Of Marri-moni:
Must American law accede that every private relation that parties thereto wish subjectively to call a “marriage” must objectively be so accepted by the general government? Must Yankee law really accede that every feather that enters into a relationship with a cap is macaroni? Or marri-moni? What sort of smithy with words would believe “equal protection under the law” should entitle everyone and every relation to be made equal, as in health care, as in being made equal in brains, brawn, and beauty?
Whatever the random or karmic events that may bring one to one’s happenstance of birth or disposition in life, should one be entitled to be freed from such karma or happenstance, by calling upon society to intervene with constitutional rights, genetic treatments, and robotic enhancements, in order to make one “equal” in one’s relations with all others … indeed, in order to ensure that no other is ever allowed to become “more equal?” Should equal protection in relations mean that everyone is entitled to woo and seduce whomever of whatever sex (or number) one can, and thereafter to require that government must recognize “the conquest” on whatever terms the dominant member demands?
Can this be a serious, sustainable proposition or path for the real world? Should everyone, as their dispositions please them, be entitled to claim to be married when it is advantageous and single when it is not? Alternatively, perhaps even on the same tax page? Why not? If an advocate can be found to argue one side, an advocate can surely be found to argue the other. Just think of the killing an advocate with a forked tongue could make, arguing both sides at once!
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In death, all particular perspectives of consciousness must eventually become collateral damage from the unfolding purposes of the field of consciousness. Our material world is not the best of all possible; we are only its gardeners, always pursuing communion, and perhaps eventual merger, with a happier state of being.
6 comments:
The monstrous situation in Massachusetts seems not altogether unlike the BP gusher from the deep. How can mere law cap a society whose judges and citizenry think themselves empowered to gush that ignorance is strength, slavery is freedom, and marriage is same-sex reach around? If we have not altogether lost good sense, does any group in the land retain means to correct the Massachusetts usurpation by its highest state court? What can be done when a state’s highest court decides it can be lawless in matters beyond higher federal jurisdiction? One who retains faith that Massachusetts has not lost all respect for lawfulness my wish to believe that the federal Supreme Court should retain power to correct an obvious affront to representative governance. Or one may wish that Massachusetts’ governor or legislature would find means to correct the lawless usurpation by its “judges.” But if the governor and the legislature lack power or backbone, what does that tell us? Are there no Dutch boys in Massachusetts to plug this leak? Well, the Dutch already legalized same sex marriage, on April Fool’s day, 2001. See http://old.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200406030910.asp: “…if the widespread campaign to persuade the Dutch people that marriage has no special relationship to parenting is not the explanation for the dramatic increase in out-of-wedlock births, what is?” “Family is whatever an individual wants it to be, and the state has no business expressing a preference.” But of course the collectivist state will have no preference regarding family! The collectivist state seeks to preempt and replace the family as the wellspring for inculcating social values. “Who has the burden of proof here? I would argue that the burden lies with the advocates of radical change to the existing definition of marriage, one that no society we know of has embraced, to show that this kind of social experiment will do no harm. “ Is Massachusetts availing “peace in liberty,” or is it greasing the way to naked rule of the collectivized? After the Massachusetts court’s heedless drilling beyond the limits of law, comes the deluge.
I don't see history or common sense behind the argument that to deny gays the right to marry is to deny them equal protection under the law. Would it deny a person equal protection under the law to deny him the "right" to clone himself in order to "marry" his clone? How do you get "right" and "marry" to mean anything under such reasoning? Yet Leftists spout their arguments, as if demonstrable in objective logic or math.
Ok, show your work. Show me the math that proves it as Fact that there is a violation of equal protection. Apart from "proof" by assumption (and given that the Constitution, per Obama, is like "curved space"), how is it that denying marital benefits to cohabiting same sex adults violates their equal protection under the law?
Marriage is fundamental to family values. Family values are fundamental to decent civilization. Decent civilization is based in respect for the potential perspective of divinity that inhabits each of us. Decent civilization is not based in discounting the divine potential in each member of the masses, as if we were fit only to be ruled by know-it-all's, who seek to collectivize the herd, "for our own good." To undermine family values is to create a vacuum, for the State to replace parents, with all thought of higher values to be filled by the State, to be ruled by elitists. To destroy marriage leads quickly to sacrilege, i.e., elitists posing as gods. That is a well trod path to despair ... for everyone.
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What decent Americans usually fail to understand is that Commies actually believe in their principles, however wrong their principles may be. Commies believe to the point of devaluing everything else, even to the point of being willing to sacrifice millions of lives and cut off innumerable heads in order to get their program over a difficult hump. Individualists, on the other hand, tend to see, or hope to revive, a higher dignity in all. Unfortunately, Individualists often project their hope and tolerance for too long. Meantime, of course, both commies and Muslims take advantage of the tolerance of Individualists, and come to secrete, infest, swarm, promote their own, and reduce the landscape to a hive filled with drones.
The more history shows commies to be wrong, the more commies have faith. After all, where else can they go? They have no God but their faith in a worldwide commune, which they fervently believe that history will eventually require to arise out of dialectical materialism. Their faith is that "science will win" -- even in matters of moral choice-making and human relations. Indeed, their faith is that science will remove the chance for anyone ever again to deviate from the politically and morally correct collective.
Progs are just naive commies, i.e., wanker commies lost in a maze, with no principles apart from their glands. And what do Commies and Progs fear most? They fear any decent alternative faith in a higher Source, which confers dignity to every mortal perspective, which does not bow to any elitist usurper or presumptive mouthpiece for the collective. So why do collectivist Marxists align with collectivist Muslims and against decent Americans and representative republicanism? Well, for the same reason that Sunnis and Shiites align against Jews and Christians: Priority of battles.
Why do we find ourselves cheapening marriage? Well, we seem to have forgotten (if ever we learned) the centrality of marriage to the sustenance of viable, humane, Western civilization. The values associated with marriage – as traditionally accepted, celebrated, and even supported within government’s tax base – are irreplaceable. To accept every alternative to marriage, to celebrate and charge to the community the cost of defending and financing every diverse desire or institution, as if it should be equivalent to marriage, is to cheapen and marginalize that which is most fundamental to the sustenance of decent civilization. Indeed, it is to lay the groundwork for central government to find it necessary to intrude its tentacles ever further into how the next generation is to be raised.
Few care what is generally done by those who choose not to engage in traditional marriage. But many care that not every relationship should be entitled to the same social centrality and support as marriage. Indeed, once every conceivable desire and diverse relationship is thought to carry rights and entitlements, then how shall any viable government define, support, sustain, or propagate anything?
The advocacy of relationship-entitlement-theorists (daydreaming adolescents) -- i.e., oligarchical hegemonists (new world order freaks), collectivists (tribal barbarians), communists (spaced out utopians), socialists (control freaks), progressives (regressives), liberals (statists), even libertarians (high narcissisists) – tends more often towards dissolution into dissimulative goo of anarchy, i.e., precursor to breakdown of civilization, i.e., horror.
If you want to see how the collective can redefine marriage once traditional Western marriage is undermined, look at Islam. If you want to see how children can be shaped to turn to collectivism and against their parents, look to communism and progressively encroaching education. Do we really want the village treasury to be required to expend equal sums to take over and "make equal" the definition and detailed regulation of family values?
From A.T. -- @Countryman: You may be on to something! If government were not subsidizing having children, the less responsible among us might not be having so many children that they cannot, or do not intend to, support. Maybe, if local authorities representing the public weal want to protect children from too many familial obligations at too young an age, they should go about it in ways other than by issuing marriage licenses. Your points may be worth pondering.
@Pa Guy also makes good sense, that the equality argument simply does not compute. That is, "equality" does not rationally support government sanctioning of gay marriage.
@Countryman, in some ways I incline to agree; in others, not so much. Like it or not, the law has taken an interest in certain social relationships. Our law does not allow you to sell yourself into slavery. I hope our law will not allow Islamic wives while in America otherwise to surrender their legal dignity. In default of a prenup, state laws regulate property claims between spouses. Regardless of prenup, State law limits how many rights you can contract away. Law accords various presumptions as to the best interests of children in event of death or divorce of parents. Those presumptions may not apply to polygamous relations, which necessarily lack the "piece of paper." Western culture favors monogamy and sometimes incentives reproduction, so we can have sustainable demographics. When people divorce and are unable to agree on how to split property rights and involvement in raising their children, there will need to be applied some legal, authoritative way to make and enforce decisions. So law will be expected to intrude. That said, I agree with your sentiment that intrusion from the legal authority (government) should be minimal. IMO, to expand the government's interest in issuing "pieces of paper" to non-monogamous relationships in order to call them marriages so as to create default presumptions and treasury incentives is an unnecessary extension of governmental intrusiveness.
Moral issues do need debate, but it hardly helps to debate them with folks who are down for feelings but not for debate. "Moral rights" is probably not very helpful terminology, since that terminology connotes dependence upon social agreement, which connotes subservience to law. "Unalienable rights" for (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) seems to be the more appropriate terminology for the more fundamental concepts. But there is no unalienable right to engage in public indecency, child abuse, or to feed at the public treasury.
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