In this world where everyone has a blog, what can I add this morning to the avalanche of post-election chatter?
I can start by saying that I am filled with joy and sadness at once. Joy, of course, in Barack Obama’s triumph. Joy that my fellow Californians have, by a resounding margin, spoken up for better conditions for farm animals. Joy that there will be more progressive voices in Congress and the state legislature than there have been in some time. And sadness, real sadness, that Proposition 8, banning gay marriage, appears almost certain to have passed here in California.
As far as the presidential election is concerned, like so many liberals, my fear that we would somehow find a way to lose a “sure thing” overwhelmed me in recent weeks; I had a hard time believing the polls (which turned out to be accurate.) With two states remaining to be called (Missouri and North Carolina), Barack Obama’s margin in both the popular and electoral college vote exceeded my hopes. To watch Virginia, a state for which I have great affection and to which I have strong family ties, fall into the Democratic column was particularly satisfying. Though the margins in the House and Senate were not quite as sweeping as I had hoped, they are sufficient to come close to giving progressives the best mandate we have had since at least 1964, and perhaps since 1932. There is much reason for optimism.
I puddled up three times yesterday. The first time was standing in line to vote. I showed up at my polling place at 6:45AM, fifteen minutes before it was scheduled to open. In 2004, I had walked in without a wait — yesterday, there were at least 100 people ahead of me, standing in a light rain. We shared umbrellas and anticipation, and moved slowly towards the doors. The moment that grabbed me was when one of the first people who had been in line emerged, having cast his vote: a black man in his seventies, very well-dressed, a huge smile on his face: “Good morning, everyone!” he said to those of us still standing on line. “It’s going to be a great day.” His joy was palpable, his certainty that he was witnessing history absolute — and I got a lump in my throat. The second time I teared up was listening to Obama’s acceptance speech; his eloquence, his poise, his narrative and his promise overwhelmed me. The thought that my future children — who will carry African blood in their veins — will take it for granted that anyone can be president made my heart soar and the water rush to my eyes.
And the third time I teared up was with frustration, just before midnight, as it began to be clear that we had lost on gay marriage. The California electorate was generally in a liberal mood: we’ve passed (should the results hold, as seems likely) every bond on the ballot, including a lovely one on high-speed rail. We’ve passed, as I had hoped, new rights for farm animals — and passed it, praise God, by a whopping margin of the sort that invites similar initiatives in other states. And by a narrow result, it seems almost certain we have rejected, for the third time in as many years, a proposal to require parental notification for minors seeking an abortion. Good news – but all of that tempered with the painful reality that by what appears to be a settled 52-48 margin, Californians have eliminated same-sex marriage rights. Discrimination is enshrined in the state constitution. Not forever, because the state constitution can be amended far more easily than the federal one. But for now, and that is a bitter pill.
The exit polling suggests that African-Americans voted overwhelmingly for Obama, and against gay marriage. Given that Obama has won the state by 23 points, and gay marriage has been rejected by a 4 point margin, clearly a substantial number of people disregarded the president-elect’s plea to reject Proposition 8. It is clear, too, that even a great many progressive folks are unwilling to embrace full equality for gays and lesbians. The fact that all three gay-marriage bans on the ballot (the others were in Florida and Arizona) passed (the other two by much wider margins than 
is all the more frustrating because so many other state initiatives went “our way.”
Indeed, besides the bans on gay marriages, progressives carried the day in state initiatives. In addition to California’s rejection of parental notification, South Dakota and Colorado both turned down — by comfortable margins — anti-abortion initiatives. In Washington state, voters passed a measure that would allow for “death with dignity”; the Evergreen State now joins Oregon as the second US state to permit some form of euthanasia. And heck, Massachusetts banned greyhound racing. Outside of the debate on marriage, social conservatives did not have a good day at the polls — indeed, the pro-life movement took a drubbing across the board. But the seamless garment of justice is torn; while we vote to protect our daughters’ privacy and vote to allow our parents to pass on with grace, while we vote for animals to have a better life we also have voted to bar one of the central institutions of both public and private life to an entire class of human beings. And that is desperately sad. The fact that the margin was so close in California, and that younger people across all racial categories were more likely to support gay marriage than their elders, does little to ease the sting of now. But it does give hope for tomorrow.
More reflections later, and a return to “regular blogging” tomorrow. But for now, I am of two minds: exultant and chastened, hopeful and downcast, exuberant and sad. America has made an extraordinary choice, choosing a most extraordinary man to be our forty-fourth president. I am praying today for him and his family, asking God to protect him and guide him. If he governs with the same measured passion that he campaigned, with the same commitment to justice he has shown in his sparkling career, then we may well be witnessing the rise to power of one of the greatest leaders this country has ever known. In my political memory (which extends back to the election of 1976), I have never been so impressed by a candidate as I have been with Barack Obama. And I have never been so hopeful in the aftermath of victory.
LOVED your description of the “black man in his seventies, very well-dressed, a huge smile on his face.” What an inspiration!
It does say something that Californians think more highly of farm animals than same-sex couples, doesn’t it?
Well, the result on the parental notification initative and the farm animals initative showed that this is a progressive state in many respects — but that an unwillingness to let go of an antiquated understanding of marriage remains strong even among liberal folks.
It does say something that Californians think more highly of farm animals than same-sex couples, doesn’t it?
. . . or un-born human beings. Make the chicken comfortable. Abort the baby.
Proposition 4 did nothing to affect the legality of abortion, Stephen. But it is refreshing to hear somebody admit that the real purpose of Prop 4 was not to facilitate communication or to protect our daughters, but to block abortions.
Yep. No problem admitting that that was a hoped for outcome, although not the sole motivation.
As one of those Virginia voters, I can say WOOHOOO! Look at THAT!
However, the results of the Prop K vote in San Fran, as well as the bans on gay marriage have left me a bit bitter. I am quite surprised by the gay marriage ban in CA. Not so much in Arizona, where many older people live or Florida, also with many older voters and many deeply religious white, Latino and Africian American communities, but the CA response rather shocks me.
I of course find it odd that all kinds of “liberal craziness” (I mean that in a good way) goes on in CA, and shoot, even FL, but gay people cannot get married??? Makes no sense.
We’re well aware that it’s both to stop abortions and create a legal structure that reinstates the legal status of women as the property of men.
“But the seamless garment of justice is torn; while we vote to protect our daughters’ privacy and vote to allow our parents to pass on with grace, while we vote for animals to have a better life we also have voted to bar one of the central institutions of both public and private life to an entire class of human beings.”
Beautiful prose…if only it weren’t so devastatingly true. As someone who lived in CA in 2000 (when Prop 22 “clarified” marriage as between one man/one woman) I was hopeful that Californians would reject this divisive and unjust measure.
I wonder where the marriage equality movement goes from here? In Oregon, where I live, we have civil unions, but it seems like second-class status since Oregon “defined” marriage in 2004. As a pastor my heart hurts knowing that much of the support for this unjust and discriminatory measure came from faith communities.
Part of the reason for that is that the “liberal craziness” doesn’t need the approval of the inland counties to go on in the more liberal coastal areas; the areas that display the most “liberal craziness” voted against Proposition 8.
California has a lot of internal variation in how conservative or liberal it is (as I know from experience, having moved to Orange County from the much more liberal SF Bay Area).
Yeah Pennsylvania is also like that, large liberal cities but some very, very, very conservative counties. I doubt gay marriage would pass here even though we are (usually) a blue state.
But I am optimistic, it was close and there will be a next time whether through the courts or through another ballot proposal. I am pretty sure it could pass in 4-8 years as societal attitudes change.
Mythago,
Well, yes. Of course the purpose was to prevent abortions. Since abortion is generally a gravely sinful form of homicide, and morally licit only in a few circumstances (such as to save the mother’s life), that seems to me to be an eminnently worthy purpose: the fewer abortions, the better. Of course there are other arguments, leaving aside the moral argument, why a minor should not be allowed to have an abortion unless her health is threatened. At 16 or 17, few of us are totally sure of our values and beliefs, and most of us lack the experience and moral development to know whether one day we will come to regret our decision. There are things worse than death, and one of them is living with a guilty conscience.
As a pro-life Democrat I was happy that Obama won, but also deeply saddened by the failure of pro-life ballot initiatives in Michigan, Colorado, California and South Dakota. It appears that we Americans are a bunch of hypocrites about innocent human life- we like to complain about abortion, but aren’t actually willing to vote to make it illegal. Of course this isn’t a surprise, this has always been a self-interested and hypocritical nation. The denial of nature in the realm of economics, which forms the basis of our capitalist system, is of a piece with the denial of nature in the realm of motherhood. Until we become a society which once again values obligations over rights, self-sacrifice over self-fulfilment, and conforming to the law of nature over freedom to choose our own destiny, we can never become a society that truly respects innocent human life.
Amanda:
“We’re well aware that it’s both to stop abortions and create a legal structure that reinstates the legal status of women as the property of men.”
I don’t often agree with you, but oh yes on that statement. I wish men got to be the ones to get pregnant and deal with the abortion issue for a while, I bet then the morality/legality of the matter would clear up in favor of safe legal abortions quite quickly.
Renegade Evolution,
Of course. That would be why the first recorded prohibitions of abortion, from the laws of the ancient Persians, prescribed death for the husband of any woman who had an abortion. That would sure be a good way of controlling women.
Honestly, this ‘it’s all about women’s rights’ business would be hilarious in its absurdity if it weren’t so pernicious in its effects. Abortion has been condemned by Jewish and Christian tradition for well over two thousand years, consistently and unequivocally, and always on the ground that it was a grave violation of the injunction, “the just and innocent man ye shall not put to death.” Which, of course, it is.
Okay then Hector…how about we make abortion illegal, and like the ancients, impose something for the men as well…enforced chemical castration, perhaps?
As well as tradition, last time I checked, not everyone in the US was christian or jewish?
Renegade Evolution,
Except that I wouldn’t punish the women, either, any more than I would the men. I would punish the doctors. If it could be verified in any particular case that the woman’s partner had encouraged her to get an abortion, then I would gladly prosecute the man for criminal conspiracy.
The prohibitions against abortion are part of natural law, which is accessible to all men regardless of faith. Every man, not just Christian or Jewish, should agree that “the just and innocent man ye shall not put to death.”
Hector, most of the rules against abortion need to be understood in the context of what abortion meant, medically, until the 20th century — a high risk of death for women. It’s grossly inaccurate to assume that prohibitions on abortion were primarily about protecting fetuses; it’s just as well to assume that they were about protecting women from a procedure that carried a very high mortality risk.
Aristocracy is part of natural law. The idea that all men (and women) are created equal is an idea with a highly contentious history, and is not anywhere NEAR being universally embraced, even in Christian or Jewish traditions.
Polygamy is a part of natural law. Most societies throughout history have had at least some form of it form some people. Monogamy is unnatural, and not an integral part of either Jewish or Christian traditions.
Slavery is a part of natural law. All the major religions have histories of religiously-sanctioned slave ownership.
Theocracy is part of natural law. The idea of a separation between sacred and secular spheres is recent and novel, especially in Christian circles. The idea of religious freedom and toleration of religious differences is something that even modern Christianity has a very uneasy relationship with.
I’m not going to convince you. I’m not going to change your mind. I am going to ask politely that you not appeal to “natural” when what you mean is “moral” or “right”. It’s natural, even God-ordained (according to the book of Genesis), for childbirth to be an extremely painful procedure; I doubt you’d get angry at a woman for having an epidural.
Your argument about just and innocent men not being put to death assumes that personhood begins at conception. It doesn’t. Conception begins a process which ends in personhood; where along that line personhood is obtained varies greatly from culture to culture.
Let me qualify my statement about all major religions having a history of religiously-sanctioned slave ownership by saying: all the major religions I’m familiar with. Which are pretty much the monotheistic ones. So, Sikhism (for example) may not, but I don’t know b/c I’m an ignorant Eurocentric white guy.
Is that because punishing women is politically inexpedient, or because you believe women are morally infantile?
If a woman pays a hired killer to strangle her five-year-old, we don’t blame the hit man and excuse the mother. We don’t assume she was “misled” by the hit man. If she sobbed that she thought the death would be painless and the child was going to a better place, we’d cynically note that she had an insanity defense cooked up. Why, if the child she kills is still in the womb, is there this rush to pretend that she is anything but a murderer?
On Proposition 4, please note that the measure did not require parental permission, only notification. As the mother of a teenage daughter, I find this incredibly stupid. What, I’m going to get a call from Planned Parenthood saying “We’re performing an abortion on your daughter in 48 hours; you have no right to stop it, but we thought you ought to know”? (If you’re going to bring up poor judgment, by the way, you apparently think a 16 or 17 year old is smart enough to choose to be a mother, just not to have an abortion; how does that work?)
Mythago,
Mythago,
That’s because any woman, or man, can SEE the five year old and know that he or she deserves protection. Whereas most men and women in modern America lack either the knowledge of embryology or the moral training to know that the fetus is equally deserving of protection. They can therefore not be held culpable in a moral or legal sense, since they lack the ‘mens reus’ i believe the lawyers call it. No doubt there are some women who do know the quality of what they are doing, and these people are indeed morally culpable, but it isn’t fesible for the law to determine what someone’s state of mind was when they sought an abortion, and so we need to treat them all as though they were not culpable.
Carl Rennie,
Aquinas viewed both aristocracy and slavery as against nature in the strict sense, and held that they both came about as unavoidable results of the Fall of Man. Indeed, much agitation against both aristocracy and slavery was on the grounds that these institutions were the results of human wickedness, and were contrary to the natural state of man.
Well, this makes it easy for me not to continue in this argument- I think there is a difference between a cluster of cells/fetus and a human…at the same time, I get grumpy when people think they can tell other people what to do with their bodies in general.
Hector,
I’m not arguing with you specifically. As I said, I’m not going to change your mind. I’m arguing primarily for other people who might be reading this, and mostly because “babies are innocent people!” is such a common argument.
I’ve explained that “natural law” is a misleading term because nature shows us that many things our current culture considers morally wrong are inextricably linked with the history of human culture and religion. You responded by an appeal to authority, and a somewhat obscure one that.
Aquinas doesn’t have any authority to explain what natural law is or isn’t. He’s welcome to his opinion, you’re welcome to yours, but they’re opinions. I think it’s more instructive to look at how cultures have responded to these questions in different ways, at different times, and how those responses played out, but if you’d rather defer to a 13th century Catholic scholar, that’s your own choice.
As for your reply to mythago, I’d suggest that it’s demeaning and patronizing, and that a gentleman would offer an apology.
Speaking of apologies:
I’m sorry for the snarkiness of my replies today. I donated to No on Prop 8, campaigned for it, and even though I’m straight I feel personally hurt by its passage. Hurt and disappointed. I feel like I didn’t do enough, wasn’t convincing enough, but I’m not sure that anything I personally did could’ve made it better. Mostly it’s painful to see people so willing to make other people sacrifice for their own comfort.
My whole family supported Prop 8, and nothing I could say would change their mind, and I’ve been fighting with them in my head for weeks now and I feel like they’ve won. It’s disheartening and exhausting, and I’m a little bit ashamed.
If my reply was interpreted as sexist, then I apologize for that. I am not going to apologize if it came off as authoritarian and paternalistic, because I do subscribe to a paternalistic theory of the state, and not a liberal one. Women are no more or less invincibly ignorant than men, but that isn’t saying much, as we are all often base and ignorant creatures who need guidance from both the state and the church.
Marriage is essentially a religious not a civil arrangement. Maybe the best solution is to involve only the state in civil unions. All state unions are civil unions, and leave marriage to the priests, rabbis, ministers, shamans where it can be properly blessed and might have really meaning. I am saddened that euthanasia, otherwise known as murder, is now spreading from Oregon to Washington.
Rainbow,
I agree with you on both counts.
Hugo, I want to apologize to you in advance for what I’m about to type, because it isn’t going to be civil at all and I know you like to keep things civil whenever possible. But I’m pissed and I’m tired of hearing the stupid arguments about it. And if you want to ban me for it, that’s fine.
Hector,
Fuck off. When you grow a uterus and can become pregnant, then you get to have an opinion about abortion. When you can have your body hijacked without your permission to create another person, then you get to have an opinion. But until that time, shut the hell up.
And don’t go spouting off about the moral value of the fetus and how it’s a poor, innocent little baby, because that’s a religious argument and while you’re welcome to it, we do have, last I checked, a legal separation between church and state and legislating religious beliefs is a big no-no here. And don’t tell me that I’m a poor misguided soul, because I don’t believe in any kind of deity at all, but I have been pregnant and I do have children and I love them more than anything else in the world. But pregnancy is pure hell and to force that on someone against their will, in the name of a god who may or may not exist and who probably doesn’t care in the slightest what I do with my womb even if it does (and if it does, then said deity is a right bastard and I wouldn’t worship it anyway) is going to far. That’s torture and slavery and it just isn’t right.
The separation of church and state does not mean an individual cannot vote their conscience nor does it mean that one cannot argue or legislate based on one’s religious beliefs. It does mean one cannot legislate a state religion. I cannot make you say or act like you feel a fetus is a human being with a soul and/or rights. You cannot force me to abort a disabled child no matter how much you think it is the correct thing to do, at least currently. One provider socialized medicine may make it impossible to bring a disabled child to term or at the least may ensure that they die quickly once born.
Rainbow,
The best way to deal with name-calling from KS and Ms. Marcotte is to remember the following:
22 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.
23 Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.
What nonsense. Next you’ll be excusing mothers who commit infanticide on the grounds that most people don’t understand infant development very well, and so don’t know that newborn babies feel pain and are fully cognizant. I doubt most people who oppose abortion came to that conclusion through “moral training”. As for mens rea, we do not excuse a murderer who genuinely, truly believes that his victims are not fully human.
I’m going with politically expedient on this one. Most anti-abortion activists understand that people get hinky at the idea of “your sister had an abortion so we’re going to lock her up for 15 to life”. Doctors are much less sympathetic targets.
Mythago,
It’s not nonsense, it is a fact. Most men and women do sincerely believe that fetuses are not the equivalent of human beings. That position is wrong, but its wrongness is not immediately obvious, and it can be held in good faith. Whereas anyobe can tell that a newborn baby can feel pain, all you have to do is observe one.
If a construction crew wrecked a building that they thought was deserted, but actually had people inside, they would be prosecuted for negligence but not for murder. I call abortion many things, including homicide, but I haven’t and don’t intend to start calling it _murder_ since the element of malice is usually absent.
Why *isn’t* it murder then? I mean, I knew it was in there and I sent the wrecking ball in anyway, right? That’s not negligence in your understanding, from what I can gather.
Hector,
I am someone who thinks of abortion as an unfortunate evil in the same way that poverty and war are unfortunate evils. I’d rather live in a world where it rarely happens. I think that some legal measures might be appropriate (short of criminalization) to lower the numbers of abortions, but that real effective prevention will more likely come from better (comprehensive) sex ed, better access to birth control, and better overall choices for women. I really am a pro-life feminist, even though I’m not quite sure I exist.
All that said, I think it’s extremely important that you see how *I* differentiate abortion from homicide (from an idea by Judith Jarvis Thompson):
Imagine if you woke up tomorrow connected to a person with severe kidney failure, who would die without being connected to you. You would have to be connected to this person for approximately 9 months (for them to survive), during which time you would experience a great deal of discomfort, and it would put a great deal of strain on your body, some of the effects of which would be permanent (though not necessarily serious).
Now, it’s quite possible you would happily choose to remain connected to that person. You would not want them to die, just because you were unwilling to bear this “inconvenience”. But would you want the law to force this on someone? What if now you added in the possibility of a high health risk to you, including a risk of death? What if it was just a terrible time in your life for this sort of intrusion?
I don’t think that a woman automatically “owes” the embryo or fetus access to her body. The only complication then is that abortion *kills* the fetus, and does not allow any outside intervention (as could be the case with a disconnected kidney patient). This is why I am not gung-ho pro-choice. But my first statement STILL stands. A mother does not OWE a child access to her body any more than a father does. Parents are not legally obligated to donate compatible organs or bone marrow or even blood to their children, even though we’d like to live in a world where all of them would do so.
And by the way, if doctors could be criminalized, then they’d be very fearful of doing any procedure, even if it did seriously effect the health or life of the mother. Even if it were just a few cases of that happening, this would be extremely problematic.
A woman seeking an abortion does not think her uterus is “deserted”. That’s kind of the whole point of the abortion, isn’t it?
The idea that all women seeking abortions are too fluffy-headed to possibly understand that pregnancy = baby really is nonsense. I guess it provides some comfort to women who joined the anti-abortion movement after they got theirs – “I didn’t kill my baby on purpose, male doctors hid the truth from me.” But there’s nothing in the law that suggests only those with a degree in embryology can possibly know that abortion is murder.
By the way, all your construct offers women is an affirmative defense to murder charges. A woman who has an abortion would be able to prove that she didn’t know it was a human life. We wouldn’t, however, excuse all women from murder indictments simply because a few of them were led astray by the evil medical establishment.
Hugo,
“The thought that my future children — who will carry African blood in their veins…”
Does this mean that you and your wife are planning on having at least two children?
Yup.