Marriage & Family

Postponement and Corruption

By Justin Katz | February 2, 2009 |

Word on the street is that the RI Senate Judiciary Committee has indefinitely postponed its hearing on marriage issues. On a related note, a source in a position to know informs me that the reason even informed citizens can be surprised by such events is that the General Assembly exempts itself from open meeting laws.…

Government and Marriage

By Justin Katz | February 1, 2009 |

I’ve been getting notices of an RI Senate Judiciary Committee hearing concerning three marriage-related bills on Tuesday afternoon, but there’s currently no information online. The Judiciary Committee isn’t on the legislative calendar, and the schedule for the committee lists no meetings. Acknowledging the short time-frame in which they’ve been forced to act, the National Organization…

Life’s Potential

By Marc Comtois | January 23, 2009 |

(H/T)

Sitting Down with the Treasurer

By Justin Katz | January 21, 2009 |

RI General Treasurer Frank Caprio invited Anchor Rising for a sit-down chat in his office last night, centering on pension issues, but touching on various other matters. In general, I think the four of us in attendance were reasonably impressed with the treasurer’s explanations for economic policies and his knowledge of political history in Rhode…

Nonsense Opposition to DOMA

By Justin Katz | January 10, 2009 |

One doesn’t have to follow the same-sex marriage debate for long to recognize a strain of human tendencies with which I became familiar as an ideological minority in the college classroom. As I duked it out with the professor, most of the students would rush to take his or her side (silence from others being…

Redefine a Word and the Problem Goes Away!

By Justin Katz | December 29, 2008 |

Some readers may have found cause for a sparkle of hope in the following turnabout, as explained in the NY Times: The number of black children being raised by two parents appears to be edging higher than at any time in a generation, at nearly 40 percent, according to newly released census data. Demographers said…

All in the Name of Civil Rights

By Justin Katz | December 23, 2008 |

From the town hall to the courthouse, the same-sex marriage movement has been characterized by a willingness to disregard law and democratic practice. (Which isn’t surprising, from a crowd that goes so far as to declare a desire to defend a pivotal cultural institution to be bigotry.) California Attorney General Jerry Brown is the latest…

Allowing Respectful Adjustments

By Justin Katz | December 20, 2008 |

The solution that David Benkof describes is one that I’ve been suggesting for years: The 30 constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, including Proposition 8 in California, are a direct result of the lawsuits-for-marriage strategy practiced by gays and lesbians since the mid-Nineties, including successful suits in Massachusetts, California and Connecticut. So achieving marriage in three…

Didn’t Chuck and Larry Get “Married”?

By Justin Katz | December 2, 2008 |

I highlight this only because I think Crowley, in his ineptitude, stumbles into an error of reason that others exhibit more subtly. Pointing to the expressed concern of Howard Weizmann, deputy director of the U.S. Office Of Personnel Management, that expanded domestic partner benefits would increase incidents of the sorts of fraud depicted in I…

Pausing History for a Day

By Justin Katz | November 27, 2008 |

In the way that notions are stirred into the culture, like pollen dissipating into the air, the Tolstoyan view of individuals’ cumulative construction of history has been working its way again through the world of commentary. Our lives go on, and history follows. It occurred to me, looking at four generations of my family at…