Thoughtful article by Ross Douthat, a conservative Millennial with a traditional view on marriage. This is absolutely the most refreshing pro-traditional marriage column I’ve read in the wake of Judge Walker’s Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision.  But I still disagree.

Specifically, with two points at the end of Douthat’s peice:

“In this landscape, gay-marriage critics who fret about a slippery slope to polygamy miss the point. Americans already have a kind of postmodern polygamy available to them. It’s just spread over the course of a lifetime, rather than concentrated in a “Big Love”-style menage.

If this newer order completely vanquishes the older marital ideal, then gay marriage will become not only acceptable but morally necessary. The lifelong commitment of a gay couple is more impressive than the serial monogamy of straights. And a culture in which weddings are optional celebrations of romantic love, only tangentially connected to procreation, has no business discriminating against the love of homosexuals.

But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate. That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.

But based on Judge Walker’s logic — which suggests that any such distinction is bigoted and un-American — I don’t think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea.”

First: As a proponent of marriage equality I value monogamy.  Douthat’s assertion that by making “this shift” as he calls it, that we are giving up the ideal of lifelong heterosexual monogamy is simply wrong.  There is nothing that says the ideal of lifelong heterosexual monogamy can’t, and shouldn’t be maintained, nor that it can’t co-exist alongside the acceptance and ideal of homosexual monogamy.  The ideal of monogamy is what serves as the more important societal stabilizer, not the sexual orientations of the couple.

Second: I’ve read Judge Walker’s opinion. It states that these relationships (hetero- and homo-sexual marriages) should be viewed the same in the eyes of the law, but the opinion does not speak to the distinctions “in their challenges and their potential fruit” because it’s not the judge’s place to characterize those distinctions.  Having been at the trial and read the transcripts, there was precious little in the trial (especially from the defense charged with arguing against marriage equality) that set out to characterize those distinctions, upon which Walker might have commented in his decision.  Culture can find a way to distinguish and characterize the differences in same-sex and opposite-sex marriages, but the law ought not.  That’s the point of equality in the eyes of the law.  Walker never uses the words bigoted or un-American once in his decision.  Douthat flirts with characterizing the judge as a radical in the last sentence (which he is not, and which Douthat surely knows, which is why I suppose he goes no further than this flirtation).

I am honored to join the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) Advisory Board on the eve of the Perry vs. Schwarzenegger trial, which challenges the federal constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8.

I am humbled that my name appears alongside civil rights legend Julian Bond, and the likes of Cleve Jones and Judy Shepard, whose personal sacrifice for equal rights in this battle is well known. I don’t pretend that my experience in the fight for civil rights is equal to theirs. I’m joining this effort as a representative of a new generation of Republicans whose conservatism consistently emphasizes individual freedom and recognizes the constitutional right of all Americans to marry.

Marriage equality is a constitutionally protected right owed to all Americans, as Ted Olson and David Boies will begin to argue in federal court tomorrow. I applaud AFER for recognizing that that marriage equality should not be a partisan issue and for building a coalition that aims represents the full diversity of America.

For those in my own party who question my conservatism because I support marriage equality, I remind you of comments made by Vice President Cheney, whose conservative credentials are impeccable and who answered a question about gay marriage before the National Press Club audience on June 1st last year by saying simply, “…freedom means freedom for everyone.”

Here is my post on FoxNews.com in support of marriage equality.

On Inauguration Day, David Frum launched NewMajority.com where I will regularly post. Check it out. Post yourself. This is a Big Tent site, inviting participation from all.

Here is my first contribution:

Note to President Bush:  Beware of finding comfort in hopes that history will look back on you favorably; if you don’t take care for your historical narrative while in office, no one will bother to give you credit later.

As the great-granddaughter of Herbert Hoover, I know.

Hoover’s stubborn unwillingness to fight for his own legacy may have been honorable, but has resulted in eighty years of bad press.  Being related to Hoover has given me a special appreciation for the importance of presidential communication, and in Hoover’s case, an example of how effective a counter-narrative can be.  It’s remarkable that forty-five years after his death, contemporary commentators like Rachel Maddow make popsicle stick cut outs of Hoover and sarcastically recycle 75 year old FDR generated talking points. If America knew more about the real Herbert Hoover, Rachel Maddow, John McCain, Paul Krugman, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and even Dick Cheney would be ashamed of their role reinforcing the stereotype of Hoover as the economic anti-Christ.

No American president’s reputation has been so removed from the larger context of his life accomplishments, or been the recipient of such multi-generational partisan slander as Herbert Hoover. It is my hope that mainstream historical narrative will someday get Hoover right, but his own actions make this a challenging prospect.  During his presidency he considered it a misallocation of energy to devote any time to image-tending or public perception (an extension of his Quaker-faith), especially if that energy that could be dedicated to fixing problems (the engineer’s creed).

While I don’t foresee resolution of Hoover’s legacy in the near-term, it is possible that 2009 could fertilize our collective conscience for an eventual re-evaluation of Herbert Hoover’s role in history.

We’ve forgotten the master of emergencies, the godfather of the modern NGO, and the man whose swift and effective response to the worst river flood in American history won him the presidency in 1928.  Lost is the Hoover who saved Belgium from starvation in 1914, Bolshevik Russia from famine in 1921, and Poland and Eastern Europe again after WWII.  Instead, partisan historians and forgetful citizens heap disproportionate responsibility on his plate for the economic devastation of the 1930s, never mind that he was President for only two years of that decade.

The unlikely coincidence of the current economic crisis with the ’08 presidential campaign, created an opening for a national debate about the effectiveness of New Deal economics.  Thanks to Amity Shlaes’ groundbreaking work in The Forgotten Man, honest historians and economists have begun to debate her thesis— that New Deal economics failed to fix the Depression, and likely contributed to making it “Great”.

In all history, but especially with Hoover, one must judge the actor’s decisions based on the information available to them at the time, rather than with the hindsight provided to us thanks to their experience.  This is likely to happen only after we fairly debate the effectiveness of New Deal policies and reexamine the mythology of FDR’s presidency.  Only then can the narrative of Hoover’s record be rewritten to reflect not just the merits and demerits of his Presidency, but his entire life of service.  An unfortunately timed presidency ought not erase a lifetime of contribution to humanity.

As for the few contemporary Republicans who understand and appreciate Hoover – such as former Oregonian Senator Mark Hatfield— the Obama wilderness years call us to agree upon common principles which will forge the policy solutions we offer our country tomorrow.

A good place to start is Hoover’s earliest political contribution entitled “American Individualism”, which reflects on the economic, political and social forces that led to America’s ascendance, and which Hoover felt compelled to defend upon returning from Europe after World War I. While socialism seems a remote concern, socialist parties had earned 3% of the vote or better in the four elections through 1920. In the wake of the war’s devastation, collectivist ideas had gained ground in the old European democracies, and were polarizing and destabilizing the politics of the new democracies in Germany, Hungary, and Austria, after violently seizing power in Russia.

In Hoover’s words, it is never “amiss to review the political, economic and spiritual principles through which our country has steadily grown in usefulness and greatness, not only to preserve them from being fouled by false notions, but more importantly that we may guide ourselves in the road of progress.”  As Republicans hoping to forge a New Majority, we would do well to begin here.

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