Courtesy of TRS, who has the audio:
So let me suggest this to you with respect to the power of the courts, in particularly the Supreme Court. Where there is not a clear constitutional issue as there clearly was in Loving vs Virginia under the 14th amendment, a clear violation of the 14th amendment, then why should the federal courts intervene? Why should the Supreme Court intervene?
The Equal Protection Clause doesn’t say the ‘liberal promotion clause’ or the ‘radical egalitarianism clause’ where people can pour their economic or social agendas into the Constitution for the courts to decide. That’s not what that clause is there for and that’s not what it means.
‘So Mark, what should the court do?’
In my humble opinion, the court should strike down the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision, and through it the district court’s decision in San Francisco. And the court should say:
‘We have no business in this case. The people of California voted, they passed Proposition 8 to amend their constitution. Maybe in ten years they’ll pass another proposition to reverse course. But there’s no federal constitutional violation here. This is not the same as segregation and racism. This is not a matter of equal protection.’
Levin went on to say something that you who read me regularly and who have read me regularly for years will immediately recognize: the process matters.
By which Levin means that, regardless of where you stand on the policy issue, the Constitutional process we have in place to address policy issues needs to be both recognized and respected. And when it comes to the courts, their role is merely to apply the law and interpret the law, not to act as philosopher kings and queens and determine policy as activists or sages.
That is to say — and here’s where you’ll recognize where I’m going with this, because you’ve read it from me repeatedly in the course of my discussions on language, interpretation, and intentionalism — how we get there matters.
The people of California, hardly a bastion of conservatism, used the process allowed by their state Constitution to amend that constitution. And state courts upheld the legality of that move under California law. Therefore, there was no reason whatever for the federal courts to involve themselves in this case.
This is not a case about equal protection, as Levin notes; it is a case about forcing people who don’t wish to do so to adopt a label that they don’t wish to grant. It is, in the end, about federalism, and about the very nature of citizenship, the 10th Amendment, and the role of the courts.
Because as Levin points out, if we cede to SCOTUS the authority to decide every issue for us, what’s the purpose of having state legislatures? Or even having a vote? Which is why he counsels — and I couldn’t agree more — that on contentious issues such as these, SCOTUS be very circumspect before choosing to take up the cases that may lead to social and civic discontent.
In states that voted to recognize same-sex unions as marriage, those unions should be recognized as marriage — despite my belief that the voters of those states made the wrong decision from the standpoint of what they’ve opened themselves up to by way of future legal challenge. But states that don’t wish to re-organize the composition of thousands of years of traditional marriage merely to grant homosexuals leave to assume a label that voters of those states don’t wish to surrender (going under the valid assertion that what has never been marriage is not suddenly marriage simply because some interested group wishes it to be so) should not be compelled to do so by 5 or 6 citizens in robes.
Part of the beauty of the federalist system is that states can hold different corporate views, and that American citizens are free either to convince voters of their state to adopt a different position, or else to move between states to find those states that better match one’s own beliefs.
The voters of California followed the proper procedure and made their wishes known. You may disagree with their wishes, and disagree with the policy. But how you get there matters.
Rewriting the Constitution at will, or reworking the role of Justices to bring about social change, is anathema to a representative republic. And those who support such activism — regardless of where they stand on the policy issues — can lay no claim to being either classically liberal or constitutionalists.
I recommend everyone go listen to the first hour plus of Levin’s March 26 broadcast. Because in it, he addresses arguments being made by his friend Ted Olson (who is arguing for same sex marriage), as well as addresses red herrings like the Full Faith and Credit Clause that are often used to suggest that same sex marriage needs be made universal with respect to the states.
the process matters
I’ve said this to some same sex marriage supporters until I’m blue in the face. The last time that a black-robed oligarchy instituted gay marriage by fiat, one of my friends was nearly orgasmic with delight at the outcome. As my views on the subject are well known to her (I’m a federalist, so whatever the people in any state want to vote for is fine with me, no matter how much I disagree with them), I pointed out that if you don’t respect the process, the day will come when you’re carted off to the gulag, or its equivalent, due to the actions of some judge and I will be pointing and laughing at the horrified and surprised expression on your face. Of course, I’ll probably be in the cart with her, but the delicious schaedenfreude will help keep me warm. Her response: “But yaaaaaayyy, gay marriage!!!” It was like talking to a fucking brick, only stupider.
Even better: she used to be conservative-to-libertarian, but she fell in love with the Democrats over the idea that she could force someone else to pay for her $10/month birth control habit. This caused me to respond that I thought it was a good thing she and her husband had decided not to procreate. Still uncertain that that comment was well received.
I don’t think the Court should even be hearing this case.
Since I am not a lawyer and am only familiar with certain aspects of the law in a very broad way, I am failing to see where the parties bringing suit can demonstrate harm and seek a remedy. The comparisons to miscegenation laws of the past are disingenuous at best and down right insulting. No homosexuals have been jailed for playing house or had their children removed or their property confiscated as biracial couples did back in the day. California’s Civil Union laws result in homosexual couples enjoying the same rights as heterosexual couples: They just may not call them marriage.
Thus there is no harm done and no remedy required.
Setting a Civil Rights precedent is going to turn our legislative system on its head. The cascade effect of unintended consequences is horrifying. Churches are next into the dock when they refuse to perform these sham marriages.
If this were honest, I’d be seeing pictures of happy gay married couples on Facebook this week, and not the annoyingly self-righteous “Equality symbol dipped in Hell.”
At least make me feel like my morals on the wrong side of history, not the wrong side of your “Wouldn’t it be nice?” cocktail talk.
i like the doma case more better
the prop 8 case is mostly a bunch of melodrama
california just needs to keep voting til they get it right is all
At least make me feel like my morals [are] on the wrong side of history…
Keeping in mind, of course, that the phrase “wrong side of history” originated with the Marxist belief that History inevitably marches in one direction (The Correct One, toward genuine progress) and that you can either hop on board or be crushed by the juggernaut.
BECAUSE OF THE INEVITABILITY!
leigh
Scalia got it right when he asked Olsen “when did denying marriage to homosexual couples become unConstitutional?”
Ted tried to be snarky with “when did banning interracial marriage become unConstitutional”
Scalia answered “14th amendment.”
The same-sex mafia wants judicial fiat not process. Their interests are far beyond mere marriage.
“History” was Hegel’s circumlocution to avoid the G- word and concepts associated with the G- word like “Providence.”
The crosscut through having what must be attained and not having what must be attained, along with the promise (that) a surrender will be cherished (even if a lie) is all it takes to propel the world. Only look.
Right has got nothin’ to do with it.
Oh, and History merely replaced Providence in the lingo.
Which isn’t to say there aren’t far-reaching consequences to such alternative sorts of politipoot talk.
jinx
It’s easy to be for same-sex “marriage” … it’s feelings based and nothing is easier than letting your feelings trump your principles and reality.
And when it turns out to be a disaster, you can always bleat “but that’s not what I thought would happen!”
cuz you never thought AT ALL
The one inevitability is our decline and collapse. SSM is but a symptom.
How is marriage a right, btw? It doesn’t make sense to me.
it’s super easy to be for gay marriage and I’ll be totally shocked if anything too terribly bad happens cause of it, but if it does I’ll be all like omg I totally didn’t see that coming
when the lawsuits against churches who won’t marry ss couples start, hf, your “omg” will be small comfort.
I expect the same outcome, Darleen.
To say nothing about the polygamists who’ll be demanding their equal protection.
Religious Freedom Clauses
Of the nineteen aforementioned jurisdictions offering (or about to offer) same-sex couple recognition, fourteen of them have statutes explicitly exempting religious officials from the obligation to offer marriage solemnization to same-sex couples. Many, such as Washington’s, not only exempt clergy from performing ceremonies, but also allow religious organizations to refuse any sort of accommodations, facilities, privileges, or goods relating to a same-sex marriage, and provide immunity from any civil action relating to such a refusal.
there’s a lot more discussion where that came from Darleen
everything’s gonna be fine – you’ll see
Bullshit, hf. If SSM is a “right” then there can’t be any exemption. Those statutes will be challenged.
Look at what HHS has done to religious organizations.
you are such a debbie downer about the gay marriagings
you’re gonna give yourself an ulcer
Happy, that has nothing to do with the Prop 8 issue. See my comment above for clarification.
Do you know anyone who lives in Canada? SSM as a Civil Right has been a nightmare for the churches and church related charities of Canada. Their tax-exempt status and charitable status exemptions from Canada’s onerous tax code are being threatened by the same Gay Mafia that seeks to impose its will on the People of the United States.
This same Gay Mafia is doing a job of branding anyone and everyone who disagrees with them and their agenda as a bigot. That is cowardice. I am not going let anyone call me or my family bigots because our religious beliefs conflict with their secular agenda.
As William states, upthread, I too am a Federalist and this issue belongs to these several states, not to the jurisdiction of the federal government.
I expect that DOMA will be found to be unconstitutional as it federalizes marriage.
you’re gonna give yourself an ulcer
Ulcers are caused by the Helicobactor pylori bacterium, not by stress. Your doctor can give you a rapid test in his office and prescribe treatment.
Rats. I meant Physics Geek, not William in my 1:34.
Thomas More–or at least Robert Bolt’s More–said it best:
Roper: “To get at the devil I’d cut down every law in England.”
More: “When the last law was down, and the devil turned round on you – where would you hide, the laws all being flat? Do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?”
well we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it leigh, and I’ll be right there with you making sure gay marriage liberties do not trample religious liberties
I really doubt there will be much of a problem though
i retract about the ulcer
I’ll burn that bridge before I’ll cross it, happy.
Look up churches and gay marriage lawsuits in Canada for practice.
you are such a debbie downer about the gay marriagings
Reality has a way of harshing a person’s mellow, don’t it?
Here’s some examples
The churches and marriage are just obstacles to the real goal, which is to topple every institution except government, so that every organizing principle in American life can be subject to the official bureaucracy.
The enemies of traditional marriage are not seeking same-sex marriage, they are seeking to take control of everything that supports stable adult relationships. That’s why the argument to “separate marriage and state” entirely misses the point and, in fact, moves the ball in the direction of the destroyers precisely by making one more non-government institution less relevant.
Honestly, their vendetta against religion in America is no more about religion than it is about Red Dye #2.
Gawd, what is it with you people looking at things as they are, or as they are likely to become? You should look at things as they should be, and then everything would be great and you’d be as
vapidvacuoussillyinaneignoranthappy as happyfeet!A gay couple gets “married” in a ceremony right now, and a Christian couple tries to sue them. They get laughed out of court, freedom of religion, freedom of speech. Plus, everyone agrees it’s dumb. They have every right to call themselves married.
We federally recognize gay marriage through a judge’s personal idea of law. A gay couple sues a church. A gay judge, who doesn’t need to recuse himself, allows the case to be made, because we need to at least examine the law, costing the church money it doesn’t have.
Even then, if this were honestly the will of the people, there’d be less to say against it. But this is time honored: “Pushing society where you want it to go through abuse of law,” which has a 0 batting average for improving any society ever.
Yeah, Squid. The whole “Life’s a bowl of cherries, if you throw away the pits” POV.
That’s the ticket!
Want a small taste of what will happen with gay marriage? Last week the St. Pat’s parade in Cincinnati would not allow the GLBTQABCDXYZ group to march with them because St. Pat was Catholic, most of the organizations are Catholic, sodomy is still a sin, and the gays only want to march in an apolitical parade to make their political points. The City of Cincinnati responded that next year they won’t provide police or any other services for free to the Order of Hibernians next year unless the gays get to march. So…you can have your rights, but we’ll treat you like a pariah. The City gave free services to OWS and they trashed a park.
I don’t think the gay community understands that the US isn’t Canada or Europe. If they push too hard there will be a serious pushback.
Dennis D
Time to tell those Hibernians Time to take God out of St Patricks Day
Because of the inclusion …
Yup. This is but another application of Frankfurt School tactics.
Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s ––Jesus of Nazareth
It’s all mine. All of it. ––Caesar
Scribe sez it: Try to get at the numbers on this and you’ll realize what a fake issue this is.
Take the Prog’s 10% estimate of the size of the “gay” population. Then, being generous, assume that 50% of that 10% is of marrying age. Then, figure that of that 50%, say 1/3 are in stable relationships. And then ponder that perhaps only 20% of the 1/3 of the 1/2 of the 10% have ever received a marriage proposal (that is, assume they have a partner that even WANTS to marry them), and where are we?
What, down to ’round .1% of the US population? I’m just guessing, but I cannot be off by more than 1/10. Move the decimal to the left or move it to the right, and it’s still insignificant.
A metaphor for this would equate Obama/Big Government with the suitor that, Oh tho’ she tried, the pear-shaped “Pat” could never gain. But that would be mean to pears.
It’s interesting that I can be called a bigot now for holding the same beliefs about gay marriage as Barack Obama until a couple months ago, or Hillary Clinton until last week. Gay marriage has always been at war with Eurasia.
I’ve said many times that gay marriage isn’t about civil rights. If it was, civil unions would suffice. Gay marriage is about walking in and pissing on someone else’s altar because they won’t worship your gods.
Queers are by nature (pun intended) Swingers. The last thing they want to be is married.
Monogomish is as far as they go. Monogomy? Meh.
I still say they are in it for the swag. And the attention, being the attention whores that they are.
Marry ’em all. Let God sort ’em out.
Never thought of it that way, SteveAz. Good point.
But I gotta say, in my book, Ernst wins the thread.
I’ll be totally shocked if anything too terribly bad happens cause of it, but if it does I’ll be all like omg I totally didn’t see that coming
And if it turns out to be a total sociological disaster, what then? Ban gay marriage? Gay-couple adoption? What?
How long is the list of social-engineering projects that are enshrined either in law or bureaucracy? How many of them are train wrecks? And how many of them have been rolled back?
I’ll be right there with you making sure gay marriage liberties do not trample religious liberties.
That plus $5 gets me $5 worth of gumballs, assuming that the mechanism isn’t all jammed up by a bent quarter.
I really doubt there will be much of a problem though
And if there is, what will you do about it? Protest here on these pages? Gee, thanks!
The push for gay marriage is only a few decades old. Homosexuality used to be pushed as a chic alternative to bourgeois values such as marriage, fidelity, heterosexuality, childbearing, and family.
The sexual revolution has done a fine job damaging society’s ability to even describe let alone support our most intimate associations. Now SSM will be used to persecute religions and the religious.
My church will never support SSM; our concept of the sexes and marriage won’t allow it. On my resume I show two degrees from BYU. After SSM is good and legal, is that going to count against me in the job market? When people find out I’m LDS, will it be socially acceptable to treat exclude me from polite society? What will people get to do to me? There’s a history of it being made legal in the U.S. to murder Mormons: don’t tell me it can’t happen again.
There is absolutely NO WAY that the Left won’t use this as a cudgel to stick it to religious organizations and religious people with a vengeance, and I don’t mean “vengeance” figuratively. They will make sure that we are never left alone until we Comply.
“Debbie Downer?!” Funnnneeee!
You should do stand-up, Happy.
I’m betting the Soops go with the Federalism out. Pluralism is our best defense against the Commies’ universalisms, so if they don’t get behind it, we’re truly screwed.
Take the Prog’s 10% estimate of the size of the “gay” population.
It’s actually 2-3%. So yeah, order of magnitude.
Team R is gonna feel so much better once they get this whole gay marriage thing behind them
like those people in the mentos commercials
manufacturing consent – gay marriage edition
Yeah, even when I was surrounded by LUGs* in college, they never made up anything close to 10% of the population.
* Lesbian Until Graduation
In the comments to this Roger Simon piece an early commenter suggested that we’re talking about upending one of the few universal human institutions to have evolved in the last 10,000 or so years so that 2% of 2% of the population can feel better about themselves.
The comment is buried where I can’t access it, so the percentages are give or take a point or two.
They were only lesbian when you were present, Squid.
I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.
the proggtards get to “feel good” too for standing up for “civil rights”
the fedora gets to relive his righteous youth being down for the struggle
Also, the category errors that EVERYONE is making in their rhetoric (not here so much as elsewhere, including SCOTUS) are driving me insane.
It is NOT true that it is illegal for gays to marry. There is no test for sexual orientation when issuing a marriage license. The test is for biological sex: you can marry the opposite sex but not the same sex.
That rule applies exactly the same way to straights and to gays. If a flaming gay man and a butch lesbian try to obtain a marriage license, it will be given to them, no questions asked. No law can stop a gay man from marrying any woman (straight or gay). No person wants to prevent such a situation.
The problem is that even though a gay man can marry a woman, he ordinarily does not want to, but his not wanting to marry a woman is based on the fact that he is not sexually attracted to her.
There is no law to prohibit anyone from marrying someone they are not sexually attracted to. There is no test for sexual attraction. You don’t have to prove that you have the hots for your intended spouse to get married.
(I’m also not sure that a person’s wants and desires—regardless of how they came by them [I’m assuming it’s a brain thing]—is a sound basis for designating a protected class or for saying that we’ve got a different species of creature walking around.)
ERGO.
The only question at hand is whether biological sex (gender) should be taken into account when issuing marriage licenses. The aim is not to remove discrimination against gays (the law does not single out gays and tell them they can’t enter into a marriage contract), the aim is to make sex irrelevant to the composition and practice of marriage.
KEEP IT STRAIGHT AND STOP MISREPRESENTING THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS
That odd bit of sophistry about polygamy being about “conduct” and SSM being about “state” is absurd. Two straight women cannot marry each other (conduct). A gay man and a straight man cannot marry each other (conduct). When a straight man marries a straight woman, that is conduct. A man cannot marry his biological daughter (conduct). Marriage is an act, which speaks to conduct.
Homosexuality is indeed a state (of being), which means it would be unjust to say that gays can’t work/live/walk/eat in the same places as straights can because they’re all gay and stuff.
It’s much different to say that nobody can engage in behavior X, even if some people totally want to do it and some people totally don’t.
so that 2% of 2% of the population can feel better about themselves.
So that people can be relieved of the burden of being “homophobes” (a term I first encountered in the 1990s) in the eyes of people who hate them anyway.
To amplify what Di just said, we can’t build nuclear power plants because somebody back in 70s made a movie and how do we know that won’t happen? More recently, we’ve been told —are still being told— that we can’t build a much needed pipeline across Nebraska because how do we know that it won’t rupture and turn the Sand Hills and the Ogalla Aquifer into an oily Salton Sea? But when it comes social relations, it’s meh, try it an’ see.
If the Left applied the precautionary principle consistently, they’d aspire to realize Revolutionary Road.
That’ll depend on which way the wind is blowing on the side of the bed Justice Kennedy decides to get up on after tossing a coin.
It’s much different to say that nobody can engage in behavior X, even if some people totally want to do it and some people totally don’t.
Thus the slippery slope appears. Polygamy. Incest. Human trafficking. What’s the big deal, people?
No big deal leigh. If you decide, that is, to do Gibbon one better and take the second century A.D. as your civilizational ne plus ultra.
Of course, you’ll have to get rid of those pesky Christians lurking in the catacombs to louse things up for you.
And it helps if you’re a
one.01 percenter.Also if you’re male.
How dare you prohibit me from tearing the arms off babies and eating them!?!?!?
H8RZ!!!!!1!!
Says a gay man opposed to same-sex marriage
you get a chance watch beck’s show today big brother in the schools
The trend line is clearly indicated:
Walter Russel Mead by way of Sarah Hoyt blogging for Instapundit.
From Darleen’s link:
Denying children parents of both genders at home is an objective evil. Kids need and yearn for both.
A lesbian can be a perfectly good mother but she can never be a father; a gay man can be a perfectly good father but never a mother.
This is exactly the kind of wicked conflation that the Left has been engaged in for decades: war is peace, ignorance is knowledge, mother is father, printed money is wealth, discrimination is justice, and Potsie is the Fonz.
Pretending that something is what it is not never works out well. Let’s not bend to the will of bullies and their misapplication of the term “equality.”
They were only lesbian when you were present, Squid.
That’s okay; I learned to play guitar instead. I still have my guitar, and in hindsight, she looks pretty good. She still hits all the high notes without any trouble, and doesn’t complain if I want to play with her for hour on end, or ignore her for weeks at a time. And her curves are just as sensuous today as the day I first set eyes on her.
So who’s laughing now, LUGs? WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?!
If gay couples and single people want to rescue orphans from the third world, more power to them. It is definitely better for a kid to have one mom or two moms than no parents at all.
But anything that increases the likelihood of turkey-baster fatherhood is not a good thing. The first consideration needs to be the well-being of the kids, not the proclivities and preferences of the adults.
Not fair that gays can’t reproduce or marry?
Maybe what’s not fair is that they’re gay in the first place.
They can’t punish God, so they take it out on those of us God made straight.
The People are really *not* leaning the “just say no” lesson.
Courts: We have, solon-like, decided you will accept this re-definition of a cultural institution.
People: No thank you.
Court: Wait, what?
People: Look, the last time you “decided” we ended up with Obamacare because a penalty is a tax even when it isn’t. So if it’s all the same to you, we’ll give this one a miss.
Court: You can’t “give it a miss,” it’s a Supreme Court Decision!!!
People: LOL whatever, Imma go have a Supreme BLT sandwich. Kthxbai.
those of us God made straight.
These bodies are engendered by our parents, not created by God. We’re not androids built by Noonian Soong (who decided to make Data as human-like as possible except for skin tone and eye color, apparently beyond the inventor of the positronic brain).
Nobody is “making someone straight” or gay or anything else. We turn out how we turn out, flaws and all.
we won’t know the decidings for several moons at least
we might not even care by then
we might not even care by then
Who’s “we,” Pikachu?
It would be nice to be able to shrug one’s shoulders about such things, letting the shouters have their shout (and their way), figuring it won’t really make much difference in the long run…
i’m just thinking about what if pearl harbor fell top our heads and we all end up bartering canned goods and women just for to survive
gay marriage might could fall off a lot of people’s radars I think
especially the women
What I want to know is why the lawyers defending Prop 8 did not challenge whether or not Federal Courts even have standing to adjudicate. At least go on record with such a challenge.
I cannot wait for SCOTUS to thread the eye of the camel in regards to homosexual marriage.
One of the funniest things I’ve done to evolutionists who support homosexuality is to ask how, exactly, homosexuality promotes the survival of the species.
Doesn’t matter what time of year, those crickets just start a chirpin’.
“freaks of nature” marriage is not very gay
They punished their parents first and it didn’t make them feel any better. If they believe in God (even most “atheists” do, but won’t admit it) then they may have declared themselves “atheist” to try to punish Him. And that didn’t make them feel any better.
So now they’re taking aim at the rest of us.
Here’s where I make myself unpopular by positing that the state has no business being involved in “marriage” on any level beyond providing a court system to enforce the contract (if any) and ensure support for minor children (if any).
The “sanctity of marriage” ship sailed as soon as it became possible to get married in Vegas, while drunk, to a person you met 15 minutes ago, officiated by an Elvis impersonator.
thread the eye of the camel
That is one epic Spoonerism, Blake.
” ask how, exactly, homosexuality promotes the survival of the species.”
There are many highly successful species in which only a minority (in some cases a tiny minority) of the individuals participate in breeding.
i’m just thinking about what if pearl harbor fell top our heads and we all end up bartering canned goods and women just for to survive
Ok, I’m with you there.
The Zombie Apocalypse cancels all bets.
Here’s where I make myself unpopular by positing that the state has no business being involved in “marriage” on any level beyond providing a court system to enforce the contract (if any) and ensure support for minor children (if any).
Spies, I’m cool with that. It would help in my quest to simplify the tax code, as well.
The “sanctity of marriage” ship sailed as soon as it became possible to get married in Vegas, while drunk, to a person you met 15 minutes ago, officiated by an Elvis impersonator.
So make those sham marriages stay in Vegas, where they belong.
At this point, SBP, I’d be up for more or less anything that shrank government power and the annoying hipster mainstream.
Bradley C. S. Watson: A Republic Worthy of Ronald Dworkin
*** […] But progressives remained committed, at least nominally, to the ideas of democracy, individual flourishing, and personal and political autonomy. So they had to put lipstick on the pig of judicial supremacy. A new, principled paradigm had to be created on which to rest the triumph of the liberal will via legal expertise.
And this paradigm had to be very different from the Founders’ constitutionalism, which eschewed expertise—rule from the desk—in favor of republicanism, and the rule of law. The Founders knew that this republicanism and rule of law would be messy things. Government was to be first and foremost political, for it would always be indissolubly linked to, and indelibly stained by, factionalism that sprang from human nature. It was a factionalism whose effects could be controlled, but whose causes could not be eliminated without unbearable cost. […] ***
I’m assuming the reference is to…
I shall re-refer to my first comment, the part about separation of marriage and state. Marriage involves legal rights and obligations that uphold stable adult relationships and help maintain the social value thereof.
If the activists were willing to be satisfied with that separation they would accept civil unions instead of insisting on “marriage.” Nor would separation take either of the two sides off the table. They will attack and wipe out the church side because it has been divorced from law — and then they will attack the state side because it no longer has the church to uphold it.
Stable adult relationships of any kind threaten the rule of the bureaucracy, and nothing, not even the law itself, can be allowed to do that.
we have proggtarded version of the us constitution wreaking havoc upon the land yet i still believe in the sanctity of the document
[…] -Jeff Goldstein weighs in over at his place. A highlight: […]
” ask how, exactly, homosexuality promotes the survival of the species.”
As a brake to overpopulation.
Which explains why so many homosexuals all of a sudden come out of the woodwork…a latent gene, triggered by whatever mechanism recognizes too many people in a given (urban) area.
If (when) human population drops to critical must-breed-to-perpetuate-species levels, gays may well all but disappear, to marginal levels (as it seems they were in previous centuries).
Somebody gather data and write a paper. Find that genetic marker and it’s trigger, there’s a Nobel in it for you… )
+1
serr8d,
Well, in my not so humble opinion, a lot of people go down the road of homosexualism because they became involved in that lifestyle and, rather than leave their lifestyle comfort zone, there they remain. Pattern of living, as it were. Add to that the sense of belonging that people need.
Being as homosexuality, I believe, predominantly occurs among males, it just increases the opportunities for straight males to have, umm, more fun. I’m not sure how that would be a brake on overpopulation.
In my opinion, based on actually talking to gay men, many are born that way. They tried the straight thing and it didn’t work, so they went with the gay thing and are happier because of it.
Not all of them are promiscuous either.
Most of the gay people you see making a racket are the radical, vocal minority. They are not representative, but they are more interesting to feature in newscasts or tabloid television.
My experience tracks with cranky’s.
Leigh, not quite as epic as “weapons grade blamethrower.”
I expect an epic fuckup by SCOTUS with the upcoming ruling. SCOTUS should have refused to hear the case because they have no standing and, in the process, invalidated all preceding federal court rulings.
This, I think. I prefer this.
I moved in and around the gay community in Minneapolis for quite a few years. The part of the gay community I saw (I, for the life of my, cannot remember the name of the big gay hangout in Minneapolis) was definitely part of the “anything goes” crowd.
Sheesh, Google came up with it in 2 seconds. Gay 90’s.
I used to hang out at the 9-0 all the time. Most of those you saw there acting out were not typical. It’s kind of self-selecting, in that the grown-ups who don’t act that way did not go there.
It was quite a circus there in the late 90s. The last time I went, a few years ago, it had ceased being much fun.
cranky, we may have crossed paths, then. I left Minneapolis in 1999.
The bar I had the most fun at, from a people watching standpoint, was The Black Spot. It was hilarious, because it was a S&M theme bar, but, the bar darn well knew it was a put on, but the patrons took the place seriously. It was a hoot.
If you hung out at La Femme, and knew Michael the bartender, then we very likely crossed paths.
These days I don’t stray from the neighborhood bar, which is within easy stumbling distance from the house I live in.
I would agree, at least in part, adding that it’s not within the proper purview of the state to redefine marriage to include same sex couples. As Gallagher mentioned in the previously linked interview:
The point is reinforced by the authors of What is Marriage? in another interview:
I’d add the quotes supporting the argument that all this matters because of the importance of the family as a secure foundation for a functional society, but, as this is already overlong, you can follow the links yourself, should you care to.
I will add, on a personal note, that it seems to me marriage, traditionally understood, as an insitution older than the state is itself entitled to government protection as one of those “certain unalienable Rights” with which we are endowed by the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”
My thought on this is the institution of marriage doesn’t cease to be sacred just because it’s been profaned. Nor should the fact that marriage remains sacred regardless of the profanities inflicted upon it serve as an excuse to profane it further.
I don’t like Weigel, but I really like what he did here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/03/27/hillary_clinton_harry_reid_when_democrats_swore_they_would_never_back_gay.html
Towards the general argument, I continue to feel more than a little cautious along the lines that have been traced out above.
This notion that THINGS MUST CHANGE IMMEDIATELY simply stands at odds with the very best impulses of conservatism. If gays were being assaulted in the streets then justice would require immediate action. We’re not though. We’re most often talking about issues on the frivolous level of the personal opinions of chicken franchisees.
I remember when Orson Scott Card (who has admittedlywritten some very questionable shit) caught hell for being a Mormon who publically opposed gay marriage. Suddenly ‘Ender’s Game’ was re-evaluated as ‘Mein Kamf II: Electric Boogalaoo’. Now Chickfila is a sinister plan to do away with the gay gene that must be stopped at any cost before we run out of time.
A awful lot of hysteria and shit for little gain and with little provocation. I guess the movement isn’t worried about, pardon my french, ‘shooting their wad’ early. Which phrase is about muskets in times where one is out of ammunition and shooting ANYTHING with the remaining powder, not nutting.
But whatever.
I heard an interesting point on the radio yesterday that maybe Dicentra can weigh in on. It seems that the SCOTUS has ruled on the definition of marriage before during Utah’s storied history as a haven of polygamists. In order for the territory to become a state, the church had to “reject” polygamy and hew to the official SCOTUS definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman.
I don’t know if this counts as precedent, but I’ve only heard it mentioned one time.
Yeah, when they act like this it’s a definitive sign that America circa 2013 is not a bad place to be gay geographically or temporally.
I think we can take a few years and muddle our way through it. The hard sell is a tell.
It’s funny. Nobody ever wants to fix Egypt or Saudi Arabia. It is America that is evil. Because. Saudi’s might stab us in the face with a burning gasoline coated knife if we fuck with them. Americans just frown at us and try to avoid confrontation. No stabby. Therefore ‘Ceterum autem censeo Americanem delendam esse.’
You are either up on my shoulders ready to chicken fight to the death for my goals, or you are against me. Unless you are seriously dangerously against me. Then I must respect your beautiful ancient culture (for the moment) and obsequiously condemn those bigots who would try to separate you from it.
Carpe facilis tentorium fructus in nomine hodierno bonum.
Does that somehow translate to “Beware, because we are boned?”
So, um what your saying is that Levin is a racist.
My Latin remains at around high school level.
“Hodierno” I googled.
Another misconception that drives me buggy is the idea that marriage is a “religious practice” and therefore the state can effectively drop it.
Hello?
A “religious practice” is something that religious people do but that non-religious people do not do, e.g., say prayers, read scripture, attend services.
Atheists, agnostics, doubters, and believers all get married. Atheists prefer not to marry in churches, but they don’t see their marriage as a one-time indulgence in religious practice, because it isn’t: it’s a civil thing.
Religions value marriage, just as they value charity and kindness and compassion, but the fact that religions value something doesn’t make it a religious thing.
Also, the state cannot butt out of marriage, because if it does, how will we know who is married and who is not? If your stupid frat brother marries you and your drunk girlfriend one night, does that mean it’s for real?
The Elvis impersonators in Vegas at least have recognized authority to perform marriages; the rest of us do not.
That’s a good thing.
I beat the drum about this all the time. People think I’m “pedantic” when I point out flaws, not with the conclusion someone reached, but with the reasoning they used. In my experience, faulty reasoning that happens to give correct answers a few times is more dangerous than when it gives wrong answers every time, because the naive observer takes the good results as proof that they’re using the wrong algorithm. Then when the algorithm no longer applies, they have no clue, and make spectacularly awful decisions.
All because they didn’t think “how we get there” mattered.
Polygamy is a well-established institution in societies around the world. Until a few years ago, no government anywhere recognized “same-sex marriage”, while many have recognized polygamous marriage.
Any argument one can raise in support of SSM can also be used to support polygamy.
Contracts. But why should the state care who is married and who isn’t?
But why should the state care who is married and who isn’t?
Custody? Inheritance? Ownership of property?
Taxes and bond issues. Just like always, Pablo.
All of which can be controlled by contract, to which gays could, should and would also have access, along with anyone else who desired it.
Remember when marriage used to be a contract? My, those were quaint times.
Which was offered. They refused it. They won’t accept any solution that doesn’t let them overturn everything everybody else believes in.
And I will repeat myself YET AGAIN: offering to separate marriage and state won’t shut them up — it will only let them move on to the next step that much sooner.
I wouldn’t do it as an offer to the gays. I’d do it because state involvement in the institution has made and continues to make hash of it.
Taking marriage out of the law will undermine law.
Taking the law out of the law has undermined the law.
Carpe facilis tentorium fructus in nomine hodierno bonum.
Grab the easy hanging fruits in the name of today’s definition of good.
In other words go after the softest targets who won’t fight back or be defended or who are afraid to retaliate and do so in the name of whatever we feel must be good right now.
It’s the modern political agitator’s motto.
All of which can be controlled by contract, to which gays could, should and would also have access, along with anyone else who desired it.
I agree. You asked why the state would care, and I gave a few guesses off the top of my head.
The as-yet-unborn children that may be produced by a marriage are, by definition, too young to give their consent to any “contract”. The sole legitimate reason for the state to involve itself in marriage is to protect the interests of those children.
What can be controlled by contract is things like hospital visitation rights. A standard, boilerplate document could be produced to allow any same-sex couple to give each other powers of attorney that all hospitals would recognize. But if that problem were solved, there would be no need to change the law. Activists do not want to relieve the suffering against which they pretend to agitate; they want to exploit it.
The state does an absolute shit job of that.
That whole deal about hospital visitation is a non-starter. You can see anyone you like when you are hospitalized. These activist types are trying to make out that the staff at hospitals are a bunch of Gestapo who would bar you from visiting your loved ones.
If you Aunt Shirley (by marriage) can get in to pester you, so can you “partner”, be he business or bedroom partner.
Agreed Pablo.
Neoneocon has a couple of columns on her blog where she talks about marriage and the law being enmeshed. I’d urge you to read her rather than a clumsy paraphrase by me.
If you wish to, of course.
Pablo
in CA the registered domestic partners are given every privilege & duty of married people, just without the “married” name within the law.
NO one has ever been legal sanctioned if two men or two women DP’s want to privately call themselves married or their partners “husbands” or “wives”
Not good enough for the SSM mafia. Even though those couples are fundamentally different than married couples, they want to be celebrated as the same, no dissent allowed even private dissent.
Visitation is minor. The right to make treatment/end-of-life decisions, inherit, get automatic custody of children… are all more important, IMO.
While it may be true that some of this can be accomplished by paying a lawyer to draw up a contract, it’s also true that straight couples get those things automatically by standing in front of an Elvis impersonator in Vegas.
“just without the “married” name within the law.”
I don’t think the federal government (the FEDERAL government) should control the definition of “married”. At all.
If you grant them the right to define marriage when it matches your personal beliefs, don’t be surprised when a later government changes it to a definition that’s less congenial.
I’m somewhat bemused by the number of people who, while dead-set against federal power grabs in most cases, are fully on-board when it comes to DOMA.
The right to make treatment/end-of-life decisions, inherit, get automatic custody of children… are all more important, IMO.
Of course. All of those can be designated in a power of attorney and a will. Straight couples spend a lot of time in court wrangling with relatives of a decedent who think the surviving spouse is undeserving. (Cf: Anne Nicole Smith)
DOMA, the section, Section 3, that is under review is, in my non-lawyer opinion, unconstitutional and will be struck down.
And you misused bemused, Spies. Watch out, di will be on you with an OED in a minute.
“be·mused [bih-myoozd] Show IPA
adjective
1. bewildered or confused.”
Hmm… I don’t think so. :-)
“All of those can be designated in a power of attorney and a will.”
You have to pay a lawyer to do those if you want them to have any chance of standing up against hostile relatives, where a marriage gets you all of those things by default. Elvis impersonators are cheaper than lawyers.
Yes, of course, relatives can contest marriage rights (you can sue a ham sandwich, as the saying goes) but they win so rarely that it’s not worth it except in extraordinary cases where very large sums are at stake (such as the Anna Nicole Smith case).
how about “veteran”, “disabled”, “single”, “minor”, “citizen”, “low income”, “rich”?
I stand corrected on the bemused comment. I took it to mean you were “amused”. My fault.
Agreed about the Elvis impersonators being cheaper than lawyers. I still don’t see a way to tweeze out marriage and contract law from the grubby fingers of the various states. Believe me, I’ve looked.
How does all of this play against Common Law marriages? In my state, cohabitating for eight years makes the couple de facto spouses regardless of whether there is a marriage license.
Right. They talk of “tolerance” but they want nothing less than submission.
Why shouldn’t the federal government, for purposes of federal business, not be able to “control” the definition it administers to? This control doesn’t affect the states in any way. It merely protects against abuse of the Full Faith and Credit Clause and upholds, among other things, bans on polygamy.
Besides, as nr rightly notes, they define categories all the time for purposes of administration and benefit availability and eligibility, not to mention tax exemptions, etc.
“Why shouldn’t the federal government, for purposes of federal business, not be able to “control” the definition it administers to?”
For (e.g.) tax purposes, you mean?
Treating married and single people differently is clearly discriminatory and unconstitutional IMO, and doing it at the state level is a violation of the 14th Amendment.
NO, thanks to the Robert’s “because I say so” amendment the government has unlimited taxation authority. They can kill you without any due process so long as it is your head paying the “this bullet needs a target” tax.
the entire 87,000 pages of the progressive tax code is full of discrimination
The 14th Amendment had to do with newly freed slaves.
Let me ask you this, can the federal government define a class of “disabled” people and deny those within it the privilege of a driver’s license?
Single people and married people are different. Two of the three are married. One is not.
Look: I’m for a flat tax or fair tax and doing away with all the vagaries of the tax code. But the fact is, this is done all the time: homeowners get tax breaks because we as a society have said we want to encourage home ownership, eg. We are permitted to make these types of arrangements. Nothing is being taken away from those who don’t own homes; we are simply incentivizing certain arrangments and behaviors we feel benefit a civil society.
I say this without detailing one way or another whether I agree or disagree with the examples. I merely offer them to show that there’s nothing Unconstitutional about them — at least, not from an originalist perspective. These are political and policy questions.
“The 14th Amendment had to do with newly freed slaves.”
The 13th was the one that dealt specifically with slavery, but the 14th was part of the same package.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
“can the federal government define a class of “disabled” people and deny those within it the privilege of a driver’s license?”
The federal government has no business issuing drivers licenses, either, but a restriction based on a bona fide physical fact (e.g., being blind) is not the same thing as one based on behavior (e.g., being married, belonging to a specific religion…). I’d be okay with literacy and numeracy tests for voting, too, but good luck with that.
Yes. And as such, it needs to be read in that context and with the proper referents to make clear its intent.
That being said, treating a single person differently than a married person is not abridging his or her privileges. It is giving others additional privileges. They still have equal protection under the law. They just don’t qualify for the same extra benefits, because not all federal programs are designed for them.
I suppose I could go back to instances in law after the ratification of the 14th Amendment written by the very same legislature that “discriminated” in the way you suggest is not allowed under the 14th amendment, but that would be tedious and a waste of time, because we both already know those exist. We are allowed to recognize differences and to make concessions to and for those differences.
Why isn’t it the same? Are you saying we’re allowed to make distinctions and then legislate based around such distinctions? Because I agree. I just don’t understand why you think some distinctions are okay but others are unconstitutional, despite the Constitution saying nothing about it being a violation of someone’s civil rights to note that they are different from some other person, and that the other person is engaging in activity we as a civil society, using the political process and as authors of our own sovereignty, wish to promote.
so the fed gov’t can’t police its own jurisdiction?
SBP
Is marriage a behavior or the status of being in a organized institution? Military members and Vets get certain benefits unavailable to the general public based on their status of being (or have been) part of an institution. And not everyone is qualified to be IN the military.
I’ve used the Equal Protection Clause to argue for the prohibition of abortion. Gays I just want to STFU.
Thoughts on various observations offered by SBP this AM:
That would be because straight couples have always gotten those things –since the time when “the state” was the guy with the most goats.
DOMA acknowledges the definition of marriage as it was from the beginning of history until yesterday, so to speak. Instituting same sex marriage changes the definition. Which action is more controlling?
What power did the feds grab here? This was limitation on state power.
gay “marriage” supporters can go eff themselves
Dr. Carson Banned from a Commencement Speech?
There’s a federal driver’s license? Is it good in all 50 states?
The reason it’s not an abridgement of one’s privileges is that if you get married, you too can file jointly and take the higher exemption. Of course, if you and your spouse are both high earners, you might not even notice it. Hence, the marriage penalty.
I think. I’ve go my John Qualen hat on I don’ know ‘bou dese tings.
wow Carson is self-destructing even faster than Herman did
Jeff: “It is giving others additional privileges. ”
Ernst: “The reason it’s not an abridgement of one’s privileges is that if you get married, you too can file jointly and take the higher exemption”
So if the IRS gave a higher exemption to, say, Southern Baptists, it wouldn’t be an abridgment because everyone is free to join that church?
Darleen: “Military members and Vets get certain benefits unavailable to the general public based on their status of being (or have been) part of an institution. ”
No, they get them on the basis of having actually performed a service.
Ernst: “What power did the feds grab here? This was limitation on state power.”
The power to define who is married and who is not. That was never a federal power before. It was always a state power, and the other states (and the federal government) always gave full faith and credit to the marriage laws of each state (with occasional and unconstitutional exceptions, such as the way the Mormons were treated).
Jeff again: “Because I agree. I just don’t understand why you think some distinctions are okay but others are unconstitutional”
A distinction based on a bona fide physical fact (not being blind in this case) is entirely different from one based the government’s social agenda. The same applies to, say, strength requirements for firefighters. Having different standards for men and women in that area is also discriminatory, IMO, not to mention just plain stupid. If I’m unconscious from smoke inhalation, I want my firefighter to be able to haul my ass out of there. If a woman can do it (and some can), great. If not, I’d rather not die while the affirmative action hire waits for a real firefighter to come along.
That, as you very well know, runs afoul of the Establishment Clause. As to how marriage is different from church affiliation, men and women of all nations and creeds can and do marry. Historically, it’s been to members of the opposite sex. That was even true in the West until yesterday.
How is conceiving, birthing and raising the next generation, i. e. creating a familiy, not a service?
As I, perhaps incorrectly, understand DOMA, it doesn’t do anything to interfere with a state’s power to define who can be married under what conditions. It merely states that states choosing to adhere to the traditional definition of marriage need to acknowledge as marriages those arrangements made in other states which choose not to. This, by the way, like the ban on polygamous marriage is perfectly constitutional, as the Congress may be general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records, and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. So it seems to me the only way Govenment asserts more power is by arrogating to itself the power to redefine marriage. (Although, as others have argued elsewhere, what they would actually be doing is undefining it.)
Do I really need to point out that traditional marriage is based on exactly the kind of distinction you describe?
Staunch!
He uses it as a verb Jeff.
i’m staunch as all git out Mr. G but I tell you what
Mr. Dr. Carson was a new fresh voice but bam in an instant the veil dropped (as Darleen likes to say) and bam he ain’t nothin but a dime a dozen stanky old social con
what do we need a nudder one of them for?
we don’t! – we all full up already -and most of them even have a whole lot more sense than to compare gay people to kiddie diddlers
what a douche
Jeff, as an alumnus of Johns Hopkins, you should write them a strongly worded letter. One questioning their commitment to tolerance and inclusiveness of others and their points of view that may not be popular with the salon set, especially as lauded a man as Dr. Carson.
A not insignificant number of gays got diddled as kiddies. Coincidence?
so did Scott Brown and he became a famous republican senator
coincidence?????
Killin’ Jesus on kill Jesus day is an eternal job, ain’t it hf?
as long as you keep gettin chockit come Sunday morning Mr. sdferr I reckon it is
naw he said the gayz are donkey fuckers
for reals am I the only one what’s a wee lil bit disappointed in Mr. Dr. Carson’s new-found banality?
this leaves Rand Paul as the only thing close to a Fresh New Voice on Team R, and he a white boy from kentucky
“but it’s not like we can afford to be choosey mothers when it comes to our peabnut bubber,” happyfeet said, without a trace of irony
pikachu you be banality central
Fortunately for me, Lent is over.
Good God, but are you a whiney little bitch or what?
And John Fund should know better.
Does anybody really think NAMBLA wouldn’t be interested in changing the definition of marriage? Hmmm?
Dr. Paul and Dr. Carson are both surgeons with a refreshing candor in their points of view.
Willingness to say unpopular things in these PC times takes moxie.
who even thinks about NAMBLA except for 700 Clubbers with an awkward gap to fill in their fundraising newsletter
Ernst, perhaps Jerry Sandusky can help out with the NAMBLA talking points. He’s practically a poster rapist for them.
you’re right the bigamist are next
Hang his poster right next to the one of that womanish thing lobbying for Planned Parenthood.
And gays, pedophiles, and bestialists, along with the incestuous, are often grouped (grouped, not compared), in these debates, because is we’re going to normalize and regularize the first, we come that much closer to first normalizing, and then regularizing the other perversities.
newrouter’s right. Should have included the bigamists and polygamists right behind the gays.
see? the new and improved Mr. Dr. Ben Carson makes for the completely same old blah blah blah
he really blew it
And here we have a fine example of an American Progressive Butthurt Cocksucker. Whatever you do, don’t touch it.
see???
it is to weep.
If only Right and Truth were as cool and fun as Wrong and Falsehood. Then we could all be as refreshing as 7-Up in a cola world.
nice friends on your side hf
NBC News on Dr. Ben Carson: ‘Blinded By the White’
Who gets their panties in a wad when someone mentions NAMBLA? Who?
A constant delight with novelty, if not a simple obsession, is characteristic of the young. Of course, being largely ignorant, they’ve plenty to encounter for a first time. Recurrence to true stuff — true where it stays the same — is a thing older people appreciate somewhat more.
Fuck you and your OUTRAGE!
We need a new conservatism. One that isn’t so icky and conservative. That would be progress.
Recurrence to true stuff seems to a lot coincide with losing elections lately though Mr. sdferr. While the boot of fascism gets ever more stompy stompy.
Maybe a conservatism that kills babies and assfucks. I hear that’s trendy.
Well ok that can go on the whiteboard but let’s keep brainstorming.
I’d say mostly the lost elections are due to very many people refusing to pay attention to what’s true, and instead acting like saps for novelties like Li’l King Barry ObaZma, m’self.
can’t argue with that
Hard to pay attention to what’s true when milquetoast moderate Republican 1.0 wouldn’t speak it for fear of being called a racist, and milquetoast moderate Republican 2.0 only spoke in half truths (“Obama’s not working”) for the same reason.
Hence, the need for Rand Paul and folks like Dr. Carson to step into the breech and talk plain.
Maybe Ernst, but to say for my own part, it wasn’t the least bit difficult. I suppose we have to make allowances for those who choose not to choose though, eh?
I think this is why history and civics classes in high schools are being dropped or replaced with nonsense bearing the original title.
Recurring to what is true for one brief moment, KU goes down like the choking dogs they are, damn ’em all to heck. Way to persevere Big Blue.
A Buddhist parable I rather liked involved how one would react to a lemon tree if it was “misbehaving”.
Would you get mad at it or would you water it? Would you get exasperated or would you prune away the other tree that was taking its light? Would you swear at it and kick it or would you fertilize it?
Trees need waterin’ and prunin’ and fertilizin’. Won’t someone think of the trees?
Jesus had at a fig tree (and it didn’t go well for the tree). Never did quite understand that bit o’ business, though I’ve heard many an explanation.
I’m at a loss.
Okay, found it.
I’m looking now. What’s your cite?
Via wiki, here for Mark and here for Matthew.
Matthew 21:18.
Anyhow, it has always seemed very odd to me. I’ve tried to fit it into some picture that would make sense, but failed, over and over again. It’s probably something to do with my unbelief though, or so I reckon.
Bad links, sorry. Okay, Mark here and Matthew here.
I can’t say that I entirely understand it myself.
burbank has a lot of camphor trees
as far as I know the lot of them are as yet wholly unmolested by Jesus
happyfeet said helpfully
Maybe it has less to do with the tree than Jesus’ ability to do such things. Trees have symbolic value so we look for that to be there. What if instead Jesus stubbed his toe on a rock and he cursed it and the next day it had crumbled to sand. Then it would be a fairly straight forward sort of thing if not a parable exactly.
I had a great figtree in the backyard in D.C. back in the day. Took a bushel of fresh picked figs out to the Inn at Little Washington, gave ’em to the chef and he, in exchange, gave us (table of 8) free desserts all around. Nice guy (nice gay too), cause he wasn’t allowed to send them back from the kitchen to the dining room (as I’d hoped), so he and his crew ate ’em instead. We got the better of the deal I think, since we had figs all summer long anyhow.
As figs preserve nicely and melons are terrible around here this time of year I’ve been pairing them with the cured, salty porks instead and it’s been working pretty well.
Hot capocollo and fig make for an interesting winter antipasto.
Jesus does tell that other parable about recognizing the tree by it’s fruit (Luke 6: 43-44, for instance). So there could be a link-up with that. But still, I don’t exactly feature God hisself pickin’ on a dumb tree — it’s a little too close to kicking a dog for lickin’ his own ass. And kickin’ dogs is mean, whichaeverway we cut it.
That figtree, by the way, was my first real experience with the technique of “copse” culture. It was a single trunk when we moved in the house, but cut down, back sprang fifteen new trunks from the roots. And produce? Boy howdy, did they produce.
In all likelihood it’s probably less a tree and more some uncharitable tribe or another though. Been years since I’ve known which box the one concordance I own is in though and that box is currently 300 miles away.
“Though” in consecutive sentences in the same place. The brain lesion returns.
I am betting a bad translation there. If you where going to do a miracle, why not have the thing sprout some figs?
It could be salutary in the sense that a minding of the occasionally wrathful God of the Pentateuch is appropriate, in a “don’t fuck with me” kind of way, yet taking it out on a dumb figtree is an easier pill to swallow than say, puddlemelting a Roman soldier or other.
A thread about gay marriage, and you two don’t see the allegory in a fruitless fig tree?
When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs.
And?
It did come to mind for some reason, Ernst, but that’s a time-traveling mind transference sort of read, isn’t it?
I don’t know. Maybe not. There’s the admonition to be fruitful and such but the analogues in their time would have been infertile couples or deserts or something, right?
I sorta bracketed the “season for figs” part because as Jesus is God then that isn’t really an issue for him. It might not be the earthly season for figs but that’s not a divine sort of concern.
I can get that the figtree thing on the surface is a kind of demonstration of the power of faith — followed as it is by the claim that strong faith can cause a mountain to go jump in a lake — though why one would want a mountain to jump in a lake is a mystery all its own. Yet the alternative Bmoe suggests — make the tree fruit out of season — seems an equally viable demonstration of the same lesson, so the sense that the strength of faith is all there is to the lesson necessarily fades a tad.
Perhaps Mark is making a different point than Matthew by presenting a different order of events.
I have no idea whether figs ripen in Judea during the month of Nissan or not, by the way. So maybe Mark makes explicit what Matthew leaves implicit?
In which case it’s a parable about holding oneself in readiness, as well as the power of faith.
It’s the picking on a dumb tree bit that’s always stumped me. And that sense of quirky assault isn’t lessened by noticing that it ought to be equally possible to cause the tree to fruit, parable or no parable.
I was suggesting in a roundabout way that the purpose of a fig tree* is to produce figs, and if the fig tree doesn’t produce, then it serves no purpose. Just like the purpose of a man is to love a woman and the purpose of a woman is to love her man….
*especially one growing by the side of a road –-presumably wildly.
Maybe it’s a bit like when Jesus told his disciples to drop what they’re doing (even if it involved familial obligation) and follow him.
Asking them to drop their normal obligations would be a bit like asking a tree for fruit out of season.
I honestly have no idea though.
” men and women of all nations and creeds can and do marry.”
Polygamy was (and I believe, still is) more common than monogamy, though. That’s okay, then?
“Do I really need to point out that traditional marriage is based on exactly the kind of distinction you describe?”
And this has exactly what to do with tax status?
Blindness is directly related to whether one can safely operate a car.
Physical strength is directly related to whether one can carry out the duties of a firefighter.
Sexual preference is not related (as far as I can tell) to the ability to pay income tax.
I think that’s right. I also suspect, given that this takes place within the context of the Entry into Jerusalem, and the Cleansing of the Temple, etc., the entire incident is charged (fraught Jeff might say) with eschatological expectation.
It’s doubtful that polygamy, while common enough alright, has actually been the dominant form of human sexual alignment. And there isn’t any particular reason to expect polygamy will ever end, so far as we can see. On the other hand though, it doesn’t appear to have any overwhelming advantages for humankind, does it? And if we listen to Montesquieu, no small set of fraught disadvantages.
I guess that doesn’t hit me. Partly because trees are indeed dumb and insensate. (To invoke the “no harm, no foul” rule.)
The other part is borderline old-school maybe but I reckon we’re to implicitly factor in that the higher power occasionally sends floods or causes droughts to help build our character or remind us of our little-specks-of-dust-in-the-universe status.
I’ve never had any trouble cutting down trees, for lots of reasons, mind. But I don’t go out in the yard and cut down an orange tree because the oranges aren’t bigger than a pin-head while I happen to be hungry. I mean, that would just be stupid.
This has been my chance to casually use “midrash” in conversation but I failed completely.
Try this guys.
I don’t know if it is or isn’t more common than monogamy. I don’t think it’s okay though, even if it is more common, de facto or de jure. Maybe it’s more defensible in a debate.
Neither are blindness (though I think there’s a tax deduction for that) or firefighting. And the marriage exemption isn’t based on sexual preference. Neither is marriage, for that matter.
But marriage is based on something like the real differences you described in your firefighter example.
And if you really want the marriage exemption to go away, I can’t think of a better way to help finish it off than by supporting the homosexuals in their effort to complete what the feminists previously started.
Could be the quiet story was the Jesus’s mortalish eyesight was on the wane, since he had to walk up to the tree to see whether it had any fruit on it? That whole action doesn’t fit with RiverC’s assurances to me that it wasn’t necessary for Jesus to have actually read Plato’s dialogues in order to have “read” them without ever seeing them, since after all, he is God and these sorts of doings are the essence of Godliness.
Thanks, Geoff.
Makes sense to me geoff. Thanks for linking.
Since we’re talking parables and allegories, let me amplify what I was trying to get at with my 10:03, by way of the same:
You know, it was a lot harder to get away with anything amounting to real trouble when I was a kid because the eyes of half the mothers in the neighborhood were watching. And it was damn near impossible to get get away with anything even resembling trouble when my parents were kids, because nearly all the mothers were watching.
And they all had each other’s phone numbers!
In this day of cell phones, gps trackers, and nanny cams? It’s just not the same.
In the footnotes: “[…]the wrath of God is pictured by the destruction of the fig tree. cf. Psalm 105:33; Jeremiah 8:13; Hosea 2:12.”
Guess it’s a repeated theme.
Repeated motif is probably more accurate.
Cap’n Beefheart could have sung “dem poor Jews, they got the figtree blues”.
Like I said, eschatological expectation.
Hideous. I guess this is typical of my misunderstanding.
It doesn’t help things that your faculties are hindered by the fact that your all chained up staring at a shadowy reflection on a wall of this cave we call “the world.”
Heh, it only took me 12 years of parochial school to achieve my high level of hideous misunderstanding, sdferr.
If you listen very closely you can hear dozens and dozens of yard sticks slapping ominously somewhere in the distance.
Or just looking at pictures of the Nazi’s work. Nevermind reading Raul Hilberg.
I think there’s a chance I’ve misread your use of “hideous”.
I meant the implications of the exegesis as seen from the point of view of the unruly Jews, not simply with regard to the era of Christ’s presence in Jerusalem, but right down to today, should the devout Jew choose to follow the thread the exegesis would suggest.
Being the chosen people brings responsibilities and a price for failing to uphold them.
America, by putting into power the ones we have, shows the world we don’t/can’t give a fig.
Oh, and my school went down to Duke, 71-61.
You don’t have to go the Nazis or Hilberg (who, I confess, I don’t know) when the Romans and Josephus are sufficient.
Sewing, reaping, whirlwinds….
Hilberg merely has the advantage to witness a sort of progression of the story, from conversion by the sword (you cannot live among us as Jews), to ghetto (you cannot live among us), to concentration camp (you cannot live). The Jews still haven’t figured out their evangelical calling however, converting no-one of those surrounding them to the glories of God, but maintain their nearly unique ability to suffer the hatred of people who live both near and far.
You’re starting the story at conversion by the sword or you cannot live amongst us as Jews but the references from that footnote are all Old Testament.
In this parable we then see Jesus, a Jew, referring to their internal scripture to other Jews.
I don’t see the external or gentile justification for violence against the Jews. And what is it that they’d be doing wrong exactly? The Romans or Nazis would say it’s because they are Jews. These stories seem to say the opposite or something along the lines of them not being Jewish enough.
I guess I don’t see this exegesis.
Couple fixes for above. The Romans didn’t necessarily care that they were Jewish, right? They just weren’t as easily assimilated because of their monotheism I think. (I’m no classicist.)
Also, those stories probably don’t encourage them to be more Jewish. Jewish is sorta binary, you are or you aren’t in their terms. I suppose I mean observant or pious or something.
As somebody who likes to joke that I have a brother whose purpose in life is to prove that he should have been born first, I can sympathize, however remotely and imperfectly.
My comment wasn’t meant as a justification, (sdferr can speak for himself, but I’m guessing neither was his) simply an observation. Something to remember is that the gospels were written AFTER the destruction of the Temple at the hands of the Romans,, and the atrocities Josephus describes would have been understood within the context the verses you mentioned.
Agree with you about the not being Jewish enough.
The Jews were seen as odd, but not as odd the Christians came to be seen. If the Romans were more brutal to the Jews than they were to any other rebellious people, it was because the Jews resisted more effectively. And the Romans couldn’t have that.
In any event the siege of Jerusalem was horrific, even by ancient standards, because the Jewish rebels were divided into factions that were just as interested in killing their rivals as they were in killing Romans.
Oh, to be perfectly clear here, I was going off of sdferr’s comment. Didn’t take you to be offering justification in any way, Ernst. Not at all.
Gotcha.
I think I’ll call it a night now.
Recapturing pagan piety today is a tough one, practically impossible for the likes of us’uns, so I’m uncertain how the Romans looked upon these especially strange Jewish people. On the one hand, the Romans seem to have been intent on converting many of their conquered nations to Roman political sensibilities, but this would surely have entailed a knowledge of and obedience toward their religious practices, wouldn’t it? On the other hand though, we don’t get the sense that the conversion by a Roman upon an outlander was ever solely devoted to conversion on religious grounds alone, without the political bits that organized the ground under their feet. So these aspects of the Roman relation to other-worshippers is murky at best, so far as I can make out. But then I’m ignorant as all get out where it comes to the Romans. So.
Didn’t the Romans, in general, set up temples for the gods of conquered peoples in Rome?
I’ve gathered the impression (and it could be wrong) that they didn’t generally meddle in local religious customs unless they were a focus of rebellion.
The only exceptions that come to mind are the Jews (’cause they would not tolerate any other gods) and the Druids (whose religious practices were so incredibly cruel that they horrified even the Romans).
How cruel does does your culture have to be to make the Romans say “Dudes….that is fucked up”?
Very similar to the Spaniards and the Aztecs, at least in old racist accounts. Before we learned that the Native Americans were just a bunch of peace-loving hippies, living in harmony with one another and with Nature, I mean.