It's Little Ricky And "Hating Teh Gay" Thursday!

Yes, our favorite “Elephant Poop In The Room” pundit is back to spread more misinformation, and today, he predictably goes after California’s recent decision on same sex marriages…

The latest distressing news came last week in California. The state Supreme Court there ruled, 4-3, that same-sex couples can marry.

In doing so, four judges rejected a statute that passed in a referendum with 61 percent of the vote that defined marriage as a union of one man and one woman.

It's merely the latest in a string of court decisions that have overturned the overwhelming will of the people.

By the way, if you detected an uncanny similarity between this language and that used by neocon quota hire pundit Bill Kristol of the New York Times and The Weekly Standard earlier this week, you’re not alone (and fortunately, this response from Shakesville to Kristol Mess applies to Little Ricky also, in particular)…

If Mr. Kristol had bothered to read the history of the case or the ruling itself rather than launch his typical right-wing volley of "activist judges" missiles, he would have known that the court ruling was not making social policy from the bench at all, but doing exactly what the court was created to do in the first place: interpret the laws and the constitution of the state. The California Assembly had twice tried to pass laws legalizing same-sex marriage, only to have them vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wanted the State Supreme Court to first decide whether or not such laws would pass constitutional muster. The court so ruled on Thursday, citing only the state constitution and pointedly avoiding the social policy aspect of the case.

But of course, a phrase like “activist judges” is something Little Ricky’s minions are more prepared to froth themselves over than something like “activist state legislatures” (too many syllables, I guess).

To continue with Little Ricky’s screed…

Look at Norway. It began allowing same-sex marriage in the 1990s. In just the last decade, its heterosexual-marriage rates have nose-dived and its out-of-wedlock birthrate skyrocketed to 80 percent for firstborn children. Too bad for those kids who probably won't have a dad around, but we can't let the welfare of children stand in the way of social affirmation, can we?

Oh, brother…

I have news for Little Ricky; a whole lot of other countries besides Norway apparently believe in “social affirmation” also, because, according to this link from Encyclopedia Britannica Online…

In 1989 Denmark became the first country to establish registered partnerships – an attenuated version of marriage – for same-sex couples. Soon thereafter Norway (1993), Sweden (1994), Greenland (1995), Iceland (1996), The Netherlands (1997), and Finland (2001) established similar laws, generally using specific vocabulary (e.g., civil union, civil partnership, domestic partnership, registered partnership) to differentiate same-sex unions from heterosexual marriages. By the early 21st century other European countries with such legislation included Croatia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Switzerland.

Interestingly – and perhaps a reflection of tensions between the marriage-for-procreation and marriage-for-community-good positions discussed (previously) – many European countries initially prevented same-sex couples from adoption and artificial insemination; by 2007, however, most of those restrictions had been removed.

Outside Europe, some jurisdictions also adopted some form of same-sex partnership rights; Israel recognized common-law same-sex-marriage in the mid 1990s (the Israeli Supreme Court further ruled in 2006 that same-sex marriages performed abroad should be recognized), while same-sex civil unions were legalized in New Zealand in 2004, in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul in 2004, and in Mexico City in 2006. In 2007, Uruguay became the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex civil unions; the legislation became effective in 2008.

The Britannica article then goes on to note that, as civil unions have been recognized in more and more countries, those populations have tended to accept same-sex marriage with greater frequency (basically, the only other countries I can find who are as harsh on this subject as were are would be China and Iran, and probably a few others I can’t identify at the moment – nice).

And as far as this “straw man” concerning the alleged decrease of heterosexual marriages and increase in out-of-wedlock birth rates, this Media Matters link concerning Falafel Boy’s similar assertions about Sweden (with the help of Hoover Institute hack Stanley Kurtz) tells us…

Kurtz wrote in February 2004: "A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more."

Here, Kurtz conflates correlation with causation. The data show that high cohabitation and out-of-wedlock birth rates are not even correlated, but Kurtz assumes that such correlation exists, then concludes causation from it. In fact, the data show that cohabitation and out-of-wedlock birth rates began rising in Scandinavia long before the enactment of homosexual partnership laws. This trend is apparently partially a result of laws governing heterosexual unmarried couples. In many Scandinavian countries, cohabitating heterosexual couples have most of the same rights as married couples, which obviously reduces incentives for a cohabitating couple to marry.

I realize that, now, I’ve given Little Ricky a chance to rail in his next column about “the evils of unmarried cohabitation” leading to an increase in tolerance of same-sex unions…or something.

This is also making me seriously rethink my opposition to same-sex marriage, by the way (never opposed to same-sex partnerships with all attendant legal rights, however), if for no other reason than the fact that it is increasingly more abhorrent to me to share any position whatsoever with Rick Santorum.