The Age of Bull

Some of the lab-coat bozos who dream up fake "studies" to convince you to eat or not to eat and to spend a lot of your money on buying books related to fake health and nutrition scams would like you to believe that wheat is your enemy.  Unless you have celiac disease, it isn't, but  if you're like most Americans, you don't know science from Shinola, don't know a study from a Studebaker or glutin from glockenspiels and the same goes for history and biology, but that's not what this is about.

A popular fiction is that "studies show" that the advent of  agricultural civilization (is there any other kind?) made people smaller and so you should avoid agricultural products. Of course it's hokum designed to sell product and is popular with inflated airheads from Hollywood, but it's not a study, a scientific, randomized large double blind study, it's motivated speculation -- like all those e-mails I get telling me that some new scandal is going to get Obama impeached any day now.

Agriculture allowed cities to form.  Cities allowed greater communication and closer association between more and more people and that fostered diseases and epidemics previously unknown or previously restricted in range. Such things had a strong effect on health and disease can easily explain what the diet "doctors" would like to blame, for their own gain, on grain.   Even in modern times, AIDS, which may have been around for a very long time, was spread around the world by airplanes.  Communication has a dark side, just look at what the spread of Europeans and their diseases did to the Americas.  Still we live longer than ever, are more disease free, are larger than ever and remain active longer, Pizza and TV dinners notwithstanding.


Of course if you like to give names to the "ages" of Man, you'd have to consider the title The Information Age.  Could it be however that pernicious, malicious, malignant and dangerous ideas, memes, lies, stereotypes, maledictions and political doctrines are the deadly side effect of  the electronic media, just as cities, ships and Camel trains spread death along with culture and commerce?

Obama is going to declare martial law, going to take your guns, send you to death camps, murder your grandmother. Apollo 11 never went to the moon, that German plane, that Malaysian plane never crashed, that bomb never went off.  Obama is a Muslim, Clinton tried to have the UN invade the US.  Cell phones will kill you, wheat will damage your brain, cooking your food is bad, The Koch Brothers and Woody Harrelson know what's best for us and Subarus are made with love. Sure, it's the information age, but who can deny, looking at the vast majority of that information, that it's the bullshit age.  Mythology has gone metastatic. It's mass produced for entertainment and profit, for greed and power and even though much of it is benign, much of it is deadly.  It's not only deadly to your health, but to your cognitive, your critical faculties and whether or not it all ends with bangs or whimpers, the cenotaph, the tombstone of our species will be inscribed with these words  STUDIES SHOW.

His name was NOT Steve.

 "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross"

I wish I could say that was Sinclair Lewis, and perhaps he does too, but it seems he never did. Perhaps someone needs to say it however, because there is something coming; something already here dressed in red, white and blue, blowing hard about Christian values and lying, slandering, maligning, dripping with hate and evil and blood and grasping for power enough to make the devil blush.

You can't talk to some people about Allen West if you are objective about him.  To many ex-military people, it seems as though he is some sort of a hero or, perhaps it's more about some sad kind of solidarity than about sympathy.  I saw a lot of that during the Vietnam war:  the way people looked at me when I talked about the My Lai 4 massacre or when others suggested that indeed Lt. Cally was a war criminal who disgraced his country as much as anyone ever had. Perhaps you've read accounts of how he ordered a small boy who had just escaped the bullets, running screaming from the pit of murdered women and children to be shot. The order was carried out. It was outrageous that he was held accountable said my war supporting, true American coworkers -- just outrageous.

We don't burn no draft cards down on Main Street;
We like livin' right, and bein' free.

 I never did quite understand the attitude, but as I wanted to keep my job, I just kept quiet.  By the time  Allan West 'retired' from the US Army to avoid a Court Marshal for abusing an Iraqi prisoner, I no longer was a working man and loudly protested his attempt to become my Congressman.  For many here, the attitude was strangely the same.  He ran as a hero and of course we can't criticize anyone who was "fighting for our freedom" as such things are so grotesquely described.  In fact such people who thought differently then he or John Wayne or the people from Muskogee did, said West, should be deported.

But West's campaign failed and he promptly pulled up his tent stakes and went somewhere else to live and to prosper as the head of something called the National Center for Policy Analysis.  Of course as another failed far-right politician and criminal, he followed in the footsteps of Oliver North and became a Fox News contributor. 

West's current Bogeyman, as is that of his owners at Newscorp seems to be the alleged emergence of Sharia Law under the Muslim alien Obama.  Sadly people listen to him and because there never is a hint of rational cognitive function supporting the claims of the Far Right and the Fox Right you hear it discussed all the time.  Sharia law is taking over, even though it isn't -- not at all, not in Muskogee, not at Wal-Mart.

It's a strange proposition for people who strive with flapping tongues and logic all curled up like a pig's tail to push Christian Values as a substitute for the body of laws we've had since the beginning.  They want Christian law, even though there is no such thing, and they fear Muslim Religious courts that don't exist.  Hell, they think Wal-mart is part of the legal system and they get rich from this stupidity.  But Allen West has announced "Proof" that even without any courts or any mechanism to impose it, even such all-American importers of  foreign goods as Wal-Mart is trying to impose it on its customers.  Yes, that's right and as he observes with ungrammatical and folksy charm:

There was a young man doing the checkout and another Walmart employee came over and put up a sign, “No alcohol products in this lane.” So being the inquisitive fella I am, I used my additional set of eyes – glasses – to see the young checkout man’s name. Let me just say it was NOT “Steve.”

I pointed the sign out to Aubrey and her response was a simple question, how is it that this Muslim employee could refuse service to customers based on his religious beliefs, but Christians are being forced to participate in specific events contrary to their religious beliefs? Boy howdy, that is one astute young lady.

Imagine that, this employee at Walmart refused to just scan a bottle or container of an alcoholic beverage – and that is acceptable. A Christian business owner declines to participate or provide service to a specific event – a gay wedding – which contradicts their faith, and the State crushes them.

Seems the nonSteve checkout boy was a minor.  There was a law, an American, Christian Values law forbidding  a minor to serve or sell alcohol.  As usual the devil is in the details and as the devil speaks through Allen West and his Tea Party hooligans, liars, traitors, schemers, thieves, torturers and war criminals are lying about those details.  His screed was titled, Sharia law comes to Walmart? but he later changed it to More ominous signs of Christian persecution. (Did he mean to say persecution of Christians ?) What does it matter?  Lies have their own grammar, it seems and to the people who are looking to put a rational face on their bigotry, racism and hatred West's face will do fine.   See, we're not racists.

In a way, it's liberating to be old and not to have to give a shit about what the tinhorn patriots and liars for God have to say or what they threaten to do, and there's no reason to refrain from saying that the My Lai murderers and the unnamed perpetrators of similar massacres are no better than the Nazi Criminals we executed years ago, and that Allen West is their brother in dishonor.   They dishonor our country, they dishonor all things honest and true and decent, they dishonor our species .

All against all

I was going to begin this by asking whether you've noticed the sharp increase in shootings of policemen against the background of hysteria about shootings by policemen, but trying to answer that question myself, I had to admit that all we can know is derived from the sensationalist coverage designed to outrage, that plays out in the media.  The first news item appearing on my smart phone this morning was about the shooting of two policemen, there was another about the shooting of an FBI agent.

I was going to base this morning's post on the observation that unscrupulous entities may be trying to create a war or the appearance of a war that can only end in the degradation of the justice system and increase tolerance of mob violence and mob justice.  It's a clumsy attempt because when there is a questionable action by police and those policemen are arrested and charged with a crime, it would appear to show that the system has functioned properly, but such is the need to demonize that it makes little difference.  The witch hunt proceeds with the public perception that everyone involved with the police and prosecution and defense is corrupt and murderously racist.  Everyone is stretched and trimmed into the Procrustean bed the media provide for us.

And so I can't answer my own question.  When one incident or two or three incidents in a vast ocean of possibilities is all that's needed and no statistics are provided or referenced, we just can't know.  We're made to believe that real justice comes from the mob and so when the system works, the system is still somehow at fault and more rioting is needed, more public marching and chanting.  Perhaps it would be productive to inquire after the people who benefit most and it's tempting to see a small group of disruptionists, anger mongers and distortionists making a living and making names for themselves by making sure that nothing changes, making sure that improvements are seen as failures, that progress is seen as lack of progress and that everyone is at war with everyone else.

If we somehow managed to get along, if the policeman's lot became a happy one, if petty crime and serious crime stopped being a cultural norm and violence became a faded dream, who would suffer? That's not hard to answer. What's hard to answer is the question of why we get all our information and opinions from them.

Wal-Mart will take your guns

And Obama will whistle at the white girls if we don't act now.

Conspiracies certainly occur.  The assassination of Lincoln involved a conspiracy as did the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the Babington Plot amongst countless others.  The selling of something as a conspiracy however has been refined to a formula and indeed the absence of evidence seems to make it all simpler.  An observation out of context, a partially true statement or a totally untrue statement loudly asserted is all one really needs to get the theory rolling and momentum creates enthusiasm which creates more observations and assertions the preposterousness of which are enthusiastically overlooked.  The Internet can produce more than enough "experts" to verify or deny anything and hide facts behind a labyrinth of web links.  I remember a certain white coated "doctor" touting a diet pill that proved not only useless but ineffective and dangerous.  How many people bothered to use the Information Superhighway to discover that the man in the medical costume was a Doctor of Marketing from some college you never heard of?

Of course certain observations can assist the necessary triage.  Might the theory have merit or not? Should we bother to investigate or can we reject it out of hand -- or is it obviously true?  One helpful process is of course, to consider the source.  Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, Fox News, Ted Cruz?  No, that sound isn't a truck backing up, it's the bullshit alarm. So far not one of the dire predictions have come true, from the "death panels" to the "double Dip' recession to the Communist Agenda.  Is doesn't seem to matter. "Change you can step in" read the bumper sticker I saw yesterday.  Never mind the recovery, the market highs, the unemployment lows, Obams is a "disaster." He went over there and apologized to them and if you can't see that, you're part of the conspiracy.

Consider the "Jade Helm 15" conspiracy theory.  Do we need to read all the web posts, the YouTube clips to reject it?  Do we need to follow the "arguments," look at the pictures, examine the witnesses? Do seriously think Obama is going to use the military to invade the South?  Is he conspiring with Wal-Mart to grab our guns, swarming up out of underground tunnels pushing Wal-Mart shopping carts?  Ted Cruz seems to doubt it, but as the government is "untrustworthy," we have to give it some credence. Of course when Bush suspended Posse Comitatus and made it legal to use the Army to invade the US, we didn't hear a peep or a whimper, but that's different.  It's OBAMA who is untrustworthy and we know that because Ted Cruz tells us, because the Texas Governor tells us the invasion is imminent The wolf is coming, never mind those ten thousand mistaken cries and when this passes away and nothing comes of it and when the whole thing is denied, there will be no shame and you will believe the next one.

One might consider that since this latest is so similar to the propaganda that reached a crescendo during the Clinton years and has yet to diminish, it has no more merit than the Vince Foster Murder or Clinton's plan to turn the armed forces over  to the UN and furnish them with nuclear weapons stored in tunnels and bunkers under Philadelphia.  I can't list them all but suffice it to say it was all hokum.  Too bad we don't remember and like an old man with advanced dementia, every morning in America is a new day.  You can be wrong every day for 25 years but we will believe you again and again.  Every Democrat is all about inviting the foreigners to take over, to bankrupt us by supporting the "takers" and grabbing our god given guns.  Have we been wading through the bullshit so long we can't smell it any more or is it just so much fun to suspend disbelief?

The Maine Thing is Being Fertile

In Maine, we have found something almost as rare as a 3-legged Sasquatch. It's a Republican who wants to expand the Affordable Care Act.

Maine Senate Majority Leader Rep. Garrett Mason authored a bill that would force insurance companies to pay for fertility treatments. Which sounds, for a Republican, almost sympathetic: you have a couple trying desperately to have a child, and finally reach the point where their only solution is medical treatment that would cost thousands of dollars that they just can't afford. And Maine wants to make their lives just a little bit better.

Except for one thing: it includes a morals clause. The original language of LD 943, An Act to Provide Access to Infertility Treatment, has the following provisions:

A. The covered individual must be married;
B. The covered individual's infertility may not be the result of a sexually transmitted disease

And once again, the "small government Republicans" want to ensure that they can get the government to intervene in women's personal lives. Because everybody deserves the chance to have children, unless they're a slut. Because god knows that if they had an STD, they must have proven that they're unfit parents, right?

Now, Mason has said that he's open to removing the provisions. "I'm totally willing to do something that fits Maine better, and that is why we have the committee process."

Which is probably best. It's good that he's willing to remove these ignorant nanny-state provisions. I mean, it totally shows what a completely unthinking, small-minded, judgmental, moralistic fucknozzle Garrett Mason was to include them in the first place, but still. It's nice that he's willing to put them aside.

Because in its original form, this bill would lose the first time it went before the Supreme Court, which should have been obvious to anyone with the brain power of an Eastern White Pine (the State Tree of Maine).

It's good to know that rape victims who received an STD from their attacker might have had a good chance of being declared "unfit parents" in Maine, thanks to this simpering, slack-jawed, puffy-faced used car salesman.

I'm a little curious whether, if a couple has a divorce midway through treatment for infertility, would they be on the hook for the entire bill? Or just for the portion of the infertility treatment that came after the divorce was finalized? And would there be a "statute of limitations" for divorce? How long would the new parents need to stay married before the state wouldn't arrest them?

This bill has, at least, one area where it isn't discriminatory. Maine has recognized same-sex marriage since 2012. So at least it would be easier for lesbian couples to get pregnant.

Your day will come

Being of a certain age, I take offense at being called a "senior."  Since I'm a half century away from being enrolled in a school, I find it to be inappropriate, but of course the real offense is the carefully crafted image of anyone over 65 as a doddering, inept, technophobic imbecile.  For years, Mammon, in full knowledge of my age (and everything else about me) has been sending me advertisements for burial insurance, walk in bathtubs, old age homes and most annoyingly, special idiot phones designed for people held to be less able to make phone calls than those "tech savvy" younger people who rarely can tell a NAND gate from a flip-flop, a J-FET from a Unijunction or a beam tetrode from a tea caddy.

In my experience most of those TS people couldn't tell you how any of their prized electronics work, but that's another matter. Yes, of course more people of my age are in poor health and some have passed away, but the 70 and 80 year old folks in my circle of friends hardly fit the image designed to make the young and inept feel as superior as apparently they need to do.  Not only do few of us have problems with our smart phones, many have had careers designing complex equipment. Friend Walter helped design and launch the first communications satellites, Friend Will helped design the Lunar lander and other fellow codgers of my acquaintance are building a private wireless network using old WiFi routers so that we can phone each other outside the apparatus of the phone companies. All of us of course enjoy being talked down to by 15 year olds who assume we're unable to comprehend the miracle of text messaging.  PSK, RTTY, PACTOR?  Huh? Wazzat?

Sometimes I think I'm of the last generation that knows how things work, but wait, there's more.  Yes, I design and build electronic equipment for fun. Yes, I still ride a heavyweight motorcycle, I still navigate a yacht crammed with electronic equipment and I know people in their 90's who do as well: who build and race cars  and fly planes. Of course some don't, but who the newborns choose as a comical stereotype has more to do with ego boosting than reality -- and age being the last socially acceptable characteristic to mock.

So if you will forgive my digression, I have to turn my ire toward those that corporation named so aptly for a fruit, for making "special" iPads for "seniors."    Your day will come. Some kid now stinking up his diapers will in a few years time, joke about you wearing diapers, call you a Senior and ask in a loud voice if you know how to use something you invented.

To Every Thing there is a Season

Well maybe not to everything, but to some things there is a season.  The Flu comes around in the Autumn, at least in South Florida when the tourists arrive with their runny noses. Hurricanes come around in the Summer.  For other things, like bigotry and propaganda however; like ignorance and intellectual laziness it's constant.  Other things come and go but the bullshit never stops.

Got an e-mail today with a massive address list.  It began HOORAY and told the recipients that we had narrowly escaped a fatal attack on the sacred second amendment when the Senate voted down a UN treaty that would demand confiscation of guns.  Of course the Evil Black Man was behind it but we should remember all those Democratic Senators who voted against our divine right to run guns to terrorists and vote them out of office.

Strange to say, that vote was in May of 2013 and unfortunately many of those Senators now have to work for a living.  Did this fabricated charge  help the GOP hijacking of the Senate?  And of course the treaty in question would have no effect on domestic gun laws or rights whatever. It was aimed at restricting international arms trade -- and remember the US is a major player -- to prevent sales to terrorists, insurgents and to countries violating human rights treaties. HOORAY!  Hooray for the liars and Hooray for the damned fools who support them at their own expense because there is nothing too stupid, too dishonest, too ridiculous for the moon motivated morons of America to believe. No conspiracy too unlikely, no slander too foul to attribute to the gun-grabbing, big spending and N**** loving Democrats

You have to wonder who supports arming ISIS or Boko Haram or any such groups, but of course the answer is right in front of us:  the NRA and the GOP and all the ignorant, hate-filled and demented Americans who spread this crap like special sauce on a shitburger in the hope of poisoning Democracy and ousting the Dreaded Black Man in the White House.

Remember when Clinton secretly turned over the command of our armed forces to the UN?  Of course not, because, like all the other lies, slander and libel it wasn't true and so far all the predictions, accusations and "revelations" about Obama have not and likely will not materialize, but when this country finally fails, and the Bible-quoting, weapon-waving big buck barbarians pick over the corpse of American liberty and prosperity who will remember that they supported it?

The sins of some Fathers

Earth, cover not my blood. Let my cry have no resting place.

Job 16:18

The conceit we show in the invention of our gods is well matched by the assertion that they can do only as much as and no less than we say they can and require our assistance in the small matters of human thought, government and behaviour.  Thus the oldest profession is that which created the need for and the definition of prostitution: the priest and not the whore.  Who will rid us of these troublesome priests?

The lying priest of Vero, as though to spite the name itself,  by his dishonest maledictions and bloody libels against doubters, unbelievers and free thinkers, would have us distracted from  the history of atrocity and repression by attributing the Church's own heinous abominations and bloody handed tyrannies to those who make the rights of man, the freedom and justice for us all their cause.  Our country was not founded nor our constitution drafted by priests or churchmen nor was the concept of our right to take the reins of  government into our own hands part of Christian tradition. Our country was founded in armed and bloody defiance of Church teachings and kings who ruled by divine right. 

The Renascence with its advances in the arts and sciences and architecture and living standards and concepts of justice was met with burnings of men women, books and paintings by the Church of Rome and indeed by others. The age and philosophers of enlightenment and democracy was not the work of  nor was it approved by the Roman Church.  1700 years of human sacrifice, torture and oppression by or with the permission of the Mother Church grants no license to refer  to "Christian" values by any of its members, nor the right to slander Judaism with any false association therewith.

 It's no longer as easy to make scapegoats of the Jews, with some of the world still old enough to remember the bloody history of genocide and murder, but the current assault on secularism, on disbelief and indeed the very right to such opinions is simply a substitute.  Of course the persecution of science and scientists, of poets and philosophers, the suppression of  knowledge, even to the point of  keeping the Bible off limits to those who would read it. . . All this and more is as old as Christianity and the stench of burning astronomers and engineers and heretics and freedom fighters still lingers in the halls of Rome. While the Vatican tries to make amends and to recognize the ability of their God to do as he pleases without consulting parish priests, these evil provincials in black dare to defy and presume to continue the tradition of nearly a hundred generations of treading upon the human soul and the spirit of  freedom that lives there. Are the attacks on Church power he cites better described as a fight for freedom?  Let my cry find no resting place.

Did Hitler slaughter millions because he was an Atheist?  That's a dishonest conjecture at best, but that The Church and it's pope cooperated, received vast sums of bloody money for looking the other way is well documented -- and what can we say of  a "holy" Father who refused not only to excommunicate him and his henchmen, but even to speak out against it  while Jews were being rounded up in full view of the Vatican.  A church that granted the Nazis the power to appoint teachers at Catholic schools.  A Church that wants to make a saint of the Pope who made deals with Hitler, that portrays itself as the real victim?  To talk about God and goodness with such mouths!

If the road to redemption begineth with confession, whither goest the road that begins with denial, is paved with lies, and the pilgrim's progress impelled by venomous rage against the innocent? 

When Religious Freedom Means Religious Intolerance

To read this hate screed, click on image to enlarge.

By (O)CT(O)PUS

The above advertisement appeared in two consecutive issues of our local newspaper.  Two years ago, a controversy disturbed the peace of this sleepy beachside community.  The mayor refused to let a member of the Ethical Humanist Society address the Town Council. Why? EHS members are scorned as atheists.  As George Orwell once said, some citizens are more equal than others, and City Hall is filled with animals.

In response to the above advertisement, I wrote an opinion letter that will be published in our local newspaper next week, as follows:

Our national debate on the role of religion in our public life has taken a troubling turn. Clerics and politicians alike have upped the ante on rhetoric by mischaracterizing opponents with inflammatory language intended to dehumanize, disenfranchise, and silence stakeholders holding opposing viewpoints.

Recently, a paid advertisement called “Religious Freedom?” appeared in the pages of this newspaper. Ostensibly a plug for a book, the advertisement blames the worst atrocities in modern times on the evils of atheism and secularism: “From 1917 to 2007 approximately 148 million people were killed by atheist run countries.” The author employs a cherry-picking fallacy that weaves selected historical events, although true, into a subjective and self-serving narrative that is decidedly untrue.

Ninety years of modern history is a false equivalence compared to a millennium of Crusades, Inquisitions, apostates burned at the stake, forced conversions under penalty of torture, ecclesiastical corruption, simony and the selling of indulgences, the Reformation culminating in the Thirty Years War – all are examples of unrelenting violence in the name of religion that ravaged Europe for a thousand years.

Appeals to prejudice are another fallacy that equates atheism and secularism with Nazism and evil. Was Adolph Hitler an atheist, as implied by the author? In fact, Hitler attended a monastery school, and his vaunted 'Wehrmacht' bore this inscription: “God is with us.”

The worst atrocities always begin with words – incendiary words that deprive people of their citizenship, their human rights, and ultimately their lives. Frankly, I am concerned when a religious leader employs the same techniques of propaganda -- used by demagogues and despots -- to advance a sectarian agenda.

Free speech is not free without the right of reply, nor is it a platform from which others must only listen. In demonizing people, the goal is to shut down democratic discourse and bully those who stand in opposition.

Constrained by a 300-word limit, there is a lot more I could have said.  I could have mentioned the anti-establishment clause in our Constitution, the one that keeps the peace between denominations and ensures religious freedom for all.

I could have mentioned this statement spoken by Pope Francis two years ago, the one that said:  All good people, including atheists, are redeemed in Christ and go to Heaven.  Apparently, the message has not yet reached these humble shores.

Needless to say, I expect flack.  Angry villagers brandishing pitchforks will write letters and demand my neck in a noose.  My next letter will be short and sweet:

Atheists are voters. Baptists are voters. Buddhists are voters. Catholics are voters. Episcopalians are voters. Ethical Humanists are voters. Evangelicals are voters. Jews are voters. Lutherans are voters. Mennonites are voters. Methodists are voters. Mormons are voters. Muslims are voters. Presbyterians are voters. Seventh Day Adventists are voters. Unitarians are voters. Have I left out anyone?

Who among you shall love your neighbors less by depriving them of their right to vote? Who among you shall revoke your neighbors’ citizenship and violate their human rights? Who among you shall vilify and persecute a neighbor on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin, partisan affiliation, or sexual orientation? Who among you shall cast the first stone?

Sophistical Refutations and the Supreme Court

It's too early to predict the Court's ruling on gay marriage, of course, but it's tempting to look at what's been said so far. Perhaps it's impossible to resist it. 

Chief Justice John Roberts:

"You're not seeking to join the institution, you're seeking to change what the institution is. The fundamental core of the institution is the opposite-sex relationship and you want to introduce into it a same-sex relationship."

"If you prevail here, there will be no more debate. I mean, closing of debate can close minds, and it will have a consequence on how this new institution is accepted. People feel very differently about something if they have a chance to vote on it than if it's imposed on them by the courts."

"If Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe, Sue can marry him and Tom can't. And the difference is based upon their different sex. Why isn't that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?"

(on the question of forcing states that ban same-sex marriage to recognize those unions formed in other states.)

 "It'd simply be a matter of time until they would in effect be recognizing that within the state, because we live in a very mobile society and people move all the time. In other words, one state would basically set the policy for the entire nation." 

Justice Samuel Alito:

"Suppose we rule in your favor in this case and then after that, a group consisting of two men and two women apply for a marriage license. Would there be any ground for denying them a license?"

Justice Elena Kagan:

"It's hard to see how permitting same-sex marriage discourages people from being bonded with their biological children."

Justice Anthony Kennedy:

"The word that keeps coming back to me in this case is millennia, plus time. ... This definition (of marriage) has been with us for millennia. And it's very difficult for the court to say 'Oh well, we know better.'"

"Same-sex couples say, of course, we understand the nobility and the sacredness of the marriage. We know we can't procreate, but we want the other attributes of it in order to show that we, too, have a dignity that can be fulfilled."

We have to allow that some questions that seem to show a negative attitude may simply be of the Devil's Advocate variety, challenging the proponents to present their case differently, but we have to suspect that the preponderance of the Argument from Tradition, generally classed as a fallacious one is being used as a cause to restrict what many if not most see as part of an assumed right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness as well as equal protection under the law.  "It's always been done that way for a long time and who are we to question it?"  

It doesn't take a wit or a historian to suggest the traditional practices of slavery and segregation or debtor's prisons (or worse if we want to look at the Western World of past millennia) persisted mostly because of such arguments.  The difficulty of ruling against tradition is hardly an excuse and in my opinion explains the need for an independent court: a court independent of politics as well as of tradition and religious bias.  "you're seeking change" is hardly an argument for the status quo.  

What about two men and two women?  Well what about it?  Is this the time-worn slippery slope fallacy?   

Roberts argues that recognition of marriages made in other states is likely if not inevitable, which is equally an argument for a positive ruling as a negative one.  Is it like claiming that because murder is on the decrease we don't need to forbid it. That's a fallacious argument and once was used to argue against the emancipation of slaves.  Nobility and sacredness? Are these matters for the courts or for preachers?  What about the nobility and sacredness of the "Rights of Man" that we once defined ourselves as defending?  God is not a citizen, has no Human Rights or rights as a legislator or judge allowed under our laws. God has as many opinions as people put in his mouth and cannot be relied on in questions of law and government. 

People don't like court rulings, says Roberts as though that were an excuse for not making them.  Indeed a constitutional amendment would be one possibility, but it's very difficult and has at least once required bloody war to bring about. But the case is being made on existing law and it would seem to some that the ball is in the other court - the Supreme Court. The question is "why not?" and perhaps the answer has to be better than "Tradition."  All the great advances in liberty have required unpopular, bold and difficult decisions; have involved all sorts of legalistic and casuistic debate, but if the manifest destiny of us all is to advance the cause of personal liberty against the bulwarks of ecclesiastical tradition -- and I think it is -- it's time to just do it.

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