I ♥ NY

There may be elements of wishful thinking in this New York Times report on a homosexual "marriage" ruling, expected today in New York state supreme court. But as an object lesson in the New York Times' agenda on homosexual issues, how it's barely more than cheerleading for the Human Rights Campaign et al, the article is just this side of unbeatable. You can see the hopeful anticipation seeping through the article in phrases like:

● "[W]hether to permit gay and lesbian marriages in the state" in the story's lead paragraph. Which phrasing presupposes that there is any such thing as a gay and lesbian "marriage" in the first place, something that the state can "permit" (or "ban") as it pleases. The whole case against homosexual marriage is that marriage MEANS a man and a woman and that there 'tain't no such thing as gay marriage, any more than four-sided triangles or male pregnancy (insert Monty Python joke here).

● "The most sweeping would be a clear affirmation of a constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry" in the second paragraph. Which phrasing presupposes that there is such a right, one that needs "affirming" rather than being "created" from whole cloth. And doing so in a "clear" way; clarity always being good you understand (and I doubt the Bowers precedent abberation was ever called "clear" by the NYT). The controlling worldview is that gay marriage is a reality that our bigoted society just needs to acknowledge and be liberated toward.

● The first direct quotation from Stephen Gillers of NYU: "The question is whether they can intellectually do what I think intuitively and emotionally they'd like to do." As a piece of legal prognostication, this is nothing short of a shocking admission (albeit probably true) that what matters is not what the law or precedents say, but what the judges "intuitively and emotionally [would] like to do." The intellectual work -- the legal analysis, in other words; the supposed expertise that earns judges their legitimacy as rather than a super-legislature, deciding value conflicts -- is slave to the wish.

● "[L]awyers noted that the Court of Appeals has a long history of trailblazing, going back to a golden age in the 1920's under Chief Judge Benjamin Cardozo." Which phrasing presupposing that "trailblazing" in matters of legal issues, is something good. Otherwise an era of it wouldn't be called a "golden age," but a "dark age." Can you imagine the 12th century being called "the golden age of religious authority"; if you can't, you see my point.