There have been a bunch of news stories recently about Bridal Brokerage, a new business that buys and sells canceled weddings. If a wedding falls through, the (unlucky) couple sells the location, vendor contracts, and so forth to Bridal Brokerage...which then tries to sell them (at bargain prices) to another (hopefully luckier) couple. It's an ingenious idea—but the thing that really stopped me in my tracks reading about it was an off-hand statistic I saw in the linked article. That statistic being: American weddings, cost, on average $27,000.
I think I've seen a similar figure elsewhere. But no matter how often I come across it, it still makes my jaw drop. The median US household income is only about $45,000, after all. You look at those numbers, and it's clear that there have to be some not inconsequential number of people who are spending more than six-to-nine months worth of income on their weddings—and undoubtedly starting their married life in hock for a $6,000 gown or a $10,000 reception or I don't even know what.
A big part of my sticker shock probably has to do with the fact that my wife and I didn't have a wedding. I certainly didn't want one myself—but my not-wanting was nowhere near her level of adamant apocalyptic not-wanting. Even the hint of a mention of guest lists made the anxiety come off her in waves. She actually moved the date up four months because she was sick of her boss talking to her about it at work, and figured doing the deed would shut her up. And if none of that sounds very romantic—well that's my wife. (She proposed to me in her parent's bathroom. We'd come in to find her some Advil, and she turned around and said, "I think I'm ready to get married now." I suggested that maybe we could talk about it later, and she said that that was fine as long as I said "yes." So I did. )
Anyway—as I said, she moved the wedding up to spite her boss, so instead of having it on Halloween, we had it in summer (neither of us can even ever remember the exact date...I think August 22 or 23). A friend of a friend we'd met at a cocktail party who happened to be a minister married us at our house. We asked him to put in the phrase "for fairer or fouler," and he did, and that was the extent of our effort to personalize the ceremony. We had two friends as witnesses, her parents, and our cats (who were polite enough not to yowl). My wife's dad took pictures and, in a final vain act of protest, cut my head off in just about every one of them. Our rings were family hand-me-downs; she wore a simple red Chinese dress she'd gotten at a thrift store. We had a party a day or so later for friends, and another one out on the East coast at my parents place for my relatives. The whole thing (including plane tickets) probably cost between $1,000 and $1,500. No debt, no trauma about seating or who and who not to invite. Nonetheless, at least as far as I can tell, we still seem to be as married as if we'd spent $10,000, or $27,000, or even $100,000.
It would be easy to argue that we did it the right way—and, again, it was definitely the right way for us. But even though the thought of a $27,000 wedding or, god forbid, a $100,000 wedding fills me with terror, I think it can be a little too easy to decry wedding expenditures. In his book Debt: The First 5000 Years, for example, David Graeber notes that "for most people in the world...the most significant life expenses were weddings and funerals." It's not like we're the first civilization on the planet that has ever gotten it into its heads that marriage is a big deal, nor the first people to commemorate it, in one way or another, with a large outlay. Major life events are major life events. What are you saving for, if not for them? Along those lines, Eugene Genovese points out in Roll, Jordan, Roll, that there is something more than a little indecent in the eagerness with which middle-class folks have, throughout history, chastised the poor for paying too much for funerals. Genovese argues that "respect for the dead signifies respect for the living—respect for the continuity of the human community and recognition of each man's place within it." Similarly, it seems like wedding expenses—whether totaling $1,000 or $27,000—aren't extravagant waste but a way of showing respect for the community, and of the place of love within it.
Not that more always equals better, or that you have to beggar yourself for love. All things in moderation, even respect for the community—and, like I said, our extremely low-key wedding worked for us. Which is maybe part of why I like the idea of Bridal Brokerage. Folks who have canceled their weddings at the last minute can sell their preparations and recoup some of the expenses. And folks who want a big blowout wedding can find one for a little cheaper.
Laura Beck at Jezebelpoints out that "there's a bit of a used car salesman feeling" to Bridal Brokerage's business. But even that seems kind of appropriate. After all, America is America; capitalism is what we live in. If our weddings are about our community, then they're going to reek of commerce, at least a little. There's probably no point in wringing one's hands about that. Better instead, perhaps, to focus on getting the best wedding for you—at a bargain price, if possible.
Ivan Ivanovich, just returned from space (Zvezda Museum)
On March 25, 1961, a group of peasants in Izhevsk, a village near the Ural Mountains in the center of the Soviet Union, watched a man fall from the sky. He wore a bright-orange jumpsuit attached to a blooming parachute. His arms shook. His legs flailed. When he succumbed, finally, to gravity, he crumpled onto the snow-covered ground. He made no noise. The Izhevsk villagers, Deborah Cadbury writes in her book Space Race, were baffled by the sight of this fallen flier and "his lumpy body." They ran to him, and opened his helmet's visor -- and must have been even more bewildered by the new sight that greeted them.
The open helmet revealed, Cadbury notes, not a face, but a sign, printed with stark capital letters: MAKET, or "mock-up." (Less technically: "dummy.") The figure they'd just seen hurled from the heavens wasn't a man so much as a mannequin: one of the world's first, and last, space-traveling dolls. He was an early cosmonaut, or rather a cosmonot: a sailor of the stars in every sense but the human one.
The Doll It All Hinged On
His nickname was Ivan Ivanovich -- "John Doe" -- and he was, in his way, the first person in space. (He beat Yuri Gagarin to that honor, technically, by four weeks.) Today Ivan is displayed, still in his Tang-orange suit, in the Smithsonian -- a steely-eyed relic of a time when space travel inspired not just wonder, but something else, too: fear. We may now regularly tweet with astronauts living in space. We may now regularly enjoy their quirky YouTube videos and Google Hangouts and AMAs, delighting in the mind-bending images of microphones (and food, and water, and cameras, and humans) floating in microgravity. We may now treat space as, along with so much else, a form of entertainment.
Not long ago, though, when space travel was still one of humanity's most epic and frantic goals, the concept itself -- sending a man into space! -- alarmed people. Particularly those people who were responsible for making the travel happen in the first place. Space was tantalizingly, terrifyingly new -- and we simply did not know what would happen to an earthly body when it was shot outside of the Earth itself. There were legitimate fears of radiation poisoning. There were less-legitimate fears of "space madness." There were concerns about the considerable psychic and political consequences should something go wrong. The Soviets, like their American counterparts, wanted to be first to space -- but they wanted, more specifically, to be the first to make it back again. Gagarin had to make his historical orbit around the Earth; he then, just as importantly, had to return to Earth intact. No other outcome would be tolerable.
So the engineers of the U.S.S.R. tested and then re-tested and then re-tested their technology. And, to make sure space travel was as safe as possible for organic creatures like themselves, they sent fellow animals -- mice and cats and dogs and chimps -- as sacrifices to the cause of space. Ivan Ivanovich was the culmination of that testing: He was as human-looking a thing as they could send short of sending a human. And he had an important job to do. The Korabl-Sputnik satellite -- the spacecraft that would carry Ivan and, later, Gagarin into space -- wasn't equipped for soft landings. It required its passenger to eject sometime after re-entry into Earth and sometime before collision with it. A parachute, it was hoped, would take care of the rest. To convert that "hope" into considerably-more-reassuring "expectation," Ivan would take two flights: the first, on March 9, and the second, on March 25. He would operate as a high-tech crash-test dummy.
And so, for a few heady weeks in 1961, all the hopes and fears of space's vast new frontier were embodied, quite literally, by a doll. If Ivan failed, leaders might conclude that it wouldn't be worth the risk of swapping him out for a human. If he succeeded, though, all systems were go. Gagarin -- and all those who would follow him -- could launch. Ivan was, Joyce Chaplin writes in her book Round About the Earth, "a dummy human to represent the human space travelers to come."
Ivan, having never been removed from his suit or his chute, today hangs as part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. (airandspace.org)
'So Much Like a Human Being'
Ivan was made, for the most part, of metal, with bendable joints that allowed for ease when it came to dressing him and situating him within his tiny spacecraft. He had "skin" of synthetic leather. His detachable head -- engineers connected it to his body through his open helmet -- was made primarily of metal, too. Yet Ivan was, and this was the whole point, eerily humanoid. He was also, and this was less than the point, a little bit creepy. He was designed with the help of the Moscow Institute for Prosthetics, and his face -- the only part of him that would, in flight, not be covered by his spacesuit -- was made to look as lifelike as possible, with eyes and eyebrows and "even eyelashes," Mark Gallai, an acclaimed test pilot who advised the U.S.S.R. on cosmonaut training, recalled. Ivan resided, as such, in the uncanny valley -- a "phantom cosmonaut" who was more phantom than cosmonaut. "There really is something deathly unpleasant in the mannequin sitting in front of us," Gallai put it, bluntly. "Probably it is not good to make a nonhuman so much like a human being."
Vladimir Suvorov, an acclaimed documentary cinematographer hired to film Ivan's test flights, agreed with that assessment. In diaries documenting his filming of the first Vostok flights, Suvorov describes his first encounter with Ivan at the Soviet space agency's Assembly Testing Complex (ATC):
The next day we got acquainted with Ivan Ivanovich: a dummy pilot. In a spacious clean room of the ATC three men in white overalls opened a big, sealed box which arrived via the special delivery service. They lifted the dummy carefully from the box and put it into the cosmonaut's seat. "He" was dressed extraordinarily: bright-orange suit, white helmet, thick gloves and high, laced boots ... His head, the "skin" of his body, arms, and legs were made from synthetic material with durability, elasticity, and resistance mimicking that the of the human skin. His neck, arms, and legs had gimbal joints so they could be moved ... Dressed in a complete cosmonaut spacesuit he looked somewhat unpleasant with his fixed false eyes and a mask for a face.
Adding to the unpleasantness, no doubt, was the fact that scientists, eager to make the most efficient use possible of the test flights Ivan would complete on their behalf, designed his hollow limbs to function as their own kind of spacecraft. Ivan's arms and legs housed medical experiments designed to test -- even further than researchers already had -- how living organisms would fare in space. So Ivan's compliant corpse became home to a mini-menagerie of life both large and microscopic: He carried in his appendages, variously, 40 white mice, 40 black mice, a group of guinea pigs, various reptiles, human blood samples, human cancer cells, yeast, and bacteria. (This was in addition to the canine companions that flew with Ivan, in the proud tradition of the Soviet space program: Chernushka ("Blackie") for his first flight, and Zvezdochka ("Little Star") for his second.)
Ivan would, over the course of his mission, suffer many more indignities for the cause of manned space flight. Within his remaining cavities were placed yet more experiments devised by zealous humans, these featuring, instead of animals, tools and instruments. They measured the acceleration, angular rate changes, and levels of space radiation Ivan encountered while away from Earth. And they included radio devices so that Ivan could communicate with the ground below.
Spies! Choirs! Borscht!
So Ivan's creators gave him not only a face, but a voice. His main mission, besides surviving the Korabl-Sputnik's hard landings intact, was to use that voice to test his communications equipment during his orbit of Earth. But what should a dummy cosmonaut say to the world below him? This was a tricky matter, given that the Soviets could expect Western intercepts of whatever radio transmissions they sent during their flights. Their messages would have to be coded -- but, then again, not too coded as to arouse Western suspicions of spy activity. And coded in such a way, furthermore, as to maintain the pride and dignity of the Soviet space program. (Previous flights, per the cosmonaut Georgi Grechko, had featured basic, pre-recorded combinations of letters and numbers. Which "led to rumors that a cosmonaut had called for help from an out-of-control spacecraft.")
A proposal that the tape Ivan played would contain a recitation of technical details of the flight itself was rejected on the grounds that it might suggest Ivan was part of a spy mission. Next came a proposal that Ivan would activate a tape of someone singing -- discarded on the grounds that anyone who overheard the flying singer might assume that a Soviet spy had succumbed to space madness. (Thus failing, obviously, on "pride and dignity" grounds.) In the end, engineers decided on a musical compromise, including on Ivan's final flight a tape of a choir singing songs (since "even the most gullible Western intelligence man knew you couldn't fit a choir in a Korabl-Sputnik satellite"). A human voice reading a recipe for borscht, the Russian beet soup, was added for tasty -- and Western-intelligence-confusing -- measure.
In an age of rampant paranoia, however, Ivan's final test flight still ended up causing confusion. As the cosmonaut Alexei Leonovtells it, Ivan's recording -- as both feared and expected -- was indeed picked up by Western listening posts. And "since no announcement of the flight had been released by our state news agency, TASS, rumors spread like wildfire that a manned space flight had gone wrong and been covered up."
A model of Ivan in in the Korabl-Sputnik's ejection seat (Zvezda Museum via Russian Spacesuits)
It had not. On the contrary, Ivan's test flights -- both of them -- seem to have gone remarkably well. In their book Rocket Men, Rex Hall and David Shayler note that the March 25 flight, just like the March 9 version before it, had taken just as long as engineers had planned: exactly one hour, 40 minutes. It "lasted for just one orbit, and was a complete success." In Space Race, Deborah Cadbury elaborates on Ivan's -- and by extension, the Soviet space program's -- victory. "He made the perfect flight," she writes. "His sightless eyes took in a God's-eye view of the world. His unhearing ears heard the retro engines fire. His unfeeling limbs felt the rush as he landed in falling snow near a remote village."
Ivan's victory gave Soviet scientists the confidence they needed to launch a human in the place of the doll -- which they did, finally, on April 12, 1961. The space doll had done his job.
Space Man or Spy?
And he was given, finally, the same treatment that his fellow cosmonauts would receive: He was recovered, and then celebrated. When Ivan made his first orbit of Earth, a team of thirty Soviet paratroopers was sent to guard the site where he and his craft would land. Rescue engineers, using a ski plane and a horse-drawn sleigh, found the Korabl-Sputnik capsule, scorched from its re-entry, sizzling and steaming in five feet of melting snow. And then they found Ivan -- who, per one eyewitness, "looked precisely as if a real cosmonaut had been killed during the landing."
But there are differing versions of Ivan's second return to Earth. The most common is the one described at the beginning of this story: Confused villagers, open helmet, MAKET. Suvorov the cinematographer, however, describes the scene a little differently. The Russian peasants, he claims, fell victim to the same misconception that Ivan's designers feared Westerners would: They assumed Ivan was a spy. Only they assumed he was a Western spy. The villagers wanted not to help him, Suvorov writes, but to turn him in.
Here, from the diary of the documentarian, are Ivan's final moments as a cosmonaut:
The people in the region of the landing mistook the sound produced by the spacecraft upon reentering into the Earth's atmosphere for an anti-aircraft rocket shot sound when hitting the target. In addition they soon saw a parachute-diver in a strange bright-orange suit. So they had all the reasons to believe that they were facing another spy pilot. Probably already anticipating the governmental awards the peasants with a local militia-man surrounded the motionless and silent figure and tried to grab him. At that particular moment the search group arrived and saved "Ivan Ivanovich." They said that the fellows were so frustrated by the revelation that they smashed their fists into the face of the dummy. But "Ivan Ivanovich" was too tough for them.
So the alternative history of Ivan Ivanovich (one told, it's worth noting, by an employee of the Soviet government) ends with the inanimate hero -- the doll that paved the way for humans' first tentative steps into space -- falling victim to a confusion of his own making. The pseudo-human lying on the snow scared people. He baffled them. He angered them. Newly returned from space, the pathbreaking doll was punched in the face.
1) We've had another of the periodic refreshes of our web design. You can see the old look if you click on the name of one of our writers -- for instance, the Ta-Nehisi Coates author site. You can see the new look if you click on the headline of any particular item or posting, like this (wonderful) one about Ta-Nehisi's experiences on arrival in France.
The new look has bigger fonts, wider "leading" (white space between lines -- legacy term from the days when type was set on strips of lead), and narrower text columns. Together these are intended to give it a lighter, more accessible feel. As part of the transition, the "Previous" and "Next" buttons of the old design, which took you to earlier and later posts by a given author or in a given channel, have been removed. Apparently our web metrics showed that not many people used them.
In keeping with my misfit nature, I personally used these buttons all the time. As a public service for any others in this predicament, here's the E-Z workaround for seeing a sequence of posts by a specific writer. If you're reading an item by Ta-Nehisi Coates about his experiences in France and want to see what else he has written in this vein, you:
Click on his name, at the very top of the item, to get a newest-first stream of all his postings, in "classic look" smaller-font layout;
Just read them that way; or
Scroll to the item just before or after the one you were previously reading, and then click on that item's title. Repeat as needed.
Now you know.
2) An idea on comments. A reader sends this suggestion:
I just renewed my mail subscription to the Atlantic. [JF reply: Thank you.]
So it occurred to me: what if you had a comments section (even if just on some posts) limited to verified subscribers? You might sell a lot of subs! Would be a smart discussion too, I bet.
This is the first comments strategy that has some appeal from my point of view. Probably technically too complex to implement, but an interesting thought experiment. For why I prefer to quote reader messages, rather than enabling comments, see here and here.
3) Speaking of subscribing, on the flight from DC to Los Angeles several days ago I sat next to a woman who had bought our latest issue at the airport newsstand. After she finished a few hours' work on her computer in first part of the flight, she pulled out the magazine and read it carefully cover to cover. I sat there, discreetly watching, and beaming positive thoughts in her direction. When she reached the last page she pulled out the (hated by everyone, but effective) blow-in subscription card and put it in her purse.
As the plane headed in for a landing I dared ask her how she'd liked the magazine, and explained why I was asking. "That is a great issue," she said. And she was right. While of course I love all issues of our magazine, I think this one really is exceptionally strong from very beginning to very end -- in range, surprise, execution, and refreshed look. Please do check it out.
Bonus incentive: in this issue you'll see the answer to my version of the Andrew Sullivan "View from your window" contest, which I posted in January.
"Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge" – William Wordsworth
"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling." – Oscar Wilde
April is our poetry month at #1book140, The Atlantic's Twitter book club. On our nomination page and on our hashtag, readers have been suggesting an exciting diverse mix of anthologies, authors, and individual poems.
This month, let's plan to read together in two ways:
Vote for a main poetry collection to read for the month
The poll, at the bottom of this post, closes at 9 p.m. EST on Thursday, March 28. The choices:
The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry offers a great overview of "the major and well known poets of the twentieth century" writes Timothy Nassau. It's a "moving and impressive book," according to the Poetry Magazine review. It doesn't always offer poets' greatest hits, but its astonishing range of translations will offer us a wonderfully diverse set of poems to choose from and a helpful place to start for further explorations.
The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Shorter Edition is a great one-stop choice for anyone interested in mostly British and American poetry, featuring work by most of the poets suggested by #1book140 readers. It's almost a thousand pages shorter and nearly as expensive as its towering cousin. At 2.2 pounds it could slay a Jabberwock, but by Zephyr's winter traces, it's thorough.
It was a dramatic week for the nation and the Supreme Court. Scores of people slept in the snow in hopes of a ticket to argument; thousands more rallied in front of the Court to show their support for marriage equality, and often their own unions. ("IF GAY MARRIAGE WERE LEGAL," read one sign yesterday, "TODAY WOULD BE MY 31st ANNIVERSARY.") They were hoping for a clarion call for equality from the nation's highest court.
But when Chief Justice John Roberts said today, "The case is submitted," the law's engines of circumlocution took over. And such signs as could be read Tuesday and Wednesday suggest that those crowds should prepare for anticlimax, and perhaps disappointment.
Heartbreak is not out of the question.
Wednesday, as Tuesday, a number of justices seemed to be seeking a way not to decide United States v. Windsor. And it seemed more likely than before that there are four justices who are unwilling to reach any result that will give legal approval to same-sex marriage.
The question seems again to come down to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who posed the question many expected to be on his mind: "The question is whether the federal government under our federalism scheme has the authority to regulate marriage."
This argument is a potential winner for Edith Windsor, the plaintiff. Windsor and her partner of 41 years, Thea Spyer, married in Canada in 2007. When Spyer died in 2009, Windsor was hit with a tax bill of $363,053 on her partner's estate. A federal court determined that Windsor and Spyer were legally married under New York law; but she could not receive the spousal deduction from the estate tax because of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, which requires the federal government to award spousal benefits of all kinds only to opposite-sex couples, even if they are legally married under state law.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment requirement of equal protection because it discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. Gays and lesbians as a class, the lower court held, have suffered so much discrimination over the years that laws that harm them are subject to "heightened scrutiny," like laws that discriminate by sex.
The federal government, at President Obama's direction, admitted its belief that DOMA is unconstitutional. Wednesday, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued to the Court that Windsor, not the Internal Revenue Service, should win. His argument asked the Court to adopt the Second Circuit's "heightened scrutiny" test. Argument ran for one hour and 50 minutes -- less than the six hours in the health-care cases, but still more than the Court's normal 60-minute session.
By the end of that time, it seemed unlikely that the Court would follow Verrilli's invitation to create a new "protected class." Instead, if Edith Windsor ekes out a win, it is like to come on federalism grounds, or even grounds of standing.
Because the government conceded below that DOMA could not stand, the statute was represented Wednesday by former Solicitor General Paul Clement, hired by members of the House to argue for its validity. Clement avoided any claim that gay marriage was undesirable or unworthy. DOMA does not infringe equality, he argued, it assures it: All same-sex couples are treated equally. Congress has the power to define marriage as it chooses for its own statutes, for reasons of insuring that federal law is uniform around the country. "We don't want somebody, if they are going to be transferred in the military from West Point to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, to resist the transfer because they are going to lose some benefits," he said in his closing argument.
Justice Samuel Alito emerged Tuesday and Wednesday as the general of the conservative wing. He obliquely warned that any recognition of same-sex marriage will simply beget new challenges. What if the federal government allowed the spouse of a wounded soldier, married under state law, to visit in the soldier in hospital? Wouldn't it then be discriminating against another partner, recognized by state civil unions? And what about gay partners in other states where no unions are recognized at all?
The warning was clear: State same-sex marriage is the camel, and its nose will tear down the tent.
The liberal to moderate justices fought back by suggesting that DOMA creates second-class marriages. DOMA means the federal government "can create a class they don't like -- here, homosexuals -- or a class that they consider is suspect in the marriage category," Justice Sonia Sotomayor said to Clement.
Justice Elena Kagan challenged Clement by citing the language of a congressional report issued on DOMA's passage that said "Congress decided to reflect an honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality." The courts do not void laws because "a couple of lawmakers may have had an improper motivation," Clement replied.
Solicitor General Donald Verrilli rose to argue that "heightened scrutiny" is the test for DOMA. As the lawyer for the federal government, he refused to make any argument based on federalism. Unlawful discrimination against gays and lesbians, he repeated several times, is the true issue in the case.
"You think Congress can use its powers to supersede the traditional authority and prerogative of the States to regulate marriage in all respects?" Kennedy asked. It was a slow pitch, letter-high; but Verrilli kept his bat on his shoulder: "The problem is an equal protection problem from the point of view of the United States."
He did admit that "the federal government is not the 51st state," but he reverted to equal protection, urging the Court to move in a direction it seemed manifestly unwilling to go. Recognizing "heightened scrutiny" in this case, some justices clearly worried, would require applying it to state marriage laws too, pushing the Court toward a rule that would require same-sex marriage in all 50 states. That was where Alito's warning about the three military couples surfaced; once loosed, "heightened scrutiny" is hard to cabin, he seemed to be saying.
When lawyer Roberta Kaplan rose to argue for Edie Windsor, Chief Justice Roberts had had enough. "You're following the lead of the Solicitor General and returning to the Equal Protection Clause every time I ask a federalism question." he told her. His worry: What if Congress adopted a law that treated all gay couples as married, regardless of the state law? "Whether or not the federal government could have its own definition of marriage for all purposes would be a very closely argued question," she responded.
Justice Alito returned to his warning of equal protection problems ahead if the Court rules for Windsor. What would happen when a married couple from North Carolina, which has no same-sex marriage, became subject to tax? "If the estate tax follows state law, would that not create an equal protection problem similar to the one that exists here?"
Chief Justice Roberts returned to the issue of disapproval Kagan had earlier raised. He asked Kaplan if "84 Senators [voting for DOMA] based their votes on moral disapproval of gay people?" She responded, "times can blind, and ... back in 1996 people did not have the understanding that they have today, that there is no distinction, there is no constitutionally permissible distinction."
Roberts pounced. "I suppose the sea change has a lot to do with the political force and effectiveness of people representing, supporting your side of the case?" In sea metaphors, this was a reef. If gays are now powerful, they do not need "heightened scrutiny"; their lobby can prevail in Congress. "You don't doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same sex-marriage laws in different States is politically powerful, do you?" he asked. "Political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case."
"I don't believe that moral understanding comes from political power," she replied.
The first 50 minutes of argument Wednesday were devoted (as was much argument Tuesday) to the question of whether the case even belonged before the Court. If the government has conceded the issue, why does a group of House members get to argue for the law? For that matter, if the government agrees with the court below, why should it get to appeal? Court-appointed amica curiae Vicki C. Jackson, a Harvard professor, told the Court that, because the government did not seek "relief" from the judgment requiring it to refund Windsor's taxes, the "natural urge [to resolve the issue] must be put aside" and "await another case for another day."
"We have injury here in the most classic, most concrete sense," Kagan objected. "Whether the government is happy or sad to pay that $300,000 the government is still paying the $300,000." Clement told the Court that Congress had standing to protect its "single most important prerogative ... the prerogative to pass laws."
Oral argument is notoriously hard to read; few foresaw last year that the Affordable Care Act would survive its Court trial by fire. One who did was Lyle Deniston, dean of the Court press corps, who has covered the Court since the days of Earl Warren. "DOMA is in trouble," reads the headline on his argument recap for SCOTUSblog.com. If that is true, it seems, it is not because of enthusiasm for the cause that brought the rainbow flags to the Court steps this week, but for legal reasons that are hard to explain, and may be soon forgotten.
Windsor's trumpet will sound from the Court by the end of June; but it seems likely to strike an uncertain note.
The passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 was intended in part "to express moral disapproval of homosexuality." Less than two decades later, multiple states have blessed same sex marriage.
What explains the rapid change?
John Roberts raised that question Wednesday at the Supreme Court. "I suppose the sea change has a lot to do with the political force and effectiveness of people representing, ! supporting your side of the case," he told a lawyer who wanted DOMA struck down. "You don't doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same sex-marriage laws in different States is politically powerful, do you? ...Political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case... I'm just trying to see where that comes from, if not from the political effectiveness of groups on your side."
I can think of a source that may be far more significant.
Yes, political activism by groups favoring same sex marriage has been important. So have essays by people like Andrew Sullivan, who helped to pioneer the intellectual arguments for same sex marriage. What I suspect, however, is that the most important factor of all has been the decision by countless gays and lesbians to come out of the closet and be open about their identities. "A poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, released last week and conducted in mid-March, fo! und that 14 percent of Americans say they have changed their m! inds about same-sex marriage. Roughly a third of them told pollsters it was because they know someone -- a friend or family member or other acquaintance -- who is gay," the Los Angeles Timesreports. And the reason that so many young people grow up supporting gay marriage, compared to their cohort a generation ago, is partly that their coming of age has been spent conceiving of gays and lesbians as real people whom they know, not abstract others, who are easily stigmatized and demonized by virtue of being made into caricatures that are never tested.
Having a single gay friend or co-worker is enough for many straight people to unconsciously conclude that the mainstream descriptions of homosexuality from just a generation ago are absurd.
As Neil Steinberg p! ut it, "All that coming out of the closet worked."
He adds some tragic context: the role the AIDS epidemic played in forcing gay people out of the closet. "The old bargain -- stay silent and we won't hurt you, maybe -- was now a fatal compromise. Silence = Death," he wrote. "So gay people became more visible. Families that didn't know they had gay members discovered -- not typically to their delight -- they did. Businesses found they had gay employees... Coming out was never easy -- it's not easy now, as growing acceptance is one thing, facing your own dad something very different. It takes courage. And most gay men and lesbians no doubt think of coming out in private terms. But they should also realize that it had enormous political implications, which pollsters like Pew are now seeing."
Exposure to gays doesn't change the minds of sincere traditionalists whose opposition to gay marriage is rooted in a notion of marriage as a sacramental, procreat! ive institution, rather than one grounded in love. But as public opinio! n on divorce law and prevailing attitudes about straight marriage attest, that is a tiny group of people -- not nearly enough to constitute a majority that can block gay marriage. That requires the addition of the "yuck, gays" vote, which is rapidly shrinking. It turns out that once Americans get to know gay people they find they rather like them.
Last week, Flavorwire had a good laugh at the recently uncovered notes from the producers of Blade Runner, who seemed united in their hatred for the "deadly dull" sci-fi noir that would prove one of the most influential movies of the '80s. But it's important to remember that some of those casually involved in the production actually liked it quite a bit—particularly Philip K. Dick, whose book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was the basis of Ridley Scott's film. And while there's a long (and enjoyable) history of authors loathing what Hollywood does to their books, there are a few examples of writers who are utterly delighted with their page-to-film adaptations.
Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner
In a lovely letter written to the Ladd Company shortly before he died (and before Blade Runner hit theaters), author Dick expressed his enthusiasm for what he had seen of the film, and boldly predicted its response. "The impact of BLADE RUNNER is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people," Dick wrote, "and, I believe, on science fiction as a field... Nothing that we have done, individually or collectively, matches BLADE RUNNER. This is not escapism; it is super realism, so gritty and detailed and authentic and goddam convincing that, well, after the segment I found my normal present-day 'reality' pallid by comparison. What I am saying is that all of you collectively may have created a unique new form of graphic, artistic expression, never before seen. And, I think, BLADE RUNNER is going to revolutionize our conceptions of what science fiction is and, more, can be." In conclusion, he tells producer Jeff Walker, "My life and creative work are justified and completed by BLADE RUNNER." Not exactly faint praise, that.
Elmore Leonard, Jackie Brown
Quentin Tarantino took a few liberties with Elmore Leonard's book Rum Punch, changing the race and last name of its leading character to accommodate Pam Grier and the title to reflect her importance. But Leonard was still thrilled with Tarantino's film, which he says is his favorite dramatization of one of his books. "I've had some good ones," he said of his film adaptations. "Get Shorty and Out of Sight, and the one Tarantino did, Jackie Brown, those are good movies. And Tarantino's especially stayed close to the book. I was surprised that he stayed closer than anyone. And there have been other adaptations that have varied widely for the worse. That's the way it is with making movies. Most of them are not that good, so you kind of expect that. Hopefully it won't happen with yours."
James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential
"I think that if a writer options a novel to a studio or to filmmakers in general," novelist James Ellroy said in 1997, "then he has an obligation to keep his mouth shut if the movie gets made and it's all fucked up." But Ellroy helped promote Curtis Hanson's Oscar-winning adaptation of L.A. Confidential, telling reporters, "I am in the wonderful position of actually wanting to open my mouth and extol L.A. Confidential the film." Of the script, Ellroy said, "I saw that they had done a good job of compressing my story while maintaining the overall dramatic thrust of it, and I saw that they had contained the narrative structure of the three men. Of course when I saw the film it was very, very taken with it." Asked to compare his work and the movie, he shrugged, "The book is black type on white paper and the film is visual. That's it. It's a brilliantly compatible visual form of the novel."
Dennis Lehane, Mystic River
"I didn't want to sell Mystic River," Lehane told The Atlantic in 2004. "I didn't think anyone could film it, since the vast majority of it happens inside the characters' minds. It was only because I talked to Clint [Eastwood] and knew he got it that I said all right, I'll let him do this. And then of course they did it so beautifully."
John Grisham, The Rainmaker
The frequently adapted lawyer-turned-author gave a memorable interview to Entertainment Weekly in 2004, in which he candidly accessed all of his works to date, and films made from them—from good (A Time to Kill) to bad (The Chamber). He had the highest praise for Francis Ford Coppola's 1997 film, starring a still up-and-coming Matt Damon: "To me it's the best adaptation of any of 'em. Coppola really wanted my involvement, for whatever it's worth. And I love the movie. It's so well done."
P.D. James, Children of Men
Director Alfronso Cuarón took plenty of liberties with The Children of Men, the novel by P.D. James that he loosely adapted in 2006. But she gave her blessing to the film—according to the filmmaker, anyway. "She's a big endorser of the movie," he said after its release. "She made a statement in which she says, 'It's obvious that this film departed from the book, but I'm so proud to be associated with this film.' She really understood that in a way we took an elaboration of her own premise. So the core of everything is her book."
J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun
Ballard reflected on Steven Spielberg's 1987 adaptation of his book Empire of the Sun nearly 20 years after its release. In The Guardian, he wrote, "I was deeply moved by the film but, like every novelist, couldn't help feeling that my memories had been hijacked by someone else's." However, he was careful to note that Christian Bale, his avatar in the film, was "a brilliant child actor," and summed up the experience thus: "Spielberg's film seems more truthful as the years pass. Christian Bale and John Malkovich join hands by the footlights with my real parents and my younger self, with the Japanese soldiers and American pilots, as a boy runs forever across a peaceful lawn towards the coming war. But perhaps, in the end, it's all only a movie."
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
When his novel Cloud Atlas, which many considered un-filmable, was made into a feature film by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, author David Mitchell penned a guide of "habits of successful adaptations"—which he considered Cloud Atlas to be. "Adaptation is a form of translation," he wrote, "and all acts of translation have to deal with untranslatable spots. Sometimes late at night I'll get an email from a translator asking for permission to change a pun in one of my novels or to substitute an idiomatic phrase with something plainer. My response is usually the same: You are the one with knowledge of the 'into' language, so do what works. When asked whether I mind the changes made during the adaptation of Cloud Atlas, my response is similar: The filmmakers speak fluent film language, and they've done what works."
Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire
When Tom Cruise was attached to the film version of Rice's smash novel in the role of the vampire Lestat, the author was livid. "The Tom Cruise casting is so bizarre, it's almost impossible to imagine how it's going to work," she told Movieline. "I do think Tom Cruise is a fine actor. [But] you have to know what you can do and what you can't do." When she saw the finished product, however, Rice changed her tune. Of Cruise, she wrote, "From the moment he appeared, Tom was Lestat for me." She later penned a lengthy "personal statement," in which she declared, "What fuels this statement is a passionate love of the film, a marvelous relief that it exists now in a form that can be preserved; that it was what I dreamed it could be, and that I got through the whole experience without being destroyed. A mediocre film would have destroyed me just as much as a bad one. I thought IWTV was exceptional."
Susan Orlean, Adaptation
Charlie Kaufman's screenplay adaptation of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief was, to put it mildly, unorthodox—particularly in his decision to not only write himself (and a fictional twin brother) into the tale, but Orlean as well. When she first read the script, she was understandably surprised. "It was a complete shock," she told GQ last year. "My first reaction was 'Absolutely not!' They had to get my permission and I just said: 'No! Are you kidding? This is going to ruin my career!' Very wisely, they didn't really pressure me. They told me that everybody else had agreed and I somehow got emboldened. It was certainly scary to see the movie for the first time. It took a while for me to get over the idea that I had been insane to agree to it, but I love the movie now. What I admire the most is that it's very true to the book's themes of life and obsession, and there are also insights into things which are much more subtle in the book about longing, and about disappointment."
This post also appears on Flavorpill, an Atlantic partner site.
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3) Speaking of subscribing, on the flight from DC to Los Angeles several days ago I sat next to a woman who had bought our latest issue at the airport newsstand. After she finished a few hours' work on her computer in first part of the flight, she pulled out the magazine and read it carefully cover to cover. I sat there, discreetly watching, and beaming positive thoughts in her direction. When she reached the last page she pulled out the (hated by everyone, but effective) blow-in subscription card and put it in her purse.
