Throwback Political Ad

And, since there's been so much Edwards content today:

Putting Same-Sex Marriage in Historical Perspective

As voters in California consider a ballot initiative that would define marriage as between one man and one woman, I would advise everyone to read this article from Stephanie Coontz. Coontz, who wrote the most definitive history of marriage as an institution to date, which accurately points out that the whole notion of a monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is a historically new phenomenon.

Historically, marriage has tended toward polygamy, and the emphasis hinged more on reproduction so that families could ensure the retention of property more than anything else. A man could take a new wife or concubine if his first wife proved to be infertile. Additionally, she notes that the church’s involvement in marriage is also fairly new, “For the first 16 centuries of its existence, Christianity held that the validity of a match was determined by a couple’s stated intention to be married, rather than by any formal ceremony or licensing process,” Coontz writes.

Recently, the government and religious institutions have increased involvement in what has traditionally been considered a family or private affair, Coontz notes. After freeing individuals from needing parental approval to get married, the courts also struck down regulations that banned marriage with someone of another race, a “drunk,” or someone with a venereal disease. All of those have been systematically struck down by the courts.

Coontz astutely points out:

These two innovations—channeling more benefits through marriage than in the past while also repealing the denial of individual choice to most groups—have given gays and lesbians a strong socioeconomic incentive to demand access to marriage and a strong moral argument to press their case on the basis of equal justice. And contrary to “Conventional Wisdom,” their case is also supported by the Western legal and religious tradition, which has never made ability to procreate a precondition for marriage and which traditionally accorded legal rights to many unions that religious leaders considered illicit or immoral.

In other words, Coontz finds it something of a historical paradox that even as laws have tended to increase the autonomy of the individual when it comes to marriage, there are simultaneous attempts to rob certain groups of that automony. Overall, people tend to be happier with a more or less monogamous relationships and increased autonomy. But it’s important not to be selective about that autonomy and understandable that groups would resent that exclusion.

Cross posted at Pushback.

Dear Gossip Blogs: Elizabeth Edwards Knows Things About Health Care!

Well this is annoying. Campus Progress, our sister organization, sponsored an event with Elizabeth Edwards and Ezra Klein to talk about health care on Monday. Since then, the story that has come out of the event was that– gasp!–Edwards wasn’t wearing her wedding ring (presumably fallout from her husband’s messy and publicly exposed affair).

Megan said it first, but I’ll second it: Edwards is a smart, wonky person who knows her stuff when it comes to health care. As a victim of breast cancer, she’s had some invaluable up-close-and-personal encounters with the health care system. She’s critical of both the health care plans proposed by the major party candidates and is a committed advocate of comprehensive health care reform. How obnoxious, then, that after an hour-and-a-half discussion about the intricacies of the health care system all anyone can talk about is her personal life.

I’ve said it before, but quite frankly John Edwards’ affair and the fallout from it is none of the public’s business. It’s clearly a very private issue, and it’s a shame that the gossip blogs have seized on this. And if we’re really honest and take a long hard look at this, affairs aren’t all that uncommon. They happen to people every day, and have for centuries. To single one family out for public judgment is unfair and unwarranted.

Yes, I know that this is what gossip blogs do, but come on, people. Rather than pegging her as a victim, we should allow her to do her public work. Edwards is an intelligent human being with a lot to say about one of the most important issues today. Can we at least acknowledge that she deserves credit for that?

Cross posted at Pushback.

A Long Way to Go

As always, via Megan, I read this insightful piece by Rebecca Traister in Salon. The piece takes a moment to acknowledge that this election season has seen some breakout female television news anchors and interviewers: Katie Couric, Campbell Brown, and Rachel Maddow. It's important to give these women their due, especially since just last election season the commentary was pretty much all old white dudes.

But even though it's important to acknowledge the achievements of the women at the top, it's also really important to look at the representation of women at all levels of media. It's a similar argument that Ann Friedman made in an issue of The American Prospect earlier this year: just because we have few token women at the top doesn't mean the work of gender equity is done.

Still women have barely broken into the upper ranks of journalism and women on the op-ed pages remain dismally around 30 percent of the bylines. Most of the features written in "serious" publications are written by men, and even though journalism schools train a lot of women that rarely translates into more female journalists. So while I respect the achievements of Couric, Brown, and Maddow, we shouldn't take this as a signal to be complacent. Women still have a long way to go to gain equity with their peers in media.

Halloween

I love Halloween. It's definitely one of my favorite holidays, if not my favorite holiday. I've loved it ever since I was a kid, and I just never grew out of it. This year, I'm going as Poison Ivy, one of the villains from the Batman comics.

What's interesting about Poison Ivy is that she's an eco-terrorist. She harks back to a day of a different kind of protesting. Now everyone's into "greening" and the environmental movement has become popular. But characters like Poison Ivy remind us that the environmental movement came from a pretty radical past. It wasn't that long ago that Greenpeace was attempting to forcibly shut down oil rigs, or that some animal rights activists sought to "free" animals from captivity.

Today the movement has mellowed out a lot. But it's also a lot more effective than it used to be. By making themselves less radical, the environmental activists were allowed to sit at the table and negotiate for favorable legislation. Granted, it seems like sometimes against an anti-environmentalist president it's all for naught, but there is real optimism within the environmental movement that they will get their message across soon.

Women and the Individual Health Insurance Market

Via Megan at Jezebel. So the New York Times reports something that I wrote about last week: The individual health insurance market is much more expensive for women than it is for men. Thanks to a report by the National Women’s Law Center, people are discovering that insurance companies are charging higher premiums–and often skipping out on key pieces of coverage like maternity care–for women that buy their insurance on the individual market. This graphic that the Times produced shows how women pay more across the board even if they live in different locations or are in different age groups.

There are some states that have already legislated regulation that bans gender bias, but many states don’t. Even fewer require maternity coverage on the individual market. And perhaps the most shocking part of the NWLC report is that in nine states and the District of Columbia, it is still legal to deny coverage for a victim of domestic violence–on the grounds that it is a pre-existing condition.

The reason that you won’t find such biases in employer-based coverage is because the courts have determined that many of the non-discrimination workplace laws (including the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978) also apply to employer-sponsored insurance coverage. So it seems that those same protections need to exist on the individual market, even though only about 7 percent of women get insured that way. Far more women–about 18 percent–are uninsured, perhaps because it’s so expensive to buy coverage on the individual market.

Cross posted at Pushback.

Ugly Betty's Cast: No on Prop 8

Via Feminocracy. Not only is Ugly Betty one of my favorite shows on television today, but the cast also made this great ad opposing Proposition 8 in California, which would eliminate the right of gays to marry.



The reason this strikes me as important is because it addresses the Latino community -- a heavily Catholic contingent. While research shows that Catholics are breaking away from the Church's political stances more and more, it's important to have Latino celebrities leading this progressive cause.

What's especially interesting about this commercial is that they directly point to the moral obligation to allow gays to marry and say that it destroys family. This directly assaults the language put forth by the pro-Prop 8 people.