scores of empty seats, or not at all.

"I think he's now in the frame of mind that pretty soon it'll be Gore's whole bailiwick," said a Washington political consultant who knows the President and Vice President well. "He knows the torch will be passed soon and he wants to get as much done as he can. But he's also realistic it'll be Gore's whole banana to deal with soon. He realizes that; he has no false delusions about that at all. He understands where he is and he accepts that pretty readily."

Clinton still plays the political game with relish, even though he has run his last campaign. Nothing engages him more than a detailed discussion of New York politics, war-gaming a possible Senate race between his wife and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York City.

He also lights up when analyzing a possible race between Gore and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, the early favorite for the Republican Presidential nomination. But these are other people's battles, not his.

Clinton is still dusting himself off after his impeachment trial, which he survived, but at a horrendous cost. The President has emerged from a year of isolation from all but his closest friends and financial supporters. Last week he invited reporters to two off- the-record dinners in Central America and on Friday he is to hold his first full-dress press conference in nearly a year. But as much as he would like to talk about his proposals for Social Security and education, he is likely to be questioned more about his past than about his plans. He has never been asked, for example, about the impeachment trial and what lessons he took from it.

He is also likely to be asked about Mrs. Clinton's political plans and his assessment of Gore's chances. Beyond sketching out his proposals for entitlement programs and education, he has not drawn a large-scale picture of his agenda for his remaining months as President.

But at a more profound level, Clinton is already thinking beyond his last 22 months in office to the imprint he will leave on American politics and American life.

"Our public life is poorer when people forget the past and ignore the future," he said last weekend. "It is poorer when they choose power over purpose because they forget we're just here for a little speck of time. And in 100 or 200 years, nobody will remember any of us, and all that will endure is whatever contribution we made to make life better and richer and more decent."

from PDL 1999-Mar-27, from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

Epilogue in office: Footnotes on the final days

WHILE THE REST of the world was watching college basketball last weekend, a C-SPAN junkie might have caught a replay of the president's first press conference since Buddy was a pup--if not before. Bill Clinton himself joked that he remembered the last press conference because of all those questions on . . . Zoe Baird! Ba-dum-bum.

But-seriously-folks, it was a little unsettling to watch this president directly address members of the press. Or at least directly defer to his lawyer's previous statement. We now know why these news conferences haven't been missed.

But there was one moment worth rehashing. Some inky wretch had the nerve to ask this president about the new L-word. No, not Liberalism; the unspeakable word now is Lying. And one reporter wanted to know:

What would be Bill Clinton's legacy when it comes to telling the truth?

Upon hearing the question, the Washington Post reported, the president's "face tightened" and he responded in an "edgy voice." Really? On the replay, he looked and sounded like the same old Babe-Ruthian politician getting set to take his usual cut at a hanging curveball.

Talking to the Washington press corps, Bill Clinton looked as calm and fine and completely unruffled as anytime we ever saw him tell whoppers when he was still just governor of Arkansas and had us believing we'd only misheard. We bet the old boy's pulse rate didn't skip a beep. With him it's a sport, and, when he swings for the fences, something to see.

For starters, said the president, loosening up at the plate, getting set, taking a practice cut, he just wanted everybody to know that telling the truth is "very important."

"And I think," he added, approaching the ball, getting in range, then connecting, "what young people will learn from my experience is that even presidents have to do that, and that there are consequences when you don't."

Not bad. If the president had just stopped there. But no. Of course not. He never does. There's always the

follow-through. Repentant Bill comes around about 360 degrees, at the end of which he's morphed into Vindictive Bill. Like DiMaggio turning into Leo Durocher. You always know there's a But coming, a moment of no return when he's crossed over into the whine. And sure enough . . .

"But I also think that there will be a box score, and there will be that one negative. And then there will be the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times when the record will show that I did not abuse my authority as president, that I was truthful with the American people, and scores and scores of allegations were made against me and widely publicized without any regard to whether they were true or not. I would hope there would be a higher regard for truth-telling by all people in public life and all those who report on it."

TOUCH - with a blunt ax. It's the follow-through that always ruins this president's wilder swings, leaving him asprawl in a pool of self-pity. Nobody blame-shifts better than William Jefferson Clinton, as he will be known when future generations discuss his presidency and impeachment. (But we repeat ourselves.)

Never a particularly eloquent speaker--an effective vote-getter, yes, but true eloquence requires a certain depth--our aging boy president has mastered the knack of making everybody in the press room uneasy except himself as his wiles grow transparent. At some point the poor, squirming reporter who's asked the question may just want to Get This Thing Over With. The trick to being Bill Clinton is to always embarrass the other fellow.

One of this president's favorite stories is about the hapless fellow who can't figure out why everything seems to go wrong for him. He's always just the innocent bystander. The punchline, delivered in God's voice, goes: "There's just something about you I don't like." Uh huh. Have you ever noticed that every little Willy Loman who's ever messed up tends to confuse himself with Job?

It occurs at times like these that we're going to miss this president. He makes for such a handy mirror of our society, of ourselves, of the still small voice within each of us that wants to break out and shout It's Somebody Else's Fault!

Who doesn't rationalize his wrongs by adding up all his rights? It's the new American way. The solemn, empathy-on-demand Out. When in doubt about what you've done, follow this president's two-step plan for self-exculpation: (1) tally your virtues, and (2) point the finger at somebody else.

More than a shaper of his times, Bill Clinton is a reflection of them. He's the cheval glass in the Oval Office, allowing us to see who, what and where we are in the final days of both the millennium and his administration, which seems to have lasted about as long.

Thanks to Bill Clinton, we've learned that one can love the sinner but ignore the sin and, most of all, hate those who revealed it. It's the new morality, or at least the new name for the same old immorality. Except that it used to be more interesting.

from TPDL 2000-Apr-7, from Universal Press Syndicate, by Ann Coulter:

VAST CONCOCTIONS III

When Jeffrey Toobin's Clinton book, "A Vast Conspiracy," first came out many months ago, The New York Times' real book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, called it "highly partisan" and "willfully subjective." He said the book was full of "dubious assertion(s)," "petty meanness," "contradictions and perplexing assertions" and noted that Toobin "ignores (the president's) lies" while "spend(ing) the better part of this book railing against Mr. Clinton's adversaries."

This wasn't good enough for the Times. After a month of looking, the Times finally found a reviewer, one Thomas Powers, sufficiently unfamiliar with the facts to praise Toobin's book fulsomely, complaining only that Toobin did not go far enough in saying Clinton was "the good guy in this struggle."

In two earlier columns I have already identified about a dozen outright factual errors in Toobin's book, taken from about a half-dozen pages of his aggressively nonfactual book. Since those were such a hit, I decided to forge ahead and read three more pages. You'll never believe this but -- Eureka! -- I happened upon another series of Toobin's invented facts.

On Pages 172-174, Toobin eloquently recounts in fawning detail the feminist myth of Catharine MacKinnon's involvement in the first workplace sexual harassment case. The problem is, that case, Barnes v. Costle, decided by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1977, was not the first case to hold that sexual harassment was actionable discrimination under federal law. The first case was Williams v. Saxbe, decided in 1976. The Supreme Court first applied that rule to the entire nation in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson in 1986. Two and a half pages dedicated to repeating an easily verifiable lie.

On Page 199, referring to the talking points that Monica Lewinsky had passed on to Linda Tripp, Toobin writes: "For starters, every word in the talking points was true; thus, regardless of its authorship, there was no way the document could be evidence of a plot to obstruct justice."

Don't be fooled by the lawyerly "thus" -- Toobin's statement is false, as a matter of law.

To take just one statement from the talking points, the document instructed Linda to say this about Monica: "Well, she turned out to be a huge liar. I found out she left the WH because she was stalking the P or something like that."

Even if you are Jeffrey Toobin and cannot grasp the import of the semen-stained dress, that single talking point constitutes subornation of perjury. Linda knew perfectly well Monica left the White House because she was having a affair with the president, not because she was stalking him. Indeed, whether Monica had, in fact, been having an affair with the president is immaterial (but see semen-stained dress, phone records, White House logs, testimony of a dozen witnesses, etc., etc.).

Remember how Clinton's defenders kept trying to save him from perjury by pleading insanity? Their argument was, if the president really, truly believed he was not having sexual relations with Monica, then he didn't commit perjury. It's true that the oath-taker's belief determines whether his statement is perjurious, but it has to be a genuine belief. Otherwise it would be impossible to prove any perjury case -- ever. The deponent could always claim, "Gosh, but I believed the bank I robbed was a space station from an alien planet outside the laws of the United States!"

There is no question that Linda believed Monica was having an affair with the president -- and did not believe Monica was a "huge liar" who had been "stalking the P." Nor can there be any doubt that Linda's belief was reasonable: Monica had spent hours and hours on the phone detailing the affair. Monica had never retracted that claim, and Linda believed it to be true (as does the entire country, save Jeffrey Toobin).

Consequently, for Linda to say otherwise under oath would be false, a lie, perjury -- not to be confused with "true," as Toobin says. Perjury turns on the (reasonable) belief of the oath-taker, not on Jeffrey Toobin's personal feelings about the ultimate truth of that belief.

Also on Page 199, Toobin refers to the widespread belief that a lawyer had coached Monica in drafting the talking points, remarking that: "All this hypothesis illustrated, however, was the hysteria that afflicted Clinton's critics."

Among others, the anti-Clinton "hysteria" apparently infected a lot of lawyers, including every one interviewed by The Washington Post's law reporter, Joan Biskupic, back in February 1998. In an article titled "Lawyers See Legal Hand Behind Lewinsky 'Talking Points,'" Biskupic quoted a professor of legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., a lawyer "who specializes in white collar criminal work," and several other lawyers with and without attribution, all of whom believed the talking points showed the hand of a lawyer.

Of course, those lawyers probably don't even realize that a legal finding of perjury turns on Jeffrey Toobin's personal belief as to the truth, and not the belief of the deponent.

from PDL 1999-Mar-28, from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, by Paul Greenberg:

Short bursts

In his first post-Moronica press conference, Bill Clinton explained that he'd told only one lie, and it should be balanced against all the times he'd told the truth.

Hmmm.

Down that crooked line of reasoning lie all kinds of questions. For example:

Does this mean the president now admits he lied about Monica, and didn't just "mislead" the country for eight months? Does it mean he lied under oath in both civil and criminal proceedings, too? Or is that a question he's still leaving to his lawyers, like any inquiries about Juanita Broaddrick? Is he still compartmentalizing his lies and truths, and how can he tell the difference?

Does a lie repeated month after month, and told and embellished to all associates in sight so they can broadcast it far and wide, count as only one lie or as many? So when Bill Clinton says he's told only one lie, is he lying? Can he be lying about lying? And in his case, who can care any more? This president could wish us Good Morning, and we'd check our watch.

Besides, it's not really how many times this president has lied that has cost him his credibility, but the way he tells the truth--so qualified, so cagey, so full of trapdoors and clinton clauses, till his politics are neither true nor false, just clintonesque.

An honest straightforward lie would be a step up for this president. It could be unmasked, admitted, disowned, repented for. But careful, calculating, technically non-perjurious dissembling . . . how do you clean that up?

And is truthfulness really a matter of balancing falsehoods against accuracies, and seeing which comes out ahead, like counting assets and liabilities? Could a lifelong liar tell just one truth and save his soul? For isn't the chance of redemption eternal? And could telling a lie be the finest thing someone who's always been honest and trustworthy do? ("Nein, mein Herr,'' said the old woman who was hiding the American fliers in her attic, "I haven't seen any strangers in the village.")

So is that all Bill Clinton's great apologia pro vita sua, and philosophical inquiry into the nature of truth, going to amount to-- a bean count? But truthfulness isn't some kind of mechanical balance sheet. It's not so much the words we say, but the meaning we convey. It's a matter of good faith. It's what we are, habitually. And everyone knows what this president is, habitually.

Talk about discretion: Bill Clinton had his vice president do the honors at a White House Conference on domestic violence. Good move. Al Gore was able to give his speech, as he always does, with a straight face, including this timely passage: "Physical brutality at the hands of a partner or spouse is not simply love gone wrong, or someone needing to blow off steam at the end of the day. It is criminal assault, pure and simple. We don't do anybody any favors, least of all abusers, when we ignore it."

No need to go into detail; the vice president didn't mention Juanita Broaddrick.

The best part of Hillary Clinton's speech at the United Nations didn't make the AP story.

"It is no longer acceptable," said the first lady, "to say that the abuse and mistreatment of women is cultural. It should be called what it is--criminal." She didn't mention Juanita Broaddrick, either.

By now Mrs. Broaddrick may be the most immediately thought of but never mentioned figure in any speech on women's rights by spokesmen for this administration.

Welcome back, Mike Espy! Yes, the former secretary of agriculture is back with the federal government. He seems to have passed this administration's high ethical test: He's been acquitted.

Mr. Espy's taking those gifts may have led to his resignation as secretary of agriculture, but now that it's been established that he was only being sleazy, not criminal, he's been appointed senior adviser to the Department of Energy--though without pay. One wonders just what Mr. Espy can be advising the Energy Department about, how to accept gifts without breaking the law?

There is apparently no basis for the speculation that Webb Hubbell should also be back in the administration any day now advising Janet Reno. That's ridiculous. After the crackerjack job she's done investigating Chinagate, our attorney general scarcely needs advice about how to ignore the law.

Kenneth Starr is the informal defendant in more than one official proceeding by now. Mark Geragos, Susan McDougal's defender, has put the independent counsel on trial here in Little Rock, and now Mr. Starr is being investigated by our ever alert Justice Department, too.

Janet Reno may have proven the sleepiest of watchdogs when it comes to campaign contributions from our Chinese comrades, but now she's nipping at the independent counsel's heels--like Fearless Fosdick plugging every cop in sight in his single-minded devotion to the law. Is this administration's pursuit of Ken Starr politically motivated? How could anyone think such a thing! To quote Eric Holder, the still unconfirmed deputy attorney general, "That is a bunch of crap. That's c-r-a-p."

Mr. Holder's spelling is impeccable. Indeed, it may be the only impeccable thing about this administration. Which of course is the most ethical in American history. Bill Clinton said so.

from PDL 1999-Mar-23, from the Los Angeles Times, by Cal Thomas:

President Clinton's multiplied lies

Math was not my strongest subject in school, but I did learn that multiplying two negative numbers produces a positive result. In President Clinton's calculation, lying about whether he's told more than one lie must, in his mind, produce the truth.

In his news conference last Friday, the president was asked, "What do you think your legacy will be about lying, and how important do you think it is to tell the truth, especially under oath?"

After saying he believes that telling the truth is "very important," the president invoked a sports metaphor: "I also think there will be a box score, and there will be that one negative and then there will be hundreds and hundreds of times when the record will show that I did not abuse my authority as president, that I was truthful with the American people."

The admission to lying once concerns his finger-wagging denial to the American people that he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky. But no less an authority than Lewinsky herself told Barbara Walters that Clinton admitted to her that he's been a serial liar since childhood. Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) told Esquire magazine three years ago that "Clinton's an unusually good liar. Unusually good." Whom do you believe?

In fact, chronicling Clinton's lies would produce a very thick book. Here is a tiny sample:

-- In 1992 candidate Clinton denied having an affair with Gennifer Flowers. But in a 1998 deposition he admitted having a sexual affair with her.

-- In 1993 Clinton pledged never to deploy American troops overseas unless U.S. strategic interests were threatened and there was a clear military goal with a firm exit strategy. In 1995 Clinton said he would deploy troops to Bosnia for 18 months and they would then come home. In 1998 Clinton sent thousands of additional troops to Bosnia with no exit strategy and an open- ended commitment. He's now proposing to do the same in Kosovo.

-- In 1992 Clinton promised to "have a legislative program ready on the desks of Congress on the day after I'm inaugurated." Six days before his inauguration, a reporter asked, "We were originally led to believe you would have an outline for Congress even before the inauguration and presented on day one or shortly thereafter -- and now we're told it may be a couple of weeks down the road with afull plan ready in March. When will it be ready?" Clinton replied, "Well, I don't know who led you to believe that, but I'm the only one who's authorized to talk about that."

-- In February 1996 Clinton said, "Since I was a little boy, I've heard about the Iowa caucuses." There were no Iowa caucuses when Clinton was a boy. They begin in 1972 when Clinton was at Oxford avoiding the draft, an incident that produced several more lies, not only to avoid service but about his motives for doing so.

-- In June 1996 Clinton said, "I have vivid and painful memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child." The truth is not one black church was burned in Arkansas when he was growing up.

-- Clinton promised in 1992 not to raise taxes, saying he would actually cut them. In 1993 he authored what some claim to be the largest single tax increase in U.S. history.

-- Clinton charged the Bush administration with "coddling China" and ignoring human rights abuses. In 1994 he approved congressional extension of Most Favored Nation status for China and de-linked human rights from U.S. trade concerns.

-- June 1992: "I will support a balanced-budget amendment. February 1995: "Obviously I don't support it."

-- Clinton opposed "backbreaking" federal gas tax hikes. In 1996 Clinton supported a 6.8 cents per gallon increase in the federal gas tax.

One definition of the word "lie" is "to make an untrue statement with intent to mislead." That seems to sum up the game Bill Clinton has been playing. By that definition, his box score shows he has mostly struck out.

from PDL 1999-Mar-22, from Capitol Hill Blue, by Doug Thompson:

Experts say Clinton lied repeatedly during his press conference

President Bill Clinton lied repeatedly during his Friday press conference, avoiding the truth when discussing the China spying scandal, his relationship with his wife and charges that he raped Juanita Broaddrick, an analysis by two experts shows.

Capitol Hill Blue hired a psychologist who treats chronic liars and a private investigator who uses voice stress analysis to catch liars. They analyzed the President's press conference live on television and again on videotape.

Their conclusion: The President lied more often than he told the truth. Even when he told the nation that he felt a "scorecard" would show he had been a good President who had told the truth more often than he had lied, he was, in fact, lying.

"The President exhibited all the classic symptoms of pathological prevarication," said Dr. Stephanie Crossfield, a psychologist who treats people who have trouble telling the truth. "His eye movements, gestures, and changes in voice tone all point to a consistent evasion of the truth."

Jonathan Rensley, a private investigator who used a voice stress analyzer to monitor the President's performance during the press conference, agrees.

"In spite of his demeanor, the President's voice patterns showed unusually high levels of stress, consistent with someone who is not telling the truth," Rensley said.

At Capitol Hill Blue's insistence, Dr. Crossfield and Rensley did not make their judgement based on one viewing of the President's performance or by consulting with each other. Both watched the press conference live, then rechecked their findings by viewing a full videotape of the press conference on both Saturday and Sunday to confirm their findings.

Without consulting with each other, they concluded the President was lying at several points in his press conference, including:

His claim that he believed the Los Alamos case of sensitive nuclear secrets being turned over to China was an "isolated" case. His claim that investigations of such incidents at the national labs had not turned up any evidence of espionage. His claim that he and the First Lady are trying to work out their problems. His statement that she had suggested more than a year ago that they should live in New York after his term was complete. His claim that he believed history would judge him fairly because a "scorecard" would show he had told the truth more often than he had lied. His claim that he had exhausted all available options on Kosovo. His claim that he had not talked with Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan about replacing Treasury Secretary Robert Rudin.

Dr. Crossfield said the eyes usually give even the best liars away.

"Eye movement is difficult to control," she said. "The eyes dart away in specific patterns when a person is not telling the truth. The President's eyes dart a lot."

"We love each other very much and we're working at it," Clinton said of his wife and their problems. Dr. Crossfield said Clinton's eye movement indicated lying when he said he loved his wife. Rensley's voice stress analyzer said the same thing.

And even though the President refused to answer ABC newsman Sam Donaldson's question of his guilt of the charges of rape by Arkansas businesswoman Juanita Broaddrick, both said Clinton's demeanor suggested he was hiding something.

"His eyes looked away in a pattern that is consistent with evasion and concealment," said Dr. Crossfield. "His body language was not that of a man who was being truthful."

Likewise, Rensley's voice stress analyzer said the President was lying when he said: "There's been a statement made by my attorney. He speaks for me, and I think he spoke quite clearly."

"He's hiding something serious. If I were conducting this test on a potential employee for a client, I would advise against hiring the person because he can't be trusted."

The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment on this report.

from PDL 1999-Apr-1, from the Associated Press:

Clinton says impeachment no `badge of shame'

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton says he does not see his impeachment as ''some great badge of shame'' and believes historians will judge there were political motives behind Congress' action.

In an interview Wednesday with CBS News, Clinton said he felt ''honored'' that the impeachment gave him a chance to defend the Constitution. He said the American people saw the impeachment as an attempt by Republicans to undermine his presidency.

''Those that did not agree with what I had done and were furious that it had worked and that the country was doing well, and attempted to use what should have been a constitutional and legal process for political ends, did not prevail,'' Clinton said. ''That's the way I saw it....

''But I do not regard this impeachment vote as some great badge of shame. I do not,'' Clinton said. ''I do not believe it was warranted and I don't think it was right.''

The interview, conducted at the White House by CBS anchor Dan Rather, elicited Clinton's most detailed assessment yet of his impeachment on charges stemming from his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He was acquitted by the Senate in February.

The president said he never thought about resigning.

''I would never have legitimized what I believe is horribly wrong with what has occurred here over the last four or five years. So it never crossed my mind,'' he said. ''....I just, I prayed about it.''

He also said he has no consuming animosities toward those who pushed impeachment. ''I don't wake up every day mad at those people,'' Clinton said.

''Any moment I spend full of anger and bitterness is a moment I am robbing from my wife or from my daughter or from my country or from my friends,'' he said. ''I just think that it's past us and we need to put it behind us, and we need to go on.

''We owe that to the American people, to let it go. ... All the great players here, they need to let it go,'' he said.

While the interview focused largely on the crisis in Kosovo, Clinton also discussed how first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's ruminations on running for a Senate seat in New York and how his family is faring the wake of the Lewinsky scandal.

''Given what we've been through, we're doing reasonably well,'' he said. ''We're not a large family. We do love each other very much, and we work hard to support one another.''

He said he had no idea what Mrs. Clinton would decide, but that it still struck him that having a first lady run for office was ''a highly unusual thing.''

''And I can imagine that many voters in New York would wonder,'' he said. ''And that would be a burden she would have to carry in the campaign.''

But, Clinton said, ''I think if she could win an election like that, she would be magnificent.''

from the Washington Post p.A28, 1999-Apr-2:

Mr. Clinton's Honor

PRESIDENT CLINTON feels "honored" to have had a chance to defend the Constitution by warding off impeachment, he told CBS interviewer Dan Rather on Wednesday. "I do not regard this impeachment vote as some great badge of shame," Mr. Clinton said. He was impeached, the president believes, because people who were "furious" that his policies were working and that the country was prospering "attempted to use what should have been a constitutional and legal process for political ends." As for his own responsibility, the president allowed that he is ashamed of his "mistake." But he suggested that his behavior may not have been as bad as we've all been led to believe. You have to bear the consequences of your mistakes, he said, "whether or not what's made public is [an] exactly accurate reflection of what, in fact, happened."

The unseemliness of Mr. Clinton's self-pitying musings, especially at a moment like this, is stunning. On the historical interpretation, we certainly part company with the president. We believe that lying under oath was a serious offense, and we don't ascribe base political motives to all of those who felt such conduct warranted his removal from office. In fact, we can recall Mr. Clinton himself, at moments when he evidently felt in more political jeopardy than he does now, acknowledging the seriousness of his offenses and expressing a willingness to accept a fairly severe censure from people whom he did not attack, at that time, as political malcontents.

But all that is almost beside the point now, or at least it should be. When the time comes, Mr. Clinton will be a young ex-president; he'll have plenty of opportunity, after he leaves office, to plead his case to history. For now, he should be concentrating on other things. At this moment, many Americans -- including members of Congress and the public, including many who believe Mr. Clinton should have been removed -- are trying to set aside their doubts about his leadership in the interest of supporting American troops whose lives are in danger. This is a moment "to stay with your leaders," he pleaded during his CBS interview. But he doesn't make that easy.

Mr. Clinton had the audacity to compare himself to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in response to a question about his reputation for "parsing words too closely" -- for toying with the truth, that is. "That's what they said about President Roosevelt, too," Mr. Clinton said. "He made a pretty good president." Mr. Roosevelt did make a pretty good president. One reason may be that he spent more time earning his place in history and less time decorating it in advance.

from TPDL 1999-Apr-15, from the Manchester Union-Leader, by Michael Kelly:

A frightening view of Clinton

The most interesting - not to say the most repellent and most frightening - aspect of the press conference held on April 8 by President Bill Clinton and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji was not instantly obvious.

It was not the moment when Zhu was asked to respond to a question about the "reunification" of Taiwan with the People's Republic of China. The premier pointedly noted that Beijing had "never undertaken to renounce the use of force in this regard." And he noted that "Abraham Lincoln, in order to maintain the unity of the United States . . . resorted to the use of force . . . so, I think Abraham Lincoln, President, is a model, is an example."

Nor was it the moment when Zhu was asked to respond to "charges that China stole nuclear warhead designs and perhaps neutron bomb technology from the United States and also funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to President Clinton's reelection campaign."

To the charge of nuclear espionage, elaborately detailed in The New York Times, Zhu joked that he was considering a suggestion that he should order his government's missiles to be imprinted with a sign "that they are made in China, not from the United States."

To reports that Johnny Chung, a Clinton 1996 campaign fund- raiser, had testified before a federal grand jury that Chinese military intelligence chief Gen. Ji Shengde had given him $300,000 for Clinton's reelection ("We like your President," Ji reportedly said), Zhu got off another excellent crack: "I have $146 billion U.S. dollars of foreign exchange reserve, so I should have put out at least 10 billion U.S. dollars for that purpose, why just $300,000? That would be too foolish!"

Nor was the nadir reached when Zhu was asked to respond to U.S. State Department criticisms of his government for human rights abuses. He answered with a naked threat, calling a U.S.- supported draft resolution by the United Nations Human Rights Commission censuring China, "interference in China's internal affairs." That diplomatic term of art is recognized as fighting talk. Zhu then tossed in another insult. He noted that friends had urged him to deliver to Clinton "a lot of information about the problems of human rights in the United States" - but that he had not done so, because he trusted that Clinton and America "are able to resolve your own problems."

No, the really gross and scary aspect was how the man standing next to Zhu responded to these remarks. Bill Clinton laughed with his guest. That was polite, but it was also awful.

It was awful to see the President respond to a profound insult to a predecessor in office by joking, "I think I have to just say one thing, if I might, since I got zapped by Abraham Lincoln" - and then blandly answering Zhu's direct threat of war by reassuring him that "the United States has a one-China policy."

It was awful as well to see how the President responded to Zhu's sneering dismissals of charges that his government had stolen America's nuclear secrets and had attempted to corrupt the American political system. "You know," said Clinton, in his cracker-barrel thoughtful voice, "China is a big country with a big government, and occasionally things happen in this government that I don't know about."

Roll that answer around in your mind. Does Bill Clinton think that the No. 2 boss in the People's Republic of China might not know if his government had engaged in nuclear espionage that allowed China to build multiple-warhead missiles and an effective neutron bomb? Does he believe that Zhu might not know if the director of his government's military intelligence had ordered that $300,000 be contributed to Clinton's reelection campaign? Or does Clinton believe that his own government's investigators are leveling false charges?

Clinton said he had asked Zhu for "his cooperation" in pursuing these matters. Zhu said he would cooperate as long as the United States "can provide some clues." Does Clinton believe that the ongoing investigation by his own Justice Department into the campaign finance illegalities has not yet provided any clues? Does he believe the investigation by his own Energy Department into China's spying has likewise failed to provide any clues? Given that Zhu's government has blocked Justice and congressional investigators from obtaining financial records from China, has refused to grant visas to investigators and is refusing to extradite subpoenaed witnesses, does he believe that Zhu is serious about cooperation?

Or does he believe that these questions should never really be answered? We wouldn't, after all, want to embarrass our good friend Zhu - or his good friend Bill.

from TPDL 1999-Apr-5, from Capital Hill Blue:

The Mad Hatter of Pennsylvania Avenue

The Kosovo war, we are constantly reminded, is a campaign to stop the actions of a madman.

This may well be true, but it may be time to face the unpleasant fact that the madman is not in Yugoslavia, but back here at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Yep. The real madman in this headlong march towards global war may just be William Jefferson Clinton.

Reports out of the White House and Pentagon say Clinton has become so obsessed with his "legacy" that he is willing to kill American soldiers to try and redefine his place in the history books.

Clinton doesn't want to be remembered as the President who got blow jobs from interns while conducting the nation's business. Nah, he wants to go down in history (pun fully intended) as the madman who sent young men and women to die in a desperate attempt to reshape his presidency.

Madness? You bet it is. Insanity? How much more proof do we need?

Clinton's mental stability (or the lack of it) has been the subject of whispers around Washington for some time now.

Would a sane man have risked his presidency for quickies in the Oval Office? Good question.

Would a sane man rape an Arkansas businesswoman in a Little Rock hotel room 21 years ago, leaving her bruised and bleeding on the bed, then put on his sunglasses and calmly tell her that she'd "better put some ice on that?" Better question.

"There are sufficient outward signs that the President's mental stability could be subject to question," says psychologist Dr. Stephanie Crossfield, who has been watching Clinton (at our request) for some time now.

This is the good doctor's professional way of saying the President may be loony tunes. Nuts. Wacko.

Problem is, this nutcase has the power to send our troops into war. This fruitcake can deploy nuclear weapons. This madman can destroy life as we know it on this planet.

And there ain't a lot we can do about it. Clinton has survived enough political scandals to sink a dozen other politicians. Each time he survives, his arrogance grows, along with the inability of anyone to do anything about his illegal, immoral and treasonous actions.

An American public that doesn't want to dump a President over sex also doesn't want to think they were duped into twice electing a madman to office. If they wouldn't buy his crimes (despite overwhelming evidence), how are they going to accept insanity (which is harder to prove)?

Impeachment? Been there, failed that. Under the Constitution, a majority of the cabinet could declare the President incapacitated and relieve him of his duties, but Clinton's cabinet doesn't have the balls to do that. The military, clearly frustrated with serving under a draft dodger, could take over the government, but this country fears military rule even more than it does a madman.

Which leaves the uneasy prospect of trying to survive 21 more months with the Mad Hatter in charge. That prospect scares us a hell of lot more than any Serbian strongman in Yugoslavia.

For detailed coverage of the Juanita Broaddrick story, read The Broaddrick Files.

from the New York Observer, 1999-Mar-8, by Ron Rosenbaum:

President's Sycophants Are Blaming the Victim

But that was in another country; And besides, the wench is dead. It is one of the all-time great heartless dismissals in all of literature (soon to be joined perhaps by "You ought to put some ice on that"). To be accurate, it's a satire of heartless dismissal. Was it from Marlowe's Jew of Malta? No matter: That was in another country; And besides, the wench is dead.

No, Juanita Broaddrick is not dead, but she might as well be for Bill Clinton's defenders. For the Friends of Bill like Lanny Davis, her story just doesn't matter. Doesn't give them pause. It was so long ago it might have been in another country. She might as well be dead for all they seem to care about whether or not she was raped by their friend our President. After all his other lies they don't have time to look into this one. It's "too late in the day." It's hard, perhaps impossible, to know the truth, so why care? It's time to move on. We have scandal fatigue. Let's talk about saving Social Security.

I don't know whether it's true. I hope it's not. Nobody knows for sure except Juanita Broaddrick and Bill Clinton. But the Friends of Bill don't know either. And the difference is that they just don't seem to care. They don't care enough to hesitate for a nanosecond before going on the talk shows and telling us it doesn't really matter, it was all so long ago, it was in another country - and besides the wench is probably lying.

I think the time has come for the Friends of Bill like Lanny Davis to be held to account. Their Bill has come due. Three issues ago in these pages [Feb. 15], when the Juanita Broaddrick story was still being held by NBC, I suggested the Friends of Bill were making themselves hostages to fortune. That their disingenuous claims that their boy was being persecuted only for "consensual sex" ignored the more serious charges of nonconsensual sex from Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Jane Doe No. 5. I dislike Bill's puritanical inquisitors as much as they do, but attacking them, attacking the charges of sexual harassment and rape as "immaterial" to his impeachment, isn't going to cut it anymore. That's avoiding the real question, to which these charges of nonconsensual sex are material - the question of who Bill Clinton really is.

But they still don't seem to care. The Friends of Bill who so pathetically, obsequiously vouched for him until the stained dress of his lies was virtually rubbed in their faces, didn't even seem to blink when faced with this latest unproven but serious charge. You wonder: In their heart of hearts, when the MSNBC and CNBC cameras go off, don't the Friends of Bill entertain just the slightest doubt, after all the lies, after all the false denials, that this latest denial might not be the full truth? Or would such a doubt, even a tiny one, be fatal to their entire belief structure? Their perk and status life. Could the Renaissance Weekends be that great? Could the beds in the Lincoln bedroom be that soft?

I think about Lanny Davis, former chief of staff and now chief cable-news talking-head Friend of Bill. "Friend" in the sense Bill Clinton has friends: People he can lie to shamelessly, whose lives and reputations he can ruin callously and still count on to go on TV and defend him. I think about Lanny Davis attacking Juanita Broaddrick before he even got to see her tell her story. "How do we know she didn't lie to all her friends?" Lanny Davis asked in The Washington Post before the Lisa Myers interview aired.

Amazing! An absolutely astonishing revelation of the mindset of the terminal sycophant Friend of Bill. We don't know whether she didn't "lie to all her friends," he suggests. But we do know someone with a proven record of lying to all his friends. A proven record of lying to Lanny Davis, lying about Gennifer, lying about Paula (remember his first response: never heard of her, never in a room with her?), lying about Monica.

But now, without knowing the facts, without pausing for a moment to wonder "Gee, he's lied to me so many times before and I've looked like such a fool so many times before for defending him, wouldn't it be a good idea to hesitate for just a moment before smearing a woman who says she's been raped and calling her the liar? Don't I have any responsibility to think twice before mouthing off, just this once?" Even if he (apparently) doesn't care whether Bill Clinton screwed Juanita Broaddrick, he knows Bill Clinton's screwed him repeatedly. But there he is lining up, assuming the position so eagerly, so readily, once again.

In some ways the case of Lanny Davis is special, more egregious, but perhaps more explicable. I blame Yale. Well not Yale University, precisely, but the Yale Daily News and the culture of Establishment suck-uppery it cultivates. When I arrived, an alienated outsider at Yale, Lanny Davis was already on his way to becoming the ultimate Insider, the chairman of the Yale Daily News, an exalted position that is not attained without strenuous sucking upward to the upperclassmen who hold the striving Yale Daily candidate's fate in their hands. I think it is not insignificant that the initial heated competition for a coveted place on the ladder to the chairmanship of the Yale Daily was, appropriately enough, called "Heeling." It is, you will notice, a term adopted from dog training. And not for nothing. Good dogs, compliant dogs, go far, although that may be Lanny's tragedy: so much heeling, so little to show for it on his own - until, relatively late in his career, his being a Friend of Bill, chief sycophant to the Commander in Chief, gave him a shot at the gold ring.

Yes, I think it must have something to do with the heeling process and the enormous sense of self-importance and entitlement the Yale Daily chairmanship inculcates; debasing oneself so profoundly demands profound recompense. And there is profound recompense: the coddling and cuddling by the silvery patriarchs of the Eastern establishment, the shining future assured by the old-boy network, the unspoken blandishments of promised power that waft through the nostrils of the triumphant heeler like fragrant incense so that an exaggerated sense of self-importance grows to proportions vast and fathomless, like the caverns of Kubla Khan, "measureless to man."

Even when an exalted News chairman would gesture at dissent from the Establishment, write a mild editorial questioning the War in Vietnam, say, the embrace by the silvery patriarchs would just grow warmer, more passionate. There would be the special little off-the-record chats with the Bundy brothers, who raced up to New Haven to reassure the exalted heeler that his voice was heard in the very highest circles, that his opinion was respected, that off the record, they even sympathized, but, even more off the record, there were very serious plans afoot to end the war in an honorable way and vulgar public protest was only helping the troglodytes dig in their feet. Better to leave it to the enlightened insiders. They all shared the same values, didn't they? It was just a difference over tactics. It was so flattering to be taken so seriously, if one didn't trouble oneself to look too closely at the lies of powerful people. And so one learned not to look too closely at the lies of very powerful people. An important lesson in getting ahead. You could call it self-heeling. Curbing the instinct to question those with White House passes, to bite the hand that pets you.

But the heady days of triumphant heeling didn't seem to pay off as well for Lanny Davis as they did for other Newsies. Henry Luce, founder of a global media empire; Potter Stewart, Supreme Court Justice; William F. Buckley, influential ideologue; Joseph Lieberman, influential senator; Strobe Talbott, Secretary-of-State-in-waiting. And then there was Lanny Davis, Beltway lawyer, lobbyist, mid-level Democratic Party functionary and failed candidate for Congress. As it turned out, his only ticket to the exalted entitlement his heeling seemed to promise was the friendship he cultivated with Hillary and Bill that began at Yale Law School.

That really paid off, didn't it? You know I feel a bit bad talking this way. I wish I hadn't read Lanny's ugly quote in The Washington Post. I know friends of Lanny Davis think that there's at least a semblance of principle in his slavish defense of Bill and Hill. That it grows from a genuine antipathy to the Christian right who've fueled the anti-Clinton crusades. But as someone at least as distrustful of the Christian right as he, I can't help wondering: Just how long can the liberal Friends of Bill use that as a fig leaf to dismiss in a knee-jerk way any charge without examining it, even if it's rape? They risk destroying liberalism by making it mainly about the defense of Bill Clinton. I thought liberalism was about standing up for the powerless, rather than sucking up to the powerful. (And speaking of sucking up to the powerful, Senator Chuck Schumer should spend less time holding Hillary's coat and respond to repeated requests that he co-sponsor a resolution condemning the racist Council of Conservative Citizens. As the estimable Stanley Crouch reported in his Daily News column recently, such a resolution has been introduced in the House, and I've gotten Henry Hyde on record in support of it. If Henry Hyde is on board, where's Chuck? Too busy being a Friend of Bill?)

But being a Friend of Bill has been berry berry good to Lanny Davis, why start questioning it now? Why let the irritating claim of a woman like Juanita Broaddrick get in the way of savoring the impeachment acquittal triumph? It's so inconvenient, her coming forward. It's so over, so five minutes ago, to care about it - after all, it was in another country and maybe "she lied to all her friends," as Lanny Davis suggested to The Washington Post. After all, if you're deciding who's a liar about illicit sex, why look in Bill Clinton's direction? Why not smear a woman you've never met who can't help you get passes to White House dinners?

But if he had hesitated when The Washington Post asked for a comment, if he had declined the limelight of MSNBC to give the matter a moment's independent reflection, what would Lanny Davis have left? Being a Friend of Bill had given him a certain cachet as a Beltway lawyer, but being Defender in Chief had made him a virtual celebrity in his own right. An object of curiosity, yes; was there anything he wouldn't defend in a knee-jerk way? Now we know: No. But still a celebrity. He wasn't Commander in Chief, but sycophant in chief is something.

But it's unfair to pick on Lanny alone; I focus on him because he didn't even wait to see Juanita Broaddrick tell her story on TV before smearing her as a possible serial liar. But if Lanny's effusion was the most premature and egregious, what about the silence of some of the other, more conspicuous Friends of Bill?

What about his rich Hollywood friends? Will they continue to bankroll him - and the First Lady if she runs - unquestioningly, without bothering to know or to care whether the Juanita Broaddrick rape allegation is true? Will they hide behind, Well-it-was-20-years-ago-and-we-really-can't-know-so-we-won't-bother-to-think-about-it? That was in another country, wasn't it, that alleged rape, a country far from Hollywood with its self-congratulatory, unquestioning, indiscriminate Friends-of-Bill mentality. Where mental giants like the Baldwin brothers are elevated to statesman stature for their sycophancy.

And what about all the liberal defenders of Bill who opposed, say, Clarence Thomas? Consider a counterfactual situation for a moment: What if it had been Clarence Thomas? Let's imagine the bruising confirmation fight is over. Despite Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations (which, by the way, I believed) the Senate has confirmed Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court Justice. But late in the process, while the debate is still raging on the Senate floor, word leaks out that a major network was sitting on a far more explosive story than Anita Hill's. An interview with a woman who claims that 20 years earlier Clarence Thomas raped her in a hotel room.

But the network keeps the story in the can until the confirmation vote is over. Most of America doesn't know about it until a week after Clarence Thomas dons the robes of the nation's highest court. Then the woman's story comes out; she seems credible, but it's hard to prove one way or the other. So much time has gone by. She didn't report it at the time, she even denied it at one point because she didn't want her life further traumatized. How would Bill Clinton's liberal defenders have acted in that situation, how would they have treated an old rape allegation against Clarence Thomas? Would they have said, well it's so old we don't care, we're not going to look further into it, we're tired, we're fatigued by all the controversy, let's just pretend the allegation isn't there. Let's move on.

I don't think so. I don't think the liberal defenders of Bill Clinton would have given Clarence Thomas a pass. Would have dismissed a rape charge as irrelevant without looking into it just because it was old. But Bill Clinton, it seems, gets a pass on a rape allegation because, unlike Justice Thomas, he's good on the issues. (Good on the issues for those who don't care too much about the plight of the welfare mothers whose difficult lives he's made more desperate. [<Vomit> - a socialist after all. -Ed.]) How comfortable can they feel, the Clinton defenders, telling us to chill, cool out, it was all so long ago, when they are, in effect, miming in their unthinking sycophancy the chilling phrase attributed by Juanita to Bill Clinton: You ought to put some ice on that.

Must we look upon the most brilliant skeptical minds among liberal democrats through the lens of the "beaten dog" metaphor I wrote about three weeks ago? The phrase was suggested by The Washington Post's Michael Powell when speaking to me for a story he was doing on liberals like myself who don't trust Bill Clinton. He suggested that many liberals are acting like "beaten dogs," losers kicked around so long they will continue to fawn over Bill Clinton no matter what he does because he's given them some moderate electoral success. Are they so grateful that they'll continue to heel when he gives a silent whistle, no matter what the charge is?

And what about the Vice President: Will he continue to avert his eyes in fawning fidelity without even asking? Doesn't Al Gore, in some deep recess of his mind, wonder at least who's the real liar in the Juanita Broaddrick case? Doesn't he have a responsibility to ask? Or does he just accept Bill's word on faith? Has he, like the other Friends of Bill, adopted a policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell?

And finally, what about the ultimate Friend of Bill, the Ultimate Voucher in Chief whose support for the President, no matter what the charge, has enabled and empowered her supporters to defend her husband, no matter what he does? Doesn't she, at this point, with a charge as serious as this, however unproven, have a responsibility to look into it a little more deeply? Just so she won't be shocked, shocked, if it turns out to be true, the way she was so shocked, shocked, when she found out the Monica story was true. At what point, after so many lies on lesser charges, after so many violations of her trust, of her privacy, of her dignity and faith, does she finally say: I'm not going to take his word on faith this time. I'm actually going to take it seriously. I'm actually going to look him in the eyes and see what I can see when I ask him if it's true. He no longer has the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to get to the bottom of this. She's so smart, so wise in many ways (except thus far when it comes to him), I have a feeling she could get the truth out of him. After so much vouching, so much enabling, so much standing by her man, she owes it to herself, she owes it to us. All the Friends of Bill do.

from PDL 1999-Mar-13, from the Boston Globe, by John Ellis, Globe Columnist:

Rape story leaves Democrats mute

"You ought to put some ice on that,'' is what she says he said before he left the room, after he allegedly raped her. And either you believe her or you don't. If you believe Juanita Broaddrick's story about Bill Clinton, then the president of the United States is a monster. If you don't believe it or can pretend it's not on the table, then life goes on almost as before.

What's so amazing about the Broaddrick story is that most everyone in Washington believes it. Right-wingers have always believed the worst about Clinton, so for them the charges are routine. Left-wingers have long suspected the worst about Clinton, so for them the charges are the last straw. Everyone else has been hoping against hope that ''it'' would somehow go away - disappear into thin air, never to return.

But with Clinton, ''it?'' never goes away and ''it'' always comes back. Now the political life support system that has enabled him for so long is coming apart at the seams. The loyalists are abandoning ship. At long last they're starting to tell the truth about the president or take action based on what they know of him. Their words and actions indicate that they believe that he should not be entrusted with the high office he now holds.

George Stephanopoulos, who joined the Clinton campaign in 1991 and rose to become one of his closest political counselors, said this week that even he was no longer sure about Clinton. ''He's too fit to be removed,'' said Stephanopoulos, ''but knowing what we know now, I don't think he'd be fit enough to be elected.''

Betsy Wright, who served as Clinton's principal political operative throughout his years as governor of Arkansas, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in late January that she believed her former boss was a sick man. ''I feel personally betrayed,'' said Wright. ''I feel personally lied to. I feel that he was so stupid, to be such a smart man. And I think he's got a sickness. I'm serious about that.''

Mike McCurry, who served as the president's press secretary for three years, has long let it be known (privately) that he harbored the gravest doubts about Clinton's character. Asked about Clinton's fitness for office by the BBC in late December, McCurry replied, ''I have enormous doubts because of the recklessness of his behavior.''

Whatever else one might say about these people, they are not members of some imagined right-wing conspiracy. Together they span 20 years of service across the spectrum of Clinton's political life. And the woman who spans his entire adult life in politics, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is reliably reported to be so unnerved by Broaddrick's allegations that she may soon take leave of her marriage rather than continue its charade.

The Broaddrick allegations are changing the political terrain. Prior to their publication in The Wall Street Journal and their broadcast on NBC television, Vice President Gore trailed Texas Governor George W. Bush (who is my first cousin) in year 2000 trial heats by 5 to 10 points. Today, according to the most recent Gallup and NBC/Wall Street Journal polling, Bush's lead has more than doubled.

After the US Senate acquitted the president of impeachment charges, the press was filled with ''analysis'' of Republican ''demise.'' There were reports that the GOP would lose control of the House in the next election and, perhaps, the Senate as well.

You won't read that story today. Privately, Democratic strategists fear a loss of two to three seats in the year 2000 Senate contests. And if the China scandal story is even half as bad as many in Washington suspect, some GOP strategists believe that the party might run the table, winning the presidency and maintaining control of the Senate and the House.

But the most startling impact of Broaddrick's allegations has been that they have rendered Democrats speechless.

Democratic senators and representatives avoid all mention of the subject. Members of Clinton's Cabinet have been struck dumb. The only one who has hazarded a response, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, said only that she took the charges ''seriously.''

Everyone in Washington agrees with her about that; the charges cannot be dismissed out of hand. They fit the Clinton modus operandi. And his denial, so carefully parsed, is almost as telling as the charges themselves.

He lies about everything. Why would anyone think he's not lying about this?

It may be that Clinton serves out his term amid a swirl of mixed emotions. But it is not certain that he will. The consequences of his acquittal are just beginning to be felt. People don't like the feeling.

The charge of rape has changed the moral arithmetic. It will get worse before it gets better, because the truth is, it will never get better until Bill Clinton is gone.

For detailed coverage of the Juanita Broaddrick story, read The Broaddrick Files.

from PDL 1999-Mar-11, from Investors Business Daily, by Paul Sperry:

A BULLY IN THE WHITE HOUSE?
Do Women's Charges Show A Pattern of Threats?

It's a diverse group. Some politically active, some not. ``I hate politics,'' says one. Many are from Arkansas, but two are from the Washington area and one's from Beverly Hills.

At the same time, they have a lot in common. All nine are women. And nearly all of them are former employees or campaign workers who say they at one point admired the man they worked for.

All now say they fear him.

A growing club of women charge that Bill Clinton personally assaulted them or, through his ``agents'' or ``people,'' threatened to do them or their families physical harm. Some are vague about the threats. Others are quite specific.

But a pattern is clear, not to mention disturbing: One after another, women are accusing the president of being, at a minimum, a bully; at worst, a rapist. And all of them say they're afraid for their safety so long as he remains in power.

Some close to them say female White House staffers working close to president should also be concerned.

``Mr. Clinton is an abuser of women. And women who surround him, such as his staff at the White House, are at risk,'' said Marie- Jose Ragab, head of a Virginia chapter of the National Organization for Women that broke away from the national group after writing an amicus brief in the Paula Jones case.

``Is there anyone to protect them?'' she added. ``Can they report an assault safely, or will they and their families be threatened?''

``He is a threat to women there,'' agreed a lawyer for Dolly Kyle Browning, who claims Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey threatened to destroy Browning if she broke her silence about her affair with Clinton.

Browning is suing Clinton and Lindsey, among others, for racketeering and defamation. The White House denies the charges, and lawyers have filed to yesterday the federal suit.

Calls to the White House on the issue of female staffers' safety were referred to the counsel's office, which did not reply.

In the past the president has denied charges of assault or threats through his lawyers or spokesmen. And, to be sure, there is no direct proof that Clinton or anyone working on his behalf has bullied women.

Still, for the first time close former aides of the president are expressing doubts about his version of the truth. And many of the women's accounts are both detailed and strikingly similar.

Juanita Broaddrick. A former campaign worker, she charges Clinton raped her at the Camelot Hotel in Little Rock, Ark., on April 5, 1978. He was the state attorney general then. Through his personal lawyer, Clinton has denied any ``assault'' took place.

She kept mum for 21 years. Jones' lawyers, who subpoenaed Broaddrick, say she was ``threatened'' to keep quiet. Broaddrick told NBC News she was not.

But she signed what she now says is a false affidavit denying the assault, and Lindsey reportedly provided her lawyer with a model affidavit for her lawyer.

Also, she told NBC she was scared to come forward: ``I was afraid that I would be destroyed like so many of the other women.''

Two former Clinton aides, Dee Dee Myers and David Gergen, this week both publicly urged the president to personally deny the rape charge, if he can.

Kathleen Willey. An ex-White House volunteer, Willey claims that on Nov. 29, 1993, she was groped by the president in the same Oval Office room where he later had consensual sex with intern Monica Lewinsky.

She kept quiet about it until Jones' lawyers subpoenaed her, too. About two months before her Jan. 11, 1997, deposition, Willey found ``masses'' of nails in three of her car tires. They were stuck in the same six-inch area in the center tread of both front tires.

``It didn't look like an accident,'' said the owner of the Richmond, Va.-area shop that replaced the damaged tires.

Shortly after, Willey's cat disappeared. And two days before her deposition, Willey told ABC News that a jogger stopped her and asked her about her tires, her cat and her children - by name. ``Don't you get the message?'' he allegedly asked.

Investigators with Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's office are investigating whether the events were part of a White House effort to abort Willey's testimony. An Alexandria, Va., grand jury is hearing the case, Starr's office says.

Gennifer Flowers. Another Clinton mistress, Flowers worked for the state of Arkansas. In 1992, she revealed their affair - and had audio tapes to prove it.

Then the trouble began, she claims.

``My home had been ransacked. I had received threats. My mother received threats. People were getting beaten. I was afraid for my life,'' she told CNN's Larry King in January 1998.

She said her home had been broken into three times and ransacked the third. She told then-candidate Clinton about the burglaries.

``When I told Bill about it, he said, 'Do you think they were looking for something on us?' '' Flowers said. ``When he said it to me, there was just a tone in his voice. And I thought, you probably had this done to me.''

Linda Tripp. The former White House aide, who worked with both the late White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster and Lewinsky, says Lindsey told her she would be ``destroyed'' if she went public with dirt she had on the president. Lindsey's lawyer denies it was a threat.

Lewinsky, in a taped phone call, warned Tripp it was ``dangerous'' to talk to the press, and reminded her she had ``two children to think about.''

King interviewed her last month.

``You have a fear of your life?'' he asked. ``Oh, absolutely,'' she replied.

Monica Lewinksy. Phone tapes record Lewinksy - at the time the White House was pressuring her to sign what turned out to be a false affidavit -intimating to Tripp: ``I would not cross those people for fear of my life.'' She also said: ``My mother's big fear is that he's (Clinton's) going to send someone out to kill me.''

Lewinsky, in an ABC interview earlier this month, said she wasn't being ``truthful'' when she made those remarks.

Sally Perdue. A former Miss Arkansas, she claims a Democratic Party operative tried to hush her up during the 1992 campaign about an alleged affair with Clinton.

The man warned her ``they knew that I went jogging by myself and he couldn't guarantee what would happen to my pretty little legs,'' she told the London Sunday-Telegraph.

But some in Arkansas doubt her credibility. ``Sally Perdue's a nut,'' said Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons. ``I wouldn't believe anything she says.''

Elizabeth Ward Gracen. A former Miss America, she claims to have had a 1983 fling with then- Arkansas Gov. Clinton. She says she kept quiet about it during the 1992 campaign after getting threatening phone calls. The calls started again, she says, after she was subpoenaed in the Jones case. ``I was physically scared,'' she told The New York Post.

Gracen told the Toronto Sun last September that Clinton is ``a very dangerous man.'' She also said: ``I've had to be very careful. There was a lot of pressure on family and friends; people were being staked out.'' She says the IRS audited her after she spoke out.

Why did she decide to come forward? The Lewinsky scandal, she says, weakened Clinton's power and nmade him less of a threat.

Lyons cast doubt on her tale of fear. ``I remember her going on TV and saying she had a one-night stand (with Clinton)'' he said. ``And it was nothing but sweet.''

Paula Jones. ``Through this whole thing I've felt very scared,'' she told King last month. ``I don't drive crazy, so I won't run off the road; and I'm not suicidal. So if something happened to me, there's a reason.''

from TPDL 1999-May-5, from Capital Hill Blue:

Yep. Willey's sure. Clinton put the moves on her

There's no doubt about it, Kathleen Willey told a crowded courtroom in Alexendria, VA, Tuesday. The President of the United States put the moves on her.

And Willey says there can be no mistake that she confided to her friend Julie Hiatt Steele an alleged sexual advance by President Clinton. The reason she's sure, Mrs. Willey says, is because Ms. Steele reminded her about it.

In the latest twist in the Willey saga, the presidential accuser took the witness stand at Ms. Steele's obstruction of justice trial Tuesday, describing the day in which Clinton allegedly made a ``very forceful'' sexual advance that she says she rebuffed.

Returning to her home near Richmond, Va., that same day in 1993, she searched frantically and unsuccessfully for hours for her husband, winding up at Ms. Steele's home. His body was found the next day, a suicide.

``I recall being there (at Ms. Steele's house) because Julie told me I was there,'' Mrs. Willey testified. ``She reminded me that I was there, that I had told her briefly what happened with the president.''

It's a crucial point for Ms. Steele, who is charged with lying to Independent Counsel Kenneth's Starr's investigators when she denied that Mrs. Willey had told her about the incident hours after it allegedly happened.

Ms. Steele says Mrs. Willey first told her about the experience with Clinton in 1997, asking her to lie about it to a Newsweek reporter.

As Mrs. Willey prepared to testify Tuesday, Starr's office sought to bolster her account by revealing a previously unknown witness, a former White House colleague who says Mrs. Willey confided Clinton's allegedly unwanted sexual advance.

Ruthie Eisen, formerly of the White House social office, said she was told by Mrs. Willey that the president ``kissed her and hugged her'' and ``touched her chest.''

Ms. Eisen said Mrs. Willey told her she was ``caught off guard'' by the president's advance. Ms. Eisen said she assumed Mrs. Willey revealed the incident in confidence. Ms. Eisen said she didn't tell anyone about it until she was questioned by Starr's investigators.

Asked whether Mrs. Willey ever asked her to lie or fabricate anything, Ms. Eisen replied, ``absolutely not.''

Until now, Linda Tripp had been the only White House staffer to have said Mrs. Willey confided the alleged incident.

A White House volunteer, Mrs. Willey said she had gone to ask Clinton for a paying job to help relieve her family's financial problems.

``I told him we were having a crisis,'' Mrs. Willey said, and that she was desperate for a job.

As they talked, he led her to a small galley kitchen adjacent to the Oval Office, she said.

She said Clinton ``hugged me and told me he was very sorry'' and then began to kiss her. ``He was very forceful. His hands were all over me,'' Mrs. Willey testified. She said he touched her breasts and put his hands up her dress. ``I told him I needed to get out of there,'' she testified.

Did she try to resist? a prosecutor asked. ``Yes,'' she said.

from the Washington Post, 1999-Mar-5, by John F. Harris:

Troubled Clinton Loyalists Put Aside Their Doubts

President Bill Clinton has once again implored leaders in both parties to turn their sights on the future, even as millions of Americans were focused anew on the lurid details of the president's past. Yet Mr. Clinton, who survived a tawdry year with his gift for ''compartmentalizing'' scandal, has apparently succeeded in remaking the capital in his own image.

While the aftershocks of the impeachment drama continue to rumble almost daily - from new allegations against him of sexual assault to the nationally televised interview with Monica Lewinsky on Wednesday night - there is scant evidence that these are affecting Mr. Clinton's ability to seize control of Washington's policy agenda, according to lawmakers, administration officials and political analysts.

Instead, many of the other critical actors in this debate have made it plain in recent days that they are following the president's lead in keeping controversy about private behavior walled off from public business. This new group of compartmentalizers includes Republicans who just weeks ago wanted Mr. Clinton out of office as well as senior members of his own administration, some of whom say they are deeply troubled by the latest questions about the president but have chosen to put misgivings aside.

Three weeks after he won acquittal in his impeachment trial, Mr. Clinton is governing in a paradoxical political climate. He is surrounded by people who view him suspiciously, yet he remains by far the dominant actor on Washington's stage.

Mr. Clinton, according to several people who have spoken with him in recent days, is by turns angry and accepting of this paradox, aware that his survival in the impeachment ordeal is not going to produce anything like a clean break in stories about his conduct.

He has complained how the ''unwelcome vapor trail'' following him in recent days, as one aide described it, shows that news organizations and some conservative opponents are determined to prevent a return to a state of normalcy.

But the president's pessimism about the motives of his adversaries is interwoven with optimism: He apparently believes that Republicans, who are divided on issues and unpopular with voters in the wake of the impeachment trial, have no choice but to work with him on his terms.

''Yes, there are hard feelings, but at the end of the day people are nothing else if not pragmatic,'' a senior White House official said. ''Politics works by self-interest, and that means there is an incentive to work together.''

The president set down his terms for working together Wednesday at a rally-style event with House and Senate Democrats at the Library of Congress. Warning about the risks of ''excessive partisanship,'' he boasted that Democrats were more unified than ever on issues and challenged Republicans to join him in passing new national standards for education, devoting nearly two-thirds of the federal budget surplus to Social Security and agreeing that preserving Medicare requires a large new infusion of federal money.

''I think they want to get some things done, and the president is banking on it,'' said Donna Shalala, the secretary of health and human services, in a reference to the Republicans. She added that she had been struck in recent days by how ''cordial'' and ''professional'' once-combative Republicans had been toward her at appropriations hearings.

But even as Republicans must look past scandal toward policy, Ms. Shalala acknowledged that she was putting aside her own concerns about Mr. Clinton's behavior.

Asked about Juanita Broaddrick's recent allegations that Mr. Clinton assaulted her 21 years ago in an Arkansas hotel room, Ms. Shalala said she had reached no conclusion about whether she believed Mrs. Broaddrick or the terse denial issued by Mr. Clinton's lawyer - and she said she did not need to in order to do her job.

''I take all of this very seriously,'' Ms. Shalala said of Mrs. Broaddrick's allegations, adding that ''I do not compartmentalize'' by making separate judgments about personal conduct and public performance. At the same time, Ms. Shalala said, ''I'm both a patriot and a professional. I serve the nation and the president.''

This allows her to pursue what she considers important issues on Mr. Clinton's behalf without knowing what to believe about his past.

In a sampling of administration officials, both in the White House and in agencies, Ms. Shalala was the only one willing to be quoted by name. But other interviews underscored the degree to which the scandal over his affair with Ms. Lewinsky had undercut Mr. Clinton's credibility even with people who work for him. Given assurances of anonymity, many people who serve the president said they long ago had reconciled themselves to the fact that there were parts of their leader's private life about which they could never be certain.

One veteran aide likened working for Mr. Clinton to being a Catholic who supports abortion rights: One simply tolerates contradictions. ''Bill Clinton has got a problem,'' this official said. ''If he weren't president, he would be in counseling.''

Of the recent Broaddrick allegation, another senior official said, ''I think you have to be troubled by it. She seems very credible.'' On the other hand, this official, who has worked both in the White House and in a senior position at an outside agency, added: ''The question is: What do you do with it? And why now? Why did she wait 20 years?''

Many other aides in recent days said they had found Mrs. Broaddrick's allegations of forcible sexual assault implausible. Her story is far different, Clinton loyalists note, from the story of Paula Jones, who said Mr. Clinton did not force the issue when she turned down a crude sexual advance.

Some aides pointed to recent rumors suggesting that Mr. Clinton had fathered an illegitimate child with a prostitute. That story turned out to be false, according to the tabloid newspaper that first raised the issue. The lesson, these Clinton loyalists say, is that even if they cannot fully trust the president's denials, they know that many of the most sensational allegations about him fall flat.

''You have to live with some uncertainty,'' one of them said. ''You just ignore it and do your job.''

from PDL 1999-Mar-26, from the Associated Press:

Grand juror drops secrecy, declares Clinton indictable

WASHINGTON -- Stepping from behind the grand jury's wall of secrecy, the foreman in the Monica Lewinsky inquiry said she sympathized with President Clinton but would have voted to indict him for perjury if prosecutors had asked her to.

In an interview, Freda Alexander described her 18 months on the grand jury as emotionally intense. She defended the independent counsel but said she sometimes felt sorry for Lewinsky and Betty Currie, the president's secretary, as they were pressed to testify about the president.

She portrayed Linda Tripp, the co-worker who turned Lewinsky in to prosecutors, as determined to damage Clinton.

Jurors are forbidden by law from disclosing what goes on in the grand jury room. But Alexander, 46, said she felt she could talk about the Clinton case because so much of it was made public after Kenneth Starr's report to Congress. She said she might even write a book. Starr's office had no comment.

Alexander, whose grand jury service ended last week, said she believed Clinton's transgressions were so personal that they never should have been made public, much less become grounds for impeachment. "His crimes were intensely personal," Alexander said from her Washington home. "You know when your mother says, 'Don't make a federal case out of it?' They were making a federal case of it." But she said Clinton wasn't honest with the grand jury about his relationship with Lewinsky.

She was offended by his assertion that "a reasonable person" would define sexual relations only as intercourse. Asked if she would have returned an indictment against Clinton, Alexander said, "If they had asked if he committed perjury, I would say yes." But she also said she believes seeking an indictment would have been "overkill." "What's a man supposed to do, when they're trying to protect their family and not hurt innocent people?" she asked.

She believes there wasn't enough evidence for a criminal indictment of Clinton for obstructing justice by covering up the affair -- the other charge considered in the Senate impeachment trial along with perjury.

Nonetheless, Alexander, who is divorced and has two sons in their 20s, said it was proper for the grand jury to investigate the Lewinsky matter and that Starr was unfairly demonized for doing his job. "I don't think Ken Starr is the devil incarnate. I think it's very sad that he's been put in that role," Alexander said. Instead, she blamed the independent counsel law for giving too much power and unlimited money to prosecutors. Alexander said investigating the president was "very difficult" for her because she "had a very high regard" for Clinton for appointing members of minority groups to high-level administration jobs.

She said she believed Lewinsky paid a high price for youthful mistakes. The former White House intern's testimony about being confronted by Starr's prosecutors was so moving -- "there were very few dry eyes" in the room -- that Alexander gave her a hug at the end. Michael Ross, a criminal defense lawyer and expert on grand juries, called it "a little bit of a shock" that Alexander discussed the case and said the fact that much of the panel's work has been disclosed publicly doesn't necessarily free her from adhering to secrecy rules.

Starr sent Congress a report and three volumes of supplemental information about the investigation, including transcripts of grand jury testimony. The House released the information publicly. Grand jurors' names aren't released by federal courts.

Alexander was first identified in USAE, a weekly newspaper covering conventions and hotels, which published a story saying she was suing a hotel that fired her during her grand jury service. She wouldn't comment on the lawsuit. While not revealing other grand jurors' reactions, she spoke openly about her own impressions of the witnesses and prosecutors:

She believes Tripp's "mission was to do as much damage as possible to Clinton" and to gather material for a book. Her biggest objections to the independent counsel's office were the lack of members of minority groups on the staff and that female prosecutors appeared to have "secondary roles."

Recalling how Marcia Lewis, Lewinsky's mother, broke down crying while being questioned about her daughter, Alexander said, "I hope I never see anything like that again."

She criticized a prosecutor, whom she wouldn't identify, for curtly telling Currie on her final day of testimony to "just sit down." "There was no reason to be rude," Alexander said.

from The New Republic, 1997-Jan-6, by Hanna Rosin:

Larry Flynt, scum chic

"Words such as respectable, insightful, and icon are spilling from the tips of some decidedly unexpected tongues."
--from the introduction to an interview with Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler, in the July 1996 issue

James Carville, having run through his patter of Ken Starr jokes, suddenly grows somber. "Milos Forman lost his parents in the Holocaust, " he says, introducing the Czech director who will introduce the new movie the Washington establishment has gathered to watch, The People vs. Larry Flynt. "The first thing a totalitarian state goes after is pornography, and when they do, the public applauds. It gets worse from there." Carville's wife, Mary Matalin, rests a fidgety hand on her fur coat. George Stephanopoulos stops throwing popcorn and catching it in his mouth. The People vs. Larry Flynt is meant to be consumed with grave import, and it is; the post-viewing crowd mingles in subdued tones. Carville, who has a large-ish ranting role in the movie, says later that this reaction is a measure of his vehicle's subtle, nuanced nature. "Like they say in wine tasting, the movie had a long finish, " he explains. "I can't imagine anyone going to see that movie and not stopping for a cup of coffee to talk about it."

The Christmas movie season is Hollywood's time for thinking large about large subjects. In the summer, it may be all sex, drugs and violence, but the winter solstice is a serious time, and it calls forth serious cinema about, well, sex, drugs and violence. But not pointless sex, drugs and violence. Sex, drugs and violence with a message--two thumbs up not from Joe Bob Briggs but from Frank Rich. This Christmas, pond scum is intellectually chic. Larry Flynt, once merely a millionaire publisher of vile, racist, scatological, pig- ugly and violently women-hating porn, has arrived, finally, at respectability' s doorstep. Dredged from the sump just in time for Hustler's twenty- fifth anniversary, the old slimemeister has been retrofitted as a hardscrabble defender of American freedoms. It's a transformation that longtime Hustler regulars watch with some awe. "I once wrote a couple of pieces for Hustler, and I used to dread that David Broder would see them," says Rudy Maxa, who covered the Flynt saga for The Washington Post. "It wasn't so chic back then. Now if I say at a dinner party I'm one of Larry Flynt's best friends, I get a lot of interest. I get a big kick out of it."

In between coast-to-coast signings for his new autobiography, An Unseemly Man ("I can't keep track of him," frets his agent), Flynt is juggling calls from "ABC, NBC, MTV, print press, magazines, it's absolutely overwhelming," she frets yet again. And the coverage is respectful, almost reverential: "the most timely and patriotic movie of the year, " raves Frank Rich in The New York Times. Barry Hannah, in a breathless profile in George (which is holding a private screening) is nearly silenced by admiration: "Flynt and I are the same age, and when you see him you feel, in the fight for freedom, a relative coward." Hannah leaves us this question to ponder: "Was Flynt our hero?"

You don't have to be Catharine MacKinnon to smell something fishy here. It's not, as MacKinnon or William Bennett might argue, that Flynt's magazine should be boycotted for corrupting young minds. And it's not that he doesn't deserve credit for fighting and winning, in the 1988 Supreme Court decision Falwell v. Flynt, one of the most important freedom of the press case since New York Times v. Sullivan. But our hero? In their desperation for a resounding liberal epiphany, the media seem to have swallowed Flynt's glossed-over image of himself. "We are talking about freedom!!" Woody Harrelson's Flynt screams at a group of reporters in one of the movie's endless portentous moments. "Doesn't anybody know what that means anymore?!" Script direction: "The reporters are silent. Larry is all choked up."

Crucial to the new Flynt mythology is faith in the movie's unstinting honesty; the idea that his new acolytes have bravely plumbed the abyss that is Larry Flynt's soul and have unflinchingly exposed this horror to the moviegoing public. "What makes this movie so effective is that it doesn't sentimentalize or airbrush Larry Flynt," writes Rich. Forman says he strove "not to glorify any of [Flynt's] life. I didn't try to cover the ugly side." The scriptwriters, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, are adamant on this point. "I don't think anyone will accuse us of whitewashing here," says Karaszewski. "As purists, we try to be honest."

Excuse me? What about, to start with the most obvious, the whitewash of shaving 200 pounds off Flynt and chiseling him into Woody Harrelson? "We knew we needed a real star because the subject matter was so strange, " admits Alexander. "The studio would not have been comfortable if we had gone with Tom Arnold."

There must have been many things that made the studio uncomfortable. The movie opens with a barefoot and freckled 10-year-old Larry peddling moonshine to the locals in eastern Kentucky (script direction: "Larry is backwards, dirt poor, barely educated, yet bursting with Huckleberry Finn industriousness"). Soon he parlays his entrepreneurial vigor into a series of go-go clubs. The clubs are skanky, but they are also just this side of cool. He pays his girls well and treats them with respect, except for the occasional pat on the bum. He loves girls; in fact, it's because the female body is the most beautiful of God' s creations that he wants to share it with his fellow man. The central drama is the love story of Larry and Althea, his soulmate and muse. It's a story about what a mischievous but good-hearted young man has to do to make it in a tough world, and what he learns along the way about liberty, the Constitution and the inalienable rights of man. Basically, it's an updated Capra flick: Mr. Juggs Goes to Washington.

In the movie, Hustler is almost accidentally in the nudie business (which is, by the way, presented as pretty innocent). Its real mission is social progress. It is engaged in the noble task of "breaking taboos" : publishing nude pictures of Jackie O., a cartoon of Dorothy and the Tin Man having sex, and interracial orgies. And it is engaged, too, in the artist's calling of showing life as it is: Playboy's hairless bunnies are replaced by working girls spreading it all under the bright lights. "God made the genitals. Who are we to say they aren't beautiful?" asks Woody/Flynt.

But what distinguishes Hustler is not its bare-all daring--the adult section of any newsstand is full of lesser-known titles brimming with genitalia--but its relentless depiction of sex as beastly and of sexual creatures as beasts. Sex in Playboy is a barefoot romp in the park. Sex in Hustler is a freak show. The magazine's pictorials are violent, depressing and perverse. The objects of sexual desire are often chosen precisely for their unwholesomeness. They mock and debase the very idea of the female body as sacred: women smeared with excrement, 300- pound women, women with penises--a horror house of Diane Arbus rejects. Hustler's preferred sex toy is a pile of shit. There is a running joke ad called "Buttwiper Beer--the King of Smears," showing a woman' s firm, sexy behind with diarrhea dripping down her leg. Couples have sex by smelly urinals, a man masturbates while watching a fat woman pee. As Flynt writes in the September 1994 issue: "the desire to prick a pompous inflated bimbo is perfectly natural." (Yes, and so also to deflate a pompous prick.)

Flynt's venomous, bestial depiction of the world is not limited to women. What fits least well with the image of Flynt as liberal icon is the unbridled racism in Hustler, also left out of the movie. The magazine's pages are filled with pictures of fat-lipped black men- -Negroes, actually--stuttering in semi-literate English or waving their oversized manhoods. In one, a smirking Louis Farrakhan chomps on watermelon while watching two white women make it. In another, a Negro picking cotton in the antebellum South waxes prophetic: "Payback' s a comin'," he says. "Two hundred years from now we'll sell 'em drugs and make their daughters hos. Then they'll be our slaves."

So what? Art is complex. Truth is ugly. The way of progressivism is not for the faint of heart. And so on. But the idea of Flynt as a man whom good liberals must regard as heroic falls apart for another reason: the facts of Flynt's own life. When, as noted in the movie, Flynt described himself as a "scumbag," it was rare modesty. Flynt has led the sort of life that gives sordid a bad name. If all you knew about Flynt came from Milos Forman, you would get the impression that Althea was the only woman he married. You would also get the impression that he passed most of his days winning over juries with impassioned speeches on the First Amendment. In fact, Althea was the fourth of Flynt's five wives. And the story of Flynt's serial marriages is an unenlightening one. Flynt's bootstrap autobiography maintains a calm, sentimental tone throughout ("I made a lot of mistakes..." ), except when it comes to his ex-wives. First there's Mary, a blonde he met at a bar in Dayton. Only after they were married did he learn, to his horror, that he was "the only one in the place who hadn't screwed her!" Then there's Peggy, the girl-next-door type. She turned out to have "the morals of an alley cat."

One viewer of The People vs. Larry Flynt who knew a bit about the subject beforehand is Tonya Flynt-Vega, who is 31 and one of five children whom Flynt fathered but didn't live with. This summer, Flynt- Vega publicly accused her father of sexually abusing her. Flynt, calling his daughter "a habitual liar," has denied the accusation. His daughter won't divulge the details, making it impossible to know what really happened. But she says some of her other stories ring painfully true. Like the time Flynt sent her and her mother, who were living in public housing, a Christmas card with $500. Inside was a picture of Santa exposing himself to a little girl. Flynt says he never sent the card. "This movie makes Hustler into a coffee-table magazine," Flynt-Vega says. "It lifts my father up as some kind of American hero, like Jesse James or Bonnie and Clyde. He's very manipulative, and he's just bought himself a respectable place in history."

Flynt's angry daughter is right about the movie. Forman's supposedly harsh examination of Flynt's life is really as soft and gauzy as a Playboy bunny shot. Even the fact that Flynt was a drug addict is presented with apologies. There is a brief interlude where an increasingly haggard and bloated Flynt ingests handfuls of pills and watches his wife do the same, but, as we learn later, it was only to dull the pain after he was shot. As soon as the pain is over he quits, "cold turkey." The movie ends with a teary, grieving Flynt, watching home videos of his dearly departed Althea. Forman excuses himself for his dishonesty. Artistic license and all that. "Bio pics are boring," he says, explaining why he left certain incidents out. But what Forman chose to omit is the central (and, incidentally, more interesting) truth of Flynt's life, and what he chose to include works to mitigate against that truth, in favor of what's politically apt.

As it happens, Forman's airbrushing of Flynt works against the core intellectual defense of Flyntism. Flynt's worshipers argue that accepting the grim, grubby reality of Flynt is the whole point. Flynt (and Hustler), they say, is the authentic voice of working-class America. "If you had a provocative magazine and it appealed to more educated people, it was all right," writes philosopher/movie star James Carville in the latest issue of Hustler. "But for blue-collar people to have this was less desirable. One thing to ponder. Are the masses entitled to as much provocative art and provocative magazines as the elites are?" Carville's view is shared by a certain breed of feminist, the vampish kind that gets a thrill from seeing Camille Paglia surrounded by her bodyguards. One such person is Laura Kipnis, who has just published Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America, with a chapter devoted to Hustler. The author's photo shows a dreamy- eyed Kipnis leaning back on a Turkish pillow, her hair tousled, her billowy blouse wrinkled and undone.

Kipnis upbraids her feminist colleagues for one of their most "formative blind spots": class. Hustler, she argues, "rants madly" against privilege, making it "by far the most openly class antagonistic mass-circulation periodical of any genre." She chalks up its grossness to "Rabelaisian transgression," a triumph of carnivalesque inversions: "the out-of- control, unmannerly body is precisely what threatens the orderly operation of the status quo." And we would all see its value if we gave up our prudish "insistence ... [on] high-minded language."

But to accept Flynt's vision of the working class is, to say the least, condescending. Flynt invents a cast of blue-collar characters--buck- toothed sex maniacs, peeping Toms--and then spits on them. His working class has no aspirations outside the four walls of their truck beds. They mock American institutions and dream of nothing more than they already possess. Flynt actually disdains the working class, and his disdain shows in his lifestyle. He wheels around his mansion in an $85,000 gold-plated wheelchair and marvels at his French provincial and eighteenth-century English antiques, Persian rugs and faux Old Masters. He likes to brag to reporters that his average reader is 28 and has a median income of $50,000. He thought they were Joe Lunchbox types but was surprised in a recent survey to find he had more highly educated readers. "Ph.D.s must be more open-minded," he says. Thus, The People vs. Larry Flynt.

That Milos Forman should have an exaggerated impression of Flynt's heroism is understandable. After all, he points out, the two brutal regimes he lived through, the Nazis and the communists, "started with crusades against perverts." But for Frank Rich or Barry Hannah to repeat this mantra is stunningly empty. After all, Larry Flynt's story does not prove America is a dangerous place, but the opposite. There has never really been anything close to a real threat to Larry Flynt' s liberty or his peculiar pursuit of happiness. Each time a narrow- minded Southern judge fined him or threw him in jail, the decision was overturned on appeal. He warns, and others repeat, that he was sentenced to twenty-five years. But he only served a few days, and, as he gloated at the time, his circulation skyrocketed. The court case on which Forman's entire movie is based was not even a censorship case. The very title of the movie is a lie. The case wasn't The People v. Larry Flynt. It was Falwell v. Flynt. It wasn't, in other words, an effort by the state to censor free speech. It was a libel case (much like the libel case Flynt plans to pursue against his daughter), an effort by one citizen, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, to prove that another citizen, Larry Flynt, had lied about him in publishing a parody interview in which Falwell talks about having sex with his mother. Flynt didn't go to court to stop the totalitarians from starting down the slippery slope of censorship. He went to court to protect his bank account. In doing so, he accidentally protected the right of free speech. That's not particularly brave or heroic. The real protectors of American rights are rather boring. They're a few dour justices and the Constitution that guides them. But that wouldn't make much of a movie.

from Insight, 1999-Feb-22, by John Elvin; Insight on the News; WASHINGTON IN BRIEF; Pg. 34:

It's a Plot, Thick or Thin

Despite denials, there do appear to be some curious links that could lead one to assume a certain validity to charges of a "vast left-wing conspiracy" to trash congressional Republicans. Sam Dealey of the American Spectator, writing in the New York Post, sees such a link in pornographer Larry Flynt's comment that he had not seen his friend, Deputy Defense Secretary Strobe Talbott - who also happens to be Bill Clinton's friend - "in years - but he is married to a sister of a very good friend of mine."

Well, Talbott's brother-in-law is Cody Shearer, a White House-connected mystery man who was pegged in an extensive Vanity Fair profile of private eye Terry Lenzner as a close Lenzner associate. Lenzner's Washington firm has been dubbed "Clinton's secret police" by insiders.

Shearer's primary White House chum is Sidney Blumenthal, often fingered as a conduit to the media for damaging dirt dug up by investigators working for Clinton. Blumenthal denies the role. Shearer's sister, Brooke, is a former Lenzner investigator legendary for her dumpster-diving skills and a longtime friend of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. And then there's brother Derek Shearer, ambassador to Finland as a result of his longtime friendship with Clinton and campaign work on his behalf.

These sorts of links prompted Insight to ask whether the Clinton White House had its own version of "plumbers" (see "Did Clinton Hire Plumbers," Nov. 16, 1998) [In Sicking the Outfit, search for Plumbers. -Ed.] - as the chaps who did the dirty work for Richard Nixon were known. Republican members of Congress still are demanding answers to that question.

In Flynt's case, some light is shed in the revelation that he relied on investigative reporter Dan Moldea - highly regarded in Washington reporting circles for his work in exposing mob activities - for much of the dirt-digging. Moldea reportedly connected with Flynt after being recommended by another veteran Washington freelancer, intelligence expert Neil Livingstone.

In a twist that should provide more fodder for conspiracy theorists, Livingstone isn't known as a Clintonite and has in fact called the president a "bumbler" in print. The identifier most frequently used when Livingstone's name appears is "colleague of Ollie North." Go figure.

from PDL 1999-Mar-4, from The Hill, by Philippe Shepnick:

Flynt targets indiscretions of 21 GOPers

Hustler Magazine Publisher Larry Flynt will reveal the youthful, and perhaps not-so-youthful, indiscretions of as many as 21 House and Senate Republicans in a special publication, The Flynt Report, which will go on sale April 6.

At least one senator and one House impeachment manager continued their dalliances during the Senate impeachment trial, said a source close to the investigation. "We had some guys nailed during the impeachment trial, but we were afraid to interfere with the process," he said.

Editors are putting the finishing touches on the 84-page, ad-free special issue. "We should have everything back from the galleys tomorrow," Hustler Executive Editor Allan MacDonell said Monday night in a telephone interview from his Los Angeles office.

The $4.99 special issue will target Republicans who "were basically the loudest" critics of President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, MacDonell said. He refused to say exactly how many lawmakers would be revealed in the magazine, but indicated the publication has evidence of indiscretions by 21 to 24 lawmakers.

The alleged trysts of the male, and perhaps female, legislators will be supported with pictures, dates, and possibly - MacDonell was coy about details - transcripts of conversations.

"We have pictures of them in bars, beaches," MacDonell said. "They're kissing and groping."

The report could include one House Republican who used his campaign money to set up a "[sex] pad, where he would bring his lady friends and party," the source said. "It was no other purpose than that. ...You'd be surprised how discreet these women were."

The special issue will also explain why Flynt is publishing the exposé, how the evidence was gathered, and its effect on politics, MacDonell said.

The standard of proof was extremely high, MacDonell said. Any evidence used to prove an affair had to be legally obtained. Every shred of information was verified. Pictures, videotapes and phone messages were analyzed. Meetings at hotels, bars or restaurants had to be confirmed.

At one point they even received a lawmaker's semen sample on a towel, MacDonell said, but they did not have the subpoena power to obtain a DNA sample.

"It doesn't help us that much," he said. "We knew he's not going to turn over any hair to us. But if I had two grand juries, subpoena power and $50 million, I'd have them all in jail."

Flynt's crusade, which has cost more than $3 million, began Oct. 4 of last year. He paid $85,000 for a full-page ad in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post. He promised as much as $1 million for documentary evidence of an "adulterous sexual encounter with a current member of the United States Congress or a high-ranking government official." Anyone with information could call or write to Flynt.

Flynt has said he received over 2,000 responses and gave a shorter list to an investigator.

"The funny thing is that I would get a lot of phone calls from various news organizations, and they would ask me various questions," MacDonell said. "I couldn't tell if they were more interested in what we knew or what they knew. People seem to know a lot of stuff that's going on."

Some tipsters tried to learn what Flynt knew. One phone call came from a California man who claimed to have DNA samples, audiotape and videotape of a high-ranking Republican official, the source said.

It took "about 30 seconds" to realize the story was a lie, the source continued. "It was too good to be true. There's sort of a profile of a person who would do that and this person was far beyond the profile."

One congressman they planned to expose was Speaker-designate Bob Livingston (R-La.). When Livingston realized he was targeted by Flynt, he resigned on Dec. 19, the same day the House passed two articles of impeachment against President Clinton. MacDonell said they had firm evidence on six Republicans at that time.

Although rumors about Flynt's targets have circulated in Washington for weeks, his only public announcement involved Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), an impeachment manager, on CNBC's "Rivera Live" show, hosted by Geraldo Rivera. On Jan. 12, Flynt accused Barr of having an affair with his third wife while he was married to his second wife. Flynt also charged Barr with helping his second wife get an abortion. Barr has denied both allegations.

Flynt's team continued to gather information during the House and Senate impeachment proceedings, but they did not want to disrupt the Senate trial, the source said.

"There seemed to be bipartisanship in the Senate, even when there seemed there wasn't an overlying desire for a bipartisan conclusion to this," the source said. "And we respected what they were doing."

When the Senate voted to acquit Clinton, they had proof on 20 lawmakers, MacDonell said. They discussed releasing the material after the acquittal, but Flynt developed pneumonia after he came to Washington for an interview on ABC's "20/20." Flynt spent several days in intensive care at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Flynt is scheduled to have surgery later this week for an unrelated health problem, MacDonell said.

Flynt should be ready to go when the publication hits the newsstands and the Internet in April but they may save some details until the 2000 elections, MacDonell said.

There's ample time for someone who will be exposed in April to claim they've had a change of heart by November 2000, MacDonell said.

"We think the people should know who they really are," he said.

from Roll Call, 1999-Mar-3, by Jim Vanderhei:

Tom DeLay Denies Rumors of Illegitimate Child

Breaking weeks of silence, Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) yesterday told his top lieutenants that he never lied under oath, never accepted illegal honoraria and never had an illegitimate child whom he later moved into his home.

DeLay, who has refused to openly discuss these allegations in public, wanted his closest allies, the Deputy Whips, to hear his defense of each charge before he roars back on to the national stage, a top adviser said.

With his Whips' confidence validated, DeLay plans to pressure Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) for a vote to condemn President Clinton's plans for military action in Kosovo and to gut the administration's emergency spending bill.

DeLay's confrontational stance may imperil Hastert's call for bipartisanship, his adviser admitted, and may strain relationships between Clinton and Congressional Republicans.

"He's back and fully engaged and he is going to start speaking out on issues," said DeLay spokesman Michael Scanlon. "It will be vintage Tom DeLay."

But first DeLay is dealing with what he believes is payback for his triumphant crusade to impeach Clinton last December. It started with a rash of negative stories and culminated with a series of death threats that prompted the Capitol Police to assign to him around-the-clock, armed protection.

"You jabbed at [the White House] and hurt them," Deputy Whip John Doolittle (R-Calif.) told DeLay at the meeting yesterday. "But for you, the turkey would not be impeached."

DeLay, in a Wednesday morning meeting with a dozen of his most trusted Whips and several aides, said his political enemies are "out to destroy my family" by spreading "absolutely false" allegations that one of his foster kids is his illegitimate child.

The rumor, well-circulated among the Washington media, landed in the pages of the New York Post and continues to haunt his two foster children. DeLay, a personal and financial supporter of a prominent foster child program in his hometown of Sugarland, Texas, dismissed the allegations and assailed the motivations of those spreading them.

The situation is so bad, according to one DeLay confidant, that his two foster children are routinely trailed by reporters and investigators and often fear for their safety.

"They hit me at my weakest point," he told his Whips, referring to the negative news reports that surfaced when he was busy coping with his wife's cancer. "That really angers me."

The illegitimate-child rumor, however, is only one of a handful of stories his political enemies are peddling, he told the Whips.

Several news organization have run stories accusing DeLay of, at the very least, hypocrisy when he provided conflicting statements during a 1994 civil deposition involving his former business, Albo Pest Control.

DeLay, his critics are quick to illuminate, vociferously hammered Clinton for lying under oath during the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil suit. Hence, the hypocrisy card.

The stories raise instances where DeLay may have misled the court, but his enemies have sunk their teeth into an exchange, eerily reminiscent of the Clinton deposition, in which the Majority Whip could not recall his position within the company.

By denying an official role, his critics say, DeLay was trying to distance himself from responsibility in the case. "I did not commit perjury, did not parse my words, or any other Clinton-under-oath issue," he told his Deputy Whips.

It's this allegation that DeLay refuted in yesterday's meeting. DeLay said "the media unfairly overlooked" a "clarifying document" he sent to the court a few months after his deposition. The document, which was provided to Roll Call, clearly states he was a "director and officer" of the company, though it was submitted well after the deposition ended.

"It shows it was never an issue in the case, it was not an issue at the time of the deposition and was not an issue at the time of the pleadings or at the time when the parties settled the case," Scanlon said. "There may have been some confusion at the time of the deposition, but it certainly was not a Clintonesque attempt to deliberately deceive."

DeLay said he feels the charges of perjury are the only serious questions raised in the articles, so "there is no reason to retry the minutiae of the case in the media."

The Whip did not stop there. He also blasted a media report, which was later retracted, that accused him of accepting illegal honoraria. DeLay told his Deputy Whips that the story was "absolutely false" and pointed them to a retraction he feared many Members may have missed.

So why did DeLay wait so long to tell his side of the story and why won't he go public with his tale?

"I never have, never will jump when someone tells me to jump," a defiant DeLay told his friends. "Obviously I am a target and I thought it would make things worse if I played their game. ... That's all I am going to say."

The dozen or so Deputy Whips in the meeting rallied around DeLay after his explanation and blamed the President for the Majority Whip's problems.

"It's part of the President's political scheme to come after us," Deputy Whip Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) told DeLay.

With the backing of his Deputy Whips, DeLay plans to jump back into the ring and become Clinton's worst nightmare on Capitol Hill, an adviser said.

He started yesterday with a phone call to Appropriations Chairman Bill Young (R-Fla.) to inform him that the $1 billion-plus emergency spending bill for Jordan and hurricane-damaged South American countries is dead on arrival unless drastic changes are made.

DeLay, with the backing of many conservatives, wants more money for Midwest farm relief and less money for Jordan and South America. Several other GOP leaders share DeLay's concerns with the overall price tag, as well as with talk of not offsetting the cost of the entire package.

DeLay also dispatched his top deputy, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), to an emergency leadership meeting yesterday to demand a floor vote on sending troops to Kosovo.

Hastert has not made a final decision on the vote, so DeLay's pressure is designed to guarantee Members an opportunity to express their opposition.

from WorldNetDaily, from Alan Keyes' column of 1998-Dec-18, from http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_keyes/19981218_xcake_bill_clint.shtml:

Bill Clinton:
Weapon of mass destruction

---

We are in the midst of momentous events. And though some folks try to play down the significance of the whole impeachment crisis, I want to explain again why I believe that this matter is so critical, and why it is far more important than many people are saying, including those at The New York Times who are writing their sophistical editorials to pretend that the president's conduct doesn't rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.

If, as I believe, this nation is in the midst of a great moral crisis, and if that moral crisis is in fact what threatens the future of our institutions and our liberty, then nothing could be more profoundly damaging than an outcome to the impeachment process that ratifies the moral corruption of our time. There are those who are making arguments as if our national security and national survival have to do only with material things. They suggest that while it is bad to give away secrets to weapons, or do things that affect adversely our material or economic prospects, or to produce weapons of mass destruction, that doing something that destroys our moral foundations is not even a misdemeanor -- it's just not even important.

These are people who apparently don't really understand even the nature of war. Because all the great tomes on strategy that have been written agree that if you are at war, if you are threatened by an enemy that wants to destroy you, that enemy will seek above all to affect adversely your mind and morale -- your character.

When enemies seriously intend to harm a nation, their ultimate aim -- that is, the reason that they will go after certain material targets and do the other particular things they do -- is to break its will, and to break its spirit. The real goal, in short, is to de-MORALIZE the society. Demoralization is the ultimate aim of the conflict -- it is the goal that is pursued with weapons and other material means. The goal is to break the will, and once the will is broken the rest follows. So nothing is more important militarily than to defend the moral strength and integrity of your forces. And likewise nothing is more important to the survival of a nation than to defend its moral foundations -- the integrity and moral strength of its people.

So at this moment, when the attention of our country has been so rudely shifted from the question of impeachment to the bombs that our president has directed against Iraq, we should make a special effort to remember the weapons that are the most dangerous threats to our nation right now, and who is deploying them. It is true today, as it was true last week and last year, that Bill Clinton represents a wholesale assault on our moral integrity as a people, and on those practical concepts which flow from that moral integrity -- including self-discipline, respect for oaths, respect for the law. Without these things, our material prosperity might continue for a time. Without these things, our physical security against foreign assaults might for a time remain adequate. But without these things our way of life cannot survive, because without moral integrity our freedom as a people would perish.

We are now facing the most potent assault that can be made against our real liberty, and it takes the form of this lawless, immoral president. It takes the form of the arguments being made on his behalf that would have us accept lawlessness, and that would have us accept the concepts which break down our sense of responsibility and moral discipline -- particularly in those things which affect the elemental institution of our society, which is the family.

We should view the impeachment process in the context of this life-threatening crisis of the Republic. We should understand Bill Clinton's whole administration -- and particularly the terrible scandal in which he has embroiled us -- as a moral thermo-nuclear weapon that has gone off in our midst, massively intensifying our general moral crisis. It has been detonated in such a way that its malicious influences are everywhere in the society, and especially in our homes and families.

If President Clinton is worried about the threat to America posed by weapons of mass destruction, he could start by looking in the mirror. William Jefferson Clinton is a weapon of mass destruction more dangerous to America than anything in the arsenal of Saddam Hussein.

The Clinton crisis is not an "episode" of sexcapades in the White House. It is not a personal crisis of Bill Clinton. It is not a small and isolated distraction from the "real" threats to our well-being posed by turmoil in the markets or Iraqi bomb programs. The Clinton crisis is a crisis of the regime -- a moment of decision about what kind of people we are and how we intend to live together. Our response to the Clinton crisis will in fact determine, right here and now, whether we have a chance to continue to survive as a free people. Our liberty is truly at stake.

And so the impeachment process is an effort, in the wake of the nuclear blast we call "the Clinton Administration," to begin to put things back together so that we will preserve our free way of life. And that means that it is a momentous challenge.

There may be some people in the Congress who don't understand this, or just don't want to see it this way. There are certainly many people of narrow vision and short-sightedness -- of moral obtuseness -- who will insist that nothing important is at stake in the impeachment effort. I disagree with them, and am morally certain that my view will be borne out if we go the wrong way. This fills me with a deep sense of sorrow for the future of the country.

But it is also what makes me celebrate the emerging possibility that our representatives in the Congress will do the right thing. This possibility should inspire us to continue in the effort so that, perhaps, we will get a fair judgment in the Senate. I do not assume that the outcome in the Senate is a foregone conclusion. We should let the process move forward, let the charges be made, and let the stage be set for a fair trial of these matters, in which the true import of the president's offenses can be brought forward, as Mr. Schippers has been doing in the House and as would presumably continue to be done in greater depth in the Senate.

The impeachment and removal of Bill Clinton loom far larger for the future and destiny of this nation than many would have us believe. In the midst of the turmoil and confusion that surrounds these matters and the effort by the media to reduce the question of impeachment to a mere fight for votes, it is good to step back and keep our eye on the real scale of the stakes for America and the world. While there won't be any air-raid sirens sounding in Washington this week, the Congress will be engaged in the most important act of national self-defense in a long, long time.

excerpts from The loneliest mile in town: Travels along the political fault line, by Sam Smith, from The Progressive Review:

When I was a radio newsman in the late 1950s, I would sometimes snag the late or early shift and have to drive from my apartment on Capitol Hill the hundred blocks or so out 16th Street to Silver Spring. The streets were dark, silent and empty and I would turn on a black radio station and listen to The Cabbie's Serenade -- a show, the host said in a mellow post-midnight voice, dedicated to "all you guys driving the loneliest mile in town." Then Al Jefferson would play the blues to keep you company.

As I have wandered deep into the mysteries of the president and his past, the memory of those nights have returned more than once. As one of a miniscule number of non-conservative journalists to make the trip, the streets have often been dark, empty, and silent.

By the standards of my background, my trade, and my politics -- as I have been frequently reminded -- I should never have never gone this way. Nothing I have ever done -- none of my activism, none of my writings, none of my choices -- have left me so much the outsider as trying to write the truth about Clinton. It has often seemed the loneliest mile in town.

[...]

From the start I had recognized something familiar about Bill Clinton. The soft southern voice unwavering in its glib assurance, the excuse for everything, the absence of inquiry, the cynical charm, a cause well used a quarter century ago and then forgotten, the adulterated intelligence, the inconsistency, the willingness to use anything or anyone, the undisciplined egocentrism, the populist rhetoric playing bumper tag with corporatist policies, the drugs, the women, and the whiff of the underworld. It was not new; I had, after all, known Marion Barry for over 25 years.

There were some other things that I recognized. For example, I knew enough political history to understand that modern corruption was largely a Democratic invention and that it had two primary branches: northern urban and southern ubiquitous. It wasn't that Republicans were more honest; perhaps they were just too greedy to share the wealth and thus seldom had time to build up a good machine before getting caught. In any case, finding another corrupt Democrat was nothing new.

Then, some months before the 1992 campaign, I read Sally Denton's Bluegrass Conspiracy -- a stunning description of how illegal drugs had corrupted Kentucky right up to the governor's office. The early tales from Arkansas contained eerie echoes of Kentucky. There were also new scents of old trails I had followed while writing about Reagan and Bush -- back when no one ever accused me of being a conspiracy theorist for reporting what I had found. The droppings of BCCI and Iran-Contra, of S&L scandals and the CIA were in Arkansas as well.

Several months before the 1992 convention I compiled a list of troublesome things that had already surfaced in that state, drawing a flow chart to link the people and institutions involved. It was the first time any journalist had connected the dots. Some of the names would become much more familiar: Webster Hubbell, Seth Ward, Genifer Flowers, Dan Lasater, the Arkansas Development Finance Agency, Mena, Buddy Young, even Mochtar Riady. Their roles were pretty murky but already they provided a rough sketch of the environment in which Bill and Hillary Clinton had prospered. There were suggestions of illegal intelligence operations, illegal drug running, illegal financial manipulations, threats of violence, not to mention run-of-the-mill political corruption. It was a disturbing sketch, but more disturbing was that no one seemed to care much about it. The Clinton juggernaut was already well under way.

My own problem with Clinton quickly became three-fold. I was convinced that he was one of the most corrupt politicians I had ever run across. I was equally certain that despite his idealistic rhetoric, the political Clinton was like the Raymond Chandler character: "smart, smooth and no good." Politically and personally, Clinton was a fraud.

My third problem was the reaction of others to my first two problems. [...]

[...]

Shortly after Clinton's inauguration, I was invited to a conference on third party politics sponsored by the Green Politics Network. I had arrived at Bowdoin College with caution but left realizing that my political discomfort was with far more than just one man -- I had developed an irretrievable distrust and disgust with what the Democratic Party had become.

In April, I was asked to write a book about Clinton's first year for Indiana University Press. In June the leadership of ADA purged those of us responsible for creating within the organization what we wryly called the "progressive caucus." The liberal Legion of Decency didn't want anyone to come between it and its new-found friend.

The book, which came out the following April, received some wonderful reviews, but there were also some noticeable silences. It got a friendly reception in as diverse locales as a black radio station in DC, a conservative talk show in Idaho Falls, a populist weekly in Texas and a west coast business column. WAMU -- Washington's public radio station -- wouldn't touch it, but Baltimore public radio was happy to have me on. I spent a cordial hour on a conservative talk show in Boston, but the establishment left such as the Village Voice and the Nation did not review it. The New York Review of Books would not consider it, but the right-wing Washington Times gave it a favorable nod.

Edith Efron in the libertarian Reason said she had to be almost forcibly restrained from quoting yards of the book; on the other hand, the editor of the New York Times Book Review told my editor the book was "turgid."

The book was favorably reviewed in the Washington Post, but only because that paper's last surviving progressive columnist Colman McCarthy, found it in the reject pile outside the office door of the book editor. Not long after, McCarthy himself was dumped outside the door by the Post. Aside from McCarthy, only three mainstream Washington journalists -- one conservative and two black -- reviewed or mentioned the book.

I had, I realized later, stumbled upon the outlines of a new American political fault line. It was so new that it lacked a name, stereotypes, cliches, experts and prophets. In many ways it seemed more a refugee camp than a voluntary assembly, yet, as I thought about it, the more its logic seemed only concealed rather than lacking.

On one side were libertarians, blacks, greens, populists, free thinkers, the alienated apathetic, the rural abandoned, the apolitical young, as well as others convinced America was losing its democracy, its sovereignty and/or its decency. On the other side was a technocratic, media, legal, business and cultural elite centered in New York and Washington. At times it felt as if all of America outside of these two centers had turned into a gigantic, chaotic salon des refusés.

Another thing I noticed was that this was about far more than politics. A cultural and class coup was underway, of which the Clinton administration was a part, one designed to create a gated economy and transform those outside the barriers into pliant, homogenized, multi-nationalized consumers for whom freedom, choice and democracy would atrophy into symbols of merely virtual meaning.

[...]

In the 1990s, however, the Washington establishment simply closed down the marketplace of ideas. This involved not merely Democratic lawyer-lobbyists now pursuing openly the cynical abuse of government they had discreetly enjoyed during the Republican years. It included not merely journalists whose sycophancy towards the powerful was now promiscuously out of the closet. It also included the professional liberal establishment of Washington -- labor, feminist, and enironmental leaders whose heady new access to government blinded them to how distant what they had once advocated was from what they were now willing to accept over -- or even in return for -- lunch.

For mainstream Washington, there was no longer any politics, only deals. No victories, only leveraged buyouts. No ideology; only brand loyalty. No conservative and liberal, only Coke and Pepsi.

[...]

It was hard, however, to find those who even noticed. Seventy years of social democracy were being rolled back, we were silently moving into a new post-reconstruction era of institutionalized prejudice, freedom and democracy were in severe neglect. And in response: silence. It would have been bad enough to watch this while among those who have no power; to witness it among some of the strongest, wealthiest and best educated of the world was shattering. I no longer wondered how Germany had succumbed.

[...]

from Salon magazine, 1999-Mar-1, by David Horowitz:

Hats off to a condemned man

---

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS' ONLY CRIME WAS TO SPEAK THE TRUTH ABOUT SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL TO A COMMUNITY THAT HATES THE TRUTH.

Let's begin by acknowledging the obvious: I am the last person Christopher Hitchens wants to see defending him in his current imbroglio with White House henchman and ex-friend Sidney Blumenthal. Like them, Hitchens and I were also once political comrades, though we were never quite proximate enough to become friends. But for nearly two decades we have been squaring off on opposite sides of the political barricades, and I know that Hitchens' detractors will inevitably use my support of him to confirm that he has lost his political bearings and betrayed them to the other side.

For that reason, let me add that I hardly expect Hitchens to have second thoughts, politically speaking, and join those of us who are critics of the movement to which he has dedicated his life. On the contrary. As everything Hitchens has put on the public record in the last year attests, his contempt for Clinton and his decision to expose Clinton's servant as a liar spring from his deep passion for the left and for the values it claims to hold dear.

In his mordantly incisive articles in both Vanity Fair and Salon, Hitchens has demonstrated that the nation's commander in chief cynically and mendaciously deployed the armed forces of the greatest power on earth to strike at three impoverished countries, with no clear military objective in mind. Using the most advanced weaponry the world has ever seen, Clinton launched missiles into the Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq for only one tangible political purpose, to -- as Hitchens puts it -- "distract attention from his filthy lunge at a beret-wearing cupcake."

Hitchens' claim that Clinton's military actions are criminal and impeachable is surely spot-on. Republicans, it seems, were right about the character issue, and failed only to demonstrate how this mattered to the policy issues the public cares deeply about. Instead they got themselves entangled in legalistic disputes about perjury and obstruction, losing the electorate along the way. In making his own powerful case against Clinton, Hitchens has underscored how Republicans botched the process by focusing on criminality that flowed from minor abuses of power -- the sexual harassment of Paula Jones and its Monica Lewinsky subtext -- while ignoring a major abuse that involved corrupting the presidency, damaging the nation's security and killing innocents abroad.

Reading Hitchens' riveting indictment stirred unexpected feelings of nostalgia in me for the left I had once been part of. Not the actual left that I came to know and reject, but the idealistic left of my youth, when I thought our mission was to be the nation's "conscience," to speak truth to power in the name of what was just. This, as is perfectly evident from what he has written, was Hitchens' own mission in exposing Blumenthal as the willing agent of a corrupt regime and its reckless commander in chief.

Unfortunately, in carrying out this mission, Hitchens was forced to trip over the Lewinsky matter, specifically Blumenthal's effort to smear the credibility of the key witness to the president's bad faith. But that is because it was through Lewinsky that the Kenneth Starr investigators had set up the character issue in the first place.

It is difficult to believe that a sociopathic personality like Clinton's could be compartmentalized to stop at the water's edge of sex, or that he is innocent of other serious accusations against him that Starr and the Republicans have been unable to prove. In fact, the same signature behavior is apparent throughout his administration (an idea aptly captured in the title of Hitchens' forthcoming book about the president -- "No One Left To Lie To"). The presidential pathology is evident not only in his reckless private dalliances (the betrayal of family and office), but also in his strategy of political "triangulation" (the betrayal of allies and friends) and in his fire sale of the Lincoln Bedroom and advanced military technology to adversarial powers (the betrayal of country). Hitchens is quite right, therefore, to strike at the agent of the king, since the king is ultimately to blame.

Given the transparent morality of Hitchens' anti-Clinton crusade, it is all the more revealing that so many of his comrades on the left, who ought to share these concerns, have chosen instead to turn on him so viciously. In a brutal display of comradely betrayal, they have publicly shunned him in an attempt to cut him off socially from his own community. One after another, they have rushed into print to tell the world at large how repulsed they are by a man whom only yesterday they called "friend," yet whom they now apparently no longer even wish to know.

Leading this pack was Hitchens' longtime colleague at the Nation, Alexander Cockburn, who denounced him as a "Judas" and "snitch." Cockburn was followed by a second Nation columnist, Katha Pollitt, who smeared Hitchens as a throwback to McCarthy-era informers ("Let's say the Communist Party was bad and wrong -- Why help the repressive powers of the state? Let the government do its own dirty work."). She was joined by a 30-year political comrade, Todd Gitlin, who warned anyone who cared to listen that Hitchens was a social "poison," in the same toxic league as Ken Starr and Linda Tripp.

Consider the remarkable nature of this spectacle. Could one imagine a similar ritual performed by journalists of the right? Bob Novak, say, flanked by Pat Buchanan and William F. Buckley, pronouncing an anathema on Bill Safire, because the columnist had called for the jailing of Ollie North during the Iran-contra hearings? Not even North felt the need to announce such a public divorce. When was the last time any conservative figure (let alone a gathering of conservatives) stepped forward to declare they were ending a private friendship over a political disagreement?

The curses rained on Hitchens' head are part of a ritual that has become familiar over generations of the left, in which dissidents are excommunicated and consigned to various Siberias for their political deviance. It is a phenomenon normal to religious cults, where purity of heart is maintained through avoiding contact with the unclean. To have caused the left to invoke so drastic a measure, Hitchens had to have violated some fundamental principles of its faith. So what were they?

There seem to be at least two charges resulting from Hitchens' transgression. One, he has been accused of "snitching" on a political ally; two, he is said to have betrayed a friend. Outrage is not the automatic response on the left to either act, however. Daniel Ellsberg, for example, is a radical snitch who betrayed not only his political allies but his own government. Yet Ellsberg remains a hero to the left. David Brock, who also kissed and told, is not exactly persona non grata among leftists either these days. The left's standards for snitching on itself are entirely different from its standards for those who snitch on its enemies.

Hitchens' longtime editor at the Nation, Victor Navasky, has written a whole volume about the McCarthy era called "Naming Names," which rests on the premise that the act of snitching is worse than the crimes it reveals, because it involves personal betrayal. On the other hand, the bond of comradeship, of loyalty, of belonging, is exactly the bond that every organized crime syndicate exploits to establish and maintain its rule.

There is an immediate reminder of these connections in the Paul Robeson centennial that progressives are observing this year. In a variety of cultural and political events on the 100th anniversary of his birth, the left is celebrating the life and achievement of one of its greatest modern heroes. Robeson, however, is a man who also betrayed his friend, Yiddish poet Itzhak Pfeffer, not to mention thousands of other Soviet Jews, who were under a death sentence imposed by Robeson's own hero, Josef Stalin. In refusing to help them, despite Pfeffer's personal plea to him to do so, Robeson was acting under a code of silence that prevented Communists like him from "snitching" on the crimes their comrades committed. They justified their silence in the name of the progressive cause, allowing the murderers among them to destroy not only millions of innocent lives, but their socialist dream as well.

Next month, the Motion Picture Academy will honor Elia Kazan, a theater legend who has been blacklisted for nearly half a century by the Hollywood left. He, too, has been called a "Judas" by leftist members of the academy protesting his award. Kazan's sin was testifying before a congressional committee about his fellow Communists who were also loyal supporters of Stalin's monstrous regime, and who conducted their own blacklist of anti-Stalinists in the entertainment community. Kazan's most celebrated film, "On the Waterfront," scripted by another disillusioned Communist, Budd Schulberg, depicts a longshoreman who "snitches" to a congressional committee that is investigating organized crime, specifically a mob that controls his own union and exploits its membership. It is a thinly-veiled commentary on Kazan's and Schulberg's experiences in the left.

"Snitching" is how the progressive mob regards the act of speaking truth to power, when the power is its own. The Mafia calls its code of silence omertà, and the penalty for speaking out against the mob is death. The left's penalty for defection in those countries where it does not exercise state power is excommunication from its community of saints. This, of course, is a kind of virtual death.

Cognizant of these realities, I avoided informing on friends or even "outing" them during my own journey out of the left many years ago. In fact, my first political statements opposing the left were made a decade after I had ceased to be an active participant in its cause, and when the battles I had participated in were over. This did not make an iota of difference, however, when it came to my former comrades denouncing me as a "renegade," as though I had somehow become an informer. I was subjected to the same kind of personal betrayal as Hitchens is experiencing now. With only a handful of exceptions, all the friends I had made in the first 40 years of my life turned their backs on me, refusing to know me, once my politics changed.

This tainting and ostracism of sinners is, in fact, the secret power of the leftist faith. It is what keeps the faithful faithful. The spectacle of what happens to a heretic like Hitchens when he challenges the party code is a warning to others not to try it. This is why Alger Hiss kept his silence to the end, and why, even 50 years after the fact, the memoirs of leftists are so elusive and disingenuous when it comes to telling the hard political and personal truths about who they were and what they did. To tell a threatening truth is to risk vanishing in the progressive communities where you have staked your life ground. Hitchens' crime is therefore not the betrayal of friendship: it is the betrayal of progressive politics, the only bond the left has ever taken seriously.

This is far from obvious to those who are not insiders. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the otherwise perceptive Roger Kimball described what has happened to Hitchens under the following headline: "Leftists Sacrifice Truth on the Altar of Friendship." But this presumes either that the leftists were closer friends of Blumenthal than of Hitchens, or that their friendships mean more to them than their politics. None of the denouncers of Hitchens could claim a closer friendship with Blumenthal as a reason for their choice. Moreover, there is not the slightest reason to suppose that these leftists would remain friends of Blumenthal either, should he ever choose to reveal what he really knows about Clinton's obstructions of justice and the machinations of the White House crew.

To examine an actual betrayal of friendship one need go no further than Cockburn's New York Press column outing Hitchens as a compulsive snitch. Friends can take different political paths and still honor the life that was once between them, the qualities and virtues that made them friends. Cockburn was once closer to Hitchens than Blumenthal ever was. They knew each other longer and their friendship was deeper. Hitchens even named his own son Alex out of admiration for his friend. But in his column, Cockburn gratuitously smears Hitchens (who is married) as an aggressive closet homosexual, an odorous, ill-mannered and obnoxious drunk, and a pervert who gets a sexual frisson out of ratting on his intimates. Not a single member of Hitchens' former community, which includes people who have known him as a comrade for 30 years, has stepped forward to defend him from this ugly slander.

What then inspires these autos-da-fé? It is the fact that the community of the left is a community of meaning, and is bound by ties that are fundamentally religious. For the non-religious, politics is the art of managing the possible. For the left, it is the path to a social redemption. This messianism is its political essence. For the left, politics is ultimately not about practical choices, concerning which reasonable people may differ. It is about moral choices that define one as human. It is about taking sides in a war that will decide the human future and whether the principle of justice will prevail. It is about "us" being on the side of the angels, and "them" being the party of the damned. In the act of giving up Blumenthal to the congressional majority and the special prosecutor, Hitchens put power in the hands of the enemies of the people. He acted as one of them.

Katha Pollitt puts it to Hitchens this way: "Why should you, who call yourself a socialist, a man of the left, help Henry Hyde and Bob Barr and Trent Lott? If Clinton is evil, are the forces arrayed against him better, with their 100 percent ratings from the Christian Coalition, and their after-dinner speaking engagements at white supremacist clubs?"

Of course, Pollitt doesn't for a moment think that Clinton is evil. But Hitchens' new fellow travelers obviously are. Observe how easily she invokes the McCarthy stratagems to create the taint -- the demonization of Hitchens' new "friends"; the guilts by association that link him to them and them to the devil; the absurd reduction of the entire Clinton opposition to any of these links.

The casting out of Christopher Hitchens, then, is a necessary ritual to protect the left's myth of itself as a redemptive force. How could Blumenthal, who is loyal to their cause, be connected to something evil, as Hitchens suggests? All of Hitchens' attackers and all 58 members of the congressional Progressive Caucus -- yesterday's vanguard opponents of American military power -- supported the wanton strikes against the Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq, without batting a proverbial eyelash. Every one of them has found a way to excuse Clinton's abuse of supposedly disposable women like Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Monica Lewinsky. The last thing they want to do now is confront Blumenthal's collusion in a campaign to destroy one of Clinton's female nuisances when she became a political threat. After all, it's they who want the reprobate in power. In blurting out the truth, Hitchens has slammed the left up against its hypocrisies and threatened to unmask its sanctimonious pretensions. This is the threat the assault on Hitchens is designed to suppress.

Here is my own message for the condemned man: You and I, Christopher, will continue our disagreements on many important things, and perhaps most things. But I take my hat off to you for what you have done, for your dedicated pursuit of the truth and for your courage in standing up under fire. The comrades who have deserted you are not capable of such things.

from TPDL 1999-Apr-17, from Vanity Fair 1999-May, by Christopher Hitchens:

I'll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again

If you care to consult the Congressional Record of the Senate trial of Bill Clinton - the only impeachment trial ever held of a sitting and elected American president - you will find that the last item of business is the entering of three affidavits into the official account. One of these was worn by me, one by my wife, Carol Blue, and one (witnessing only to the fact that we had not made up our story on the spot) by Scott Armstrong, the Senate Watergate investigator who discovered the Nixon tapes and later collaborated with Woodward and Bernstein. As the trial ended and CNN went straight to worldwide, the first features blazoned on the screen were my own - obscured (the features, I mean, not the screen) by an ill-advised new beard, which made me look like Rasputin or the Unabomber. A Clinton witness - Mr. Clinton chose not to appear at this own trial - had said that the White House staff had never done anything to spread the president's famous and desperate smear of Monica Lewinsky as a stalker and black-mailer. I had a strongly contrasting impression and had decided, whether asked by a voter or a reader or indeed by the House Judiciary Committee, not to keep it to myself.

If there was a lack of proportion here, it certainly didn't escape me. It astonishes me more in restrospect than it did even then. All I had done, in essence, was repeat a true story to which I had put my name, in print and in person, many times. But in the deranged atmosphere of Clinton's Washington (a culture of lies that I believe will one day be remembered with whistles and groans of shame) the most anecdotal truth, told by a most seemingly negligible individual, was enough by itself to precipitate a minor crisis. The Clinton trial was intended to move gravely toward a predetermined and reassuring conclusion. In Hilaire Belloc's words, "The stocks were sold; the press was squared; the middle class was quite prepared.

I'd like to say that my derailment of a dishonest consensus was a proud moment in my life, and reminded me why I had become a journalist in the first place. But I'll never quite be able to do that. The person whose dirty job it was to give Clintonian answers was an old friend of mine. I could give the lie to Clinton only by publicly disagreeing with this same friend, whose name is Sidney Blumenthal. As a result, the small matter of my testimony was engulfed by a subplot about treason, loyalty, journalistic etiquette, and the placement for Georgetown dinner parties. Christopher Buckley, the best novelist of Washington life, appeared to strain for effect when he described in The Washington Post the ensuing froth as the equivalent for our crowd of the Alger Hiss - Whittaker Chambers moment. Concerning the actual stakes, this seemed (and seems) a heroic exaggeration. But concerning mentalities and attitudes, it didn't. As it happened, Sidney Blumenthal a