Apparently, this front-page photo made 27 people mad enough to cancel their subscriptions to the Washington Post:

Two happy couples express their enthusiasm as the District begins taking applications for marriage licenses from same-sex couples. At top are Jeremy Ames, left, and Taka Ariga. Photo Credit: Photos By Bill O'leary/the Washington Post Photo

So, why did nearly half of WaPo’s subscribers cancel?  A few people wrote  ombudsman Andy Alexander using anti-gay slurs. Mostly, though, it was mothers who didn’t want their kids exposed to such displays and grandmothers who really didn’t want to watch the world changing quite so fast.    Alexander defends the photo choice:

Did the Post go too far? Of course not. The photo deserved to be in newspaper and on its Web site, and it warranted front-page display.

News photos capture reality. And the prominent display reflects the historic significance of what was occurring. The recent D.C. Council decision to approve same-sex marriage was the culmination of a decades-long gay rights fight for equality. Same-sex marriage is now legal in the District. The photo of Ames and Ariga kissing simply showed joy that would be exhibited by any couple planning to wed – especially a couple who previously had been denied the legal right to marry.

There was a time, after court-ordered integration, when readers complained about front-page photos of blacks mixing with whites. Today, photo images of same-sex couples capture the same reality of societal change.

One can argue whether “mixing” and kissing are equivalent, much less whether homosexual conduct and the mere fact of being black are.  But, certainly, there’s bound to be a major backlash when culturally controversial change is given such prominent treatment.

Is that fact that gay dudes are openly smootching in front of the courthouse — in broad daylight fer Chrissakes! — startling to some?  Much less lining up to get licenses to marry one another?  Of course. That’s precisely why this was front-page news in DC’s major newspaper.   So, I have to agree with Mediaite’s Drew Grant that, “if you don’t like it, feel free to cancel your Post subscription and live in the alternate reality where the news only reflects what you want to hear. It’s called cable.”

Interestingly — and perhaps proving Alexander’s point — there doesn’t seem to have been any complaint about the hot Anglo-on-Asian action.

A headline I never thought I’d see: “Military to Review Sodomy Ban.”  Then again, having long since gotten rid of rum and the lash, I suppose this day was inevitable.

The Pentagon’s chief legal counsel said a nine-month study on gays in the military will likely review rules for troops on sodomy and oral sex.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits sodomy and oral sex, even among consenting adults and married couples.

Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson, who is helping to lead a study on the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, said he planned to review all related aspects of the military legal code.  When asked by Arkansas Democratic Rep. Vic Snyder whether that review will extend to the rules on sodomy and oral sex, Johnson said yes.

For those readers uninitiated in military culture, let me assure you that the ban on oral sex is not vigorously enforced.

Nor, incidentally, is it specifically included in the code.  Oral sex is a form of sodomy, after all.   And sodomy is banned as one of the Punitive Articles under the UCMJ, Article 125:

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration , however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.
(b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

Amusingly, at least to me, it is listed after maiming but before arson and extortion.  I envision senior officers sitting around a conference table listing offenses that should be banned and just writing them down in the order that they sprang to mind.  But perhaps there was some more systematic rationale.

As to the merits of repealing the ban, it strikes me as inevitable.   We’re going to end the ban on gays serving openly sooner or later — probably sooner.  It would be truly bizarre to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and replace it with “okay, fine, but if you have sex you’re going to jail.”

Further, as a recent report noted, current enforcement is arbitrary and capricious.

The Commission on Military Justice recommended that Article 125, which deals with sodomy, be repealed, arguing that “most acts of consensual sodomy committed by consenting military personnel are not prosecuted, creating a perception that prosecution of this sexual behavior is arbitrary.”

In its report — dated October 2009 — the commission suggested several changes be made to the UCMJ, including a requirement that law enforcement officials videotape interrogations. The panel’s discussion of Article 125 has gotten the attention of “don’t ask, don’t tell” opponents.

“Public opinion about private, consensual sexual conduct has shifted dramatically since the military sodomy ban was written into law almost a hundred years ago,” according to Nathaniel Frank, a senior research fellow at the Palm Center, a University of California, Santa Barbara, research institute focusing on gays and the military.

Article 125 is enforced, then, either when the convening authority is particularly prudish or as a means of going after a soldier who has otherwise alienated himself from his commander. Thankfully, however, there’s always Article 134 (”Though not specifically mentioned in this chapter, all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital, of which persons subject to this chapter may be guilty, shall be taken cognizance of by a general, special or summary court-martial, according to the nature and degree of the offense, and shall be punished at the discretion of that court.”).

Virginia’s new Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, reversed his predecessor’s order prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.   It happened twelve days ago but no one apparently noticed until TPM’s Christina Bellantoni broke the story:

Gay and lesbian state workers in Virginia are no longer specifically protected against discrimination, thanks to a little-noticed change made by new Gov. Bob McDonnell.

McDonnell (R) on Feb. 5 signed an executive order that prohibits discrimination “on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, religion, age, political affiliation, or against otherwise qualified persons with disabilities,” as well as veterans.  It rescinds the order that Gov. Tim Kaine signed Jan. 14, 2006 as one of his first actions. After promising a “fair and inclusive” administration in his inaugural address, Kaine (D) added veterans to the non-discrimination policy – and sexual orientation.

[...]

In another development, the Washington Post reported that a measure passed the Democratic-controlled state Senate that would protect state workers from discrimination due to sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. The bill is all-but-certain to fail in the Republican-controlled House of Delegates.

Not a particularly surprising development.  McDonnell is an unabashed evangelical and social conservative and Virginia is, outside the DC suburbs where I live, a staunchly conservative state.

Further, McDonnell’s office issued a statement saying, “It shall be the policy of the office of the Governor to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace, encourage excellence by rewarding achievement based on merit, and prohibit discrimination for any reason. Hiring, promotion, discipline and termination of employees shall be based on qualifications, performance and results.”  One presumes that will in fact be the case.

Indeed, it’s difficult to see how the state government could win a suit in which there was blatant discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation regardless of the state of this executive order.   My sense, then, is that this is a sop to the base with no meaning.  It’s interesting, though, that this was done with so little fanfare that we’re just now hearing about it.

“Support for Gays in the Military Depends on the Question,” Kevin Hechtkopf informs us in the No Duh Headline of the Week. But the specifics are interesting: It seems people are much more sympathetic to “gays and lesbians” than to “homosexuals.”

A new CBS News/ New York Times poll finds that the wording of the question is key when it comes to determining whether Americans support allowing gays to serve in the military.

In the poll, 59 percent say they now support allowing “homosexuals” to serve in the U.S. military, including 34 percent who say they strongly favor that. Ten percent say they somewhat oppose it and 19 percent say they strongly oppose it. But the numbers differ when the question is changed to whether Americans support “gay men and lesbians” serving in the military. When the question is asked that way, 70 percent of Americans say they support gay men and lesbians serving in the military, including 19 percent who say they somewhat favor it. Seven percent somewhat oppose it, and 12 percent strongly oppose it.

When it comes to whether Americans support allowing gays to serve openly, there is also a difference based on the term used. When referred to as “homosexuals,” 44 percent favor allowing them to serve openly. When referred to as “gay men and lesbians,” the percentage rises to 58 percent.

[...]

No matter the term used, support for gays to serve in the military has risen since 1993, when the debate arose early in Bill Clinton’s presidency. In 1993, 42 percent said they favored allowing homosexuals to serve, with 21 percent saying they strongly favored it; that compared to 42 percent who opposed allowing them to serve (29 percent strongly). In 1993, 37 percent said they supported allowing homosexuals to serve openly and 56 percent opposed. However, support is down from one year ago, when 67 percent said they supported allowing homosexuals to serve (46 percent strongly).

I’m not sure I can explain the vast differences in the poll results, other than perhaps  “gays and lesbians” is more humanizing than the more clinical “homosexuals.”   I’m also unsure why we’d see a big drop in support for gays in the military from last year; perhaps it’s a function of President Obama’s finally pressing the issue and the fact that his approval numbers have plummeted (although they’re still remarkably high, considering the state of the economy and the political climate).

Both Steve Chapman and Ilya Somin argue that, since other countries let gays serve in the military without harming unit cohesion, America can, too.

Chapman:

It’s not completely implausible that in a military environment, open homosexuality might wreak havoc on order and morale. But the striking thing about these claims is that they exist in a fact-free zone. From all the dire predictions, you would think a lifting of the ban would be an unprecedented leap into the dark, orchestrated by people who know nothing of the demands of military life.

[...]

A couple of dozen countries already allow gays in uniform—including allies that have fought alongside our troops, such as Britain, Canada, and Australia. Just as there is plenty of opposition in the U.S. ranks, there was plenty of opposition when they changed their policies.

In Canada, 45 percent of service members said they would not work with gay colleagues, and a majority of British soldiers and sailors rejected the idea. There were warnings that hordes of military personnel would quit and promising youngsters would refuse to enlist.

But when the new day arrived, it turned out to be a big, fat non-event. The Canadian government reported “no effect.” The British government observed “a marked lack of reaction.” An Australian veterans group that opposed admitting gays later admitted that the services “have not had a lot of difficulty in this area.”

Israel, being small, surrounded by hostile powers, and obsessed with security, can’t afford to jeopardize its military strength for the sake of prissy ventures in political correctness. But its military not only accepts gays, it provides benefits to their same-sex partners, as it does with spouses. Has that policy sapped Israel’s military might? Its enemies don’t seem eager to test the proposition.

You could argue that none of these experiences is relevant, since, being Americans, we are utterly unique. But our soldiers don’t seem to have any trouble fighting alongside gay soldiers from allied nations.

Somin:

The Australian, British, Canadian, and Israeli armed forces are all among the best in the world. If they allow gays to serve openly with no ill effects, that strong suggests that the US can as well.

I have not followed the literature on this subject in detail. So it’s possible that there is a body of data somewhere showing that these nations’ military capability really has been impaired in some way by allowing gays to serve. I highly doubt it, but I lack the knowledge and expertise to be sure.

One could also argue that the US armed forces are so different from those of these other countries that their experience is irrelevant. Given the quality of these armies and the fact that all of them rely heavily on US-style weapons, organization, and military doctrine, I’m skeptical of that claim too.

It may be that US troops are much more homophobic than those of these other countries, and therefore won’t effectively serve with gays. That too seems a dubious argument. An April 2009 poll showed that 50% of survey respondents in military households support letting gays serve openly, with 43% opposed; 56% reject the view that allowing gays to serve openly would be “divisive.” That suggests that homophobia in the military is far from universal. As Chapman points out, there was no outcry by servicemembers or decline in unit cohesion when the ban on openly gay troops was temporarily lifted during the 1991 Gulf War. Attitudes towards gays are considerably more favorable today, which makes problems even less likely.

Now, I happen to think that the British and Canadian experience would be replicated if the policy was overturned.  Our troops would mostly put up with it, incidents of violence would be few, and the heterosexuals who couldn’t cope with the change would be out of the service soon enough.  But we won’t know that until it happens.

The “unit morale” argument is almost entirely one of cultural aversion to homosexuality which is both very real — especially in the military — and rapidly declining.  American culture — and the American military subculture — is much more religious and intolerance of deviancy from cultural norms than most Western societies.

The cited Quinnipiac poll isn’t particularly relevant.  It shows strong pluralities of Americans opposing homosexuality and the open integration of gays into the military.  This was even higher “among voters with family in the military” (whatever that means). And, I’d venture, it’s much higher among young enlisted infantrymen, the demographic that would be most impacted by the change.

My guess is that President Obama won’t be immediately successful in changing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Further, Congress would have to change the Uniform Code of Military Justice and we’ve already seen how cooperative Senate Republicans are on controversial issues.   But the change will come, almost certainly within this decade.  As with the integration of blacks and women, the culture will adapt over time.  But let’s not pretend that it’ll be “a big, fat nothing.”

Also, let’s not pretend, as Madeleine Kunin does, that “the military leadership” is behind this push for change.  Some may privately support it but most likely prefer a status quo they know to the unknown, especially with two wars underway.  JCS Chairman Mike Mullen and SECDEF Robert Gates are advancing the position of their Commander-in-Chief, not giving us their personal views on the subject.

UPDATE: To be clear, I’m not saying that Gates and Mullen are lying to Congress.  I have no inside knowledge of their current, personal views.   But sitting cabinet secretaries and JCS Chairmen carry the water for the boss, regardless of their private views, or they resign.

UPDATE II:  The Conservative Wahoo agrees that the “other countries do it argument” is specious.  But his conclusion is right:

No, the only reason to overturn DADT would be the recognition that excluding gay people–qualified in every other way–makes us a less combat ready force, a force appropriate to the needs and interests of the world’s most important power. Not because the Brits do it or the Israelis do it. Not because our military should reflect our society.

And it is my opinion that we are losing talented people whose presence in the ranks far outweighs whatever loss in unit cohesion might apply. Unit cohesion isn’t binary–a 1 or a 0. It is a continuum, constantly changing, increasing and decreasing as leadership and unit make-up changes. What matters most are how good you are and how well you work with the others. I’m convinced that gay people can do those things as well as straight people.

That’s the essential issue.  We conservatives have long argued that the military is a war-fighting instrument, not a social laboratory or even a jobs factory.  But the evidence is piling up that DADT is costing us skilled warriors that we need in the fight.

How gay is the U.S. military?

An estimated 66,000 gay, lesbian and bisexual people are serving in the U.S. military, roughly 2 percent of all military personnel, according to a report released Tuesday by a gay rights policy center. The figures suggest a slight increase in the number of gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the military, and they provide opponents of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with fresh data as they lobby the Obama administration for its repeal.

Gays, lesbians and bisexuals account for about 13,000 active duty service members, equal to less than 1 percent currently deployed, the report estimated. About 53,000 others serve in the National Guard and reserves, equaling about 3.4 percent.

The actual number of gays, lesbians and bisexuals serving in uniform is unknown; the military does not track such figures. The research brief was released by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, a public policy institute that studies sexual orientation law.

Its authors used a variety of statistical methods to arrive at the estimate, drawing in part on the Census Bureau’s 2008 American Community Survey and the 2000 Census, in which some people identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual and as serving in the military. A similar 2004 study, widely quoted by gay rights advocates and supportive lawmakers, estimated that roughly 65,000 gay people were serving in the military.

There’s no way to know, really, since gays can’t openly serve in the military.  But it strikes me as incredibly unlikely that a self-selected group that actively excludes homosexuals — and where gay jokes are a 24 hour enterprise — would happen to have the same percentage of homosexuals as society as a whole.

Regardless, there’s not much doubt that the actual numbers of gays in the military is non-zero and non-trivial.  And, yet, we’re somehow managing to fight two major wars, a handful of undeclared smaller ones, and a major humanitarian relief effort without issue.  Or, at least, issues related to the sexual orientation of those serving.

Non-statistical aside:  Doing a Google Image search for “gay military” is not advisable for those at work.

Story via Gabriel Malor.

Dave Schuler passes along Ralph Peters‘ reaction to the Pentagon’s review of the Fort Hood shootings,  which both echoes my own immediate reaction and goes light years too far.

Rarely in the course of human events has a report issued by any government agency been so cowardly and delusional. It’s so inept, it doesn’t even rise to cover-up level. “Protecting the Force: Lessons From Fort Hood” never mentions Islamist terror. Its 86 mind-numbing pages treat “the alleged perpetrator,” Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter (guess they’re still looking for the pickup truck with the gun rack).

[...]

The teensy bit of specific criticism is reserved for the “military medical officer supervisors” in Maj. Hasan’s chain of command at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As if the problem started and ended there. Unquestionably, the officers who let Hasan slide, despite his well-known wackiness and hatred of America, bear plenty of blame. But this disgraceful pretense of a report never asks why they didn’t stop Hasan’s career in its tracks.

The answer is straightforward: Hasan’s superiors feared — correctly — that any attempt to call attention to his radicalism or to prevent his promotion would backfire on them, destroying their careers, not his. Hasan was a protected-species minority. Under the PC tyranny of today’s armed services, no non-minority officer was going to take him on. This is a military that imposes rules of engagement that protect our enemies and kill our own troops and that court-martials heroic SEALs to appease a terrorist. Ain’t many colonels willing to hammer the Army’s sole Palestinian-American psychiatrist.

The rhetoric is a bit overheated for my tastes but Peters has made a post-military (he’s a retired Army intelligence lieutenant colonel) career out of railing against the defense bureaucracy and he’s essentially right. But he takes this to its illogical conclusion:

In the end, the report contents itself with pretending that the accountability problem was isolated within the military medical community at Walter Reed. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. Murderous political correctness is pervasive in our military. The medical staff at Walter Reed is just where the results began to manifest themselves in Hasan’s case.

Once again, the higher-ups blame the worker bees who were victims of the policy the higher-ups inflicted on them. This report’s spinelessness is itself an indictment of our military’s failed moral and ethical leadership.

Look, we’ve got to change a system where someone so blatantly outspoken in his sympathies for his country’s enemies can be weeded out.   But let’s not pretend that there are hundreds of Hasans out there in the ranks, ready to rise up and commit jihad against their erstwhile comrades-in-arms.

The United States military long had difficulties with intolerance of difference, whether of race, gender, ethnicity, or political outlook.

During the first half of  my dad’s career (which spanned from 1962 to 1983) blacks and Hispanics faced hostility from an Army culture that is exceedingly Southern.  That’s largely gone; racial minorities likely face greater acceptance in the military than in most workplaces.

When I first went into the military, starting as a cadet in 1984, most of us — and, yes, I include myself — were hostile to the presence of female soldiers, thinking most of them unfit for service and the impact on esprit and unit discipline not worth whatever benefit derived from the handful of good ones.  Why, the military isn’t a social experiment; it’s a fighting force.  But politicians kept forcing the military to allow women into more and more career fields that the military’s leadership thought they couldn’t do.   Lo and behold, they’ve done pretty well for themselves.  There’s still some resistance to the role of women in the force — especially in the Navy, for understandable reasons — but the culture has changed.

A primary mechanism for making this work was a system that made it very difficult for officers to get promoted if they were perceived as anything less than wholly enthusiastic of then new policies.  Like anything else that bureaucracies do, it naturally went too far.  For example, when women were first allowed to become fighter pilots, too few of them were selected for candidacy and the people in charge of training were afraid to wash out the ones who weren’t hacking it.  People died.  Arguably, the same thing happened in Hasan’s case.

But, as Bernard Finel points out, part of the problem is that the Army is having a hard time attracting psychiatrists, Palestinian or otherwise.  And, since the main weeding mechanism is periodic promotions, incompetents are likely to get a free pass.   The system just isn’t designed to get rid of people unless they’re up from promotion.  So, absent a court martial or some sort of administrative discharge for incompatibility for service, it was going to be extremely difficult to get rid of Hasan.

I’d like to fix that.   Not just for the purposes of getting potential serial killers and terrorists out of uniform — it’s hard to design a system around extremely unlikely contingencies — but to ensure that our soldiers have the leadership they need and deserve.  At the same time, we shouldn’t overreact to the point that it’s open season on Muslims — or people with funny sounding names — in uniform.

The potentially good news is that we happen to have a commander-in-chief named Barack Hussein Obama.   For a variety of reasons, I didn’t vote for him and likely won’t next time.   But there is a certain “only Nixon can go to China” advantage in having the boss inoculated from criticism for bigotry when the policy goes in the other direction.  And, one would think, a certain interest in making sure we don’t overcorrect, too.

America’s senior military leadership is considering the ramifications of allowing homosexuals to openly serve.

The discussions, centered in a small group assembled by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are in preparation for a possible Senate hearing on the 1993 law this month.

In the year since Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the Pentagon has moved slowly on the issue and even now internal dissent remains over how fast any change should be instituted. At a meeting last week of Admiral Mullen and the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, the officers debated the timing of any repeal and how much stress it would place on the forces.

A one-page memorandum drafted by staff members as a discussion point for the meeting said that the chiefs could adopt the view that “now is not the time” because of the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that the military would be better off delaying the start of the repeal process until 2011.

The same memorandum, according to a military official who has seen it, also said that “every indicator of opinion over the past 16 years shows movement toward nondiscrimination based on orientation” and that “in time the law will change.”

The official said the memorandum did not necessarily reflect the views of Admiral Mullen and the chiefs. “Not all their views are the same,” the official said.

Neither Admiral Mullen nor Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has publicly voiced an opinion on allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly, although Admiral Mullen permitted a recent article criticizing the prohibition to appear in a military journal that he oversees.

The military’s academic journals have long allowed thoughtful, academic discussion of issues of interest to its members. That doesn’t imply tacit endorsement.

Ultimately, the military will do what it’s told and cope with the fallout as best it can.  But there’s no doubt that there will be fallout. Military culture has moved substantially since 1993, when the current policy went into place, but it’s still much more conservative than that of the society writ large.

Whether forced on it by civilian leaders or allowed to evolve on its own, gays will be allowed to serve openly within the near future.  The only questions are how it’s implemented, when it happens, and how the fallout will be dealt with.

The most prominent argument against allowing same-sex couples to marry is that it somehow harms traditional marriage. Nate Silver argues that the anecdotal evidence would suggest just the opposite:  A tolerant view of marriage coincides with lower divorce rates.

Over the past decade or so, divorce has gradually become more uncommon in the United States. Since 2003, however, the decline in divorce rates has been largely confined to states which have not passed a state constitutional ban on gay marriage. These states saw their divorce rates decrease by an average of 8 percent between 2003 and 2008. States which had passed a same-sex marriage ban as of January 1, 2008, however, saw their divorce rates rise by about 1 percent over the same period.

The table below details the divorce rates for the 43 states that reported their divorce statistics to the CDC in both 2003 and 2008. It is calculated by taking the total number of divorces in the state that year, and dividing it by the number of married persons, as reported by the Census Bureau. The result is then multiplied by two, since each divorce involves two people. This is different than how the divorce rate is sometimes calculated, which may be as a share of the overall population rather than the number of married persons; I prefer my approach because it will not penalize a state for having a lot of marriages (and therefore more opportunities for divorce).

Visually, the correlation looks pretty spotty.  Virtually all of the states have affirmatively banned gay marriage and a goodly number have also banned civil unions.  They’re all over the rankings.  Meanwhile, only five states have legalized gay marriage and they’re spread out pretty well, too.   And the states at the very bottom, which have all banned gay marriage, increased by large percentages from very low baselines.  (The exception being Nevada which should, of course, be tossed from the list since it’s a notorious divorce haven.)

Indeed, what’s remarkable from the list is how incredibly small the divorce rate as a share of marriages is across the board.  Aside from Nevada, no state has a rate above 2.58% and most have rates under 2%.

But looks can be deceiving:

Overall, the states which had enacted a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage as of 1/1/08 saw their divorce rates rise by 0.9 percent over the five-year interval. States which had not adopted a constitutional ban, on the other hand, experienced an 8.0 percent decline, on average, in their divorce rates. Eleven of the 24 states (46 percent) to have altered their constitutions by 1/1/08 to ban gay marriage experienced an overall decline in their divorce rates, but 13 of the 19 which hadn’t did (68 percent).

But you’re dealing with some mighty small n’s here.  The top category has one case. The second category consists of  12 states but is utterly meaningless (what’s the difference between banning gay marriage in the constitution vice by statute?).  The third category is virtually every state in the union.

Beyond all that, Nate’s a much more adept statistician than I am.  But even I know that doing correlation analysis to analyze sophisticated social phenomena is absurd.  Unless we’re factoring in the variables known to impact marriage success rate (age at time of marriage, presence of children from prior marriages, different religious backgrounds, financial circumstances, race, prior cohabitation, etc.) so that we’re comparing apples to apples, we have no way of knowing what impact, if any, the legal status of gay marriage has on the overall divorce rate.

Indeed, Nate admits this:

The differences are highly statistically significant. Nevertheless, they do not necessarily imply causation. The decision to ban same-sex marriage does not occur randomly throughout the states, but instead is strongly correlated with other factors, such as religiosity and political ideology, which we have made no attempt to account for. Nor do we know in which way the causal arrow might point. It could be that voters who have more marital problems of their own are more inclined to deny the right of marriage to same-sex couples.

But that doesn’t make sense.  They’re anti-gay, after all.  Why would they want to save gays from an institution that they personally find intolerable?  The much more plausible explanation is that they honestly think gay marriage is immoral and they want to preserve matrimony as a sacramental relationship.

Houston Mayor-elect Annise Parker, center, celebrates with her partner Kathy Hubbard, left, Parker’s runoff election victory at a campaign party on Saturday in Houston. David J. Phillip/Associated Press

I’d bet more Americans could name the head coach of the Houston Texans than the mayor of Houston, Texas. And that’s saying something, because the Texans aren’t very good. Nonetheless, the results of the Houston mayoral race is the top story in the blogosphere this morning.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Houston became the largest city in the United States to elect an openly gay mayor on Saturday night, as voters gave a solid victory to the city controller, Annise Parker.

Cheers and dancing erupted at Ms. Parker’s campaign party as her opponent, Gene Locke, a former city attorney, conceded defeat just after 10 p.m. when it became clear he could not overcome her lead.

Twenty minutes later, Ms. Parker appeared before ecstatic supporters at the city’s convention center and then joked that she was the first graduate of Rice University to be elected mayor. (She is, by the way.) Then she grew serious.  “Tonight the voters of Houston have opened the door to history,” she said, standing by her partner of 19 years, Kathy Hubbard, and their three adopted children. “I acknowledge that. I embrace that. I know what this win means to many of us who never thought we could achieve high office.”

[...]

Throughout the campaign, Ms. Parker tried to avoid making an issue of her sexual orientation and emphasized her experience in overseeing the city’s finances. But she began her career as an advocate for gay rights in the 1980s, and it was lost on no one in Houston, a city of 2.2 million people, that her election marked a milestone for gay men and lesbians around the country.

Several smaller cities in other regions have chosen openly gay mayors, among them Providence, R.I., Portland, Ore., and Cambridge, Mass. But Ms. Parker’s success came in a conservative state where voters have outlawed gay marriage and a city where a referendum on granting benefits to same-sex partners of city employees was soundly defeated.

Turnout was light across the city on a rainy, foggy day, with only about 16 percent of registered voters going to the polls.

Ms. Parker’s sexual orientation did not become an issue in the race until after the general election produced no winner and led to a run-off between her and Mr. Locke, who is black and enjoys strong support among African-American voters.

[...]

But the ugliest attacks came from a group of black pastors who spoke out against Ms. Parker for what they called her gay agenda and two separate anti-gay advocates who sent out fliers in the mail calling attention to her support from gay groups and to her relationship with her partner. Mr. Locke denied having anything to do with the attacks, but two members of his finance committee gave $40,000 to help finance one of the mailings.

Some national gay-rights groups, meanwhile, came to the aid of Ms. Parker’s campaign with money and volunteers to man telephone banks in a get-out-the-vote effort and to urge her likely supporters to vote.

Political strategists said that to win, Mr. Locke needed to carry a large majority of the black vote, which is usually around a third of the turnout, and to attract significant support from conservative whites, many of them Republicans, who are also about a third of the voting mix here.

[...]

Ms. Parker appeared to have cobbled together a winning coalition of white liberals and gay people, who were expected to turn out in large numbers.

I’m honestly not sure that we can draw major conclusions from run-off elections in off years.  When only 16 percent of registered voters bother to show up, it’s not exactly a popular referendum.   And that’s especially true in an open primary like this one, where the top two vote-getters are liberal Democrats.

Interestingly, Houston is the 4th largest city (ranked by population) in the United States.  Everybody knows that New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are the top three.  But while it gets only a fraction of the attention, Houston is only somewhat smaller (2.2M vs 2.8M) than Chicago and is leaps and bounds ahead of the 5th largest city, Philadelphia (1.4M).  Even if we rank cities by the way we think of them — considering the suburbs and the broader metropolitan areas, not just the people living within the city limits — the Houston area is 6th, behind Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington and Philly-Camden-Wilmington.

Via Radley Balko, an illustration of why men shouldn’t write advice columns:

I dunno, this seems like very good advice to me.

One of the oddities of collegiate recruiting that has long fascinated me is the use of attractive women as bait.  Inside Higher Ed calls my attention to a NYT report that the practice is drawing scrutiny from the NCAA.

The N.C.A.A. is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into the University of Tennessee’s football recruiting practices, according to interviews with several prospects, their family members and high school administrators. A significant part of the investigation is focused on the use of recruiting hostesses who have become folk heroes on Tennessee Internet message boards for their ability to help lure top recruits.

[...]

Interviews with multiple recruits and their family members revealed that the N.C.A.A. has strong interest in Tennessee’s use of recruiting hostesses, students who are part of a formal group at the university that hosts all manner of prospective students at campus visits, including athletes. It is not clear whether the university sent the hostesses to visit the football players.

In one case, hostesses traveled nearly 200 miles to attend a high school game in South Carolina in which at least three Tennessee recruits were playing. Marcus Lattimore, a running back who made an unofficial visit to Tennessee but said he would not enroll there, said multiple Tennessee hostesses attended a game at James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., in September. He said they brought signs, including one that read, “Come to Tennessee.” “I haven’t seen no other schools do that,” he said. “It’s crazy.”

The hostesses are considered representatives of the university, which would mean they could not recruit players off campus. Therefore, the visits may be considered violations of N.C.A.A. recruiting rules.

[...]

Some recruits say their influence is significant. “You don’t want to go to a college where they ain’t pretty,” Lattimore said.

Frankly, the fact that these young women are “representatives of the university” and that their travel might amount to a secondary rules violation strikes me as a side issue.   That universities are using attractive co-eds as institutionalized recruiting tools, with quid pro quo either real or implied, is the real scandal.  And it’s been going on for years.

Perusing Yahoo! News last night, I came across a rather amusing AP story titled “Tiger’s troubles widen his distance from blacks.”

Amid all the headlines generated by Tiger Woods’ troubles — the puzzling car accident, the suggestions of marital turmoil and multiple mistresses — little attention has been given to the race of the women linked with the world’s greatest golfer. Except in the black community.

When three white women were said to be romantically involved with Woods in addition to his blonde, Swedish wife, blogs, airwaves and barbershops started humming, and Woods’ already tenuous standing among many blacks took a beating.

On the nationally syndicated Tom Joyner radio show, Woods was the butt of jokes all week.   “Thankfully, Tiger, you didn’t marry a black woman. Because if a sister caught you running around with a bunch of white hoochie-mamas,” one parody suggests in song, she would have castrated him.  “The Grinch’s Theme Song” didn’t stop there: “The question everyone in America wants to ask you is, how many white women does one brother waaant?”

As one blogger, Robert Paul Reyes, wrote: “If Tiger Woods had cheated on his gorgeous white wife with black women, the golfing great’s accident would have been barely a blip in the blogosphere.”

The darts reflect blacks’ resistance to interracial romance. They also are a reflection of discomfort with a man who has smashed barriers in one of America’s whitest sports and assumed the mantle of the world’s most famous athlete, once worn by Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan.

But Woods has declined to identify himself as black, and famously chose the term “Cablinasian” (Caucasian, black, Indian and Asian) to describe the racial mixture he inherited from his African-American father and Thai mother.

So much for the post-racial America that the election of a biracial president who looks black was supposed to yield. But it’s not surprising, really.

Stacy McCain defends AP from charges of racism, observing, “Imagine the media uproar if white people had made a race issue about Tiger Woods’ affairs. Therefore, if Associated Press had ignored the (evidently) widespread criticism from blacks, they might have been accused of bias, as if black criticism of Woods was not newsworthy.”

True. Although I’d wager they’d have treated the story much differently.

NYDailyNews headlined the same story “Tiger Woods alienates black community with white lovers.”  But the point isn’t that Tom Joyner (no relation, so far as I know) or the other blacks in the story are racist.  It’s merely an interesting cultural phenomenon.

Black women have long felt slighted by the tendency of famous black men to pair with white women, and many have a list of current transgressors at the ready.  “We’ve discussed this for years among black women,” said Denene Millner, author of several books on black relationships. “Why is it when they get to this level … they tend to go directly for the nearest blonde?”

[...]

“There is a call for loyalty that is stronger in some ways than in other racial communities,” said the author of the study, George Yancey, a sociology professor at the University of North Texas and author of the book “Just Don’t Marry One.”

[...]

Carmen Van Kerckhove, founder of the race-meets-pop-culture blog Racialicious, said there have been frequent discussions on her site about the fine line between preference and fetish. “Is there any difference between a white guy with a thing for blondes, and a non-white guy with a thing for blondes?” asked Van Kerckhove, who has a Chinese mother, a Belgian father and a husband born in America to parents from Benin. She claims that Asians don’t fully embrace Woods, either. “There are two layers of suspicion toward him,” Van Kerkhove said. “One toward the apparent pattern in the race of his partners, and the second in the way he sees himself. … People have been giving him the side-eye for a while.”

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a mate who shares your culture, as long as it’s for the right reasons, the comedienne Sheryl Underwood said after unleashing a withering Woods monologue on Tom Joyner’s radio show. “Would we question when a Jewish person wants to marry other Jewish people?” she said in an interview. “It’s not racist. It’s not bigotry. It’s cultural pride.” “The issue comes in when you choose something white because you think it’s better,” Underwood said. “And then you never date a black woman or a woman of color or you never sample the greatness of the international buffet of human beings. If you never do that, we got a problem.”

The key difference here is that while both white and black opposition to inter-racial marriage can stem from “cultural pride,” an undercurrent of inferiority/superiority underlies much of the angst.  And the frustration among blacks — especially black women — over black men marrying white women is the perception that they see themselves as “trading up” in so doing.  Dating and marrying white women is seen by many as a status symbol.

Mike Penner, the transsexual sportswriter briefly known as “Christine Daniels” is dead, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Mike Penner, the veteran Los Angeles Times sportswriter who made international headlines in 2007 when he announced he was transsexual and began working under the byline “Christine Daniels,” has died.

Colleagues said today that Penner was found dead at his Los Angeles home and that suicide was the suspected cause of death. He was 52.

“He was one of the most talented writers I’ve ever worked with,” said Times Sports Editor Mike James, adding that Penner covered numerous beats including the National Football League and sports media during his more than two-decade-long career at the paper.

[...]

Penner ended up blogging about his transition and later wrote a Times sports blog. In 2008, he began using the “Mike Penner” byline again.

A more detailed obit here.

In an April 2007 post, “LA Times Sportswriter Mike Penner Becoming Christine,” I wrote about my former colleague, Chris Kahrl, another sportswriter who successfully made the transition and was  “warmed by the utter nonreaction she’s gotten from baseball and baseball-journalism folks since converting to womanhood.”  My guess is that Penner’s issues were personal.

Salon’s Autumn Sandeen, a friend and colleague,  shares this post she wrote in February:

I wrote about Mike/Christine in a blog on February 26. I wrote in part, “Mike was born as a woman he came to know as Christine, but was not able to reconcile the difference between the outward and the inward. So Mike hid Christine until April 2007, when she could remain locked away in him no more. For eighteen months Christine was able to manifest and the soul that is Mike/Christine danced for joy.

“Then, for reasons only she knows, Christine went back to that place where she had lived all those years before. Mike/Christine is not some third gender. I think Mike needs to be able to be whomever he needs to be on the gender continuum each day. Quite simply, I think Mike is not stuck in the rigid duality of our western society. There are many transgender and cisgender people that are very stuck in that duality.”

Having a gender identity different from one’s outward appearance has to be difficult.   But the male/female gender divide isn’t a social construct, much less a Western one.  Indeed, most of the world’s cultures are far, far less understanding of these issues than ours.

Laura Sjoberg informs us that she is working to form a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer, and Allies  Caucus of the International Studies Association (the premier organization of academic IR scholars) in order to:

A. To promote fair and equal treatment of members of the Lesbian, Gay, Transgendered, Bisexual, and Queer and Allies (hereafter LGBTQA) community in the International Studies Association (hereafter ISA) and in the profession of international studies, in areas including but not limited to graduate school admission, financial assistance in schools, employment, tenure, and promotion.
B. To combat discrimination against and provide support for LGBTQA faculty, student, and professional members of the International Studies Association.
C. To encourage the application of the skills of scholars and students of international studies to combat discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
D. To promote the recruitment of new members to the Caucus specifically and ISA generally.

Leaving aside that the last of the four goals amounts to a self-licking ice cream cone (not that there’s anything wrong with that) how needed are these? Is there really rampant discrimination on the basis of sex in the academy these days? Homosexuality is mainstream in our broader society at this point, much less the relatively liberal halls of academe.

Do LGTBQ types face discrimination in financial aid or grad school admissions?  If so, how?  That is, how would the bureaucratic offices who make these decisions even know that the people were LGTBQ?  (One presumes, irrespective of the answer, that Allies are safe in this regard.)

I suppose that a man showing up for a job interview wearing lipstick and a dress might still be poorly received in many departments across the land.  But so might a man showing up with a mustache or blue jeans or a too-nice suit.

Beyond this, what has any of this to do with ISA?  It was “was founded in 1959 to promote research and education in international affairs.”  Its current purpose is still along those lines:

I.    Provide opportunities for communications among educators, researchers, and practitioners in order to continually share intellectual interests and meet the challenges of a changing global environment

II.    Develop contacts among specialists from all parts of the world in order to facilitate scientific and cultural change

III.    Provide channels of communication between academics and policy makers to promote a successful link between the production of knowledge and its utilization

IV.    Improve the teaching and dissemination of ideas, concepts, methods, and information in the field of International Studies

Rather than hijacking a purely scholarly organization with grievance issues, why not form a caucus within, say, the American Association of University Professors?

One possible explanation:  Sjobert is also chair of ISA’s Feminist Theory and Gender Studies section.  In April, she expressed concern that some LGTBQ members of ISA might chose not to attend the 2010 annual meeting in New Orleans on the grounds that “there is a substantial risk of a lack of equal protection of the laws in the most dire possible situations, including but not limited to critical medical emergencies.”  Apparently, this concern was not heeded and the meeting’s still on.

But, if LGTBQ activism can already take place (albeit, not successfully in this case) within the context of an existing organized section, why the need for a caucus?