January 3, 2009

Perhaps I just missed it...

I read this story about the Arkansas chapter of the ACLU filing a lawsuit to overturn the will of the voters in that state (stop me if you've heard this before) to restrict adoption to married couples. I read all the way through it, all the arguments advanced by the plaintiffs in that and several other lawsuits, all the fulminations about how the new law is "unconstitutional."

But nowhere, in the entire article, does the Associated Press even trouble to ask any supporter of the law why he thinks it's legitimate... a new citizens initiative that (stop me if you've heard this before) merely returns the law to the status quo ante, undoing the state Supreme Court decision that struck down the traditional understanding and ordered adoptions and fostering not to take into account the marital status of the new parents when awarding custody.

In fact, the only time they even admit that anyone supports the law (which passed 57-43) is to introduce a couple of bare facts:

The Arkansas Family Council, a conservative group that campaigned for the ban, said it was aimed at gay couples but the law will affect heterosexuals and homosexuals equally.

Jerry Cox, the council's president, said he had expected a lawsuit to be filed if the measure passed.

"We are confident this lawsuit will fail and Act 1 will remain on the books," Cox said.

By contrast, shills for the Left are allowed (encouraged) to explain their side:

"Act 1 violates the state's legal duty to place the best interest of children above all else," said Marie-Bernarde Miller, a Little Rock attorney in the lawsuit....

The group filed the lawsuit on behalf of 29 adults and children from more than a dozen families, including a grandmother who lives with her same-sex partner of nine years and is the only relative able and willing to adopt her grandchild, who is now in Arkansas state care. [So marital status is irrelevant, but a blood relationship is vital? How barbaric.]

The plaintiffs also include Stephanie Huffman and Wendy Rickman, a lesbian couple raising two sons together who want to adopt a foster child from the state.

"It's just wrong. It's an injustice," said Huffman, who lives in Conway. "I'm being denied an opportunity to provide a home for a special-needs child."

The families claim that the act's language was misleading to voters and that it violates their constitutional rights.

Evidently, the anti-marriage ACLU's side is so self-apparent to AP that asking them to allow the "opposition" (i.e., the traditional, American pro-marriage side) to respond is as outlandish as inviting an unrepentent, anti-American terrorist to be interviewed in a puff-piece published in the elite news media. Oh, wait...

As to being "misleading to voters," here is the text of the "ballot title" of the Arkansas Unmarried Couple Adoption Ban; the ballot title is the description of the initiative act that the voter sees at the top of the page (please excuse the all-caps; that's the way states seem to publish these things):

A PROPOSED ACT PROVIDING THAT A MINOR MAY NOT BE ADOPTED OR PLACED IN A FOSTER HOME IF THE INDIVIDUAL SEEKING TO ADOPT OR TO SERVE AS A FOSTER PARENT IS COHABITING WITH A SEXUAL PARTNER OUTSIDE OF A MARRIAGE WHICH IS VALID UNDER THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS OF THIS STATE; STATING THAT THE FOREGOING PROHIBITION APPLIES EQUALLY TO COHABITING OPPOSITE- SEX AND SAME-SEX INDIVIDUALS; STATING THAT THE ACT WILL NOT AFFECT THE GUARDIANSHIP OF MINORS; DEFINING “MINOR” TO MEAN AN INDIVIDUAL UNDER THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN (18) YEARS; STATING THAT THE PUBLIC POLICY OF THE STATE IS TO FAVOR MARRIAGE, AS DEFINED BY THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS OF THIS STATE, OVER UNMARRIED COHABITATION WITH REGARD TO ADOPTION AND FOSTER CARE; FINDING AND DECLARING ON BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE THAT IT IS IN THE BEST INTEREST OF CHILDREN IN NEED OF ADOPTION OR FOSTER CARE TO BE REARED IN HOMES IN WHICH ADOPTIVE OR FOSTER PARENTS ARE NOT COHABITING OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE; PROVIDING THAT THE DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES SHALL PROMULGATE REGULATIONS CONSISTENT WITH THE ACT; AND PROVIDING THAT THE ACT APPLIES PROSPECTIVELY BEGINNING ON JANUARY 1, 2009.

I'm not sure which part of this is misleading or even unclear. As to denying the "constitutional rights" of foster-parent or adoptive-parent wannabes... which constitutional rights would those be? Is there actually a constitutional right in Arkansas to adopt a kid? I rather doubt it.

Since AP appears unwilling to allow the pro-marriage side of the debate to speak, I must take up the conservative man's burden (despite my not being a conservative) and explain exactly why we should not allow same-sex couples or other sundry unmarried cohabitators to adopt a brood -- unless there is simply no other option (which is quite rare). So here goes:

1. Children ideally should have both a (male) father and a (female) mother:

   (a) Every person has both "male" and "female" components to his personality that require training and nurturing by the corresponding sex parent... every child needs both sexes in his life, preferably as parents. Since the State is picking the parents, why not satisfy this need?

   (b) Girls learn best how to be women from their mothers, while boys learn best how to be men from their fathers... women best know the special problems girls have, while men best know the special problems boys have.

2. Children ideally should have parents whose commitment to the family extends at least far enough to get legally married. (The question of who is legally allowed to marry should be taken up in a separate initiative or legislative bill all its own.)
3. The State has a vested interest in promoting and encouraging family arrangements that most closely approximate the ideal, and in discouraging or even prohibiting some arrangements -- polygamy, underaged marriage, etc. -- that swing dangerously far away from that ideal.
4. The State has no authority to take children away from their birth parents, but it does have the primary responsibility to ensure that those children under its own care -- adoptive and foster children -- are placed in families that satisfy (3) above.
5. The people of Arkansas have the right, and I argue the duty, to enact such laws by initiative when the state legislature is pathetically unable or unwilling to do so.

I don't undersand why this should not be obvious to at least 90% of the adult population; but at least it was obvious to a majority, and the Arkansas initiative passed by 14 points.

Evidently, however, it is not obvious to the Associated Press... which obtusity, when generalized, may go a long way towards explaining the financial quagmire in which the elite news media in this country finds itself in recent years.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 3, 2009, at the time of 3:38 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

December 29, 2008

All right, I admit it: Sachi, not I, has come up with the perfect analogy to illegal immigration, the legal immigration system, and everything else... and I believe everyone here will finally understand what I mean -- even if he doesn't agree with it.

Consider this:

Now we move a few hundred miles east and reboot...

Surely the vast majority, probably over 90%, of Big Lizards readers can see that the second scenario is infinitely to be preferred over the first. Surely you understand that Jerome was made into a criminal by a lousy L.A. law, a law that was arbitrary, capricious, vindictive, authoritarian, corrupt, and unjust. Under the more rational, predictable, and just law of the great and sovereign Republic of Texas, people like Jerome and Alberto need not skulk in the shadows.

The law in Los Angeles prevents honest, decent people from carrying the means to protect themselves. A rational law would allow this; but the law in L.A. is irrational, and the law in Slobovia is unpredictable and inexplicable.

The solution is to implement a rational, predictable, and just CCW permit law nationwide. While more people would be carrying guns legally, many, many fewer would be carrying them illegally. This is a trade-off that would tremendously benefit society, as Professor John Lott has shown many times over (i.e., in his seminal work More Guns, Less Crime.)

And I cannot imagine it has escaped anyone's notice that under the L.A. anti-gun law, just because someone is caught illegally carrying a concealed pistol, you cannot assume he is a notorious character up to no good: He could just as easily be an ordinary bloke who wants to protect himself from the violent hoods in the 'hood.

By contrast, since any honest, decent citizen of Texas can get a CCW permit, the only people carrying weapons illegally would be those unable to get such a permit... which in practice generally means felons, hypes, and transient bums. Therefore, it's perfectly reasonable to throw the book at anyone carrying concealed weapons without a permit, because nearly all of them are bad guys.

I suspect most of you can see exacty where I'm heading with this analogy to illegal immigration, so I'll leave off here. But please think about your reaction to the scenarios above, then about your reaction to my call for the reformation of the legal immigration system -- and my argument that this alone would dramatically decrease the illegal immigration problem.

Analogies prove nothing; that is not their purpose. Their purpose is clarity, not proof; they strip away the emotional detritus that blocks clear thinking about controversial issues.

Please use this moment of clarity at least to understand my argument; then if you still want to dispute the validity of my contention, we can debate on the basis of shared understanding of what I'm actually arguing.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 29, 2008, at the time of 11:45 PM | Comments (37) | TrackBack (0)

December 28, 2008

Bosnia and Herzegovina, when it was part of Yugoslavia, was fairly secular (granted, it was also Communist). But since the horrific war there against Serbia, when Tito's "Yugoslavia" sundered and shivered into pieces that instantly began to gnaw on each other, Bosniak Moslems have veered in a dangerous direction. Fueled by the kindling of several new madrasas (built by our friends, the Saudis) and the recent introduction of "Islamic education" into kindergarten classes, Wahabbi Islamism is sweeping through Bosnia-Herzegovina:

Many here welcome the Muslim revival as a healthy assertion of identity in a multiethnic country where Muslims make up close to half the population.

But others warn of a growing culture clash between conservative Islam and Bosnia’s avowed secularism in an already fragile state.

Two months ago, men in hoods attacked participants at a gay festival in Sarajevo, dragging some people from vehicles and beating others while they chanted, “Kill the gays!” and “Allahu Akbar!” Eight people were injured.

Muslim religious leaders complained that the event, which coincided with the holy month of Ramadan, was a provocation [but what isn't?]. The organizers said they had sought to promote minority rights and meant no offense.

It's not surprising that Bosnian Moslems would respond to their newfound freedom from Communist thugocracy by embracing the forbidden religion of their forefathers; but Serbians had the same reaction, embracing a newly invigorated Christianity. As the Wahabbism and Salafism of their Moslem neighbors take increasingly militant liberties with other Bosnians' freedom of religion (or of secularism), clashes, both verbal and violent, are bound to increase.

Although Bosniak (48%) is the plurality ethnic group and Islam (40%) the plurality religion, in fact Serbs and Croats together form a 51.4% majority of Bosnians, while Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism account for 46% of citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Thus, being outnumbered and not in totalitarian control of the government, the militant Islamic faction of the Bosniaks feels insecure and "under siege." This of course drives them towards greater militancy and terrorism (but what doesn't?)

I believe we may be on the brink of a new Bosnian civil war, which might serendipitously test a pet proposition of mine: Passionate Christianity is a greater bulwark against militant Islamism than is enlightened Euro-secularlism, and its rise is indeed the only thing that might possibly defeat the so-called "jihadist" movement.

This falls under the rubric of "you can't fight something with nothing;" the standard liberal democracic "philosophy" of Europe is as close to nothing as one can find on this globe; while Christianity, strained and anemic as it may be in this post-Enlightenment, post-Renaissance age of science and sanity, is nevertheless a powerful belief system that (we all remember) united the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans; conquered the Roman Empire; held sway over most of the known world; civilized the Vikings, the Celts, and other nomads of land and sea; and predates Islam by more than six centuries.

I think we'll find that the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina will be unable to cope with the rise of Saudi-funded extreme Islamism... but the Orthodox and Catholic populations will answer the call to arms. I also believe, perhaps paradoxically, that moderate, modern Moslems will find themselves more on the Orthodox-Catholic side than that of their own fanatical co-religionists, for the same reasons that Sunni Iraqis finally formed the "salvation councils" to rid themselves of their turbulent brothers.

I anticipate a salutory lesson on dealing with the worldwide rise of militant, violent, terrorist Islamism.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 28, 2008, at the time of 8:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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