Scalia in dissent argues that the DOMA decision is already a decision about “traditional” state definitions of marriage: “the view that this Court will take of state prohibition of same-sex marriage is indicated beyond mistaking by today’s opinion. As I have said, the real . . . . Continue Reading »
After offering some of the legal interests served by DOMA, Scalia in dissent notes the rhetoric of the majority opinion, which clearly resembles the rhetoric of gay rights activists. He chides his colleagues for treating Congress and the President who signed DOMA so cavalierly: “to defend . . . . Continue Reading »
Alito says that the Court has decided an ongoing debate between two views of marriage. “The first and older view, which I will call the ‘traditional’ or ‘conjugal’ view, sees marriage as an intrinsically opposite-sex institution. BLAG notes that virtually every . . . . Continue Reading »
Ma Jian reports in the NYT today about the inequities and brutalities of China’s self-imposed genocide. Wealthy Chinese circumvent the one-child policy with comparative ease. Not so the poor in the many villages of China: “Village family-planning officers vigilantly chart the menstrual . . . . Continue Reading »
Writing in The Nation , Melanie Mock summarizes the findings of Kathryn Joyce’s The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption . Mock writes: “Many secular adoption agencies have been implicated in corruption in the last decade and more. Joyce focuses on those . . . . Continue Reading »
In the current issue of The Weekly Standard , Jon A. Shields gives a searing summary of the trial of Kermit Gosnell. He admits, “the liberal position on killing abortion survivors makes a bizarre kind of moral sense,” and then adds: “After all, what is the moral difference between . . . . Continue Reading »
Steven Smith, who teaches law at the University of San Diego, explains how rhetorical appeals to “equality” obscure rather than illuminate public debate. Citing a Harvard Law Review article by Peter Westen (“The Empty Idea of Equality”), he observes that everyone is for . . . . Continue Reading »
I like Ross Douthat, a lot. But I hate to agree with Nate Cohn’s rebuttal to Douthat’s claim that Bush’s overreach in the Iraq war is “responsible for liberalism’s current political and cultural ascendance.” Douthat implies, Cohn claims, that Americans are still . . . . Continue Reading »
Jody Bottum nicely captures the unclassifiability of the new Pope: “He is an advocate of the poor who has consistently opposed the Argentinian government’s ostensible programs for the poor. A social activist who rejects most social reform. A churchman who refused many of the elaborate trappings . . . . Continue Reading »
What other institution on the planet produces as many impressive old men as the Catholic church? Francis is 76. Joseph Ratzinger was nearly 80 when he became Benedict XVI. Not yet 60, John Paul II was a kid when he started the second-longest Papacy in history, but he was 85 when he died. It . . . . Continue Reading »
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