Our Endangered Values
Jimmy Carter (2005)
Non-Fiction
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Let me begin by saying that, like all good liberals, I of course admire President Carter immensely. And I have to call attention once again to what the Democratic Presidents seek to do after public office (Carter, Clinton) vs. their Republican counterparts. If that isn't a revealing party difference, I don't know what is.
I'm not going to go on too much about the content of Carter's book - it's pretty straightforward explication of the Lakoffian (I really need to write a post on Lakoff/Don't Think of an Elephant, since it seems to come into play in every other post I write!) world of politics we now live in. Carter does a particularly good job at calling attention to what he, as a deeply Christian person, sees as a new kind of Fundamentalist approach to politics. A kind of simplified, oppositional world of politics that he sees as very dangerous. It really fleshes out some of Lakoff's ideas quite nicely, and shows how religious fundamentalists are quite intentionally inserting their worldview in politics in order to create a more theocratic state.
However, to return to the 'gay issue,' I must take exception to Carter's position on same sex marriage (he's for civil unions). As an older American, perhaps his views on this are good for that demographic. However, for a man as enlightened as he is (and I've had the chance to meet him, and really am an admirer), it's sad to see that he can not take the final step. He states that he thinks that civil unions are a fine compromise on the issue, and applauds what Connecticut has done. I perhaps would not take as much exception to this issue if he had not spent some much time in the book writing eloquently about race and his experiences growing up in the South. I don't usually like using the 'separate but equal' comparison, but in the case of civil unions, it's useful to some degree to think about the concept. Civil unions are nothing if not separate and unequal. It creates a separate non-marriage space for a group of people who have been historically discriminated against in our ability to form legal relationships. Civil unions create a patchwork of different laws in some states -- some states will have different CU rights from others; some states will not have them at all. So you might be civil unioned (rolls off the tongue, huh?) in one state, and have no relation to your partner in another. Even states with CU laws may or may not honor the CU of another state. Plus all the important federal benefits (taxes, immigration, etc) don't come any closer to gays and lesbians through CUs. CUs create a second class status (a 'marriage lite') that's just demeaning. I don't know why so many people don't get this.
I know that politics is the art of the possible. But it's profoundly disappointing that someone like Carter, who's lived through this before, and is such a smart and compassionate man, is still unwilling to defend the full rights of gays and lesbians. Sorry, Jimmy.
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