-
The Wall Street Journal | June 21, 2008 By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week. The first to be wed in San Francisco were Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, pioneering gay-rights activists who have been a couple for more than 50 years. More ceremonies will follow, at…
-
Democracy Journal | Summer 2007 Review of The Future of Marriage, by David Blankenhorn (Encounter Books, 2007) WHEN I came out with a book making the case for same-sex marriage a few years ago, I expected to spend time selling gay marriage to straight people and marriage to gay people. The surprise was how much time I…
-
The New Republic | May 30, 2005 IN 2003, when a bare majority of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered the state to recognize gay marriages, the three dissenting judges based their opposition largely on children. “It is difficult to imagine a State purpose more important and legitimate than ensuring, promoting, and supporting an optimal…
-
The Wall Street Journal | December 27, 2004 President Reagan, ever the optimist, loved a story about a boy who yelps with delight at a pile of dung, digging into it eagerly with both hands. “With all this manure,” says the boy, “there must be a pony in here somewhere!” Nearly two months after the…
-
The New York Times Magazine | March 7, 2004 IN ENDORSING the passage of a constitutional amendment that would restrict marriage to the union of men and women, President Bush established himself as the country’s most prominent advocate of same-sex marriage. To be more precise, he established himself as the most prominent advocate of the best…
-
National Journal | July 26, 2003 “I WAS A LIGHTWEIGHT trading on a famous name, they said.” That was George W. Bush, then still governor of Texas, writing in his 1999 book, A Charge to Keep. He might have been pleased to know that “they,” the purveyors of conventional wisdom, had said the same of…
-
The Atlantic Monthly | March 2003 DO YOU KNOW someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the…
-
Wall Street Journal | July 27, 2001 THE other day I attended what seemed an unusually disingenuous press conference, even by Washington’s standards. The event was the unveiling, by a coalition of church and community groups called the Alliance for Marriage, of a proposed 28th Amendment to the Constitution. The “Federal Marriage Amendment” was soon…
-
National Journal | September 4, 1999 NOT long after the end of the Second World War, a young man named Shiu-kee gathered up a few things and set out to walk from a small village in the Guangdong province of southeastern China. The young man possessed almost nothing in the world, and he hoped to…
-
The New Republic | May 6, 1996 WHATEVER else marriage may or may not be, it is certainly falling apart. Half of today’s marriages end in divorce, and, far more costly, many never begin–leaving mothers poor, children fatherless and neighborhoods chaotic. With timing worthy of Neville Chamberlain, homosexuals have chosen this moment to press for…