Yes, it’s too easy. Certainly, it’s low-hanging fruit. But this is politics. There’s no such thing as a shot so easy that you shouldn’t take it. So, let’s go there. And let’s start with Newt Gingrich.

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in 1999 asked his second wife for an “open marriage” or a divorce at the same time he was giving speeches around the country on family and religious values, his former wife, Marianne, told The Washington Post on Thursday.

Marianne Gingrich said she first heard from the former speaker about the divorce request as she was waiting in the home of her mother on May 11, 1999, her mother’s 84th birthday. Over the phone, as she was having dinner with her mother, Newt Gingrich said, “I want a divorce.”

Shocked, Marianne Gingrich replied: “Is there anybody else?” she recalled. “He was quiet. Within two seconds, when he didn’t immediately answer, I knew.”

The next day, Newt Gingrich gave a speech titled “The Demise of American Culture” to the Republican Women Leaders Forum in Erie, Pa., extolling the virtues of the founding fathers and criticizing liberal politicians for supporting tax increases, saying they hurt families and children.

The the man who called my marriage a “temporary aberration” apparently thought the same thing of his marriage vows. That’s why he didn’t get around to asking his wife for an “open marriage” after he’d already opened himself. (About the same time he — or his then-mistress/now-wife Callista — opened his fly.) No surprise here. After all, this is Newt we’re talking about.

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m condemning open relationships. It’s not for me, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work for other people. It does seem to me, though, if you’re going to go that route it should be something mutually agreed upon by both partners before getting the show on the road.

None of this is a surprise. After all, Marianne has been a ticking time-bomb in Gingrich’s presidential campaign, and yesterday evening there were rumors that the “Marianne Bomb” was about to go off. The only question was whether it would go off before or after the South Carolina Primary.

Newt Gingrich’s second wife (out of three) has long maintained that she has the power to end his campaign with a single interview. Leaking out on the Drudge Report in drips and drabs tonight are indications that Marianne may well have given that interview to ABC News, which is reported to be conducting an internal debate on whether to air it before Saturday’s South Carolina primary.

I guess we know how that went down.

ABC’s Brian Ross interviewed Gingrich about the matter:

GINGRICH: I said to him, we’ve been married a long time. And he said, yes, but you want me all to yourself. Callista doesn’t care what I do.

ROSS: What was he saying to you, do you think?

GINGRICH: He was asking to have an open marriage, and I refused.

ROSS: He wanted an open marriage.

GINGRICH: Yeah, that I accept the fact that he has somebody else in his life.

ROSS: And you said?

GINGRICH: No. No. That is not a marriage.

Politically, I’m not sure which would have been the best way to play this. On one hand, releasing it before the South Carolina Primary could only hurt Newt and help Romney. A Gingrich win in South Carolina would put Romney’s status as the all-but-anointed GOP nominee in question. Anything that could halt Newt’s post-debate surge in the polls would remove that threat.

Rick Santorum is another potential winner here. Evangelicals, a big part of the Republican base, are tearing themselves up over whether to support Gingrich or Santorum. Newt’s adulterous history is a big part that argument. The current Mrs. Gingrich — who could make any Stepford wife look frumpy — has been dragged into the fight, and labeled a “Mistress for eight years.”

In making his case for Rick Santorum as the conservative consensus’ alternative to Mitt Romney at a conference in Texas over the weekend, evangelical leader James Dobson reportedly brought up the marital past of Newt Gingrich, calling his wife, Callista, a “mistress of eight years.”

“Dobson first talked about how great Santorum is,” a source told Politico. “[He said,] ‘I want to tell you that I’ve gotten to know Karen [Santorum] and she is just lovely. She set aside two professional careers to raise these seven children. She would make a fabulous first lady role model. And Newt Gingrich’s wife, she was a mistress for eight years.”

(Sure. Except for living in sin with an abortionist 40-years her senior back in the 80s, I’m sure she’s a lovely person.)

Well, she was. Some of the participants in the Dobson meeting were offended, and pointed out that “Callista Gingrich had only been married once.” Ooooookay. But, here’s the thing. The guy she married was somebody else’s husband for most of the time they were dating. Her Wikipedia entry states that they started dating in 1993 she testified to as much in 1999, the year Newt filed for divorce. (Now, to be fair, Wikipedia also says Marianne began dating Gingrich in 1980, before Gingrich divorced his first wife, the late Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher.) Supposedly, Bill Clinton found out about the affair and called Newt out about it during that whole impeachment business.

Given timing, if there’s any political operatives behind this one, they’ve gotta be Republicans. I can’t imagine Democrats wanting Newt out of the race, given his liabilities. If anything, Democrats would have waited until after the South Carolina primaries, and hoped Gingrich won or made a strong showing. Bringing this out after a Gingrich win in SC, would have weakened Gingrich after he weakened Romney, leaving Santorum practically the last man standing, now that Perry and Huntsman have gone home.

But what to make of Marianne’s story? Well, we already know her story. She told it to Esquire in 2010.

Early in May, she went out to Ohio for her mother’s birthday. A day and a half went by and Newt didn’t return her calls, which was strange. They always talked every day, often ten times a day, so she was frantic by the time he called to say he needed to talk to her.

“About what?”

He wanted to talk in person, he said.

“I said, ‘No, we need to talk now.’ ”

He went quiet.

“There’s somebody else, isn’t there?”

She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?

She called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. ” ‘I can’t handle a Jaguar right now.’ He said that many times. ‘All I want is a Chevrolet.’ ”

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

He asked her to tolerate the affair. That’s not far off from asking for an open marriage. In fact, it’s not that far off from what a lot of political couples in Washington probably do. This is a town where marriage is as much about politics and image as anything. else (Doubt it? When was the last time a bachelor won the presidency, or even bothered to run? Answer: James Buchanan, who won the presidential election of 1856, served from 1857 to 1861, and is rumored to have been queer.) Plenty of couples probably have an understanding: “Do what you want, but don’t bring anything home and don’t embarrass me.”

Newt’s actions during their divorce proceedings lend credence to Marianne’s statement.

When they got to court, Gingrich refused to cooperate with basic discovery. Marianne and her lawyer knew from a Washington Post gossip column that Gingrich had bought Bisek a $450 bottle of wine, for example, but he refused to provide receipts or answer any other questions about their relationship.

Then Gingrich made a baffling move. Because Bisek had refused to be deposed by Marianne’s attorney, Newt had his own attorney depose her, after which the attorney held a press conference and announced that she had confessed to a six-year affair with Gingrich. He had also told the press that he and Marianne had an understanding.

“Right,” Marianne says now.

That was not true?

“Of course not. It’s silly.”

During that period, people would come up to Marianne and tell her to settle, that she was hurting the cause.

If you ask me, Marianne was settling during the eighteen years she was married to Newt.

Anyway, you’ve gotta admire Newt’s maneuvering on the divorce. In one fell swoop, he got his mistress to admit to the affair, and then held a press conference announcing that he and Marianne had had an understanding. If you were then to take Newt’s word for it, that all put him in the clear. He get’s his mistress to admit to an affair. Then he announces that he and Marianne had an understanding. So, he doesn’t have to admit to an affair, because he didn’t have an affair. Couldn’t have, if they had an understanding.

But, there was no understanding. You can bet on it. Asking your wife to “tolerate” an affair is, at the very least, akin to asking for an open relationship (and may have been a euphemism for just that), but it’s asking for it well after the fact. And if Marianne knew of the affair, in that knowing-without-knowing way that cuckolded spouses often do; living in hope, and coping with knowledge with out confirmation. That does not add up to an understanding.

Why is Marianne speaking now? Because she knows Newt Gingrich about as well as a spouse of 18 years possibly could, what he is and what he is not. She knows what Jenny Sanford, member of the same club, knows.

Former First Lady of South Carolina Jenny Sanford appeared on MSNBC Thursday to talk about the upcoming GOP primary, and Chris Matthews asked her whether Newt Gingrich’s messy marital past should impact his presidential candidacy.

“I think anybody’s behavior in their personal life does have to impact what they do in their professional life,” she said. “Because I think it comes down to the simple question of character. I think character matters. It matters in your family, it matters in your business, it matters in everything you do each day of your life.”

…”I think that actually seeing one of his wives speaking about him in an unflattering manner, it has got have an impact in some respect,” she said. “It does call into question his character certainly on the personal side. And, you know, as a voter, I encourage people to look at both sides, the personal side. And if you’re going to overcome somebody’s moral failings or infidelities, you have to also look at where they stand ideologically and how much does their rhetoric match their reality. In my mind, Gingrich falls short on both fronts. So, he wouldn’t get my vote.“

But this second- or third-coming of Newt is either happening in spite of who he is or because of what the party he wants to lead has become. Perhaps both.

Multiple marriages and even adultery are not automatic disqualifications for the presidency. If they were, the country would have a very different roster of former presidents and candidates. But when a political party decides that moralizing about personal conduct is as important as public policy, it inevitably makes some of its leaders vulnerable to the worst charges of hypocrisy.

In this political cycle, it is Newt Gingrich who has been unable to escape the toxic combination of infidelity and sermonizing. The stories about his three marriages have been known for years, but every time he seems to have escaped the wrath of Republican voters, they rise again.

…For too many Republicans, it’s not enough that Americans are free to pray in the house of worship of their choice; they want all children to be required to pray in school. They want to impose their own ideas about sexuality and abortion on everyone. And they love to accuse Democrats of being insufficiently pious. (Rick Perry’s exit from the race on Thursday may mean no more ads accusing President Obama of a “war on religion” and liberals of believing faith is a sign of weakness. Or, it may not, depending on how desperate the other candidates get.)

When Republican officials then get caught violating one of the Ten Commandments, they make an enormous show of contrition and repentance and ask for the public’s forgiveness. But as the hypocrisy level continues to rise, that forgiveness may become much harder to provide.

Newt will get the votes of those South Carolinian GOP primary voters who were going to vote for him anyway. But those who have doubts may find themselves pausing to consider the latest story about who Newt Gingrich really is.

Submissive Wives & Gay Husbands

You’ve probably saw this coming already, if the title of this post is what drew you in to begin with. Part of the threat of same-sex marriage is that it both calls biblical gender roles into question, and undermines complimentarity.

But the article reminded me of something else. One of the reasons for the opposition to same-sex marriage is the potential of marriage equality to call gender roles more into question.

The threat of legal same-sex marriage, then, is actually doubled. It carries one step further the progress that’s lead to women no longer having to “submit to their husbands”; they might volunteer, a’la the “surrendered wife” model, but not many women have to marry and thus “submit to their husbands” as a necessity for survival. Social progress changed the status of women, and the same people who oppose same-sex marriage would like to undo that progress to whatever degree they can. Legal same-sex marriage further cements those social changes, and makes it even harder to turn back the clock.

The threat of legal same-sex marriage, then, is actually doubled. It carries one step further the progress that’s lead to women no longer having to “submit to their husbands”; they might volunteer, a’la the “surrendered wife” model, but not many women have to marry and thus “submit to their husbands” as a necessity for survival. Social progress changed the status of women, and the same people who oppose same-sex marriage would like to undo that progress to whatever degree they can. Legal same-sex marriage further cements those social changes, and makes it even harder to turn back the clock.

It’s no coincidence that the political forces opposed to same-sex marriage or marriage equality also oppose gender equality and advocate returning to more strictly enforced gender roles. The Institute for Progressive Christianity recently published a paper titled “The KIngdom of God and the Witness of Gay Marriage,” which includes among it’s premises:

1. Gay marriages demonstrate the possibility and desirability of gender equality in any marriage by modeling a relationship where the parties to the marriage do not distribute roles and responsibilities based on gender. This modeling supports the positive transformation of the curse of gender conflict, and subsequent patriarchal domination pronounced at the Fall from Paradise into gender egalitarianism .

2. Gay marriage’s ascendancy and resilience in society participates in a fundamental shift of the culture’s understanding of marriage. That is, marriage is being transformed from a utilitarian arraignment grounded in the idea that women are sexual property to an egalitarian life journey with a partner who one chooses to develop and share mutual love, affection, respect, and support.

… One of the most obvious issues to which gay marriage speaks is gender equality. One of the strongest and most relied upon objections to gay marriage from the Right is that it violates the concept of gender complementarity. Gender complementarity is the metaphysical claim that men’s and women’s social functions in the world are determined dichotomously by their biological sex, such that where men are convex women are concave.

… Undergirding the concept of gender complementarity is the assumption that men are metaphysically meant to rule over women (ideally in the spirit of love, of course) and women are metaphysically meant to serve men

… Thus, from the gender complementarian perspective, those who act as though women and men gain equal spiritual, emotional, psychological, and existential satisfaction and dignity from leading and serving, and are meant to experience both of these sides of the human psyche, are disordered, as are those who advocate this notion of equality and balance.

The possibility of gay marriage invites heterosexuals to view their intimate partners (or potential intimate partners) not through a lens of gendered otherness primarily —that is through the lens of gender complementarity — but through the lens of sameness, that is through the lens of sharing a common human dignity, as it was in the beginning.

As much as it may seem like a tangent, the above both reinforces the relationship between sexism and homophobia, and places gay & lesbian equality in general and marriage equality specifically in the context of earlier progressive social movements, all of which — from the abolitionist movement, to women’s suffrage to the civil rights movement — had strong foundations in moral principles; progressive moral principles like those Pitt referenced in his column.

After all, if you’ve got two husbands, who’s supposed to submit to whom? If you’ve got two wives, who’s the head of whom? It calls into question assumptions about gender and gender roles. It’s no longer clear that one person is in charge and one must submit to the other’s will.

Like with housework, in our home.

Talk about “desperate housewives.” This AlterNet article brings to mind something I’d noticed before. In even the most progressive households, the lion’s share of the housework and childcare falls to the woman.

…It’s interesting, because in our house we don’t have gender-based division of labor to fall back on. That doesn’t mean we don’t have disagreements about housework. But it’s based more on personal traits than gender. (For example, as I tell the hubby, it’s not that clutter doesn’t bother me. It just bothers him sooner than it bothers me.) For the most part, who does what in our house depends on who’s free, and who prefers to do it. (Gardening, for example, I cede to him. But, I usually clean the downstairs bathroom, etc.)

Sometimes, it’s a matter of consideration. For example, I’m going to come home late tomorrow, which means the hubby will have the boys by himself tomorrow night. Thus, before I go to bed tonight, I’ll probably load and run the dishwasher, and pick up the toys, shoes, etc., scattered around the family room. So at least he can come home to an empty sink and a relatively tidy house. (It makes a difference when you’re parenting solo.)

There’s no assumption that one of us is primarily responsible for the kids and the house. If Dylan has a fever and needs to come home, and stay home the next day, there’s no assumption about which one of us will stay at home with him. Likewise with Parker, if he has to be at home for the day. Sometimes, my husband will pick up the kid in question and stay home with him. Other times, I may do the same. Or he’ll pick up the kid and I’ll meet them at home and stay for the day. Either way, it depends more on who can take time away from work (or, in my case, work from home), who did it last time, and any other issues that may apply.

It requires communication and negotiation sometimes. We have to discuss it, and come to some sort of agreement as to who’s going to do what. But the point is, we have to discuss it and come to a decision together. Neither of us is making a final decision alone, unless the other isn’t wedded to one outcome or another and says something to the effect of “You decide. One way or the other doesn’t make a difference to me.” Neither of us is making a final decision while merely keeping the other’s opinion in mind.

Neither of us is the “head” of the other, and neither of us is “submissive” to the other. We don’t have to be. As partners and parents, we’re equals and we work together as such.

Irreducible Complexity, Reduced

The problem with same-sex couples, especially with kids, is that we show that it’s possible to live and live well, without the straightjacket (pun intended) of strict gender roles. It’s a somewhat more complex arrangement that the traditional gender roles Bachmann simultaneously invokes and refutes as a presidential candidate. It’s that complexity, and its attendant uncertainty seems to be driving Bachmann’s twisting of history and gender roles.

What all these people seem to have in common is an inability to cope with complexity. Complexity results inevitably from our ever-expanding knowledge of reality, and so is one of the core challenges posed by living in the modern world. Much of the turmoil we now see around the world originates with those who are failing to meet that challenge. Things were a lot simpler when we knew less, so their solution is to try to know less once again. No doubt this also driving a lot of substance abuse.

But the trouble with knowledge is that — absent a Dark Ages, or unconsciousness — it’s hard to make it go away. We need to learn to handle it, to live with complexity. We should be able to celebrate the courage and genius of the founders, and the magnificence of the Constitution, without having to pretend away their flaws. We should be able to debate interpretations of history without falsifying history itself.

It is that falsification, not their opinions, that is the risk posed by Barton, Bachmann and their fellows. Democracy depends on freedom of opinion based on a shared trust in evidence and reason. Without that shared trust, opinions just become a matter of who has more power. Ironically, this is where American right-wing extremists line up with French, left-wing post modernists.

No matter how much Bachmann and the far-right would like to return to the Dark Ages, it ain’t gonna happen. Still, sometimes it seems that their legislative efforts are an attempt to turn back time, while their apocalyptic economic policies seem designed to hasten economic collapse and clear the way for their “Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome” fantasies to finally be realized.

Achieving that is going to require a lot of destruction (and a lot of collateral damage), and a long period of time — like another “Dark Age” — for people to “forget” everything humanity has learned since the Rennaisance.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t try, because uncertainty is inherent in complexity. Simple answers don’t readily offer themselves up, because there may not be any. Outcomes may not be predictable. The world might just not work the way be think it does, believe it should, want it to, or need it to. That throws everything in to question.

The flip side of a fear of complexity is a fear of uncertainty, which drives an addiction to certainty.

It is as though you are standing in a room, and at the other end of that room is the gate to hell. You arm is outstretched, and in your hand is the key to that date. Every question asked and answered by scientific inquiry is a step that takes you closer to that gate. Ask one question, and you take a step closer. Answer another one and you take another step. Keep asking and you’re walking across the room. Before you know it, the key is in the lock, and one more question may turn the key.

But not only must you stop asking questions, but you must stop others from asking questions if you believe in a “designer” that punishes entire cities and entire nations for tolerating disbelief. Because every step they take, every inquiry, every question asked takes them towards that gate that must stay locked, not just to keep out what’s on the other side, but because if the gate is ever opened, only one thing can be worse than what it unleashes, and that’s if it unleashes nothing at all.

At least if the very foundations of your reality depends on that gate staying closed and what you say is on the other side of it staying what you say it is and where you say it is.

It goes back to the Pema Chodron quote I keep coming back to.

The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. It is an issue that applies to everyone, including both Buddhists and nonBuddhists. Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there’s some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. It means thinking there’s always going to be a babysitter available when we need one. We all are inclined to abdicate our responsibilities and delegate our authority to something outside ourselves. Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.

… For those who want something to hold on to, life is even more inconvenient. From this point of view, theism is an addiction. We’re all addicted to hope — hope that the doubt and mystery will go away. This addiction has a painful effect on society: a society based on lots of people addicted to getting ground under their feet is not a very compassionate place.

That ambiguity and uncertainty that Chodron talks about embracing is intolerable because of precisely the reasons Sheila Kennedy God and Country: America in Red and Blue.

[Gordon] Allport believed that the former group could be educated to see past their casually adopted, culturally sanctioned attitudes. Those whose worldviews were rigid, however, who were so emotionally invested in a particular view of reality that the loss of any one piece of it would be experienced as a threat to their very identity, were beyond reach.

After all, according to some people the real torment of hell — as with the frozen heart of Date’s vision — is separation from one’s god. That’s what’s on the other side of the gate. That’s why you must not open it, and you must prevent others from getting to close to opening it.

And anyone who stands between an addict and his fix is going to suffer. That means all of us.

That Bachmann doesn’t appear to exemplify a submissive wife, or the proper role for a woman according to the evangelical view she seems to embrace doesn’t matter any more than the inconvenient truth that she’s apparently working to restore a world that wouldn’t hold a place for her outside of the kitchen. In that sense, she reminds of Serena Joy, the Commander’s wife in The Handmaid’s Tale. The world she wants and is working to bring about is likely to leave her stifled, invisible, and embittered.

The question is, what will it — or what it may take to get there, do to us?

In 2006, Bachmann said her husband had told her to get a post-doctorate degree in tax law. “Tax law? I hate taxes,” she continued. “Why should I go into something like that? But the lord says, be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.’”

Asked about the comment by CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell Sunday, Bachmann reaffirmed that to her, “submission means respect, mutual respect.”

“I respect my husband, he respects me,” she said. “We have been married 33 years, we have a great marriage…and respecting each other, listening to each other is what that means.”

O’Donnell asked Bachmann if she would use a different word in retrospect.

“You know, I guess it depends on what word people are used to, but respect is really what it means,” Bachmann replied.

“Do you think submissive means subservient?” O’Donnell asked.

“Not to us,” Bachmann said. “To us it means respect. We respect each other, we listen to each other, we love each other and that is what it means.”

But… Well… Here.

I realize it’s a bad debate tactic to refer back to the dictionary, but sometimes it’s unavoidable, as when Michelle Bachmann tries to redefine “submissive” to mean something it doesn’t appear to mean to anyone but her. On the other hand, I understand why she’s trying to do it, and it’s a sign of what may doom her.

Naturally, this goes right back to same-sex marriage.

Splitting Hairs Between “Submissive” and “Subservient”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. first, the definitions. Look at them again.

Take your pick: “ready to conform to the authority or will of others; meekly obedient or passive,” or “prepared to obey others unquestioningly.” Or, for that matter, take any other definitions of “submissive” and “subservient.” Some dictionaries even provide nearly identical definitions.

Nothing in either definition, no matter what dictionary you choose, implies respect. At least not the mutual respect that Bachmann uses to try and paper over what she really said and what she really meant. If anything, respect in a submissive or subservient relationship is a one way street — the submissive or subservient person certainly respect those whose will and authority she is prepared to obey unquestioningly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she is respected in turn. (BDSM relationships can be an exception, but I don’t think that’s what Bachmann was comparing her marriage to.) It’s a relationship that sounds an awful lot like slavery, and that may not actually be too far from Bachmann’s views.

It’s a misunderstanding, however, that does explain her bizarre views on slavery, and why she tries to rewrite history to conform to it. In fact, Adam Serwer delved into a New Yorker magazine article and dredged up a nugget about a favorite author of Bachmann’s who actually believes that America’s “peculiar institution” really was based on mutual respect,

She is also a fan of Robert E. Lee biographer J. Steven Williams, whom Lizza describes as a "leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North." Wilkins "approvingly" cites Lee's conviction that abolition was premature because it was necessary for "the sanctifying effects of Christianity” to take their time “to work in the black race and fit its people for freedom.” Not only that but as Lizza reports, Williams hates abolitionists and thought slavery was awesome:

Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith. . . . The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.

No, it wasn't an "adversarial relationship founded on racial animosity" because that implies some kind of social parity or dialogue. It was a relationship founded on the idea that black people were not human beings and white people were entitled to own them as property. But while Bachmann has an affinity for historians who think slavery wasn't that bad, she's less bullish on things like taxes and social insurance, which are actually just as bad as owning people as property (even though slavery wasn't that bad).

It works only if everyone understands and accepts their “place.” Thus the familiar southern saying, “I don’t have any problems with black people, so long as they stay in their place,” and often heard admonition to any “uppity” black to “remember his place.” It’s more than a little interesting that these familiar sentiments have resurfaced, and have been heard almost verbatim since President Obama took office.

It works only if one accepts the basic premise, as Serwer points out. That is, it works so long as all the players accept the the status quo and their place within it. If you’re a slave owner, that means accepting some things about black slaves that aren’t necessarily that hard to swallow, because (a) none of it is about you, and (b) it supports and reinforces a status quo that establishes, justifies, and defends your power and status. How hard can it be to accept your superior position?

If you’re a black slave, it means accepting things that are a bit harder to swallow, because it (a) it is about you, and (b) it supports reinforces a status quo that establishes, justifies and enforces your powerlessness and your inferiority. How easy can that be to accept? Pretty hard, considering the lengths whites went to, in their efforts to make sure that slaves heard little other than the accepted script, and to ensure that — should they by some chance hear differently — they would not be able to act upon any non-acceptance.

The slave codes varied from state to state, but all served to define the status of slaves, and the absolute power of masters over slaves. Some forbade slaves to be “provided with arms and ammunitions.” Others established that “children got by any Englishmen upon a Negro” would inherit the mother’s status. Thus, Thomas Jefferson’s children by Sally Hemmings — his mistress and his slave — were also his slaves.

Some established that “baptism does not alter the condition to the person as to his bondage or freedom,” thus making easier for slave owners to “more carefully propagate Christianity by permitting slaves to be admitted to that sacrament.” Some made it illegal to teach slaves to read, thereby making it easier for for masters to “propagate Christianity” by prohibiting their slaves from reading the Bible for themselves and giving masters control over how much and what their slaves heard regarding religion.

A passage I quoted a while back from

There are also Paul’s admonitions to slaves; “obey your masters, etc. Griffin uses Howard Thurman’s report, in Jesus and the Disinherited, of his grandmother’s response to those passages to sum up the response of most African American Christians to troublesome passage like those, and certain Levitical laws that would put the makers of fast food and polyester blend clothing out of business pretty quickly, not to mention the seafood industry. Thurman’s grandmother talks about the white minister who would preach obedience to the slaves on her master’s plantation, and wraps up by saying:

I promised my maker that if I ever learned to read and if freedom ever came, I would not read that part of the bible.

Things That You’re Liable To Read In The Bible

“How do I know?” asked the refrain of a song I learned during my Baptist childhood. The answer came in the next line: “The Bible tells me so.” It wasn’t until years later that I learned that famous Gerswhin lyric, “Things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, it ain’t necessarily so.” Michelle Bachmann’s problem, which is only going to become evident now that the spotlight on her will burn even more brightly after the Iowa straw poll, is that she’s stuck somewhere between the uncertain no-mans-land between what those two lyrics express.

The problem is, that’s where Bachmann has to stay in order to have any chance of being a viable candidate. She’s got to speak two different languages to two different audiences, and make each both believe she’s one of them, and speaking their language. The result is responses like the O’Donnell interview.

When Bachmann said “The Lord says to be submissive,” she was referencing a passage from the Bible. Ephesians 5:22-33, to be exact.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

It goes on to say that husbands must love their wives and wives must respect their husbands, but it’s still a far cry from the mutual respect that Bachmann seems to want to add to it. Certainly, it may be easier to “be submissive” towards someone who genuinely loves you, as you may be reasonably assured that they will not knowingly harm you and have your best interests at heart too.

It only becomes problematic when, say, the husband doesn’t not love or even respect the wife, as there’s no apparent escape hatch. The appears to give husbands the right to divorce wives for marital infidelity, and not much else. Women, near as I can tell may not “depart from her husband,” but is to remain unmarried if she does.

The typical answer is summed up at a website that attempts to answer the question of divorce.

If people would just obey God’s laws and follow His design for marriage and the family things would work out so much better for them. God knows what is best, and when we follow His plan we will truly have the best chance to be blessed.

It’s not that “God’s laws” are impractical, contrary to human nature or human happiness. It’s that people don’t truly follow them. If they did, everything would be fine. It’s kind like the way conservatism never fails, but is only failed.

Bachmann was not just speaking to conservatives with that statement, but to evangelical conservatives, signaling that she was one of them. The problem is, it wasn’t so much a dog whistle that only the elect would hear and pick up on, but more of a foghorn that we all heard and which left us asking “What the hell was that?”

Suffer Not A Woman

Bachmann has to strengthen her cred with evangelicals, because her candidacy itself has already undermined it. After all, if she really believes what she says, and knows what the Bible says about women leaders, she wouldn’t have run at all.

For non-evangelical Christians, this sounds ludicrous: How can a woman who believes in submitting to her husband’s will aspire to be president of the United States? Is she going to have to ask Marcus’ permission every time she wants to throw a state dinner?

This apparent contradiction—how you can be leader of the free world and yet subordinate to some guy —has proved no less confusing to the nation’s conservative evangelicals. For them, the justification for a Bachmann presidential run lies in a very careful, some would say tortured, theological interpretation that emerged during Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential candidacy in 2008.

The solution to the “Palin Predicament,” as it’s been called, is laid out on the website of the influential Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. The council, which was established in 1987 to fight “the growing movement of feminist egalitarianism,” espouses something called complementarianism — the idea that while men and women are equal they nevertheless must play different (read: unequal) parts. Men are destined to occupy leadership roles at home and at church, while women are obliged to “grow in willing, joyful submission to their husbands’ leadership.” But the civic sphere is distinct from home and church and governed by different rules, these evangelicals reasoned, and if the Bible didn’t explicitly “prohibit [women] from exercising leadership in secular political fields,” neither would they.

No doubt, part of the reason is that many evangelicals embrace another scripture that seems to make it clear that women are not to lead in the home or anywhere else. Yet Bachmann wants to have it both ways. She wants to embrace an understanding of scripture that would have kept her out of office and out of the media, if she really took it to heart and acted accordingly: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” But she wants to reap the benefits of the movement for women’s equality — the very equality she renounces in order to signal to evangelicals that she’s one of them.

But it’s a hard sell. As Libby Copelan pointed out in the piece quoted above, it won’t wash with some evangelicals — like Albert Moher Jr. who said of Sarah Palins VP candidacy: “It would be hypocritical of me to suggest that I would be perfectly happy to have Christian young women believe that being Vice President of the United States is more important than being a wife and mother.” In that view, Bachmann’s candidacy, and those of other women like her can be veiwed, at best, as a sign of men’s failure to lead effectively. Even then the answer would not be for woman like Bachmann to run for office.

After all, how can you run the world if the Bible says you shouldn’t run anything — not even your own home — and you claim to believe it. You can’t, unless you lie to yourself and everyone else. And, as Copeland point out, it might seem like Bachmann and evangelical women like her have found a way to have it all, but they really haven’t.

Except they haven’t. Soft patriarchalism and feminism are incompatible, even when they look similar. Moderate evangelical and ethicist David Gushee pointed out this fundamental hypocrisy during the debate over the Palin Predicament: If his fellow Christians supported a woman in a position of civic leadership, they should logically support the notion of women exercising leadership in church and at home — but most of them don’t. And Bachmann has explicitly rejected the title of feminist, calling herself an “empowered American.” (Palin, meanwhile, has called herself a feminist, and even if you think this description impossibly wrongheaded, it suggests a certain engagement with the idea of female equality.)

Bachmann’s description of herself as “pro-woman and pro-man” suggests a contentment with the status quo, as far as gender goes. Indeed, it may imply something more — that as a woman who defers to her husband, she believes herself to be more liberated than secular feminists are. According to Karen Seat, a religious studies professor at the University of Arizona, some conservative evangelicals argue that women’s deference is itself empowering, because it’s what God intends, and because it is the fullest expression of womanhood. In this world of opposites, submission is strength and inequity is proof of equality…

Enjoying the benefits of feminism, which gave her a career that she’d never had in a strictly biblical world, while at the same time extolling a faith that literally says that women like her just should not be, might seem like a lot of work. But it’s also a part of the fight against marriage equality.

]]> http://www.republicoft.com/2011/08/16/gay-husbands-submissive-wives-michelle-bachmann-pt-1/feed/ 0 http://www.republicoft.com/2011/07/13/gingrich-nixes-marriage-vow-proposal/ http://www.republicoft.com/2011/07/13/gingrich-nixes-marriage-vow-proposal/#comments Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:58:04 +0000 terrance http://www.republicoft.com/2011/07/13/gingrich-nixes-marriage-vow-proposal/ So, Newt Gingrich has refused to sign that anti-gay marriage pledge.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich refused to sign Iowa social conservative Bob Vander Plaats’s anti-gay-marriage pledge, saying through a spokesman that it had a long list of problems.

Mr. Vander Plaats already made one change, removing a sentence that suggested African American children fared better under slavery.

“We told him that we couldn’t sign it in its current form,” said Mr. Gingrich’s spokesman, R.C. Hammond. “We’re happy to work with him to get some more precise language.”

This? From America’s patriotic philanderer?

 

In a wide-ranging C-SPAN interview in September 2010, Newt Gingrich reflected on the crazy nature of running for president. Small moments or candid photographs can upend a campaign, he noted, mentioning Jimmy Carter’s bout with a “killer rabbit,” which came to symbolize his floundering re-election efforts. As a candidate, you cannot “control all of the events” of your campaign, he said. “Sooner or later” you will “get into some kind of roller coaster and you just have to figure out if you can survive.”

 

Gingrich has opted to get into his roller coaster immediately. He announced he might be running for office less than a week ago, and already he’s zooming down the tracks, cheeks flapping in the breeze. In an interview with the Christian Broadcast Network, he suggested that his love of country contributed to his marital infidelity.

“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate,” said Gingrich. “And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them.”

 

Let me guess what language Gingrich had in mind.

Maybe this?

Therefore, in any elected or appointed capacity by which I may have the honor of serving our fellow citizens in these United States, Ithe undersigned do hereby solemnly vow* to honor and to cherish, to defend and to uphold, the Institution of Marriage as only between one man and one woman.  I vow* to do so through my:

• Personal fidelity to my spouse.

After all, fidelity to his spouse has never been Newt’s strong suit.

In 1999, after refusing to take the seat he won in the 1998 elections, Newt Gingrich left his second wife, Marianne, for a much-younger staffer with whom he’d been having an almost-ignored affair. As in his first marriage, he did so shortly after Marianne was diagnosed with a serious illness; as in his first divorce, he fought Marianne tooth and nail over any financial settlement. And then he had the Atlanta archdiocese inform Marianne that their marriage was invalid in the eyes of his fiancée’s faith; 9 years later, he completed his conversion to Catholicism.

Given his popularity among Republicans, one would think there is little left to say about Gingrich’s personal foibles that could hurt his political career. But sandwiched in between snippets from his campaign to return to popularity in yesterday’s Esquire profile are tidbits from the still-supportive Marianne that portray Gingrich in a far-from-pleasant light — and hints that his personal foibles took quite a toll on his political fortunes behind the scenes.

Before marrying Marianne, Gingrich presented his first wife, Jackie Battley, with the terms of their divorce as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from surgery for uterine cancer. Gingrich had pursued Marianne from nearly the moment they met at a January 1980 fundraiser…

Not to mention that annoying “in sickness and in health” business.

 

After the Republican losses in 1998, then-Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA) pressured Gingrich to resign as Speaker, threatening to run against him if he did not. (Students of political history will recall that, 6 short weeks later, Livingston himself withdrew as speaker and left Congress 6 months after that in the wake of revelations of his own marital infidelities.) Gingrich left Congress in early 1999.

It was then that Marianne went to the doctor and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In early May — just before Mother’s Day — she went to Ohio to visit her mother. She told Esquire that Gingrich didn’t return her calls for two days — which, for a man that usually checked in several times a day, was quite unusual. And when he finally returned her calls, that’s when she knew.

He wanted to talk in person, he said.”I said, ‘No, we need to talk now.’ ”

He went quiet.

“There’s somebody else, isn’t there?”

She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?

 

Just saying, is all. And no, draping your genitals in the flag doesn’t excuse you.

]]> http://www.republicoft.com/2011/07/13/gingrich-nixes-marriage-vow-proposal/feed/ 0 http://www.republicoft.com/2011/05/25/a-better-life-for-all/ http://www.republicoft.com/2011/05/25/a-better-life-for-all/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 16:27:35 +0000 terrance http://www.republicoft.com/2011/05/25/a-better-life-for-all/ Remember back in 2004, when Dubya won re-election and liberals started threatening to move to Canada? Well, maybe I should have considered it. Because according to OECD’s Better Life Index, Canada is where I belong.

But, I’m still not moving to Canada.

Hows Life?

Canada performs exceptionally well in measures of well-being, as shown by the fact that it ranks among the top countries in a large number of topics in the Better Life Index.

Money, while it cannot buy happiness, is an important means to achieving higher living standards. In Canada, the average household earned 27 015 USD in 2008, more than the OECD average.

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In terms of employment, nearly 72% of people aged 15 to 64 in Canada have a paid job. People in Canada work 1699 hours a year, less than most in the OECD. 71% of mothers are employed after their children begin school, suggesting that women are able to successfully balance family and career.

Having a good education is an important requisite to finding a job. In Canada, 87% of adults aged 25 to 64 have earned the equivalent of a high-school diploma, much higher than the OECD average. Canada is a top-performing country in terms of the quality of its educational system. The average student scored 524 out of 600 in reading ability according to the latest PISA student-assessment programme, higher than the OECD average.

In terms of health, life expectancy at birth in Canada is 80.7 years, more than one year above the OECD average. The level of atmospheric PM10 tiny air pollutant particles small enough to enter and cause damage to the lungs is 15 micrograms per cubic meter, and is lower than levels found in most OECD countries.

Concerning the public sphere, there is a strong sense of community but only moderate levels of civic participation in Canada. 95% of people believe that they know someone they could rely on in a time of need, higher than the OECD average of 91%. Voter turnout, a measure of public trust in government and of citizens’ participation in the political process, was 60% during recent elections; this figure is lower than the OECD average of 72%. In regards to crime, only 1% of people reported falling victim to assault over the previous 12 months.

When asked, 78% of people in Canada said they were satisfied with their life, much higher than the OECD average of 59%.

Of course, as Ezra pointed out, there are things that the index doesn’t take in to consideration. Like cuisine, which was Ezra’s concern. Climate is one I’d have to take into consideration, because I’m a wimp when it comes to cold weather. Sure, I make it through winter every year, but I bitch every step of the way.

That doesn’t rule Canada out entirely. Sure, Montreal may not be the best place, but if I’m choosing where to live in Canada, there are still plenty of places to choose from. Vancouver sounds like a possibility. It’s one of the warmest Canadian cities in winter, second only to Victoria. Plus it tops the list of Canadian cities with the most days above freezing during winter.

Speaking of lists, Canada topped mine, but here’s how the rest of the top 10 shaped up.

1. Canada
2. Australia
3. Sweden
4. New Zealand
5. Norway
6. Denmark
7. Switzerland
8. United States
9. Luxembourg
10. Netherlands

How about that? The U.S. made it into the top ten, and beat out Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Given that, and seeing as how I’m already here, I think I’ll stay put. But it’s nice to know I have options.

Of course, there’s another incentive: my husband and I can be legally married in Canada. But we’ve already managed to do that right here. And while our marriage isn’t recognized everywhere in the U.S., as it would be in Canada, the trend is moving in our favor. Even a major equality opponent like Focus on the Family is giving up that fight, because they can read the writing on the wall too. That’s actually more of an incentive to stay put, continue fighting so that other families can do what we did.

Besides, I found plenty of reasons not to move to Canada in 2004. And if I need more reasons now, I can always ask my blogging colleague Bill Sher, who wrote the book on not moving to Canada.

Not that I need to. In 2004, most progressive didn’t move to Canada. Yeah, some of us threatened to in fits of pique. But then we got to work, trying to move the country in a different direction. In 2006, and 2008, we saw the results.

Have we been thrilled about all that’s happened since then? No. But that just means we’ve got more work to do. The OECD index starts with a set of questions that spell out the job in front of us.

Ever since the OECD started out in 1961, GDP has been the main factor by which it has measured and understood economic and social progress. But it has failed to capture many of the factors that inuence people’s lives, such as security, leisure, income distribution and a clean environment.

Is life really getting better? How can we tell? What are the key ingredients to improving life is it better education, environment, healthcare, housing, or working hours? Does progress mean the same thing to all people or in all countries and societies?

Jobs. Health care. Education. The topics in the Better Life index echo the work progressives are and have been doing toward a goal the of … well … a better life for all of us.

So, once again, I’m not moving to Canada, even if that’s where my “better life” awaits. I’ll stay put, keep working to move the U.S. closer to the top of that index, and make that better life possible for more of us right here.

]]> http://www.republicoft.com/2011/05/25/a-better-life-for-all/feed/ 3 http://www.republicoft.com/2011/01/05/constitutional-cowards/ http://www.republicoft.com/2011/01/05/constitutional-cowards/#comments Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:21:12 +0000 terrance http://www.republicoft.com/?p=6198

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."

- Eric Holder, United States Attorney General

Ed. Note: The second half of this post was written before the reading of the constitution on the House floor, at the opening of this session of Congress, and has since been updated.

Like a lot of people, when the new GOP majority in the House announced that they would begin this session by reading the constitution on the floor of the house, I was both amused and bemused. On one hand, I thought sarcastically, it might be educational. Some of them seem to know less about what’s in it, than about all the things of which they’re fond of saying "That’s not in the Constitution," while waving around the copy of the constitution they keep in their front pockets. (I’d wave around the copy I have on my iPhone, but I don’ thing it would have the same dramatic effect.)

I was bemused, because I wondered how conservatives would handle some uncomfortable parts of our history reflected in the Constitution. When I found out, I was more angry than amused, and more bitter than bemused. Congressional conservatives proved themselves to be callow and cowardly regarding the Constitution — unwilling to understand it in anything except a literalist framework, and unable to face up to the contradictions between our history and idealized image of ourselves, when the Constitution lays them out in black and white.

As Bill Scher noted, everything conservatives label, "not in the Constitution," the Constitution itself gives Congress the power to do.

…The Founders said Congress could pass whatever laws it deemed "necessary and proper" in order to "provide" the "general welfare" and "regulate Commerce."

And all of that is mainly in Article I. I’ll be curious to see if the conservatives on the House floor make it Article II before they give up and renounce America.

Like a lot of people, I wondered if they’d make it past Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3 — better known as the Three Fifths Compromise, in which delegates agreed to count three fifths of slaves in the southern states for the purposes of tax distribution and congressional apportionment. How, I wondered, would they handle it.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

The compromise was, according to historians, essential to getting the Constitution ratified, because it won the support of southern states. Without it, there might not have been a Constitution to read on the floor of the House in the first place.

So, how did they handle it?

They handled it by not handling it.

Notable passages left out: (Text taken from the National Archives’ official Constitution site).

1. The Three-Fifths Compromise. The Founding Fathers, seeking to appease slave states, found a compromise that tacitly allowed slavery without writing the word into the Constitution. It wrote that representatives would be parceled out among states based on a count of free people, and three-fifths of "other Persons." That was understood to mean slaves.

That provision’s impact was nullified by the 13th Amendment, which banned slavery.

Left out, from Article 1, Section 2: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."

For all their rhetoric about the founders’ "original intent," House Republicans couldn’t handle it when faced with the reality that the founders didn’t intend for many of us today to enjoy the rights and protections they began setting down in the Constitution. (Now president Terry O’Niell reminds us that the founders didn’t include women in the Constitution either.) Instead they continue to take the cowards way out, resorting again to the kind of  revisionism that Mississippi’s GOP governor Haley Barbour had raised to the level of art.

Apparently, Republicans now think they own the Constitution and our history along with it.

To some African Americans, skipping those passages was a stinging omission that overlooked the fact that under the original Constitution they would not have had a right to vote, let alone serve in Congress.

"It’s sanitizing history," said Hilary Shelton, a senior vice president at the NAACP. "You take out the parts of it that aren’t as attractive. . . . We’ve not always been right. But the thing that makes us great is we’ve always been willing to stand up to the challenges before us."

The House clerk’s office does not have an official version of the Constitution it relies on. In the pocket Constitutions printed by the Government Printing Office and given out to congressmen, the three-fifths compromise language is still there, although marked with brackets and an asterisk.

I know at least one of my ancestors was likely counted in the three fifths of slaves owned in Georgia.

One thing I can say for sure is that it is one thing to understand the history of slavery, etc. It is entirely another thing to reach back into one’s lineage and uncover a family member who was indeed a slave; to give a name to someone you’re connected to, who lived through the experience of slavery. For me, it was a moment that caused me to pause and think of all I’d read, and then consider that Henry Heath (who chose to keep his owner’s surname for some reason; perhaps because he was related by blood?)lived through it; not to mention Mrs. Lockhart—who is also my ancestor—and who may well have lived through the reality of being raped, or used against her will, unable to say no, becoming pregnant as a result, and then having to give away her child. History, then, is no longer abstract.

Knowing even a little of one’s genealogy as an African American, requires confronting some uncomfortable realities.

The Constitution does not belong exclusively to the GOP, nor does our history. Nor does my history. And it felt like someone tried to erase part of that history.

 John Lewis’ reading of the 13th amendment inspired an ovation, probably not just because of the words he read, but the fact that he personally faced some of the same ugliness conservatives seek to whitewash or erase from our history.

It’s appropriate, in a sense, that a man who marched across the Edmund Pettus bridge, to face an attack from state troopers — on what became known as Bloody Sunday — would get a standing ovation in an public reading of the Constitution engineered by people who can’t face up to the history it lays out in black and white.

That said, I wanted to follow up my earlier post, with more on conservatives’ increasingly ironic fetish for the Constitution. (Except, of course, the parts they want to repeal.) But I can’t really put it any better than Dahlia Lithwick.

This newfound attention to the relationship between Congress and the Constitution is thrilling and long overdue. Progressives, as Greg Sargent points out, are wrong to scoff at it. This is an opportunity to engage in a reasoned discussion of what the Constitution does and does not do. It’s an opportunity to point out that no matter how many times you read the document on the House floor, cite it in your bill, or how many copies you can stuff into your breast pocket without looking fat, the Constitution is always going to raise more questions than it answers and confound more readers than it comforts. And that isn’t because any one American is too stupid to understand the Constitution. It’s because the Constitution wasn’t written to reflect the views of any one American.

The problem with the Tea Party’s new Constitution fetish is that it’s hopelessly selective. As Robert Parry notes, the folks who will be reading the Constitution aloud this week can’t read the parts permitting slavery or prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment using only their inside voices, while shouting their support for the 10th Amendment. They don’t get to support Madison and renounce Jefferson, then claim to be restoring the vision of "the Framers." Either the Founders got it right the first time they calibrated the balance of power between the federal government and the states, or they got it so wrong that we need to pass a "Repeal Amendment" to fix it. And unless Tea Party Republicans are willing to stand proud and announce that they adore and revere the whole Constitution as written, except for the First, 14, 16^th, and 17th amendments, which totally blow, they should admit right now that they are in the same conundrum as everyone else: This document no more commands the specific policies they espouse than it commands the specific policies their opponents support.

I do, however, wonder if reading the Constitution just gave them an opportunity to mark the parts they want to edit or delete, and the parts they want to leave in.

On one hand, I don’t entirely agree with Lithwick’s assertion that the Constitution is always going to raise more questions than it answers, but not because any one American is too stupid to understand the Constitution. Part of the reason we’re having this discussion is that there are people who are too stupid to understand the Constitution.

Some of them run for office.

Some of them get elected.

Some build entire movements around being too stupid to understand the Constitution.

When a member of Congress has to be told that the Constitution both established the body in which she serves, and empowered it to pass legislation, there is a fundamental ignorance of the Constitution, what’s in it, and how it works. Likewise, when a Senate candidate doesn’t know what the first amendment says, etc.

And usually I end explaining what I thought we all learned in our eighth grade civics classes, if not over our Saturday morning cereal. Article I of the Constitution establishes Congress as a legislative body, and in Section 7 lays out the process by which legislation passes both houses of Congress, makes its way to the president’s desk, and … Well, you know how it ends if you saw that first video.

Granted, I’m not constutional law scholar, but that pretty much makes sense to me. That we have a legislative body at all kinda makes it obvious that it’s expected to, well, legislate. Otherwise, Michelle Bachman can pack up and go home, and Joe Miller can try to get a refund on his undistributed campaign signs, because there’s no point in them coming to D.C. There’s no need for them to vote on anything because “if the it isn’t in the constitution we can’t do it.” So there’s nothing for them to vote on anyway.

After all, why’d the Constitution establish a legislative body if it’s not supposed to legislate when all legislation was effectively supposed to stop 223 years ago last week, when the constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787? Wait, make that 219 years ago this coming December 15th. Apparently that was when the first 10 amendments, known as the Bill of Rights came into effect in 1791, after being ratified by the state. Of course, this is assuming that 1791 is as far back as they want to go.

But seriously, am I overestimating people here? I can’t be the only one who understands the above. And surely even people on the right acknowledge that the genius of the founding fathers was that they created a system of government that would be constrained by the limits of their imaginations and things they could or could not envision we would face more than 200 years later.

On the other hand, I think some conservatives understand the Constitution perfectly well. It just doesn’t serve their purposes. So they ignore what it says and what it means, or shirk the difficult work of interpreting an open-ended document. I don’t think conservatives necessarily believe the Constitution reflects their point of view, to the exclusion others. I think it’s more likely that they intend to make it do just that.

In that sense, I was shocked (but not surprised) that the GOP had such a problem reading the three-fifths compromise. After all, it’s pretty much an affirmation of what they apparently think the constitution should reflect. No, I don’t mean that conservatives want to bring back slavery. (A surprising number of them, however, do seem oddly obsessed with defending and/or justifying slavery.) But many do seem to want to turn back time, to a long lost "golden era of freedom," when the Constitution protected white, property owning males — as originally intended — and everyone else was somewhat less free.

Now, they don’t often come out and say as much. Or at least that used to be the case. More and more frequently you hear from the same people who profess their reverence for the Constitution, just which part of it need to be changed. What used to be "unsayable" is shouted in the street and broadcast in the media. (The first amendment is still working.)

Sometimes it’s explicit, like when the president of Tea Party Nation suggests returning to allowing only landowners to vote.

While the U.S. Constitution, as originally written, left it to the states to determine who is allowed to vote, Phillips contends that the colonial tradition of allowing only landowners to vote may not have been such a bad thing. As reported by Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind at their site, Tea Party Nationalism, Phillips offered this:

"The Founding Fathers originally said, they put certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote. It wasn’t you were just a citizen and you got to vote. Some of the restrictions, you know, you obviously would not think about today. But one of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners."

Now, it’s a little unfair, as some sites have reported, to say that Phillips was advocating that position for the present time. He was, as I hear it, saying that restricting voting rights to property owners "made sense" for the time, in his view. Which is troubling enough.

But when DeGerolamo suggested that voting be reserved today as a right for those "who pay taxes," Phillips seemed to be totally down with that.
It’s important to note what Tea Partiers mean when they talk about those who "pay taxes" — they generally mean income tax. If that’s what DeGerolamo means, what he’s saying is that poor people, who pay payroll taxes for their future Social Security and Medicare, would not be allowed to vote, because their earnings fall below the line of taxable income.

It’s even more explicit when legislators move to repeal birthright citizenship.

A group of Republican state lawmakers said Wednesday they hope to trigger a Supreme Court review of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment or force Congress to take action with legislation they’ve drafted targeting automatic citizenship granted to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

…Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, called the efforts an assault on the Constitution.

The news conference coincided with the opening day of the 112th Congress, in which Republicans have control of the House and Democrats have a slimmer majority in the Senate than they had last session. Democrats failed to approve any immigration reform legislation last session while they controlled both chambers.

The citizenship proposals are an attempt by the lawmakers to avoid trying to alter the Constitution, which is more difficult. They are part of an attempt by some states to have a greater role in enforcing immigration laws, following the lead of Arizona, which passed a controversial law last year giving police greater powers to question people about their citizenship or legal status.

It’s worth noting that the "three-fifths compromise was superseded by the 14th amendment, after the 13th amendment (outlawing slavery) rendered it moot. Now, I haven’t heard any conservatives call for repealing the 13th amendment, but what they’re proposing for the 14th amendment is cause for concern, at the very least.

Even if their legislation is "targeted" at children born to undocumented immigrants, it means changing a fundamental understanding of citizenship: Being born here no longer sufficient to make you a citizen. Think of it as editing this:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

To read more like this:

Not All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

If being born in the United States is no longer enough to make one a citizen of the United States, then on what basis is citizenship to be determined? My guess is that the bills proposed by the new GOP majority in the House would allow that being born here is sufficient to make one a citizen, so long as one’s parents are citizens by birth, naturalization, legal immigration, etc.

Not to be alarmist, but I don’t think that closes the question of what determines citizenship if one is no longer a citizen by birth. In fact, it opens the door to more reasons to call someone’s citizenship into question. Now, I’ll grant that Rep. Steven King (R-Iowa) — who introduced legislation targeting birthright citizenship on the first day of the new Congress — was probably joking (at least a little) when he suggested deporting a liberal for ever undocumented immigrant given amnesty. But at least one Senator (Joe Lieberman) wants to expand the circumstances in which government can revoke citizenship, and allow it to be done without due process.

Lieberman’s proposal would apply to Americans who are "apprehended and charged with a terrorist act," and allow them to be "deprived of their citizenship and therefore be deprived of all rights that come with that citizenship." All that’s required is that they be "apprehended and charged with a terrorist act."

Charged. Not convicted. I’m no expert in criminal law, but I know that the a criminal charge come before a conviction, and that bar is considerably higher for the former. Criminal charges are merely a formal accusation that one has committed a criminal act.

A criminal conviction requires more than a mere accusation.

The outcome of a criminal prosecution which concludes in a judgment that the defendant is guilty of the crime charged. The juncture of a criminal proceeding during which the question of guilt is ascertained. In a case where the perpetrator has been adjudged guilty and sentenced, a record of the summary proceedings brought pursuant to any penal statute before one or more justices of the peace or other properly authorized persons.

The terms conviction and convicted refer to the final judgment on a verdict of guilty, a plea of guilty, or a plea of nolo contendere. They do not include a final judgment that has been deleted by a pardon, set aside, reversed, or otherwise rendered inoperative.

The term summary conviction refers to the consequence of a trial before a court or magistrate, without a jury, which generally involves a minor misdemeanor.

Lieberman’s proposal that the government could revoke citizenship immediately upon formally accusing someone of a terrorist act. No conviction required.

Loss of citizenship. then, means loss of a whole host of rights under due process.

Due process, in the context of the United States, refers to how and why laws are enforced. It applies to all persons, citizen or alien, as well as to corporations.

…Generally, due process guarantees the following (this list is not exhaustive):

• Right to a fair and public trial conducted in a competent manner
• Right to be present at the trial
• Right to an impartial jury
• Right to be heard in one’s own defense
• Laws must be written so that a reasonable person can understand what is criminal behavior
• Taxes may only be taken for public purposes
• Property may be taken by the government only for public purposes
• Owners of taken property must be fairly compensated

In other words, the protections everything from the presumption of innocence on down. On this side of the looking glass, loss of freedom and/or citizenship would be the rsult of a conviction, which would follow a trial in which the accused would have the protection of the rights of due process.

I can only guess that would mean anyone the government accused of a terrorist act would be treated as an unlawful combatant. What protections, if any, unlawful combatants have under U.S. law was the subject of legal challenges during the Bush administration, until the Supreme Court stepped in and ruled that unlawful combatants have a right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law and the Geneva Conventions. (Tea Party Nation Prez Judson Phillips has a fix for that too: "rewrite" Article III of the Constitution, and make Supreme Court justices to a popular vote.)

In fact, conservatives’ love/hate relationship with the Constitution seem to be based on the question of whom it protects and whom it doesn’t. That’s also reflected in what they want to change. When they say they want to "restore" the constitution, they are saying they want to stop is protecting the "wrong" people; like Muslims and non-Christians, for starters.

The constitution, basically, doesn’t protect everyone. That’s especially true if you’re gay, a woman, black, etc., according to Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

Justice Scalia is now getting attention for his outlandish view, expressed in an interview in the magazine California Lawyer, that the promise of equal protection in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment does not extend to protecting women against sex discrimination. Legislatures may outlaw sex discrimination, Justice Scalia suggested, but if they decided to enact laws sanctioning such unfair treatment, it would not be unconstitutional.

This is not the first time Justice Scalia has espoused this notion, and it generally tracks his jurisprudence in the area. Still, for a sitting member of the nation’s highest court to be pressing such an antiquated view of women’s rights is jarring, to say the least.

No less dismaying is his notion that women, gays and other emerging minorities should be left at the mercy of the prevailing political majority when it comes to ensuring fair treatment. It is an “originalist” approach wholly antithetical to the framers’ understanding that vital questions of people’s rights should not be left solely to the political process. It also disrespects the wording of the Equal Protection Clause, which is intentionally broad, and its purpose of ensuring a fairer society.

Fortunately, Justice Scalia’s views on women are not the law of the land.

Not yet, but Scalia could well be one of the justices who eventually has to rule on whether my husband and I have a right to be legally married. That’s not something our heterosexual neighbors have to worry about, because their rights are not subject to a majority vote.

We, as a gay couple, have no "inalienable rights," that are not subject to a majority vote. Pair Scalia with Phillips, and in their world we might not even have a vote, unless we were property owners. (And who knows what other qualifications they’d add, if they could.) Our equality is not a "natural right," but is determined by a majority that can vote for our equality one day and against it the next, depending on which direction and how hard the political winds blow.

Conservatives, particularly of the Tea Party variety, have started declaring their intention of "taking back their country" before Barack Obama took the oath of office. Their reverent and revisionist approach to the Constitution just means they intent to "take it back," too. Back to what they imagine it originally was and want it to be "again," as Josh Marshall so succinctly put it.

They are "taking it back" because it is not your or mine, but theirs alone.

This is not your country. Nor is it mine. That we were born here, along with our forebears hardly matters. This has been the message of the Tea Party since its incorporation — and of conservatism itself for more than a generation — to anyone who doesn’t fit their demographic, in terms of race, religion, politics, etc.

It is most often expressed by the Tea Party’s declared desire to “Take our country back.” This is not your country. Nor is it mine. It’s theirs, and they’re “taking it back.” This raises a few very important questions: “Who are they taking it from?”, “Who are they taking it for?”, and “How do they plan to take it?”

Who are they taking it from? Who are they taking it for? How are they taking it? They’ve answered all of those questions.

How far backwards will they take the country, the constitution, and us along with them? In the next two years? Not as far as they’d like. But it’s a start.

For the most part, I tend to ignore what Paladino has to say about anything, except for when he starts saying what he’d do if elected; like reviving the workhouses of the Victorian Era. But when he goes off and says something so blatantly ignorant about gay people, I can’t help but respond.

Paladino says:

The Republican candidate for governor, Carl P. Paladino, told a gathering in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sunday that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable, and criticized his opponent, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, for marching in a gay pride parade earlier this year.

Addressing Orthodox Jewish leaders, Mr. Paladino described his opposition to same-sex marriage.

“I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option — it isn’t,” he said, reading from a prepared address, according to a video of the event.

Getting married? Raising a family?

Need I say it?

That’s. So. Gay.

Back in 2006, First Lady Laura Bush was advising her husband and any Republicans within earshot not to run on a same-sex marriage ban that year.

But there’s something else that makes me wonder if George is listening to Laura when she’s talking to him and isn’t scripted by his handlers. Basically, it’s this little tidbit: Laura is telling George and any other Republicans who will listen, “don’t run on a gay marriage ban this year.”

Some election-year advice to Republicans from a high-ranking source who has the president’s ear: Don’t use a proposed constitutional amendment against gay marriage as a campaign tool.

Just who is that political strategist? Laura Bush.

The first lady told “Fox News Sunday” that she thinks the American people want a debate on the issue. But, she said, “I don’t think it should be used as a campaign tool, obviously.”

“It requires a lot of sensitivity to just talk about the issue — a lot of sensitivity,” she said.

The Senate will debate legislation that would have the Constitution define marriage as the union between a man and a woman early next month, Majority Leader Bill Frist said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

Unfortunately, I don’t think congressional Republicans are likely to listen to Laura on this issue this year for two reasons. They need this issue to appeal to an important voting block in what is going to be a rough year for them, and they’re running out of time.

Then last month, Laura Bush “came out” as pro-choice and pro-marriage equality, saying that she believes marriage equality will come via a “generational shift”. I tend to agree, and have for a while. (And apparently, she told George twice — in 2004 and 2006 — not to run on banning same-sex marriage.)

Let’s not forget, also, that Jenna Bush invited Ellen Degeneres to have her wedding at Dubya’s Crawford, TX, ranch. (Of course, Degeneres and de Rossi declined, tying the knot in California instead — where, in those pre-Prop 8 days, it was legal.)

And now, former “First Daughter” Barbara Bush is speaking up and saying — on Fox News, no less — that she’s glad health care reform passed.

Barbara Bush, daughter of president George W. Bush, appeared as a guest on “Fox News Sunday” this week to discuss her non-profit Global Health Corps, whose mission is to bring health equity to the U.S. and Africa, and she made some comments that surprised host Chris Wallace.

“Why do, basically, people with money have good health care and why do people who live on lower salaries not have good health care?” Bush asked. “Health should be a right for everyone.”

“What do you think about Obama health care reform?” Wallace asked.

“Obviously the health care reform bill was highly debated by a lot of people,” Bush responded., “and I’m glad the bill was passed.”

We all knew Dubya was not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Now we know that the women have the lion’s share of the brains in the Bush family.

It’s funny, and often fascinating, how so much can change in such a short time — and yet change so little. When our family arrived back home on Tuesday evening, we were the same family we were when we left home that afternoon.

Yet, as a family we experienced an important change when my husband and I — after being married in all but the legal sense for 10 years — were legally married to each other Tuesday afternoon.

The ceremony was brief and only attended by the media, a few friends, neighbors and supportive community members. It was a change from our family routine. The boys (briefly) exchanged their play clothes for the suits they wore for the ceremony. My husband and I talked to more reporters than we would on any other day. And instead of our usual family dinner at home, we celebrated with a dinner at a favorite restaurant.

Still, we were the same family upon returning home as we were when the day began, except for one important difference. When we left home, we had few of the same benefits and protections as the other families on our street — despite having happily assumed the same responsibilities. Thanks to D.C.’s City Council and Maryland’s state attorney general, when we returned home, we at least had equal rights and protections in Maryland — and in the community where we live.

Perhaps there is one more change to consider. We are as committed to one another now as we were before Tuesday, yet we’ve become a part of something too. Marriage is, to some degree, a community affair. Vows are usually made in front of others, whether a few witnesses or a room full of people. Sometimes the officiant asks those gathered if they will support the couple committing to each other and the commitment itself — even pledging in some cases to help them keep that commitment.

Committing to one another and our family connects us more deeply to our community. We chose to be responsible to and for each other, but we realize how vulnerable the people we love are, and how little we can do to protect them at times. So our commitment must extend beyond our front door, to the street where we live and where our children play, to the community — and world — we share with all other families. Being responsible to and for each other is, in a sense, the essence of community.

Making a public commitment to each other, and having that commitment recognized and supported in the same myriad ways our society supports other families, may not change our relationship to each other very much. But it changes our relationship to the community, because we’re included in a way we weren’t before. We are today, at least in D.C. and Maryland and a few more places.

So, Tuesday evening, we pulled into the same driveway, in front of the same house, in the same neighborhood. We did homework and bedtimes as usual. After the kids were asleep we loaded the dishwasher, folded the laundry and chatted about our day, just like any other day. I kissed my husband goodnight and finally retired myself a couple of hours later.

It was just like any other day, and unlike any other day. It was a day when very little changed, and everything changed.

It never ceases to amaze me how children just “get it,” unless they’re taught otherwise. On the day we got married, Parker had a half-day at school. Before he left, he said, he told his classmates that his parents were getting married. His classmates have met both the hubby and me, so they know what that means, and it doesn’t seem to be a big deal to them.

From the mouths of babes…