In 1991, when Anita Hill testified in Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings, the country had never seen a high stakes confrontation between a black man and a black woman over illegal workplace sexual misconduct.  Now, sixteen years later, its fair to ask whether anything has changed in the climate for women of color in the workplace. 

Now, in the Knicks lawsuit we have a different set of allegations from a poised, well-educated black woman, Anucha Browne Sanders, a Princeton graduate and former Northwestern basketball star who told a Manhattan jury that Isiah Thomas, the coach for the Knicks basketball team, called her a "bitch" and a "ho" and other  profanities.  Browne Sanders, the Senior Vice President for Marketing for the Knicks, also charged that she was fired in retaliation for her complaints to management.  She testified that Thomas's  abusive language then turned to ardor, including unwanted "kissing" and invitations to "go off-site" with him.

Both women were greeted with character attacks and retaliation.  Browne Sanders was fired. Anita Hill was vilified first by Senators on the Judiciary Committee and then by conservative writer, David Brock in his book "The Real Anita Hill", filled with personal attacks, that he later recanted. 

 Some things have changed and some have not. One thing that has surely changed is that ordinary citizens, members of a Manhattan jury are prepared to sort through the "he said", "she said", the smiles, the dimples, or the righteous indignation about high-tech lynching, to award, not just compensatory damages, but a jaw-dropping amount of punitive damages. 

The trial testimony and verdict for punitive damages against the Knicks shows that some powerful black men still choose to concoct a toxic brew of sexually degrading images of black women in the workplace. Anita Hill testified about Thomas's references to a series of the pornographic movies featuring black women with oversized breasts. 

 Browne Sanders testified that she was called a "bitch" and a "ho" and hugged without her consent.  One witness, himself an employment discrimination lawyer, told the jury that he saw Thomas drape his arm over Browne Sander shoulder and say that it was distracting to work next to someone "so easy on the eyes", but that when she recoiled from him Thomas said,  "can't I get any love today" . It took Anita Hill almost ten years to come forth, reluctantly, to tell about her experiences.  Browne Sanders filed, well within the statute of limitations. 

 As Professor Tanya Hernandez has written here on Blackprof and in law review articles, her empirical research shows that black women are "overrepresented" among those who file sexual harassment claims with the EEOC.  Does this mean that black women are more often the target of sexual harassment, or are they just less willing to rely on internal company procedures to protect their rights?

In the lawsuit against the Knicks we see that some white men can also foster a hostile workplace for black women. Selena Roberts opinion piece for the NYT today identifies James L. Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, as a person who cultivated an atmosphere of sexual hostility and male power trips. The Garden Needs a Warning Label .

Is there a cultural defense to sexual harassment by black men against black women?  In 1991, immediately after the hearings ended, Distinguished Harvard Sociologist, Orlando Patterson argued in a NYT op-ed that even if Thomas had said what he was accused of saying, it would have been harmless "down home style of courting" that southern black men used to woo black women, and that Hill would have been very well acquainted with this style.  To be fair, Patterson retreated from this untenable position in a book of essays that Professor Hill and I co-edited: Race, Gender and Power in America, and in his book Rituals of Blood. 

 The Knicks trial featured an embarrassing video deposition in which Isiah Thomas says that it would violate his code of conduct for a white male Knicks executive to call a black woman a "bitch", but that it would be o.k. for a black man to use the same word in talking to a black woman.

Trashing the accuser's professional competence continues to be a favored defense.  Although ironically, both Thomases initially praised their accusers.  Thomas told the Senate Judiciary committee under oath:  "Senator, ...she repeatedly received promotions, as scheduled...In fact she may have been promoted on an accelerated basis.  Her assignments, for her age and experience at that time, I think were fairly aggressive".   Yet, sixteen years later in his new book, My Grandfather's Son and in a Sixty Minutes interview last Sunday, he referred to Professor Hill as a "mediocre employee".

Isiah Thomas and the Knicks, reading from the same playbook, gave Browne Sanders bonuses that totaled $217,500 between 2002 and 2005, before she accused them of sexual harassment and retaliatory firing.  Once the law suit was filed, they told a Manhattan jury that she was fired for flagging competence.

This morning I chatted with Michel McQueen Martin, on her terrific new show on NPR, Tell Me More about what had changed and what remained the same in the sixteen years since Charles Ogletree, and I were on the legal team that represented Professor Hill during her testimony in the Thomas confirmation hearings.

I want to hear from BlackProf readers. What has changed in sixteen years, and what has not?  Is the Isiah Thomas verdict a wake up call?  Or, can all women, but especially black women, expect more of the same sexual harassment and hostility in the workplace from some of the powerful men and organizations for whom they work?

What do you think?

Choosing a title for this blog was difficult. So many titles seemed appropriate, such “Oh No He Didn’t He!” or “Say What?!” or “Now, That’s Rich, B*&%$!”  But ultimately, I decided (thanks to Mario Barnes) that Queen Latifah captured my feelings best. 

Normally, I try to stay away from the “b” word, though admittedly not always with success (You’ll see what I mean.).  To my mind, when people use the “b” word, they either better mean it or better be telling a joke (And, let’s face it.  Some of y’all just aren’t funny.). 

On the other hand, I am all for female empowerment.  I do not have much of an issue with women who choose to use the word as a means of taking the term’s meaning back (so long as they do not include me in their group).

But, Isiah Thomas just added a whole new layer of understanding the “b” word for me.  In a videotaped deposition given for the sexual harassment trial of former Knicks Vice-President Anucha Browne Sanders—a black woman, Thomas indicated that, while “it is always wrong for any man to call a woman a bitch,” he had less of a problem with a black man calling a black woman the “b” word than a white man doing the same.

           Asked if he was bothered by a black man calling a black female “bitch,” Thomas said, “Not as much. I’m sorry to say, I do make a distinction.”

           “A white male calling a black female a bitch is highly offensive,” Thomas said. “That would have violated my code of conduct.”

          “Maybe I shouldn’t go there. … A white male calling a black female, that is wrong with me. I’m not taking that. I’m not accepting that. … That’s a problem for me.”

I certainly cannot speak for all black women, only for myself.  But, all I have to say is: “Ain’t that a b&^%*!”

     These multi-party sexual encounters raise a number of questions that force us to re-evaluate the idea of consent in rape cases.  These types of activities, sometimes involve women who get raped in the same night that they consented to sexual intercourse with multi-partners.  For the most part, we think of the concept of rape as an “all or nothing” granting or not granting of consent.  How then should we legally make sense of situations involving women, who, engaged in multi-partner sexual activities, consent to touching by some partners but not by the others?  How should we measure consent in these contexts?  How do we prevent society’s biases and stereotypes from influencing the outcome of these types of cases?

     As we have seen in past rape cases, a jury’s application of the reasonable doubt standard in rape cases can be affected by its perception of the victim’s character as well as its assessment of the circumstances surrounding the occurrence of the rape.  This perception can be detrimental to rape victims who do not fit the profile of what a jury might consider as “careful” women or “traditional rape victims”.  In the absence of force or conclusive DNA evidence, the likelihood of these women’s rapists being convicted is currently not very high.  Consequently, our task for the future will be to construct a burden of proof which does not penalize the behavior of these non-traditional rape victims and, which, simultaneously, does not unduly prejudice potentially innocent defendants.           

The media has periodically publicized examples of that practice. A few years ago, Senator John Ford in Tennessee, for example, proudly testified to his maintaining a multi-partner and multi-household family unit in a 2005 child support hearing (http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/05/01/64558230.shtml).  Even more recently, the Jessie Davis case has brought this issue to the surface.  In its coverage of the case, the media has reiterated countless times, with fascination, the fact that the Jessie Davis maintained an extra-marital relationship and had two children with Bobby Cutts Jr., a married police officer.  The media also speculated that the legal wife of the police officer knew of the relationship between her husband and Davis and harbored no ill feelings towards Davis.

 Amidst the muddled speculations surrounding this poor woman’s disappearance lie a basic fact: Jessie Davis had a spouse-like relationship with Bobby Cutts, Jr. She carried two of his kids and maintained a long-term relationship with him.  In light of that, should women in Davis’s position not be able to seek the same legal protections reserved for De Jure spouses in American Law?  Was Jessie Davis made more vulnerable by the fact that her lifestyle was one that existed at the margins of the law? We might have to answer such questions sooner rather than later.  The reality of multi-partner unions is becoming one from which we might not be able to hide much longer.

    The Duke Rape allegations are instrumental in analyzing the role that race and gender play in the handling of rape cases.  It is a great case study because it shows how catalysts like rape allegations can cause dormant racial/gender wounds to erupt to the surface in an already polarized community. The racial dichotomy and rivalry existing between North Carolina Central University (NCCU) and Duke University became apparent in the types of comments made, at the time of the investigation, by students from North Carolina Central University as compared to comments made by Duke University students.  For example, during the investigation, a student from NCCU was quoted as saying: “If it was a Duke Student and it was Central’s football’s team, the situation would have been handled totally differently (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/05/national/main1476021.shtml) while a Duke University Student stated, in the same spirit, “that the allegations … put a new strain on the already delicate relationship between the school and the community in Durham” (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/05/national/main1476021.shtml) Almost immediately after the rape allegations were made, it became evident from student comments submitted to the media, that for the Durham community, the rape allegations represented not just one isolated incident, but a culmination of slights and abuses of privilege that the community hoped would finally be punished.  The very fact that a team of 43 young Lacrosse players considered the hiring of two African American strippers as an acceptable form of sexual entertainment corroborated this feeling of exasperation.  It is also interesting that, in the midst of the mass obsession with the culpability or non-culpability of the three players, no one took the time to ask the obvious question: Why did the Duke administration offer no remonstrance against the Duke Lacrosse team for hiring black strippers at a team’s party?

Kyra Gaunt here. As you may have read, I am one of the guest contributors this June -- Black Music Month. Perfect for me as an ethnomusicologist (an anthropologist of music and a professor of hip-hop, race and gender in music). I have a few thoughts to share with you this month about 1) the impact of Don Imus controversy on hip-hop as music, 2) perhaps a bit about my research on African Americans and Francophone musicians in Harlem, and more if time permits me. I ain't a lawyer but I sure wanted to be one as a kid and it's an honor to be part of BlackProf.com.  

My first post is in honor of the upcoming Father's day. I could easily honor my mother, who was like my father most of my life as a single parent. But this is about my birth father. And I'd like to say thanks to all the dads, stepdads, and father figures who've graced my life and I have been fortunate to have many.

I've written a short essay that inspires ME! I hope you find it inspiring to for it is out of my commitment that African American women connect with their estranged daddies. If you check out my website at http://kyraocity.com you can read about other pairs I've brought together and hear the music that came from my reuniting with my dad. I hope you'll share it with your family and friends.

Here's the piece entitled:
"A Father's Day Testimony: Daddies, Daughters and a Ressurection of Family (and Life)"

Serendipity ain’t a common term in the black community but it is one way to explain the miracles that have happened since I met my birth father, Norman Lee Evans, Sr., four years ago when I was 40. All my life I pretended that my dad’s absence didn’t matter even if it hampered my romantic relationships with boys and now men. A male friend who’d been burned by too many women like me, incomplete with their fathers, told me I needed to be bigger than my dad and reach out to him first. So I did in 2002.

Serendipity struck, as it has many times before for me, on June 9th in Indianapolis, my dad’s hometown, just about a week before my first father’s day…without my dad. When we met, I went from being abandoned to being grateful that he’d had a roll in the hay with my mom because I wouldn’t have the extraordinary life I live if it weren’t for him.

On February 6th I lost him to prostate cancer like so many other black families lose their men. (Prostate cancer has a 90% cure rate and that made me so angry with him.) Other than me, he left behind his immediate family (a wife, son and stepdaughter) and eleven brothers and sisters whom I thought I’d meet at the funeral. Even into death, folks carry the past. My dad was bitter over something and made sure they were not invited.

Within a week of the funeral, I serendipitously got a speaking engagement in Indianapolis. They wanted me to speak about my book The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-hop (NYU Press, 2006) at the Martin Luther King Center’s Annual Brunch.

After a troubled period of mourning, I got inspired. I called the number for Sharon Evans and left a message with my name and connection and I waited. No one called me back so I gave up for a few weeks and then, a week before my talk, I got inspired.

Determined to find them, I asked the MLK Center to use the oral grapevine. “Someone there must know my people, the Evans, there were 13 of them,” I said in an email. Then I called the number I had again and my Aunt Sharon in Connersville Indiana answered. Her first words were “We been looking for you, dear, and praying we’d find you!” They had the wrong number for me. In that moment I felt so complete and at home.

Last Saturday after my talk the family threw me a barbeque and I met a handful of cousins and 6 of what were 14 aunts and uncles in all, several of them now deceased. It was my own personal Antwone Fisher . My father may have died without knowing how much they loved him, but I do and I was able to bring him back to them through me. Serendipity.
 

There was a great article March 12, 2007 in the Washington Post about new findings concerning prostate health care and black men.

"New findings, to be published in the April 15 issue of Cancer, reveal that black American men are, in fact, well-educated when it comes to prostate cancer risk."

"Instead, the authors find that, compared with white Americans, black men too often lack health insurance or a regular relationship with a primary care doctor. In those cases, the diagnosis and treatment of prostate trouble falls behind."

Ladies, ask your dad if he's been tested. And find out about a new detector that is not as invasive as biopsies.

An elder I met with shared that he realized he might look like a coward in my eyes for not dealing with what's important. This left me thinking we daughters have more of a say in the matter and we should say it! Ask your dad, and other men over 50, when he was tested and let him know you care that he wins the game.

My dad was 64 when he passed. My father's older brother, Clayton better known as Maurice (how I love black families and their names!) got the point and survived his prostate cancer and is living life to the fullest. 

 Take a listen to the song I wrote for my dad, too.  "Black Can Be Me" with Gregoire Maret on harmonica that I co-wrote with Tomas Doncker. 

I recently had the opportunity to discuss the role played by skin/hair politics in the mass exodus of African American male tourists to Brazil in search of the idealized Brazilian woman described by their friends and depicted in rap videos. Jelani Cobb documented these tourists’ predilection for Brazilian women over African American woman in an article published by Essence Magazine. The African American tourists interviewed in the article constantly described Brazilian woman as malleable, gentle, helpful and non-confrontational compared to African American women who they described as belligerent, confrontational, demanding, etc. These descriptions are consistent with the portrayal of black women all over the media. From Grey’s Anatomy’s “Dr. Bailey” to any run-of–the-mill cameo by a black actress, the no-nonsense black woman is a Hollywood favorite. While the idealization of Brazilian woman at the expense of black woman trigger an array of issues worth discussing, I would like focus on a question posed by an audience member after my presentation. Referring to the African American male tourists’ unflattering juxtaposition of African American woman with Brazilian woman, the audience member asked: “why aren’t African American women more mad about this? Why aren’t they doing more things to voice their anger?” My instinctive answer to the question was that, in the great scheme of challenges faced by black woman (food, shelter, job, racism, sexism, constant sexualization of their bodies, etc), this would probably not be their first item to tackle. My second thought, one often discussed with my best friend, was that, as many of the male tourists are often married or in a relationship when they go to Brazil, many black women, most likely, were aware of their partners’ exodus to Brazil even before the publication of the Essence article.

While I was in Brazil, I interviewed a Brazilian woman who told me that she receives $400 twice a month from an African American male tourist that she met during his visit to Bahia. In addition, Jelani Cobb’s article contains a number of anecdotes of tourists who, after their visit, send money regularly, to the Brazilian women whom they still see as their girlfriends. These types of transactions would be hard to hide from a partner. Women all over the world have always known how to negotiate and how to get what they need out of an imperfect situation. Whether or not the product of the negotiation is ever satisfactory enough in the long run is a question that is eventually answered by each woman for herself in due time.

As to my audience member’s question, “why aren’t black women doing anything about this?” I am not sure this particular phenomenon falls under the responsibility of black women to solve. Short of getting out of relationships with these tourists, it seems almost impossible to regulate something as deeply ingrained as the colorism/sexism-based preference for certain types of women. The work to eliminate these biases would have to be conducted on a number of fronts, among which will have to be community men’ groups working to help reverse the negative image of black women created by a racist and sexist society and media.

Michèle Alexandre

I of course understand fully that many challenge these premises vehemently.  I suspect they'd assert principally that 1) fetuses aren't human beings in the same sense as the rest of us, so that their claims to protected status -- to the extent they're vindicable at all -- are not entitled to the kind of respect we might otherwise afford them, and 2) even if fetuses are human beings in meaningfully the same sense as the rest of us, their claims to recognition are outweighed by a woman's interest in controlling her body.

I think the second option has more merit.  Obviously, one could quite vigorously debate the bioethics of the particular point at which the creation of a human being occurs, but I find the argument against humanity hard to sustain by the time an embryo becomes a fetus (which is around the 9 to 10 week point).  At that point, the fetus begins to look like the rest of us, and has a functioning brain, a beating heart, and a host of other functioning organs.  While I think the issue is much more complicated before this point, I can't discern a meaningful principle that would distinguish the quality of a fetuses' post-embryonic humanity from a baby of one-day old or a senior of 30,000 days old.  And, moreover, the quality of a human being should not be assessed derivatively on its relation to the claims of another.  That is, the fact that a fetus is within or outside a mother should have no bearing on the integrity of the fetuses' claim to humanity.  The fetus either is or is not human; where it's located at any given point is immaterial. 

But on the second issue -- the balance between the claims of a human fetus to protection against a woman's claim to autonomy -- the issue is perhaps more difficult.  Yet, once one posits the fetus as a human being, that predetermination brings with it a degree of moral status that compels government to protect the life of the human fetus from all but the most undeniable incursions on its autonomy.  I admit, however, that the way we apply this standard is an issue that I wrestle with continuously, contemplate deeply, and re-consider persistently.  But, at minimum, this standard is very different from the abortion-on-demand model we have now, in which fetuses may be aborted arbitrarily -- and by that I mean without the articulation of any reason, let alone one that meets the sort of high standard I assert. 

So I suppose what I'm looking for is a greater societal appreciation for the fact that, in a large number of situations (those involving post-embryonic fetuses), an abortion means the death of a human being.  And, even if one can justify that in a particular circumstance, it nonetheless entails the loss of a being with a sacred moral status that implicates public responsibilities of the highest order.  Particularly as a father who still remembers the earliest images of my son and daughter as fetuses, I think too much of our language is too casual or too dismissive of the gravity of what is being lost in an abortion.

While I thought the film was outstanding, I think that Imus’s recent comments describing the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team as “nappy-headed hos” make “A Girl Like Me” worthy of even more attention. 

Women's Sports Foundation President Aimee Mullins:

"The Women's Sports Foundation congratulates the talented and skilled members of the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team and their achievement at this year's NCAA Tournament.   We are saddened that there are still those who continue to judge people on appearance rather than talent.   Racial and gender bigotry are inexcusable in any circumstance, but when that bigotry has a public broadcast forum, and is aimed at student athletes, it represents the worst kind of abuse of media power.  Apologies from Don Imus and others involved, including broadcast partners, is not the simple solution.   We can no longer allow a 'mea culpa' to erase inexcusable behavior.   We insist that all members of the Don Imus Show be educated about the importance of diversity in our society and treating people as equals regardless of race or gender. “

Women’s Sports Foundation CEO Donna Lopiano:

"Don Imus has shown a continuous pattern of making racist and sexist statements on his show and then apologizing for them later.  Members of the media must be held to high standards  of conduct because they have been given the opportunity to influence millions of people with their words.  It is time that we as a society insist on the firm application of such standards.   The comments of Mr. Imus were intolerable and despicable.  He should be removed from the airwaves.   Those who feel similarly should join the Women's Sports Foundation in asking that the executives of WFAN, Westwood One and MSNBC do the right thing and drop his program ."

For those who feel similarly outraged and want to express their thoughts on his comments, listed below is the contact information for the media outlets involved:

Les Hollander, SVP       
CBS RADIO                      
1515 Broadway             
New York, NY 10036       
212-846-3939                                    

Dan Abrams, Gen. Mgr.

MSNBC-TV

One MSNBC Plaza

In multiple studies, social psychologists have found that people of color and women often do not report experiences of discrimination and perhaps more tellingly, those who report discrimination experience significant social costs.  Men and women of all races tend to think less well of those who claim discrimination – even if the claim is reasonable.  At first glance, this tendendency would seem to be explained by a general aversion to people blaming others for their failures or mistakes rather than taking responsibility for their own actions.  However, social psychologists have found that people don't think less well of people who attribute poor evaluations to the evaluater being a jerk.  Why might people judge more harshly those who are discriminated against than those treated badly by a jerk?  And what ramifications does this tendency have on discrimination law suits?

With this context in mind, I was dismayed by the rhetoric used by both sides in the oral argument to describe not only the partially-aborted fetus but also the means by which such fetuses are executed.  The rhetoric seemed intentionally designed to obscure the humanity of the late-second-trimester fetus -- and the inhumanity of the means by which the fetus was killed.  The advocates spoke repeatedly about "disarticulation"; I learned later this referred to the dismembering of the fetus during the performance of a non-intact late-term abortion (non-intact precisely because the fetus had been "disarticulated," or dismembered so that the fetus was not partially delivered intact, but delivered piecemeal -- body part by body part). The advocates also spoke of "collapsing the head"; I learned later this referred to using forceps to crush the fetus's skull.  The parties spoke, further, of "anatomical landmarks"; I learned later this metaphysical point of departure defined whether the fetus had a right to survive under the statute: delivery of a breech-presenting fetus up to the belly-button was alright; delivery beyond was not. 

At times, listening to the argument, I wondered whether we were in a parallel universe.  I suppose part of me couldn't shake the pitter-patter of my own kids' second-trimester heartbeats, or the still-vivid memories of viewing their ultrasounds and searching -- even that early -- for the curved lip of my grandfather or my own big head or my wife's nose.  I suppose I couldn't shake the image of my son, during the second trimester, sucking his thumb; or my daughter, at the same point, moving her little feet.  Whatever it was, I wondered how we've gotten to the point where we can't seem to affirm the humanity of a late-term unborn child, and the inhumanity of "fetal demise" (I learned later this refers to the result either of "disarticulation" or "collapsing the skull").

It seems to me that when we discuss the scope of late-term abortion rights, our language should accurately and honestly reflect the nature and gravity of the choices involved.  These late-term abortions irreducibly involve the taking of human life (can the late-term fetus reasonably be regarded as anything other than a nascent human being?).  That fact alone, of course, does not dispose of the propriety -- legal or moral --  of aborting such an unborn child.  But it does, nonetheless, require us to frankly engage the solemn, human urgency of the equities at issue. 

In this context, I suggested in a comment to my prior post that perhaps the apparent majority supporting the civil-union compromise believe traditional, heterosexual relationships, all other things being equal, are best suited to child-rearing.  I'm aware of empirical support for the proposition that outcomes on social, cultural, and educational benchmarks are strongest when children are raised in households occupied by their natural father and mother.  This of course doesn't mean that children don't do well in other settings (I, like most Black folk under the age of 40, was raised in a setting wildly divergent from this traditional ideal), but simply that this arrangement, holding other factors constant, best facilitates desired societal outcomes  Commentor LAGuy challenged whether the best empiricism supports this proposition, arguing that his reading of the social-science data suggests that children do no better in households led by their natural parents than children raised by same-sex couples.  I'm very interested in reviewing this empiricism and evaluating the extent to which it undercuts data suggesting the traditional family structure, when it works well, best serves kids' needs. 

In addition to the empirical question, however, I suspect part of the explanation for the civil-union compromise concerns the intuitive appeal to the notion that a child's natural parents are uniquely situated to meeting that child's needs.  I think people intuit that fathers and mothers, generally, bring different competencies that, in combination, best meet children's diverse needs.  I suspect this itself flows from the intuitive sense that there's substantive meaning in the natural fact that children are born to a mother and father -- and that, relatedly, there's substantive meaning in the natural differentiation between men and women.  That men and women are not merely clones of one another, but that they are different, and that those differences, in the aggregate, best serve children's varied needs.  I understand that some have challenged the empirics -- or even the logic -- of these intuitions; but I suspect the strongly-held and seemingly natural character of these intuitions make them hard to uproot without the most indisputable kind of empirical data.

I want to emphasize that I'm simply trying to understand the seeming political consensus around the civil-union compromise.  I assume most people supporting it have good intentions -- as those who do not likely would reject government recognition of homosexual relationships altogether.  Too often in debates on this issue the conversation quickly devolves to the ad hominem: those opposing gay marriage are cast as intolerant Christian zealots; those supporting it are seen as flaming liberals seeking to destroy traditional families.  I tend to believe reasonable people can disagree on most issues; and in this post I simply want to explore why a strong majority of Americans, including many progressives, seem sincerely and in good faith to support the civil-union compromise.  I suspect it has something to do with the child-rearing issues I raise above.

Whatever one thinks politically of this conclusion, the constitutional distinction between rights and titles seems jurisprudentially suspect.  The Court held that the State had no rational basis to discriminate against homosexual couples in the dispensation of the legal incidents of marriage; it seems inconsistent to conclude, simultaneously, that the State has a legitimate interest in discriminating against homosexuals concerning the title it applies to those rights.  Whatever interest the State has in denying marriage-related rights to homosexual couples would seem to subsume its interest in calling homosexual relationships by another name.  To this extent, the decision seems irreconcilable with itself.