As politicians debate the fate of the nation, the rest of us struggle with deep political, economic and social divides. Three Public Insight Network reporters take to the virtual road to ask folks what they still expect from America and from each other.
Today the Public Insight Network introduces a timeline that we need your help to complete. We want to know the key moments that shaped people’s outlook as conservatives. We’re plotting a lot of them on a timeline. Please take a look and then add your own story.
In order to start a civil discussion about same-sex marriage in America, we asked people from our Public Insight Network to tell us the stories behind their thoughts on the matter AND to give us questions they’d ask people who think differently about the issue than they do.
This question from Jennifer in St. Paul, Minn. found some small amount of middle-ground on the issue when answered by people who oppose legalized same-sex marriage:
If your daughter or son was gay, would you object to their being allowed the rights we confer upon married couples, such as sitting beside their beloved partner’s side at their deathbed?
We put Jennifer’s question back out to our network and here’s what people said:
In order to start a civil discussion about same-sex marriage in America, we asked people from our Public Insight Network to tell us the stories behind their thoughts on the matter AND to give us questions they’d ask people who think differently about the issue than they do.
David from Deerword, Minn., takes the long view of “tradition” by posing this question:
Why are you comfortable ignoring the multi-millennial shared understanding of what constitutes marriage?
We put David’s question to people who support same-sex marriage and here are some of the answers we received:
Laura from Edina, Minn.:
Why did we become comfortable ignoring the multi-millennial shared understanding of the institution of slavery? Our understanding evolves.
In order to start a civil discussion about same-sex marriage in America, we asked people from our Public Insight Network to tell us the stories behind their thoughts on the matter AND to give us questions they’d ask people who think differently about the issue than they do.
Stan from Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. is looking for answers to a very common question raised by opponents of legalized same-sex marriage:
If marriage is a “right”, why not extend it to polygamists or incestuous relationships — if such relationships are consensual?
We put Stan’s question to people who support same-sex marriage and here is some of what they said:
Chuck from Milan, Minn.:
The point is abuse and danger. If people are having healthy relationships, not endangering their or others’ health, and being good neighbors, why not?
In order to start a civil discussion about same-sex marriage in America, we asked people from our Public Insight Network to tell us the stories behind their thoughts on the matter AND to give us questions they’d ask people who think differently about the issue than they do.
Tiffany from Lakeville, Minn. wanted people opposed to same-sex marriage to tie the issue back to some cherished American freedoms:
How will a same-sex couple’s ability to marry infringe on your life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness?
Here are some of the answers to Tiffany’s question:
Ron from Littleton, Colo.:
The foundation of our society, indeed of all societies, is the family and same-sex marriage is a distortion of the family. If we alter the definition of family to equate homosexual parents with heterosexual parents, there’s no longer any reason to deny equality to polygamous parents or any other distortion of the family unit.
In order to start a civil discussion about same-sex marriage in America, we asked people from our Public Insight Network to tell us the stories behind their thoughts on the matter AND to give us questions they’d ask people who think differently about the issue than they do.
One question, posed by Jenny from Excelsior, Minn., drew impassioned responses from many people in the network who said they either did not support same-sex marriage or supported conferring legal rights on same-sex couples without calling it “marriage.” Here’s what Jenny asked:
If the sanctity of marriage is the rationale for legally banning same-sex marriage, should divorce and adultery also be illegal?
We put Jenny’s question back out to our network. Here’s what people said:
In order to start a civil discussion about same-sex marriage in America, we asked people from our Public Insight Network to tell us the stories behind their thoughts on the matter AND to give us questions they’d ask people who think differently about the issue than they do.
Laurie from Fargo, N.D., wants to know how legalized same-sex marriage will change “the talk”.
How would you explain the concept of where babies come from to a child if you were in a same-sex marriage yourself? How would you like to see children taught about sex if same-sex couples are part of their world in any way?
We put Laurie’s question to supporters of same-sex marriage and here is some of what we heard:
The brilliant photographer Alex Soth and writer Brad Zellar have just started a road trip across Ohio, shooting and writing portraits all along the way.
GARY behind the wheel of his GMC Starcraft in Fremont, Ohio
So this van is your home?
For the last three years, yeah. This is pretty much what I’ve got left.
Where do you park it?
Here and there. Mostly out at the Speedway parking lot. They know me.
Are you from here?
I’ve lived in Fremont for 61 years. I had my own house, but l learned the hard way that if you aren’t one of these rich guys you don’t own anything in this world. Everything’s borrowed, which means that somebody can take it away from you at any time.
How do you get by?
I do some recycling and occasional repair work, and there are a lot of unemployed and homeless people around here, so there are churches and such that have meals and give away food and clothing. I hang out at the soup kitchens, and I’m one of the lucky ones around those places. I’ve got this van.
What’s with the McDonald’s cups?
I can’t afford the coffee anymore, but I still like the cups. They’re kind of my trademark, I guess.
Is there anything you’re dying to say?
No, not really, just that everything’s too digitized now. The fifties and sixties, that was a good time.
The big social and political story of the week has been marriage. Just a day after North Carolina voters constitutionally banned same-sex marriage in their state, President Obama revealed his “evolution” on the issue has finally led him to support marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.
In a year when everything is political, we’re trying to step back and hear real stories from across America. So we asked sources in the Public Insight Network “What personal experiences inform your position on gay marriage?” Here’s just a sampling of the insight we’ve read so far:
Cassandra from The Woodlands, Texas:
My 24 year old daughter is part of a same-sex couple. We’re from Texas where same-sex marriage is outlawed.
Our earlier pieces exploring the challenges adult men face in finding and forging close male friendships led to a featured chat today on The Daily Circuit at Minnesota Public Radio. We continue to get an array of comments to our original question posted through the Public Insight Network. Today’s Daily Circuit discussion added a new layer of perspective, and another place for you to share your story. (4.12.2012)
Mike Wallace vs. Ayn Rand
By Jeff Severns Guntzel (3.9.2012)
Mike Wallace has died, which means my Twitter feed is rich with links to the legendary interrogator’s notable one-on-ones. His 1959 interview with Ayn Rand falls right into my wheelhouse. I’ve been interviewing conservatives about their formative influences and Rand is there, almost always.
Even where she is not respected as a novelist, she is revered as a philosopher. Here’s Linda Seebach, of Northfield, Minn., talking about Rand (in response to a Public Insight Network query):
When I read The Fountainhead in college — even though it came out in ‘43 — it wasn’t so much that I was swept away by Objectivism (I don’t think she had even named it), but it inoculated me against any sort of collectivist or socialist stuff with the belief that it won’t work. It’s not so much I’m in favor of the things Rand was in favor of, but that I’m opposed to the same things she was. But, she was a terrible novelist. The Fountainhead is pretty good, but Atlas Shrugged is awful.
By the time Rand was interviewed by Wallace, she had named her philosophy, but that name had not yet taken hold. Here’s his introduction:
Wallace: “Here in the United States, perhaps the most challenging and unusual new philosophy has beenm forged by a novelist, Ayn Rand. Ms. Rand’s point of view is still comparatively unknown in America, but if it were ever were to take hold, it would revolutionize our lives … What is Randism?”
Rand: “I do not call it Randism. I call it Objectivism … I am primarily the creator of a new code of morality, which has so far been believed impossible — a morality not based on faith, not on arbitrary whim, not an emotion, not on arbitrary edict — mystical or social — but on reason … Since man’s mind is his basic means of survival, I hold that if man wants to live on Earth and to live as a human being, he has to hold reason as an absolute … that his highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness and that he must not force other people nor accept their right to force him — that each man must live as an end into himself and follow his own rational self-interest.”
And with that, it’s on: Rand vs. Wallace. Highly recommended viewing. Watch it here.
By Neal Karlen (4.4.2012)
Last fall, on the anniversary of 9/11, New York University Professor Niobe Way went to Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. Way, an authority on developmental adolescent psychology focusing on male friendships, was astonished by what she saw.
“It was 8:30 a.m., just around the time the planes had hit the towers,” she told me. On the nearby benches, she counted seven men, all well-dressed, all probably in their 30s, all probably on their way to work – and yet each very much alone.
“It was utterly silent,” she remembers. “No one was talking to each other. They were each sitting there, all alone with their grief, not with a friend. I could sense a deep hunger for real connection.
“Finally,” she says, “one guy came up to me, a complete stranger. There he was, approaching a strange woman, and he was obviously not coming onto me. He said he just wanted to talk about that day, and felt safer talking to a stranger who was a woman than a stranger who was a man.”
Way, 47, is the author of “Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection” (Harvard University Press). I called her to talk about my own experience with friendships in mid-life, which in recent years centers around baseball spring training, and about the responses we received to a Public Insight Network query about men and friendship.
REBLOG (4.2.2012) We’re hard at work on an interactive timeline of conservative America, and William F. Buckley looms large. Interesting piece via thenewrepublic:
What would William F. Buckley think of the GOP of today?
“Buckley felt that outlandish stances discredited conservatism by making it seem ‘ridiculous and pathological,’ as he wrote to a supporter who had criticized his editorial. They allowed the media to tar all conservatives as extremists, and turned off young people. He insisted that conservatism had to expand ‘by bringing into our ranks those people who are, at the moment, on our immediate left—the moderate, wishy-washy conservatives’ who comprised the majority of the Republican Party … Buckley consistently maintained that conservatism was the ‘politics of reality.’”
- Geoffrey Kabaservice, What William F. Buckley Would Think of Today’s GOP
Photo courtesy of the Atlantic
(Posted by Jeff Severns Guntzel. 4.2.2012)
Our recent musings on men and friendship, prompted by a guy-trip to watch baseball in Arizona, sparked some provocative responses to our Public Insight Network query. Why, we wondered, does it seem hard for men to make new friends after they enter adulthood? Is that universal to the male experience, or is it changing with the times?
The range of viewpoints varied, but most agreed that men don’t seem to be as wired, encouraged or motivated as women to make intimate male friendships. We’re also talking with some experts on relationships and gender, and will get back to you with what we’ve learned. There’s growing evidence that friendship and health are linked. And of course there’s the reality the recent recession took its biggest told on men, leaving many of them unemployed and likely more stressed and isolated. For now, here’s some of what we’re hearing:
Professor Harry Mersmann, 51, a sociology professor who teaches gender and masculinity at Delta College in Stockton, CA, is adamant that sexual roles are behind much of the lack of intimacy in later life:
“Feelings (except anger) have been feminized in our culture and to be a ‘real man’ one is not supposed to feel. It’s hard to have friends without sharing, vulnerability, and openness, and these are all prohibited by hegemonic masculinity.”
Editor’s note: Opening day of Major League Baseball is next week – as sure a sign of spring in America as the equinox. In honor of that seasonal ritual, Public Insight Network reporter Neal Karlen offers an essay on the game and how it causes him to reflect on the bonds between men. His musings prompted a query about men and age and friendship; we’d love to hear your thoughts.
By Neal Karlen (3.30.2012)
Mention baseball, and I think of long, languid evenings spent under a clear night sky, T-shirts and shorts, freshly shorn grass, hot dogs and cold beer. But in Minneapolis, where I live, nights don’t get languid until July. And until a new stadium opened two seasons ago, my Minnesota Twins played indoors on a field that was painted, not mowed.
When I was younger, I never wanted to wait until the end of our five-month winter to see big league baseball. And so I and a few close friends made a tradition of heading south in the spring for an early taste of the best of summer. For me, spring training was also the best of baseball, shared with the best of old friends.
