Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Rich Lowry on President Obama and the stimulus package.

Who would have ever thought that a Democrat like Deval Patrick and a Republican like Michael Steele would see eye-to-eye on something?

At a February 13 Yale University event commemorating Black History Month, Patrick, the state’s first African-American governor, declared that the election of Barack Obama as President does not mean that racism has been fully conquered in the US. “The quest for social justice is never static, never complete,” Patrick asserted.

Steele, the first African-American to head the RNC, sounded a similar theme in a February 11 Black History Month speech at Archbishop Spalding High School in Severn, Maryland. Noting the racial heat he faced during his 2002 bid for Lieutenant Governor, Steele claimed said the notion that “[w]e got a black president so race is no longer an issue!” is “a load of crap.”

Patrick and Steele are about the same age, and faced similar incidents of post civil-rights-era racism. Patrick has often spoken of a horrible confrontation during his days at Milton Academy in the early 1970s, when he was harassed by a group of white teenagers at a McDonald’s near the school. In his Archbishop Spalding speech, Steele described a 1982 incident in which a planned interview for a paralegal position was abruptly cancelled once the interviewer realized he was black.

Both Patrick and Steele survived these negative experiences and went on to become prominent figures in American politics. The fact that they have achieved so much does not mean that racism has been defeated—but it’s certainly proof that racism has declined.

Of course, there will always be a dispute between conservatives and progressives about the extent to which it has declined. In his Yale speech, Patrick urged the audience: “Remember all those poor souls abandoned on rooftops after Hurricane Katrina. I ask you to consider whether they were abandoned before that storm.” He also noted that he had recently received an e-mail from a disgruntled individual who used the N-word to refer to his wife and children.

Patrick is right that the victims of Katrina were abandoned before the storm: he is wrong not to acknowledge that it was a white Democrat, Kathleen Blanco, who did the abandoning. As for the disgruntled e-mailer (who also accused Patrick of destroying the state), the governor is not alone in being the target of negative heat: Steele has been bombarded with all sorts from insults, from the far left and the far right, since his run for Lieutenant Governor. The extreme left has attacked Steele with the recycled slurs once used to describe Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, while the “wingnut” right has filled message boards on such sites as HotAir.com with assertions that Steele is a pseudo-Republican in the vein of Colin Powell and J. C. Watts (why not compare him to Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, if they’re going to make that argument?).

In their speeches, both Patrick and Steele acknowledged that the country has come a long way. At Yale, Patrick noted that his light-skinned grandmother would have to subvert the standards of segregation by entering restaurants before the rest of her family to get a table, thus making it difficult for the restaurants to force the other family members out when they took their seats. At Archbishop Spalding, Steele reminded the audience that when his mother moved to Washington, D.C., it was unheard of for blacks to socialize in the city’s Georgetown section.

Five decades ago, when causal racism flooded the United States, no one could have imagined that men like Patrick and Steele would have gone on to accomplish so much. Those negative tides have receded over the years, though as Patrick and Steele both note, there’s still some water damage.

This will likely never happen, but I’d love to see a debate between Patrick and Steele concerning politics and race. I’d like to see Patrick make the best case possible for why the Democrats have the prescription for curing the racial ills that still exist in the US, and I’d like to see Steele make a similar case for why the “Party of Lincoln” is the best vehicle to achieve racial equality in this country. There would be partisan attacks, claims and counterclaims, defensiveness and offensiveness, but at the end, there could be some understanding—and an agreement that while we may have a long way to go, it may not actually take that long to get there.

Friday the 13th tops the charts.

Jeff Jacoby on big government’s role in protecting Southern segregation.

The New York Times on Congressman Eric Cantor.

Fred Barnes interviews Jeb Bush.

John Hinderaker on Judd Gregg.

UPDATE: From the Wall Street Journal and William Kristol.

Michael Steele on the stimulus.

UPDATE: From David Brooks.

An update on the bizarre legal issue surrounding former WRKO Radio star Reese Hopkins.

Thomas Sowell on political bias in education.

Is there a conservative case for same-sex marriage?

Last week was the fifth anniversary of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s issuance of an advisory opinion declaring that the state legislature could not attempt to substitute civil unions for same-sex marriage as a means of complying with the Court’s November 2003 Goodridge ruling. This advisory opinion essentially cleared the path for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.

The controversy over same-sex marriage continues today, and it seems likely that, sometime within the next decade or so, the US Supreme Court will make its voice heard on this issue. What if the Court says something that conservative opponents of same-sex marriage don’t want to hear?

On November 22, 2003, New York Times columnist David Brooks argued that “…The conservative course [should not be] to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn’t just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity… It’s going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage. Not making it means drifting further into the culture of contingency, which, when it comes to intimate and sacred relations, is an abomination.”

In an editorial printed in its December 22, 2003 issue, the editors of National Review responded: “If that is the conservative case for gay marriage, what would the utopian one be?”

In truth, there is no such thing as a conservative case for same-sex marriage. Conservatism, so rooted in notions of traditional moral values, cannot countenance the concept of an alternation in the definition of marriage. Describing marriage as anything other than the union of a man and a woman strikes most conservatives as bizarre.

There is, of course, a non-partisan case for same-sex marriage, one based on the public-equality principle the SJC invoked in its November 2003 and February 2004 rulings. The Court made clear that the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples essentially consigned those couples to second-class status, something the Court obviously found intolerable. There is an objective argument to be made that, in order for a civil society to treat people equally regardless of sexual orientation, same-sex marriage must be allowed.

This argument would be rejected by most conservatives, who would argue that equality, while a noble goal, should not supersede tradition on the list of common virtues. However, it seems inevitable that the political entity conservatives use to express their views will one day take a different position.

It’s been recognized that there is little opposition to the concept of same-sex marriage among American voters under the age of 35. If their acceptance of same-sex marriage remains into their later years, these voters will logically force a change in the Republican Party’s view of the concept.

Once the GOP senses that the political winds have shifted in favor of same-sex marriage, you can bet the bank that the party will quietly abandon its opposition to the idea, and begin to embrace arguments similar to those espoused by Brooks. As America slowly becomes more libertarian in its view of same-sex marriage (the controversy over California’s Proposition 8 notwithstanding), the Republicans will surely chase the trend. This will cause some consternation on the right, but what will conservative opponents of same-sex marriage do if they’re outnumbered, politically and culturally?

It only takes a generation or so for concepts once considered radical to be considered normal. Let’s not forget that the concept of marriage between people of different races once faced the same hostility that now greets the concept of marriage between people of similar genders. It wasn’t that long ago when Sammy Davis Jr. caught all sorts of public grief for marrying May Britt. Now, we have a President borne of a marriage once considered scandalous.

The day will come when a Supreme Court with a progressive majority renders a ruling that will nationalize same-sex marriage the same way Loving v. Virginia nationalized marriage between people of different races. Republicans will react by attempting to take advantage of the cultural shift for electoral gain. Yet how will conservatives react? Will conservatives view the ruling the same way they view Roe v. Wade—as an act of unconscionable judicial activism? Or will they make peace with such a ruling, recognizing it as a sign of changing social mores?

Jed Babbin on President Obama and the stimulus package.

Allen Guelzo on conservatism and academia.

He’s Just Not That Into You tops the charts.

The Boston Globe on WBZ Radio star Steve LeVeille.