DIANE REHM SHOW ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

If you haven't heard today's Diane Rehm show on same-sex marriage, here's the link (Real Player). One of the guests is Scott Keeter, now at the Pew Research Center. Prof. Keeter was chair of the government department at GMU (called Public and International Affairs) a few years ago when I taught a few courses there (very good guy, very good scholar). He has some good analysis of poll numbers on the issue of gay marriage. Public opinion on homosexuality is "divided and nuanced": no majority support for gay marriage as such, but also majority opposition to FMA.

FAMILY LAW AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN MOROCCO

Recent changes in Moroccan family law have been hailed as a major advancement of women's rights. Qantara reports on the changes:

1) Wives and husbands are now jointly and equally responsible for their households and families; the previous duties of wives to obey their husbands will be abolished.

2) Men and women may enter into marriage of their own free will and with equal rights. Brides no longer require the permission of a male legal guardian, but may have themselves "given away" if they so desire. Polygamy (the right of a man to marry up to four women) will be starkly restricted.

3) A husband can no longer simply abandon his wife without consequences; divorce is being made easier for women. Simply uttering the ritual words for a divorce (repudiation, or talaq) is no longer sufficient for legal divorce, nor can a divorce be authorized by a notary public (adul). In all cases, the desire of a husband or wife for divorce must be authorized by a government family court.

4) The minimum age at which women may marry will be raised to 18; exceptions may be made with a judge's permission.

5) Couples will have joint custody of children conceived pre-maritally (during the "engagement"). If the husband refuses to recognize the child as his own, he can be forced to undergo a parentage test. This was not possible in Morocco up to now, leading many fathers to refuse to accept responsibility for children conceived out of wedlock, and causing the number of single mothers in Morocco to skyrocket.

The article notes that conservative religious authorities and islamist groups have opposed the new law and goes on to raise questions about the extent to which the law will protect the large numbers of women who are poor and illiterate.

The Sunday Herald (UK) also has this article, BBC has this report on "Morocco's shunned wives," and Aujourd'hui Maroc writes that these reforms "allow Morocco to enter the sphere of social modernity."

POLITICAL SCIENCE BLOG BIRTHDAYS

James Joyner's Outside the Beltway recently turned one, and Steven Taylor's Poliblog will do so next week. Keep up the good work, folks!

ALABAMA DECENNIAL REDISTRICTING PROPOSAL

Charles Kuffner calls attention to a proposal in the Alabama legislature to amend the state's constitution to allow decennial redistricting only. Let's wish them luck.

EQUAL VOTE BLOG

Rick Hasen calls attention to Equal Vote Blog, by Dan Tokaji at Ohio State, who writes:

The principal objective of this blog is to take a hard look at the controversy over voting technology, with special attention to its civil rights implications. It is for this reason that this blog is titled "Equal Vote," for the goal is to put voting equality at the center of the analysis. I will focus on the controversy surrounding voting machines, while also addressing related issues of political equality.

MASSACHUSETTS SJC

Some have argued that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s rulings on Goodridge, especially the unfavorable advisory opinion on the civil unions bill (PDF file here), have the potential to create a backlash. See the Boston Globe, here and the Rocky Mountain News, here.

Jack Balkin has a subtle version of this argument: the court risks a backlash because it was inept in handling its relationship with the Massachusetts legislature. So some legislators who would have supported a a civil unions bill will now vote for a constitutional amendment to overturn Goodridge itself:

[M]any Massachusetts legislators who would have supported a civil unions bill now will vote for a amendment to the Massachsetts state constitution defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Such an amendment could not take effect until at least 2006. Nevertheless, the Court has wasted an opportunity to get half a loaf (and possibly a full one) when it may well end up with none in the long run.

Some argue that the idea of a backlash is overblown. See here, for example.

Assuming for the moment that there is a backlash, though, it seems to me that there are three reasons why it might not matter:

1) The SJC may still have succeeded in shifting the national-level debate such that civil unions appear to be the moderate position between proposals to ban all state recognitions of same-sex partnerships and proposals to forbid any and all distinctions between same-sex and heterosexual partnerships. This may be what is happening in the presidential race.

2) The SJC will still have raised the salience of same-sex marriage. Once gay marriages happen in Massacusetts and civilization does not, in fact, collapse – in the Bay State or anywhere else – then opponents will have to work harder to shape the public debate.

3) In politics, timing is very important. Circumstances could still intervene to crowd out the FMA (and related) agenda. Imagine, for example, if there is (God forbid) another serious terrorist attack. Security would almost certainly crowd out all other issues on the public agenda. The FMA would seem like a waste of time and perhaps even a divisive installment in the “culture wars” that should at the very least be placed on the back burner for a while. It would be hard to imagine that the President would want to spend political capital on the issue, lest he raise concerns that he is harnessing the security issue in inappropriate ways. Some have said that the administration has harnessed 9/11 inappropriately, of course, and without expressing any opinion on that matter, I think it’s safe to say that the political skill of this administration should not be underestimated, and I don’t want to rule out the use of presidential authority in favor of limiting same-sex marriage. Nonetheless, the success of the political backlash against the SJC will likely partly depend on circumstance and especially on the ability of advocates of the backlash to keep the issue on the agenda.

The third point is dependent on circumstance, but the first and second points are reasons to celebrate the ruling, seems to me. That’s not to say that Jack Balkin is wrong – the SJC could have gone about the issue in a much less clumsy fashion (by simply granting marriage licenses to the plaintiffs rather than appearing to open up space for legislative compromise and then closing it again with the advisory opinion). Still, to the extent that the first and second points above are right, an uncompromising stance by the SJC may have set the stage for national-level gains for gays and lesbians that are greater than would have been the case if the SJC settled for civil unions.

GEORGIA'S HISTORY STANDARDS

Last week I expressed dismay over the Georgia public school curriculum's proposed elision of most of the nineteenth century -- and surprise that this story has been overshadowed by the proposal to ditch the word "evolution." A friendly reader writes:

I cannot help but feel that some people believed that excluding the Civil War and Reconstruction from the high school curriculum would improve the lives of teachers and administrators by avoiding highly charged material. Certainly teachers get it from both sides in some locales. In particular, the neo-confederate movement is quite strong in rural and suburban Georgia.

Tough issue. Unfortunately, an education that never angers parents is likely not to be a good public school education. The job of public schools -- it seems to me -- is to encourage the development of historically-informed skills of critical thinking. Some parents want that, some might not. Those who do not want it should lose. A public school system that encourages parental involvement and that requires good relations with the (property tax paying) public will often fail to live up to the ideal of encouraging the skills necessary to be a good citizen, but it's necessary to keep that ideal in mind nonetheless.

ROBERT KIRBY

Reader J.B. sent along a link to this column by Robert Kirby from the Salt Lake City Tribune.

There was even a time when that's all the federal government needed to know about Mormons in order to systematically strip us of the right to vote and own property.

The point of controversy back then was marriage. Specifically, what kind of marriage was moral enough to be sanctioned by a government? Turns out that it was one guy and one woman, and not one guy and a bunch of women like we thought.

Polygamy was declared barbarous by no less than the U.S. Supreme Court, which ironically once also declared slavery to be legal. Oh, we're a fine bunch when driven by moral outrage.