Eli Pariser and Zach Exley, names probably familiar from your inbox — Eli has a disconcertingly consistent pattern of vowels and consonants — are talking to a packed crowd of about 400, explaining how MoveOn.org got started and how the Internet is enabling us to rebuild some of the community that’s been lost over the decades.

They humbly stress how they stumbled into success, and make the good point that, when something succeeds, inevitably people look for geniuses which is “terribly disempowering” to everyone else.

They stress that we’re just at the beginning of the Net-izing of politics. “In a few years, we won’t be talking about a 2 million person email list. And we won’t be focusing on MoveOn. We’ll be talking about 40 million people and hopefully lots of groups.”

They say that the report of 6M names on a Republican list is an exaggeration, and if they have that many, it’s because they bought ’em and thus the names are less effective. “The Republicans are doing a good job on the Internet, but don’t be intimidated by that 6M number. It’s more like 400,000.”

“And they haven’t yet learned the power of having a two-way dialogue.”

What will the connective platform in 2008, they’re asked. Who knows, they answer.

The unsinkable Molly Ivins introduced them. She loves the Net and the way it’s connecting us. I’d take issue with her call to find “some way” to get rid of the bad information on the Net — get used to it, Molly — but what a treat to hear her talk, if only for a few minutes.

[Cross-posted at Loose Democracy]

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Salon is expanding its coverage of The Slugfest in the States, the Brawl for All America, DubZilla vs. Frankenstein, or whatever you want to call the upcoming election. It’s opened a DC bureau under Sidney Blumenthal, it’s publsihing “The New Pentagon Papers,” it’s teaming up with Rolling Stone, Air America (the new liberal talk radio network) and The Guardian.

Salon has 74,000 subscribers. For $29, you could make it 74,001. Salon is one of my favorite daily reads, so I’m just being selfish when I ask you to subscribe.

After all, Scott Rosenberg, has added a notice that now his blog is “New! Improved! Now Fair and Balanced!” Isn’t that worth something? (Also, Salon has one of the more innovative ways of enabling readers who don’t want to pony up the subscription fee to still get full access to the articles on the site.)

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If I could quiz one of the tens of millions of reasonable, good-hearted Americans who oppose same-sex marriage, here are the questions I’d ask.

Set #1

Do you believe that same-sex couples can fall in love?

Is their love lesser than that of contra-sex couples?

Can same-sex couples form commitments as strong, lasting and valuable as those of contra-sex couples?

Are same-sex couples as likely as contra-sex couples to raise children well?

If yes to all of the above, what is the relevant difference between same-sex and contra-sex couples that justifies treating them differently with regard to marriage? [Note: a relevant difference is one that is relevant to the distinction in treatment. E.g., the Supreme Court decided in 1967 that race was not a relevant difference when it comes to marriage, although weight may be a relevant difference when it comes to choosing jockeys.]

Set #2

Do you believe that if same-sex couples are allowed to marry, it will affect contra-sex marriages? If so, how? Is there evidence to support this prediction?

Do you believe that which gender one finds sexually attractive is a matter of choice? Is there an element of choice in it?

If it’s a least partially an element of choice, are there reasons — other than the discriminatory culture in which we live — to make one choice over the other? That is, in a culture that didn’t discriminate, is heterosexuality a better choice than homosexuality? If so, for what type of reasons? Moral? Psychological?

If so, are the reasons to prefer heterosexuality sufficiently strong, and the overall consequences of same-sex marriage sufficiently negative, to ban same-sex marriage?

Set #3

Let’s say your daughter is 28 and has been in a loving relationship for six years with Pat, a person you’ve come to like and respect. She comes home one night and announces that Pat has popped the question and she’s accepted. She’s obviously delighted. In case #1, Pat is a man and you share your daughter’s joy. In case #2, Pat is a woman. Do you react differently? How? Is the difference in reaction justifiable? Why?

I don’t mean to state these questions as if the answers were obvious, although I’m sure my partisanship is evident. I don’t have fixed opinions about some of these questions, and I’d like to know where my thinking diverges from those who have come to a different conclusion on this issue.
Cross-posted at Loose Democracy

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Ed Cone writes about what conclusions to draw from the fact that Maryland’s use of electronic voting machines on Tuesday seemed to go well: “‘Election officials will think that this validates the system, that now we can all see that it works just fine – but that’s not the case,’ says Michael Wertheimer, a systems-security consultant…”

My favorite bit:

A sampling of voters at Lutherville, Md., on Super Tuesday showed that the systems worked well on the surface. “The machine was easy to use,” says Charlie Mitchell, 49. “The only thing I wondered about was what I had read about these machines – were the votes getting counted or not? I don’t know.”

Oh, I see. Let me paraphrase: “The system worked perfectly and I was very happy with it, except for the gnawing fear that it disenfranchised me of my most basic right as a citizen.”

Electronic voting, without a voter-verifiable paper trail, inevitably introduces doubt into the system that should be the paradigm of lock box security.

(It is inevitable because the digital only has a symbolic relationship to the real, analog world. But that’s a different story…the same story about why computers that model thought aren’t themselves thinking. But I digress.)

Cross-posted at Loose Democracy

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Massachusetts’ old-style (= corrupt) House Speaker, Thomas Finneran, no longer backs a compromise amendment to the state constitution that would permit civil unions but ban same-sex marriages. Instead, he wants two amendments. The first would say: “It being the public policy of this Commonwealth to protect the unique relationship of marriage, only the union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Massachusetts.” According to the report in the Boston Globe, the second amendment “would include language saying that the Legislature ‘shall establish civil unions,’ but would call for the Legislature to define at a later date exactly what rights and benefits those unions would include.”

Ah, excellent. Let’s limit rights first and then maybe get around to supporting some, maybe, oh look, the cat’s coughing, what were we talking about?

But those of us who support the right of loving adults to marry can learn from this strategy: We should break our push into two parts. First, we should make it legal for same-sex couples to marry, but only if they’re hot lesbians. That’s something this great nation has obviously shown it can get behind. And then we can expand the right to include all those whose love dares not speak “I do.”

Cross-posted at Loose Democracy

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I listened to Kerry’s victory speech last night and was impressed. Perhaps because he’s an opportunist (yeah, this is going to be a left-handed compliment at best), he has absorbed the best messages from the other candidates. I thought his rhetoric and the set of issues he propounded were right on. (I wish the Internet and innovation were on his radar screen, but that’s my own little “special interest.”)

I just hope that he hasn’t peaked. All three Boston Globe columnists today worry that his shallowness will be exposed over the long term. Why is he running, other than to dethrone King W? I believe Edwards and Dean had issues that kept them going, in addition to their personal ambition of course. Edwards cared about the immorality of there being two Americas. Dean had an inchoate vision of what a great country set free from special interests could do. I honestly can’t tell you what gets Kerry going. And I’ve been paying attention.

I desperately hope Kerry figures it out.

The item on his list that struck me as having the most potential — keeping in mind that I have never ever once been right about this sort of thing — is the idea that Bush the Uniter has been Bush the Divider. Maybe Kerry’s announced destiny is to pull America together again, rejecting the wedge politics Bush has been practicing here and abroad. Of course, I’m predisposed to this message as a registered Deaniac and Netiac.

Mini Bogus Contest: What Kerry bumpersticker would be worth driving down the re-sale value of your car?

Cross-posted at Loose Democracy

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Jay finds a positive example, a reporter who sets out to avoid the lures of the Master Narrative. Brilliant, important stuff

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Fascinating article in the Washington Post by Howard Kurtz about the dysfunctional nature of the Dean campaign organization. Reading it makes you realize that the notion that the campaign’s infatuation with the Internet brought it down is a point of view that only someone infatuated with the Internet would propose. Far more destructive were the personal and organizational frictions caused by a small-town campaign suddenly going national.

[Cross-posted at Loose Democracy]

Dean disputes the accuracy of the quotes in the article.

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Bob Herbert’s column today in the NY Times — “Bliss and Bigotry” — made me cry. It’s a good column, but it did not provoke my sadness and anger so much as allow it. I keep surprising myself with how much the issue of gay marriage means to me. Every day I find it means more.

When I was a young a-hole in the ’70s, my line of grad school patter said that homosexuality is an inferior form of love because the sex carries no risk. (Yeah, those were the days.) Homosexuals sex acts lack the existential possibility of creating new life, I’d maintain, affecting my best Norman Mailer-esque pose. This gave me sufficient cover for my homophobia even with my gay friends. But, as I became an older a-hole and saw those friends form relationships as loving as the best of my straight friends, I stopped spouting that particular form of stupidity. I shut up, and was a better person for it. Funny how often that works.

I thought my patter was cocktail-party interesting, but it was just a spin on the mainstream bigotry that pinned itself on the “promiscuity” of “the gay life style.” No commitment. No love. Just sex sex sex.

So, now we have gay couples standing in line to foreswear promiscuity, to embrace commitment and love. But it turns out that it’s not just their way of having sex that’s unacceptable to us. Even their love isn’t good enough.

Well, God damn a country that turns away love, that would diminish love, that would deny love. What purer gift could we be offered?

Aren’t we commiting the very sin that brought God to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? It sure wasn’t because their citizens were just too deeply in love with one another.

History may give Bush a pass for his doctrine of preemptive war, because the country was traumatized by 9/11. It may chuckle ruefully at the brazenness of his oligarchical partisanship. But I do not think history will forgive George W. Bush’s attempt to turn our Constitution against the love our children have for one another.

And if history will, I won’t.

It’s a shame that John Kerry is once again taking a position that’s politically convenient. We could use a leader right now.

[Cross posted at Loose Democracy]

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Cross-posted at Loose Democracy:

If I were getting married today, I think I’d opt for a civil union instead. Limiting marriage to heterosexuals feels so arbitrary that it’s, yes, weakening the institution for me.

I could argue in favor of my position, and you would hear nothing that you hadn’t heard from others. But I don’t think we change our minds about moral issues through argument…

More…

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