Friday, February 27, 2004

Frum Versus Sullivan

The National Review's David Frum poses eight questions for Andrew Sullivan, attempting to undermine Sullivan's proposed compromise: "a federal constitutional amendment that would solely say that no state is required to recognize a civil marriage from another state."

Sample question from Frum:
A Massachusetts man buys a condo in Miami. He marries another Massachusetts man. The condo purchaser dies before he can write a new will. Who inherits the condo?
Frum's oddly effective here in making a great case for skipping any compromise and simply granting the same rights to gay couples that heterosexual couples enjoy. Of course, I don't think that's what he intended.

What he really suspects is "that 'letting the states decide' will over time gradually evolve into a demand to allow the most liberal states to impose their social values on the others through the mechanism of a million petty lawsuits on a thousand different issues." Right, Mr. Frum, in the same way that African-Americans imposed their social values on the rest of us.

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