A Stitch in Haste

Still cleaning out the aggregator --

ITEM: Britain abolishes an anti-lesbian rule for access to in vitro fertilization --

Single women and lesbian couples won landmark parental rights last night as MPs voted to remove the requirement that fertility clinics consider a child's need for a father.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill will replace the rule with a "need for supportive parenting" after opponents were defeated in two votes by unexpectedly wide margins.
...
It will stop fertility clinics turning away lesbians and single women because their children will not have a father or male role model. While the current law does not block such therapy, it is sometimes used to justify refusals.

MY TAKE: The lie that "kids do best with a mom and dad" (which distorts as "anti-gay" studies comparing only stable and unstable heterosexual-parent homes, while ignoring substantial research showing no ill effects from being raised by committed gay parents) was, at least in part, the flawed basis for the gay marriage defeats in New York and Washington, but was soundly rejected by the California Supreme Court. Its debunking and elimination from public policy debates is a key victory.

ITEM: In the minus column --

San Diego County plans to comply with a state Supreme Court ruling that allows same-sex marriages but will not force employees to perform the ceremonies if they cite religious or moral objections.

County Assessor-Recorder-Clerk Greg Smith, whose office issues marriage licenses, said he has informed the roughly 115 employees deputized to conduct ceremonies to tell him if they object to same-sex marriages.

MY TAKE: Aside from the pesky fact that a government office is not a church (no matter how many Decalogues theocrats slap on the walls), one wonders why marriage bureaucrats should receive special bigot privileges relative to other government employees. We don't allow bigot police officers not to respond to 911 calls from gays, we don't allow bigot firefighters to opt out of responding to fires at properties owned by gays, we don't allow bigot public school nurses to refuse to treat gay students' bloody noses.

And before you leap to an "emergency care" exception: Would a bigot health inspector be allowed to refuse to audit gay restaurants? Would a bigot food handler in a government office building's cafeteria be allowed to refuse to serve a gay patron? Would a bigot janitor be accommodated in his preference not to mop the office floor of a gay bureaucrat? If there is a workable basis for allowing this and only this accommodation to this and only this group of bigoted public employees, then I cannot deduce it. (Via Religion Clause.)

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ITEM: Speaking of "cannot deduce it," Rick Santorum has, to quote one of my fellow bloggers, "slithered out of oblivion to offer us his unique brand of brainless blathering" --

When I wasn't ducking the epithets, I was being laughed at, mocked, and given the crazy-uncle-at-the-holidays treatment by the media. Or I was being told I should resign from my leadership post by some Senate colleagues.

Five years later, do I regret sounding the alarm about marriage? No.

I'm just saddened that time has proved right those of us who worried about the future of marriage as the union of husband and wife, deeply rooted not only in our traditions, our faiths, but in the facts of human nature: as Pope Benedict said, "The cradle of life and love," connecting mothers and fathers to their children.

(Cue epithets: Bigot! Hate-monger! Homophobe!)

MY TAKE: Cue epithets? Against Rick Santorum? Me? I wouldn't dare. I leave that sort of thing to the experts:


(Contains naughty language.)
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are a group of non-bigoted, non-hate-mongering, non-homophobic anti-gay-marriage banditos. But Rick Santorum is not one of them.