Politics, Presidents and Marriage Equality -- a View from the Jurassic

The president attended an LGBT fundraiser in New York this Thursday, and of course that visit came in the middle of the now-successful push to legalize marriage equality in that state. Many LGBT people (and indeed anyone who supports the same rights for all citizens) have for some time now expressed frustration with the president's irksome, if politically astute, repetitions that he is "evolving" on the issue of marriage equality.* (Read full post after the jump....)

St. Paul, Defender of the Faith.

By Captain Fogg

(with an afterthought from Octopus)

One of the things I have liked about Congressman Ron Paul is that he's often been on the side of deregulating private life and consensual behavior, but either he doesn't mean what he says or he is willing to say what he doesn't mean in order to curry favor with the Great Regulators of the Religious right.

Speaking in Iowa recently, Mr. Paul said:

"The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in 1996 to stop Big Government in Washington from re-defining marriage and forcing its definition on the States. Like the majority of Iowans, I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman and must be protected."

That resonates in my ears as a statement of his religious persuasion and of course he was speaking to a group of religions conservatives representing denominations opposed to letting people decide for themselves about such matters. Other religions might have other ideas and indeed some do. In other words these are people quite open about forcing their definition on Americans.

I find it curious that proponents of defining marriage according to religious definitions always use the word "is" where one expects "should be," "ought to be" or "must be" and there must be a reason for it. Marriage, after all is a human institution and marriage customs vary amongst groups of humans. Perhaps "is" is a way to pretend that it's written into the fabric of the cosmos like general relativity or the uncertainty principle. It isn't.

Of course Paul couched his opposition to doing away with the Defense of Marriage act in terms of states rights and whether or not he was following in the tradition of all the other "states rights" defenses of so many other things we now see as unjust, it's a defense of something with as limited a future as our embarrassing misogyny laws of recent memory. A minority of the country oppose preventing people from marrying whom they will and I can't help but find my feeling that the history of humankind's progress toward democracy is once again being thwarted by the notion of a divine will that opposes our allegedly innate liberty.

When someone who has been so stalwart in defending the Constitution and restraining government power, promotes such peremptory views on the most personal of choices, it seems a jarring discontinuity that makes on question the man and everything else he's described as being unconstitutional. It's hard to understand why he's willing to use government power to defend a certain Faith when that is something the government is expressly forbidden to do.

Yes, I know. I've been talking a lot about religion of late, but to me, there is no other force in American affairs more intractable than the movement to force compliance to religious standards on people who have or wish to have no affiliation with those standards and prefer the right to make personal choices according to their own consciences. That ability, that kind of freedom is the beating heart of liberal democracy. If we lose that, we lose it all.

It's sad to see Congressman Paul speaking this way. I once had high hopes for him, if not as Presidential material, certainly as a voice of reason and restraint at a time when the Republican party seems increasingly controlled by anti-democratic, anti-libertarian influences. Now he seems far less of a libertarian, far more of an authoritarian and indistinguishable from any other politician groveling before the powerful.

An afterthought from Octopus, who picks up where Captain Fogg leaves off: “indistinguishable from any other politician groveling before the powerful”

When we construct a hypothesis to explain any observed phenomena, the idea is to find the simplest possible construct that best fits the data. If you accept the premise that “pandering and political opportunism” is the motive that drives the Elder Paul, there is a good chance this hypothesis will withstand scrutiny. If you attribute religious belief in the broadest possible context as his motive, there are too many hypothesis-challenging exceptions to pass muster.

Not all religious denominations, for example, share the views of the Elder Paul. Look no further than the Reverend Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of The Interfaith Alliance, who has long criticized the abuse and misuse of religion in our public life.

Politicians are known to contradict themselves when stoking the fears of key constituencies and stakeholders, and Ron Paul is no exception. Inasmuch as the base of his party is right leaning and reactionary, why should his tilt towards authoritarian social control surprise us? The bogeyman behind the words is the bogeyman of wedge politics as candidates jockey for position and influence. I hope this clarifies Captain Fogg’s point.

Permit me this brief digression. Last night, I sent these links to Captain Fogg as ideas for a future discussion: The Ashtray: The Ultimatum (Part One) and The Ashtray: Shifting Paradigms (Part Two). Readers may want to read these links first to brush up on the issues before continuing. Here is the first analogy.

You have two fish in a fishbowl. One of them is golden in color; the other one is not. The fish that is golden in color, you name “Goldie.” The other fish you name “Greenie.” Perhaps you use the description “the gold fish” and point to the one that is golden in color. You are referring to the gold fish, Goldie. Over the course of time, however, Goldie starts to change color. Six months later, Goldie is no longer golden. Goldie is now green. Greenie, the other fish — the fish in the bowl that was green in color — has turned golden (…) The description theory would have it that Goldie means the fish that is golden in color, but if that’s true then when we refer to Goldie, we are referring to the other fish. But clearly, Goldie hasn’t become a different fish; Goldie has merely changed … appearance.

The flaw in the "Goldie" analogy is the misuse of semantics, of identifier and modifier merged into one and used interchangeably in the sense that: (1) a proper name identifies “Goldie” as the subject of this thought experiment, and (2) a modifier describe the properties of said subject such as color. In common parlance, a proper name is not subject to changes in appearance; whereas our choice of modifiers tends to be mutable and subject to revision as we observe change. Nice idea. I get the historical persistence point: Fishy example. In fewer words, if a very tall couple - well over six and half feet tall - plan to have children, they should never name their firstborn “Tiny Earl.” We need look no further than historical and comparative linguistics and the Brothers Grimm in search for better examples.

Similarly, Kuhn’s “paradigm shift” may have a certain revolutionary allure and Che Guevara appeal, but it fails to account for context and continuity, and the best example I can give is the difference between Newton versus Einstein. Although Kuhn may cite Einstein as an example of paradigm shift, the proper context is to view Newton as a subset of Einstein, not merely within the timeline of history but in how we observe the same phenomena at different velocities. Thus, there is nothing incommensurable in the shift from Newton to Einstein.

It seems the writer of the NYT article (Morris) understood these issues intuitively but could not articulate them with sufficient explanatory adequacy. Rightfully, Kuhn threw an ashtray at Morris who did not completely think through his homework.

All this brings me to a challenging subject. When we apply pure reason to various disciplines, we find that reason is time delimited, i.e. a snapshot of what we perceive at fixed points in time. Inasmuch as reason has been exalted as a reliable and trustworthy source of truth, such is not necessarily the case. The words that inform thought are plastic and malleable; the tools of reason are themselves flawed and forever changing; and the products of reason (i.e. the conclusions derived thereof) are subject to revision upon revision. If there is an evil genius at work, at least these preoccupations keep the Wunderkinder employed.

Perhaps another way of looking at things is not to pit religion against science, or reason against its presumed opposite, whatever the opposite of reason is, but to acknowledge all aspects of mind in more holistic terms – that consciousness is an adaptation leading to the more successful regulation of life. The conscious mind infuses human beings with an instinct to probe the unknown, and these faculties of mind take many forms: Sensory experience, emotions, inspiration, intuition, epistemology, phenomenology, logic and scientific observation … all contributing to a human penchant for speculative imagination. Why prejudice one aspect of mind against another when we should start this inquiry within the context of our long and tortuous journey that began ages ago in the Great Rift Valley.

Start your engines. Are we bursting with ideas?

Yes you can, no you can't

Private morality does not seem to me to be the state’s business unless it compromises the public welfare.

-Bishop Shelby Spong-
_________

Yes you can, no you can't, yes you can, no you can't. It must be infuriating for California's same sex couples looking for stability and security in their lives. Gay marriage opponents have again succeeded in blocking further unions pending yet another appeal for reasons known only to themselves -- although most seem happy to tell you why they're against it.

Do the objections make sense or are they simply a reflection of a selective morality with perhaps a bit of personal anxiety adding a note of passion? The appeal that came quickly after the judicial decision to overturn the ban tells us that

"California, 44 other states, and the vast majority of countries throughout the world continue to draw the line at marriage because it continues to serve a vital societal interest."

And what would that social interest be? Why,

"to channel potentially procreative sexual relationships into enduring, stable unions for the sake of responsibly producing and raising the next generation."

Astonishing, isn't it that the conservatives behind this can still make a living challenging the right of the State to serve social needs while advocating it so vociferously in this instance. Doesn't Social Security and Medicare and welfare and don't income taxes serve a societal interest? Is there any evidence anywhere of a negative effect on the public welfare of allowing gay marriage?

Sure, I could ask silly questions about why older couples past child producing age are allowed to marry or people who don't want to or are unable to have offspring are exempt from the Biblical mandate to go out there and get pregnant. I could ask why the State of California can find a right anywhere in its constitution or the Federal Constitution to promote Christianity and I could snicker at the fact that it really doesn't matter whether people are married -- they make babies anyway and I could point out as well that stable, married gay couples seem to do as well if not better at raising children, but we both know I wouldn't get a sensible answer because the position isn't about any of those things. It's about a personal repugnance concerning the private behaviour of other people with its origins in a religious tradition not recognized or supported by the government of the United States. Preventing a social contract between same sex couples serves no more legitimate a societal interest than outlawing interracial marriage, segregating public facilities, keeping Jews out of Palm Beach hotels or preventing women from voting. Yet that same rhetoric was used to defend those things and worse.

Pace the nauseous nattering of people like Sarah Palin and a large number of Republican hypocrites, there is no clause in the constitution saying "insert the Bible here." The objections are an excuse and nothing more and they are neither supported by facts or reason.

Another frequent argument is that the court which overturned the ban was " ignoring the will of the people" which of course is part of the job description of the legislative branch; that being another bulwark against the mob rule our founders were so rightly worried about. That is, or should be embarrassing to those who have made careers bloviating about "activist judges" since what they're calling for is a judge who rules on personal and political sentiment rather than a strict interpretation of the law. Is this hypocrisy or duplicity? Does it matter?

Marriage isn't about breeding, it's about property and responsibility and the right of one person to care for another without legal hindrance. The law isn't about bringing a Christian or Jewish or Muslim utopia to the world in preparation for it's destruction. I agree with bona fide Libertarians that the role of government in promoting some vision of public good needs to be limited and its ability to intrude into the most private and intimate parts of the human experience needs to be restricted to matters of the utmost need. There is no need or evidence of need here. There is no logical or factual consistency here and the allegedly conservative position isn't conservative. It's everything conservatives tell us they hate: an intrusion into life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by a self appointed group of moralizers. Morality is not the government's business. Sin is not the government's business: It's God's business. God can handle it.