Rich v. Blankenhorn

Suggesting that the New York Times’ columnist Frank Rich has failed to “respect ordinary standards of decency, reasonableness, and fair play” in writing about David Blankenhorn, he and two of  his colleagues at the Institute for American Values  have written the Times ’ public editor asking him to speak on the matter himself. Rich, they write, has been in three articles since February made

three main accusations against Mr. Blankenhorn. The first is that Blankenhorn is unqualified to serve as an expert witness on the topic of marriage. The second is that Mr. Boise [the pro-homosexual marriage lawyer at the Proposition 8 trial] ”demolished” Mr. Blankenhorn on the stand . And the third and most important by far (to us) is that Mr. Blankenhorn is an anti-gay bigot and propagandist.

Rich did all this, as readers will guess, in the broad, contemptuous Richian style. You are to understand that Blankenhorn is a buffoon and a bigot, and safely to be ignored.

The letter includes testimonies to Blankenhorn’s qualifications by a diverse and impressive list of family scholars, some on the other side of the gay marriage issue, like William Galston, Leon Kass, David Popenoe, and Mary Ann Glendon. Unless Rich will say that these people are all incompetent, and I doubt he would, that takes care of that charge.

The letter also includes a revealing report from the New Yorker’s blog on the exchange between Boies and Blankenhorn, in which the lawyer does not come out well, and an analysis of Blankenhorn’s views on homosexuality, which are far from bigoted — unless having reservations about extending marriage to homosexual couples is in itself bigoted, as it apparently is in Frank Rich’s (bigoted) view of things. (That last comment was mine, not the writers’.)

Blankenhorn is the founder and president of the IAV , and author of the very, very useful book Fatherless America . The other writers of the letter are the eminent political scientist Jean Bethke Elshtain, chairman of the IAV’s board of directors and a member of our editorial board, and Elizabeth Marquardt, author of My Daddy’s Name is Donor (see here for a short description of the book and links).