Dean's World

Michael Barone likes to say that all arguments over process in governance (such as the recent kerfuffle over the Senate filibuster--on both sides) are insincere. I can agree with that. I'd say that, similarly, almost all handwringing over "theocracy" in America is shallow and paranoid. This is best proven by the fact that almost no one who talks in sweaty, jittery terms about "separation of church and state" and "theocracy" ever complains about religious figures who take political positions they agree with; they reserve it for religious people they disagree with.

The only people I'll generally grant an exception to on this are gay people, since until recently their relationships were actually illegal in many states, and that's a fear most of us have never felt. On the other hand, odds of it happening again are pretty low; such anti-gay laws were slowly being removed from the books on their own, to the point where by 2000 or so only 14 states had any such laws, and they were almost always ignored in the states where they still existed, when finally the Supreme Court simply swept them all away as unConstitutional.

Yesterday I noted two articles in the Wall Street Journal on this theme. James Joyner also noted a third piece on the same riff by George Will. Click here to read it.

Interesting how the subject seems to be in the air, isn't it?