Culture Vultures: Must Be the Maple Syrup
Steyn, Mark
[eNNui talk nlESjN :11 :N,'m u l mlh nniJ ~ i : i ~ by Mark Steyn Must Be the Maple Syrup The Green Mountain State is now the Civil Union State. A ll quiet on the western bank of the...
...My friend Bill, who runs the general store, asked my advice the other day on what he should do with the adjoining barn: Use it for video rentals...
...As to the notion that this innovation can be confined to Vermont by the Defense of Marriage Act, that's merely the Maginot Line of the culture war...
...Just as those justices, however unrepresentative, are the highest court in the land, so Town Meeting is still the legislative body of Vermont communities...
...a vision of opportunity...
...He offers a few suggestions on how this might be done, but they are lame: more mentoring, better day care and prenatal care, increased funding for education, etc...
...Whether in conservative Alaska or liberal Hawaii, voters have overwhelmingly rejected same-sex marriage...
...T he standard line on Vermont and New Hampshire is that they re diametrically opposed: The thinking on one side of the river is turned upside down on the other side, just as the two triangular states appear to be...
...The trick is to find a state where it's procedurally all but impossible for legislators to restrain the court...
...Rather, he says the fourth awakening's goal of self-realization for all mankind will be met if these 15 "immaterial commodities" are imbibed by people all over the world: % sense of purpose...
...Who could object to such a picture of domestic bliss...
...So let me propose a New Hampshire solution: Let gays have the same benefits as straights, and let it be...zip, nada, nothin...
...Laura puts it, to make coherent families...
...And yet in 1998 , in a bad year for Republicans nationally, the party's gubernatorial candidate Ruth Dwyer managed to get 4 z percent of the vote against a popular incumbent (Howard Dean) by running on an unapologetically conservative platform (she's strongly pro-life, for example...
...The Town Clerks on the Vermont side of the river aren't so very different from the ones on this side and, as far as mine's concerned, I can't really imagine going in with, say, Earl or Bud and asking her for a permit to pronounce us man and husband, or partner, or whatever it says...
...I've spent hours looking for a decent gay disco and no one's ever said: "Oh, sure...
...Of course, that may change if, as opponents of "civil unions" predict, Vermont becomes a kind of Reno of the northeast...
...Everything changes...
...Patty, our clerk, gave my betrothed a leaflet from the State of New Hampshire, which recommends tile bride ask the groom if he's had sex with other men...
...There's only one surefire way I know to distribute spiritual resources across the globe and that's through a real, unmistakable awakening that reaches across all classes and countries...
...Fogel's idea of economic history covers a broad array of factors that I hadn't thought of as economic...
...Look around you...
...the capacity to focus and concentrate one's efforts...
...Doubtless it never occurred to the framers of the Vermont constitution specifically to reserve the institution of marriage for a man and a woman, any more than it would have occurred to them to specify that, under state law, water has to flow downhill...
...But when you think about it, gay marriage could only really slip in through somewhere like northern New England...
...Nor have we seen entire communities transformed in dramatic ways...
...Not the rich, who work longer than ever...
...and, last and by all means least, the so-called moderate will never be the same again...
...Open a gay bar," I said...
...I caught the end of some political discussion show the other week and someone was marveling at Vermont's pioneering zeal: "Who'd have thought it...
...a thirst for knowledge...
...Poor old Ben and Jerry have lost their ice-cream company, but on the bright side, they can now move in together and claim state benefits...
...Second left after the timber yard and the woodchipper rentals...
...Fogel is correct in pointing out that a shift of religious conservatives into the Republican Party helped the GOP reach parity with Democrats...
...Too quiet out there, at least from my vantage point across the river on the New Hampshire side...
...N Culture Vultures/Steyn (Continued from page 57) children has learned to keep its suitcase packed and a bundle of change-of-address cards on hand...
...It was embarrassing enough going in with a woman...
...Today there is more "spiritual estrangement" than ever before, which is why international sharing of spiritual resources is the task Fogel assigns to this era...
...We're no longer prepared to put in the effort, as Dr...
...an appreciation for quality...
...From that crowd, you'd think you were somewhere between one of London's loopier Marxist boroughs and Albania...
...Absolutely, but it's only the final nail in a coffin that's been peppered with them for almost 4 ~ years...
...I know of no gay men in my small border town in western New Hampshire-the "club scene" tends not to be so lively in parts of the country where last orders for dinner are at 6:15 p . m . - b u t there are a handful of tough old gals shacked up together, no questions asked...
...In the end, what's valuable about Fogel's book is his eclectic view of what's had the greatest impact on the human condition...
...wives...
...Given that heterosexuals redefined marriage to provide easier opt-out clauses, it's no surprise that others have used that wedge to create opt-in clauses...
...If this is matrimony in the 21st century, let us live free and let marriage die...
...We haven't seen the widespread, noisy conversions of earlier awakenings...
...I wish New Hampshire was as solidly, crazily Republican as its congressional delegation would suggest-Judd Gregg, Bob Smith, Charlie Bass, John Sununu-but, alas, it's no longer the reliably crusty, cranky Granite State it gets portrayed as during primary" season...
...If anything sets our century apart from the past," he says, "it is this huge increase"from 41 years to 75 years--"in the longevity of the lower classes...
...Incidentally, my "leathery old dykes" isn't entirely gratuitously stereotypical: If you'll forgive a sweeping generalization, I'd say that male homosexuality is basically urban in character, whereas lesbianism is essentially rural...
...Soon, no doubt, the first clone will be born to a gay couple in a clinic in Mexico or Tunisia, but one day he'll come to Texas or Maine and apply for a driver's license and no court is going to want to be the one that pronounces the poor clone a "non-person...
...No, it's certainly not the broader distribution of material resources...
...Meanwhile, a generation of American (Continued on page 93) The American Spectator "July~August 2000 57 returning to the faith they had as children or young adults or dropping out of liberal mainline churches and joining conservative evangelical congregations...
...These improvements, Fogel insists, have aided the poor far more than the rich...
...But it's not quite like that: Small percentage differences on election nights exaggerate the character of a state...
...In fact, Fogel asserts that "biomedical measures" offer a more accurate assessment of gains in "material egalitarianism" than do conventional economic yardsticks...
...There's not a gay bathhouse in the whole of Vermont, and, if there was, the gays would have had a tougher sell...
...I mean, do they even have any gays up there7" But that's the point...
...There speaks a true son of the Granite State, where the liquor stores are cunningly positioned a hundred yards across...
...And let's face it, there's nowhere else round here to go for a drink afterwards...
...On the other hand, the activist judiciaries in virtually every state can be relied on not to pass up the opportunity to flaunt their ability to redefine fundamental human institutions...
...a sense of the mainstream of work and life...
...Even the late Matthew Shepard, Wyoming's "gay martyr," has proved to have no mileage as a poster boy beyond the narrow coterie of predictable cheerleaders like Frank Rich...
...self-esteem...
...This seems unlikely: Woodsville is, as its name suggests, a small lumber town populated by scrawny, leathery, stump-toothed guys in plaid and their 3oo-lb...
...Years back, the state's tourist slogan boasted that Vermont is what America was, but, to be honest, it's hard to believe America was ever like this: small towns with picture-postcard commons and white-clapboard churches and rundown dairy farms and leathery old dykes firing up the truck to head off and collect the kids from dayeare...
...Sooner rather than later, faced with the actual fact of real, live gay couples, neighboring jurisdictions will find it less complicated to offer them some kind of formal recognition rather than face years of arguing through one court and another why a couple joined in lawful union in Windsor, Vermont, has no legal status over the bridge in Cornish, New Hampshire...
...By contrast, the Vermont gays demanding their rights on the Channel 3 News and in the Burlington Free Press are hard to demonize: They're mostly women of a certain age, graying hair, comfy sweaters, curled up in a porch rocker with their partner of a decade and a half 56 July~August 2 o o o " The American Spectator perched on the arm...
...a capacity to engage with diverse groups...
...What we have seen, though, during this supposed religious awakening is the continued secularization of American society and marginalization of religion as a force in the popular culture...
...a sense of discipline...
...Marriage has been so comprehensively trivialized we might as well put it out of its misery...
...But he's persuaded me...
...MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New "God, just the thought of it makes me Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator vomit," said Bill...
...That's where the big bucks are...
...an ethic of benevolence...
...The gay rights movement has had a very clear-sighted strategy...
...Pat Leahy, who inclines more towards East European-style Communism and, indeed, with his last Senate campaign against idiot dairy farmer Fred Tuttle, has even introduced Stalin-style ersatz elections to Vermont...
...For example, the social investments "that contributed most to unmeasured income were the construction of facilities to improve the supply of water, the cleaning up of the milk supply, the development of effective systems of quarantine, and the cleaning up of the slums...
...a capacity to resist the lure of hedonism...
...And if the shrink's not enough, he can join the rest of the most medicated generation of children in U.S...
...Just a few yards away in our Granite State vastness, we New Hampshirites seem certain to be the point where the dyke cracks, if you'll forgive the expression...
...Well, so what...
...And don't think "redefining" ends there...
...And who's now gaining more leisure time, another important immaterial commodity...
...Too bad it hasn't happened recently...
...In theory, the state could propose a constitutional amendment to correct the oversight and restore the status quo...
...Two years ago, at one high-school graduation on the Connecticut River, class valedictorian Kate Skidmore declared that it was time "to tell the truth" about Woodsville...
...Afterwards, it was argued that the kind of gnarled, curmudgeonly old Yankees who turn up at Town Meetings are an unrepresentative selection of the state's population...
...Dwyer is running again this year, and, whether or not she wins, I wouldn't be surprised if Vermont has a Republican governor before New Hampshire does...
...All these benefits, of course, "accrued disproportionately to those with modest incomes...
...a sense of community...
...But a lot of other people shifted as well: men, Southerners, conservative Catholics, gun owners, prolifers...
...Conversely, Vermont isn't as droningly progressive as it appears from its congressional delegation-the House's only self-confessed socialist Bernie Sanders...
...As a result of an increased food supply and improved sanitation, the average body size of humans has increased 5 ~ percent and their life span has grown lOO percent, while the "capacity of their vital organ systems" has improved greatly...
...He's right," said one of the other guys...
...I was going to bend the ear of a Log Cabin Republican for his thoughts...
...Is it, as my esteemed colleague David Frum said in the Weekly Standard, "The End Of Marriage...
...thing else I could do with the place...
...It might as well be us who deans 'era out as anyone else...
...H aving said all that, I liked The Fourth Great Reawakening and the Future of Egalitarianism enormously...
...These are fine characteristics, but they have as much to do with the Enlightenment as they do with religion...
...Summer ice-cream place...
...Fogel's ease for a fourth reawakening is further weakened by the fact that none of the "spiritual resources" which he says are paramount now and must be redistributed include faith in Jesus Christ as one's personal savior...
...Same-sex marriage can't win at the polls, only through the courts and craven legislatures...
...Vermont turned out to be the perfect choice...
...If you wish to be married in your church, good luck to you, but it won't affect your civil status, your tax status, or anything else...
...Fogel writes about the "emergence of teehnophysio evolution...
...IN The American Spectator _9 Ju I y/Au g ~ s t 2, o o o 93...
...I was just heading over there myself...
...But Vermont's constitution is much more difficult to change: Any amendment has to originate in the state senate, pass four separate votes in four consecutive years, be signed by the governor, and then be approved by the electorate...
...Presumably over in Vermont, that will now be a minimum requirement...
...she cried...
...There must be someof London...
...In fact, she was so unapologetically conservative that that wimp Jeffords refused to have anything to do with her...
...That's what Hawaii's legislature did after its court, in 1996 , declared that two men had the right to hula-hula down the aisle...
...A feed store...
...Mrs...
...That theory holds that over the past 300 years, and mostly during the past century, humans have gained control over their environment--"a degree of control so great that it sets them apart not only from all other species but also from all previous generations of homo sapiens...
...We've already had a grandparents' "visitation rights" case before the federal Supreme Court, but who knows who else will want a piece of the action by the time marriage has been "redefined...
...There are gay people everywhere in Woodsville...
...He contends the theory of the social gospelers that "improvement in material conditions naturally leads to spiritual improvement" is wrong...
...Republican Jim Jeffords...
...Instead, Vermont's a pretty good foretaste of what America will be, a half-decade or so down the line...
...Gays are thin on the ground in both Vermont and New Hampshire, though not for lack of effort by their admirers...
...Some gays have already argued that a ban on human cloning infringes on their reproductive rights...
...A ll quiet on the western bank of the Connecticut...
...The point of the Vermont supreme court ruling was that whatever state benefits were accorded to heterosexual couples also had to be accorded to same-sex couples...
...A surprising number of those amiable Green Mountain lezzies seem to live in the Connecticut River Valley, and many of them work on the New Hampshire side of the border, where Dartmouth College and other prestige employers are...
...Is it something in the maple syrup...
...If one half of a Vermont civil union gets hit by This world a car leaving the college, she'll be taken to Dartmouth Hitchcoek Medical Center, and it seems highly unlikely to me that the hospital would decline to recognize her spouse...
...So are the five justices on the state's supreme court who voted in favor of equalizing the status of gay and non-gay unions...
...That's what the guy with the last whaling tavern in Provincetown said," I pointed out...
...And besides, at Town Meetings in hardscrabble hamlets or in ballot boxes across the biggest state in the nation, it makes no difference: As California's ballot initiative proved, gay unions won't play, whether in towns or states, liberal or conservative...
...Vermont...
...the border from Massachusetts...
...a work ethic...
...history on his daily dose of Prozac and/or Ritalin, which seems to work pretty well, at least until the day the kid forgets to take it and guns down his schoolyard...
...a capacity for self-education...
...But up here in the North Country,, Log Cabin Republicans tend to be Republicans who live in log cabins and they don't take too kindly to being confused with the other kind...
...Let the state decline to recognize any "partnerships" and treat us all as individuals from cradle to grave...
...On Sunday Junior's with Mommy and her lesbian wife, Monday with Grammy and Grampa from Mommy's first, non-gay marriage, Tuesday with Mommy's gay biological sperm donor, Wednesday with Mommy's lesbian's egg donor's boyfriend, Thursday with his turkey baster's mannfacturer's ex-wife, Friday with his shrink...
...She'll get the anti-civil unions vote, too...
...In non-binding resolutions on Town Meeting Day, dozens of Vermont municipalities voted on the issue and all disapproved, though it got little play in the national press...
...But over there in Vermont in weathered capes and mossy cabins the state's gays are picking out their Sunday best in preparation for July 1. That's the day when, for the first time anywhere in this great Republic, Adam and Steve will be able to go to the Town Clerk's office and ask for a permit for a "civil union...
...a strong family ethic...
...They're all gonna be over the other side of the bridge getting married...
Vol. 33 • July 2000 • No. 6
