UPDATED: Miss California Says NOM on Same-Sex Marriage

UPDATE: The National Organization for Marriage advertisement featuring Miss California has now launched on YouTube. We'll reserve our comments about the claims that proponents of "opposite marriage" are being victimised, but the ad is not exactly going down a treat with viewers.

According to Ben Smith at Politico the National Organization for Marriage (which raised many Twitter users ire for its attempt to associate the term 'NOM' with something other than pictures of cute animals eating stuff) has enlisted the support of Miss California Carrie Prejean for the launch of its new advertisement.

Prejean, of course, told Perez Hilton that she believed in "opposite marriage"- that is, marriage between a man and a woman:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XMvviFbkf0[/youtube]

The ad will apparently focus on the 'vicious attacks' Prejean was subject to after stating her opposition to same-sex marriage. We'll try to bring you more details after its release tomorrow.

Previously:

• Winning The Culture Wars: How the "Gathering Storm" over Same-Sex Marriage was Defeated

Living the Bubble Life in Miami

The “great” American signer Jimmy Buffett wrote and sang of Margaritaville, a place where oblivion was the default position. Why Mr. Buffett is often referred to as “great” defeats me, but as he has a recording contract and I do not, I’d better leave this question alone. Indeed, I'll consider his oblivion.

Some nights ago, I was sitting at Sundowners, a bar/restaurant in Key Largo in Florida. I was the designated driver, hence no margaritas for me, but the setting was perfect, the food ambrosia, and even the plain iced water was nirvana. I watched, mesmerized, as the sun dipped into the ocean. It was good to know that, at my venerable age, I could still see a distance of 93 million miles.

My wife and I had been visiting our eldest daughter, who works for the Miami City Ballet. She was raised to think independently, but she has taken the idea too far: we did not tell her to have such thoughts 5,000 miles away from us. Nor did we expect that she would embrace a “bubble existence” in this city.

Still, her decision meant we could attend a performance at the interestingly named and fabulously comfortable Arsht Centre. I have witnessed my fair share of ballets over the years but would make no claim to being a connoisseur. However, my wife is. In her view, MCB can rival any ballet company in the world.

What astonished me was the audience. Maybe they weren’t as sophisticated as those attending Covent Garden or La Scala. Maybe there was spontaneous applause after an extraordinary solo or duet, when the piece had not ended. But the Miami audience dressed to kill. Men in jackets and ties, women in beautiful cocktail gowns, children dressed so smartly. I felt a little embarrassed as I was in slacks and a (very smart) T shirt. In my 30 years of visits to Miam, the dress code has always been casual or ‘down’. What has happened here?

Our visit coincided with Spring Week, which now seems to last a month. Coming back to the hotel on our first night, four young ladies sat in the Lounge, each one more beautiful than the other. I asked my wife whether I might have a chance of getting a date with one of them if I was forty years younger, fifty pounds lighter, and sixty times as funny. It took her no time to reply, “Not so much.”

At this time, Miami Beach is more replete with pulchritude than normal. Pretty girls and good-looking boys abound. The attraction is sunshine, the beach, and each other but, perhaps, subliminally, they seek the bubble existence after the rigours of college.

So there has been little conversation about the economy or Obama’s European trip. However, the decision by the Iowa state legislature to lift the ban on same-sex marriage attracted much attention. Not to be outdone in publicity, the Vermont Governor vetoed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, setting the stage for an override vote in the legislature. Thus, these two states will be the centre of attraction for Miami Beach’s substantial gay community, gearing up for the Gay Pride Parade.

CNN, too, seem to have caught the bubble mood. After the Obamas’ tour of Europe, I expected some close analysis, but last night, a deadly serious Wolf Blitzer introduced a section on Michelle Obama. Was this related to her duties as First Lady, or FLOTUS, as they like to call her here? Not really. The piece was devoted to Mrs Obama’s wardrobe and the way she covered her upper arms.

Before I am accused of mockery or cynicism, I happen to think that a society that is willing to take on awkward topics like same sex marriage, abortion and even creationism has to be applauded. As Aaron Sorkin wrote, “America is an experiment in advanced citizenship.” The political debates in UK seem sterile and passive by comparison. Nevertheless, I am relieved the talking heads on Newsnight are not getting involved in Mrs. Obama's wardrobe.

Miami Beach may lack realism but it certainly has life. I regret that my daughter has chosen to live here, rather than stay in UK. For the sake of an extra hour or so in an aircraft, I might have preferred that she had moved to Portland or San Francisco. However, when one is young and the world still resembles an oyster, when total reality has yet to hit, when annual sunshine --- give or take a hurricane or two --- is the staple diet, maybe the bubble that is Miami Beach is not so bad.

Culture Wars Warning: First Same-Sex Marriage, Then Polygamy

I'm not sure I can add much to this dramatic article offering the prospect of American society going to hell in a handbasket, except to note:

We're not talking one guy, several women polygamy here, but same-sex polygamy.

Don't say we didn't warn you.

Same-Sex Marriage: Opening The Door To Polygamy

By Gregory J. Sullivan

With the decision by the Iowa Supreme Court and an enactment of a statute Vermont Legislature sanctioning same-sex marriage, a great deal of commentary, filled with understandable but unwarranted optimism, has appeared on the possibility of same-sex marriage being legislated in additional states, including New Jersey.

Advocates are dismissive of the slippery-slope argument - that is, by allowing same-sex couples to marry, then any restrictions on a parent marrying his child or his couch will logically fall. Such views are easily ridiculed if not rebutted, but the next logical step in this debate - namely, polygamy - is not readily dismissed and must be honestly considered by those who favor same-sex marriage.

We tend to think that culture wars are a unique affliction of our unsettled age. In the 19th century, however, the country was engulfed in a moral struggle not only against slavery but also - and often with comparable fervor - against Mormon polygamy. From Joseph Smith's revelation in the early 1830s that included plural marriage to the official repudiation of this teaching by the Mormon Church in 1890, Mormons were furiously persecuted and relentlessly prosecuted for their practice of polygamy.

The platform of the Republican Party in 1856 famously called for the prohibition in the territories of "those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery." Moreover, the state constitutions of Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Utah all have provisions banning polygamy and Congress required these anti-polygamy provisions as a condition of admission to statehood in all these states except Idaho.

This constitutional struggle over polygamy culminated in 1878 when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Reynolds v. United States. A bigamist named George Reynolds was prosecuted in the Utah territory. Reynolds sought a conduct exemption to the criminal prohibition of polygamy based on the guarantee of the free exercise of religion under the first amendment. With the correct observation that the practice of polygamy is incompatible with American political institutions, the Court determined that the prohibition was well within the authority of Congress in the territories.

Mormon polygamy was defeated by a culture stable enough in its understanding of public morality, particularly at the elite level, to thwart this great challenge. That understanding has essentially vanished today.

Proponents of same-sex marriage invariably wonder what harm would be presented by allowing couples of the same sex to marry. Of course, by ignoring sexual complementarity and violating the natural law, the common good is undermined; in other words, our moral ecology will be damaged. But our intellectual elites who dominate the courts, the universities and the editorial offices of newspapers are animated by a radical individualism on social issues and they have no concern at all for public morality and refuse to acknowledge any such harm.

Then what is the case against polygamy? Allowing a man (or woman) to enter into plural marriage will not prohibit others from marrying in the monogamous tradition. It would not interfere with that arrangement in any way. Churches would still be free to marry couples in conformity with their own teachings.

What is more, it should be acknowledged that, unlike same-sex marriage, plural marriage has a long and established tradition throughout many parts of the world. Finally, with the easy availability of unlimited divorce, serial polygamy is already thoroughly commonplace in Europe and America. What is the difference between taking three or four wives at once or one after the other?

With the exclusively libertarian premises that are relied on today for such questions, the case for polygamy is stronger than that of same-sex marriage. For the libertarian, any case against polygamy is based on nothing more than ignorance and fear. After all, most people know homosexuals. How many polygamists does anyone know? Perhaps such irrational opposition should be stigmatized as "polyphobia."

With numerous Mormon fundamentalists (excommunicated Mormons who practice polygamy) in this country and increasing immigration from Islamic countries where polygamy is enthusiastically practiced, plural marriage is not a concern based on hysteria or conjecture. Indeed, the intellectually casual embrace of same-sex marriage by its advocates is remarkably oblivious to this problem. Instead of mocking opposition to same-sex marriage as the irrational product of a benighted religious tradition, advocates must be forced to confront the inescapable logic of their own argument.

If marriage is to be deconstructed to satisfy a "right" that never occurred to anyone until the day before yesterday, then certain ineluctable ramifications must be addressed.