Degrees of honor: whom colleges reward, says a lot

MOST colleges that grant honorary degrees would endorse the sentiment, expressed by a Cambridge University spokesman, that "an honorary degree is the highest accolade the University can give." So what does it mean that Hamilton College decided to bestow this garland of official commendation on Mary Bonauto, the activist lawyer and former director of the Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD)? Ms. Bonauto, who graduated from Hamilton in 1983, was in the public eye most recently when she successfully argued the case for same-sex "marriage" before the Massachusetts supreme court in 2003. It was for this act of benevolence that a friend of mine described Bonauto as "one of the foremost legal threats to the institution of marriage as we know it in the Western tradition."

Bonauto's great rhetorical feat in the case in question, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, was to get the court to believe that same-sex "marriage" was a civil-rights issue. Here's the reasoning: Marriage brings a wide variety of social benefits to the married couple, ergo if Mary Jo is not allowed to marry Mary Grace, they have been discriminated against. Just like the blacks when there was slavery.

Yes, yes, I know: As an argument it is pitiful. But it populates the world with illusory rights and pushes all the buttons liberals thrill to push. "Oh my God, have we really been discriminating against an entire subpopulation for all of recorded history? Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Let's change the law. Right now."

The technical term for Ms. Bonauto's argument is hornswoggle. No one says that homosexuals may not marry. They just may not marry someone of the same sex. Why? Because "marriage" means the union of a man and a woman. (Not just any man and woman, of course: You may not marry your sister or brother or father or mother; in many places you may not marry your first cousin.) To pretend otherwise is to indulge in the Humpty Dumpty approach to semantics: "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knockdown argument,' Alice objected. 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'"

Nice work if you can get it, but not something that should impress a judge.

Before we indulge in too much admiration for Bonauto's rhetorical skills--perhaps "sophistical skills" would be more accurate--it is worth noting that in this case she was greatly aided by the fact that she was addressing a court extremely well disposed to the issue of same-sex "marriage." The chief justice of the Massachusetts supreme court is Margaret Marshall, a vocal friend of the idea of same-sex "marriage." It is almost too good to be true, but it is true: Justice Marshall is married to Anthony Lewis, the Frank Rich of yesteryear, the man who for decades held down the left flank on the editorial page of the New York Times. It's the Empedoclean principle of like-flocking-to-like in action.

A Hamilton College news release touts Ms. Bonauto's role as lead counsel in Goodridge, but it does not dilate on her efforts a few years before in the so-called "Fistgate" scandal. In March 2000, a statewide conference called "Teach-Out" was held at Tufts University. Sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, the conference invited teenagers and children as young as twelve from around the state to participate in workshops on such themes as "Ask the Transsexuals," "Early Childhood Educators: How to Decide Whether to Come Out or Not," "Diesel Dykes and Lipstick Lesbians: Defining and Exploring Butch/Femme Identity," "The Religious Wrong: Dealing Effectively with Opposition in Your Community," and "Starting a Gay/Straight Alliance in Your School." One alarmed parent taped some of the proceedings--to no avail, for Ms. Bonauto found another sympathetic judge who issued a gag order preventing the distribution of the tape. They grow a very special sort of judge in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.

I very much doubt that Hamilton will go into this episode when they confer the baccalaureate, honoris causa, on Mary Bonauto. What I'd like to know is what parents, proudly assembled to witness Hamilton's commencement exercises, would make of Mary Bonauto's activities if they knew about them? And how about Hamilton's alumni: Would they be happy to see their alma mater honoring this radical activist? What about Hamilton's trustees, a group that is rapidly emerging as the dead-letter office of American higher education? Isn't anyone ever at home there?

What is it with Hamilton College, anyway? Are its leaders actually trying to make it look ridiculous? Or is the fact that Hamilton has become a recruitment poster for the dysfunctional American college the product of simple incompetence fueled by radical left-wing animus? I do not know the answers to these questions. It's a bit like Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice": Some say the place was ruined intentionally, some say it was stupidity goaded by radicalism. I hold with those who pick the latter. But either would suffice. You certainly would have to work a lot harder than most tenured professors are accustomed to working if you wanted to bring more shame and obloquy on an institution than Hamilton has had to bear in the last few months.