House of Eratosthenes

I’m tempted to disclaim this with a paragraph or two about my high-minded intentions, but what in the hell is the point. I know I’ll be accused of taking a cheap shot for writing this, and that’s not what I’m trying to do, nor does it speak to what I’m trying to say. It isn’t my point to say “gay people stab each other with screwdrivers” and it isn’t my point to say that “writers for the Huffington Post stab people with screwdrivers”…but why should I have to say that. To conclude that this is my intent, would be bad logic. Measurably bad logic. Expressably bad logic.

Fish have gills, fish swim in the ocean, dolphins swim in the ocean therefore dolphins have gills.

Simple Socratean logic defends me…why should I try to toss up a bloated paragraph to try to do the same. It happened, I’m linking it, conclude what you will. Anyway, Morgan Rule #1 is if I’m gonna be accused of something, I wanna be guilty. But I’m not guilty — my motive for citing this is singular in nature.

Here in the land of fruits-n-nuts, in which we’re weighing the benefits and liabilities of Prop 8…we are rapidly settling into the disturbing and dishonest habit, of using “loving” as a euphemism for “homosexual.” Nobody’s complaining about that besides me, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything terribly wrong with it. As a straight dude who’s a parent, I find it grindingly offensive. And reasonability-wise, that’s the same dolphin logic cited above, or at least it encourages it.

Just as some things in the sea breathe water and some other things in the sea breathe air, that’s the way relationships are. Gay and straight people abuse their partners. Gay and straight people love their partners and treat them well. Neither sex-preference community has a monopoly on taking good care of children, loving the people in their households, beating ’em, butchering ’em, mutilating their bodies, killing themselves. It is non-correlative. At least partially non-correlative. On whether one community or the other demonstrates a statistical tendency for such things…I don’t wanna get into it and I see no reason to do so here.

No, I don’t want you to conclude anything about gay people.

If you want to conclude something about Huffington Post contributors, on the other hand, I’ll not do anything to stop you. Having read a few samplings from that corner, I’ll probably not even disagree with you too harshly about said conclusions, depending on what they are. There is something in the drinking water in that corner of the web. Not exactly a wellspring of cool-headed, rational thinking…

…having said ALL that…this is a little gruesome…

Woman stabs lover 222 times with screwdriver, then kills herself
October 31, 2008 – 1:30PM

An election writer for popular US blog The Huffington Post killed her 56-year-old lover by stabbing her 222 times with a screwdriver, before shooting herself, US police said.

Police said Carol Anne Burger, 57, attacked Jessica Kalish in the garage of their house in Boynton, Florida, on October 22 and then loaded Ms Kalish’s body into her car and abandoned it a few kilometres from the house.
:
Burger initially reported Ms Kalish missing, but committed suicide before police could question her, the paper said.

Things like this give me cause to take the comments of famous straight-lady and Bush-basher Ms. Jong in a somewhat different light (an Obama loss would spark rioting in the streets, et al). As you inspect the divide between left-wing and right-wing, a theme consistently emerges that concerns order versus chaos. The left wing likes to call itself tolerant, and deplores accusations of lawlessness. As you inspect left-wing positions, you find some of them are tolerant. Others are not. But left-wing positions on various unrelated issues do tend to possess a common attribute of finding lawlessness appealing.

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh the week before last and he asked an intriguing question: When do WE riot?? Answer: “We” don’t. That’s because of the “we.” The pronoun does not refer to registered Republicans, or talk show hosts, or people who like cigars or golf with Rush Limbaugh, or straight people or white people or even ideological conservatives.

“We” are people who long for a restoration of order. Not authoritarian/totalitarian order. Directional order. The kind of order that was upset on the playground when you got tired of the bully messing with you, punched him in the gut ONE TIME, and you both got hauled off to the principal’s office…the bully to get a ritual-nothing talking-to, and you to absorb the brunt of the real punishment.

We’re the people who think if there are rules someone bothered to scribble down, and an authority charged with enforcing them, then by implication the authority should be making life a little easier for people who follow those rules and tougher on people who don’t — rather than the other way ’round.

On a whole ballot full of issues, Proposition 8 is the one thing that divides my household. That’s because we think as individuals here. To me, as an individual, this stuff is all about definitions. As I declared when called-upon to defend my position, the argument has been put before me that gay marriage is all about a civil rights issue…I’ve considered the argument, and I’ve rejected it. I think of it as a big ol’ pig-in-a-poke, and I’m not buying. It’s not a civil rights issue. It’s a definition issue. And I’m sick and tired of seeing things defined as other things.

Illegal aliens are just-plain-illegal…we have to have a big debate about whether they are, or should be. Vote registrations are fraudulent…we have to have a big debate about whether they lead to actual fraudulent votes. Clinton lies about having sex with an intern…we have to have a debate about whether the lie counts or not. Obama says he’s going to spread the wealth around…we have to have a debate about whether that’s what he really meant to say.

Our minds are WAY too open. And yes, there is such a thing. We debate WAY too many things that aren’t really open to question. And I’m sick to death of it. But that isn’t the worst of what we’re doing. What we’re really doing, is casting ballots about recognizing things, and laboring under — or imagining ourselves to labor under — some obligation to relegate our individual cognitions to second-fiddle status, behind the government’s opposing sensibilities mandated by the prior election. That is not how it works.

But getting back to the subject at hand. This central debate that goes undebated. Chaos versus order. Maybe this will be offset when, this weekend, some right-winger goes off and commits domestic violence, and some left-wing blogger will read something into that. It doesn’t matter.

Something has slipped out of a dark cave here, and allowed us to catch a rare glimpse of it. And it’s the order/chaos discourse that underlies all other agreements between right-wing and left. Try this: Gather together a list of issues we’ve been discussing. Make it exhaustive. Anything in which there is a clearly-defined right-wing and left-wing position.

Gathering the first five or ten should be easy for you. The “exhaustive” part may pose a little bit of a challenge. Start a spreadsheet. Start a database. See how many you find.

Now examine those left-wing positions. When do they have something to do with preserving order? When you define “order” as the excision of dissent from left-wing sensibilities…or the prohibition against punishment of someone whose actions have somehow brought it down. Just in those two scenarios. Those are the only situations in which the left wing champions anything that could in the wildest imagination be called order.

The rest of the time, they look like what they are: Agents of chaos.

So yeah, Carol Anne Burger turned her lover into hamburger, and yeah, I’m reading something into it. Just as countless others read something into it when Dick Cheney shot his hunting partner in the face. It’s not tit-for-tat; it just makes sense. Especially when you consider other evidence suggesting the left-wing masks some package of human impulses that demand, perhaps urgently, a little more critical inspection before someone else gets hurt. That’s my cheap shot.

That story gives a whole new dimension to the concept of “lesbian bed death.”
- vanderleun | 11/01/2008 @ 11:01
The purpose of government is to provide and order and civilized ways of interaction within society. With that in mind, it is easy to see why the left-minded are so hard at work on taking over the government – they can then instill their desires for chaos to the fullest extent possible and do so under the mantle of the very tool meant to do the opposite of that.
- Shannon in AZ | 11/01/2008 @ 11:17
You’re too right about this issue. I am in agreement that it’s not about gay marriage…the real issue is the redefinition of words and ideas. Why do we have to redefine words to make them into something they are not? It’s a basic tenet of radical thought…controlling words will control thought and speech.
- nonannystate | 11/01/2008 @ 12:54
You’re absolutely right, it’s a question of definition, not rights.

If it were a question of rights, we wouldn’t be talking about this one word, “marriage”. We could just call a gay union something else and perhaps come up with a super-set word definition that included both kinds of couples, and ascribe the “rights” the government currently ascribes to married people to the superset instead.

THAT has been suggested. It’s even been done. But it’s not enough for the gay activists, because it’s really not about the rights. It’s about the word. They want to force a new definition of the word upon the whole of society in the name of acceptance. Yes, acceptance. Not tolerance. Those two words mean different things as well. ( My Things I Know #7

Marriage isn’t a word the government came up with. It’s a word it took from our culture’s definition of a basic family unit. The reason the government is interested in this basic family unit shouldn’t extend beyond enforcement of basic obligations these family members have to each other.

Now we have a set of people who would like to be looked upon differently by society – a society that has traditionally not accepted such units as a valid basic family unit. Society has long tolerated this kind of living arrangement, but still a majority doesn’t want to accept it.

So what these activists seek to do is coerce the society into using the same word for something it has throughout history been seen as something quite different by having the government redefine the word to include what they want it to include. As if government should get to decide these things.

You wait, as soon as that becomes the official government definition, anyone who calls a gay union something other than a marriage — especially if they refuse to call it a marriage, will be accused of something akin to a hate-crime and at least be required to go to sensitivity training if not something worse.

If it’s about rights, fine, give them the “rights”, such as they are. I’m fine with that. But don’t hijack the word from the rest of us.
- philmon | 11/01/2008 @ 22:42
How is a ban on same sex marriage not a violation of civil rights? Does not such a ban single out one segment of the population? Or is it a question of normality? Are gays in some way abnormal, maybe even diseased as necrophiliacs are diseased? Can you say homosexuals are within the range of normality, and bar their exercise of the right to marriage honestly?

And how does a gay marriage change the meaning of marriage? Is not marriage a partnership between two people? An agreement between a couple to share fortune and failure? The decision to work together to make life better for both? For we need company, we require companionship. And there comes a time in many lives when we meet somebody we become closer to than even family. That is when the two of your consider marriage.

Marriage has a power civil union cannot equal. Even when civil unions impart the same social benefits as marriage, they can never impart the same reputation, the same hold as marriage does. A civil union is what you enter into when you’re giving a relationship a try-out. Marriage is when you’re being serious.

Marriage tells the world you are both in this for good. Why then limit this expression of commitment to only different sex pairings. So long as it be a binding agreement between two mature adults, what matter their genders? So long as the couple truly desires to live their lives together, to support, promote, share with each other, to be a permanent joining until the end comes in death no matter what actually happens, is it our right to deny certain people that choice because we don’t like who they choose to love?

Is it a defense of marriage that motivates us, or a dis-ease because some of our populace prefer to engage in sexual discourse with those of the same gender? Be it harm to marriage or the fact some of the married couples can now both be men?

Let’s not damage marriage under the guise of defending it. Let us especially not weaken society by denying a segment a right others enjoy. Marriage will not weaken and die simply because two men or two women choose to partake in it. Marriage can only weaken when we decide to weaken it, to make it a casual affair with no real meaning, no real strength. You want to defend marriage, then speak out on the importance of commitment. Promote the need to stand by your partner, your lover, your wife or husband.

Over three years ago one Alan E. Brain of Australia began a remarkable journey. They don’t know how it happened, though it did begin when Alan started taking a statin for high cholesterol, but one fine day in 2003 Alan E. Brain began to spontaneously turn into a woman. Now Zoe E. Brain she lives in Australia with her wife, and since the two were married when Zoe was Alan, under Australian Federal law they remain married. Married not because the law says they can be married, albeit on a technicality, but because they love each other deeply and cannot envision life without each other. And since we recognize marriages from other nations, they would remain married were they to visit here. Or even come to live on a work visa, for Zoe is a a real life rocket scientists and may one day be invited to work in America on a project.

A legally married same-sex couple living in the United States. Can we justify a ban on same-sex American citizen couples in such a case? And should the Brains become naturalized American citizens how do we justify the forced break up of a marriage neither desired to end?

Let’s not mistake our fears for the desire to do right.
- mythusmage | 11/01/2008 @ 23:34
The word “ban” conjures up strong passions, so it is worthy of note that we have a fundamental disagreement on which side is banning something, and what exactly is being banned.

It is certainly no miniscule kooky minority that thinks of a marriage as something involving one man and one woman; and it is certainly no miniscule kooky minority that builds an entire value system, or systems, around this basic definitional concept. As Phil, myself, and others have pointed out, we have unfortunately traveled well beyond the point at which we are all free to form our own conceptual understanding of these things, “agree to disagree,” and go on our separate merry ways. Once arrested and convicted, people can have their penalties enhanced through the dubious (and curiously, within the legal system, unchallenged) notion of “hate crimes.” You can be sued for “discriminating” if you are an employer, or any other organized entity. Such as, to name one example, a church. If Prop 8 fails, can a church be sued or otherwise risk losing its tax-exempt status for failure to recognize same sex marriages? For failure to perform them? Who’s to say no? On what grounds?

So what position is really threatening our freedoms as individuals? I’ve been married. I’ve also thought things out as an individual. I found much greater personal freedom in thinking of things as an individual. So my personal biases are, freedom really starts with that. I haven’t found freedom to be associated too much with being married. That may be why the argument is lost on me.

Now, I see this as primarily — solely — as a regional issue. I’m opposed to regulating marriage in any way at the federal level. In fact, I really don’t see how & why government at any level should be involved with it at all. But anything cultural should be decided at the state level or lower.

And California desperately needs a proposition like this. We are in a terrible crisis in all walks of life, here, for the reasons I stated. We debate too many things. Everything that can be defined, lacks definition here. It affects other things. We have this highly dysfunctional city called San Francisco. The years go in, the years go out, the mayor fixes nothing. How does he stay in office? By churning up phony issues like this one. He’s just one more example of an underperforming, lackluster politician with an indefinite political lifeline because of one single issue that wouldn’t exist at all if we did a better job with our definitions.

That’s what happens when things are undefined. The mediocre and the excellent change places in stature — then things that need maintaining, go without maintenance, and things yet unbuilt, stay that way.
- mkfreeberg | 11/02/2008 @ 10:43
How is a ban on same sex marriage not a violation of civil rights?

Maybe you’re not reading what’s being written here.

Let me ask a question. What legal rights are being denied here that are not addressed by coming up with a different name for that kind of union and guaranteeing whatever rights we’re talking about to those who have chosen that kind of legal union?

Marriage was marriage long before the government stepped in and adopted society’s definition for legal purposes — that is, being able to legally enforce the contract that marriage defined in our society.

Now we have a different group of people from, frankly, a different society that, to hear them tell it, only want the same legal protection — the same government recognition of contract, that people who are married have.

What we’re saying is if that’s all they really want, then why the fuss over the word? And there is a fuss over the word. That’s what this is all about.

After all, what legal rights do married people have that gay couples do not? Can they live together? Yes. Can they adopt children? Yes. Can they eat out at restaurants? Go on vacation together? Have sexual relations? Yes, yes, and yes. What can’t they do that the government, the law, is keeping them from doing? I’m not saying there aren’t any, I’m just asking you to think about it in those terms.

When my wife and I got married, we didn’t get married to have the state recognize our union. The “contract” was between me and her.

There are no laws prohibiting ceremonies in which gay people enter into such a verbal contract with each other. I mean, really, what can’t they do? They can call it whatever they want. They can call it a wedding. They can say they are married. And I can say they are not. And it shouldn’t matter to them what I say. They can say whatever, and I can say whatever each according to our respective beliefs.

What they can’t do is to get people to accept that it is the same thing. What we are saying is that it is not the same thing. It might be a very, very similar thing. But it is not the same thing. What the activists want is the word, and they want the word because they want acceptance. They want the word legally defined because since they can’t get the rest of us to voluntarily say it’s the same thing to be coerced to legally acknowledge that it is the same thing and to have a tool to enforce that.

What they want is to re-define the word to legally mean something other than what it has always meant.

From what I can tell, it comes down mostly to the tax code and to employee benefits (which employers aren’t legally required to give anyway — that’s is the employer’s choice). So fine, what I am saying, and I’ve said it before — come up with a new term which can include both. Call it a “Legal Union”. Apply whatever rights apply to “Legal Unions” instead of to Marriages. And same-sex couples can call it whatever they want and people who don’t believe they are marriages can continue to call them whatever they want.

No civil rights are denied.
- philmon | 11/02/2008 @ 15:04

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