A NEW POLICY FOR MUSLIM COUNTRIES?

Political pundits had been debating for some time whether democracy was possible in Muslim countries. Some believed yes, others argued no, but no one could have said for sure. The experiments with democracy that have taken place recently in Afghanistan and Iraq may now provide us with an answer. If democracy fails in these countries we will have the certainty that we cannot treat these countries according to the same standards that we treat today's modern, civilized nations. Our policies towards these countries and their religion will take a radical turn from what has existed up to now. This is a lesson that Israel has learned long ago, and it suggests the direction the new policy will likely take.

If Bush can be credited for anything, it will be in having removed any doubt about how we should regard these countries.

WHY JONATHAN TURLEY IS OFF THE MARK

Jonathan Turley thinks he has the answer to ending the debate over homosexual marriage, which you can read in his opinion piece "How to end the same-sex marriage debate" in the April 3 on-line edition of USA Today.

But here is why he's off the mark.

The "civil union" is a political sleight-of-hand having been created purely for political purposes in order to satisfy a loud and whiny special interest group.

This is because the government really has no important state interest in promoting either same-sex marriages or “civil unions,” which would actually apply to those types of relationships incapable by nature of producing offspring.

Government has no legitimate interest or business either in regulating or institutionalizing the private and personal relationships of consenting adults of these types of relationships, which would include those between friends or partners of the same sex regardless of sexual intimacy. If two people of this type of relationship wish to make a contractual living arrangement between them they can have a legal contract of sorts drawn up by lawyers. There is no reason why society should subsidize or bear the costs of private, intimate relationships that have no state interest.

When people have actively sought to make government stay out of the private lives of consenting adults when government interference was disadvantageous to them, they can't very well expect government to then intrude into their lives just because it would now be advantageous to them. The principle of non-intrusion works both ways.

The government, however, does have a legitimate and important state interest in promoting the union of relationships of the heterosexual type, since only heterosexuality is able to produce future citizens. To promote and protect this model by institutionalizing it with the advantages and legal status of marriage increases the likelihood of producing and raising offspring in more desirable circumstances in order that they become responsible and productive citizens.

The difference between marriage and civil unions, then, is the difference between relationships that have a legitimate and important state interest and ones that don't.

While the counter-examples raised concerning infertile couples, couples past child bearing age or couples who have willingly decided not to have children, have been used as a rationale for same-sex couples to marry under similar circumstances, it must be emphasized that the marriage statutes are not conceived in function of the exception that these particular cases represent but rather in function of the model exemplified by the heterosexual relationship. If the criteria established by the model are satisfied, then marriage must be allowed to all couples meeting those criteria by all standards of due process and constitutional law. Anything else would be unfair!