The Maine Objection

So, Maine has gone ahead and repealed its same-sex marriage law. Perhaps this is the time to stop and think about this, ask ourselves why people are so vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage in the first place. I think there’s an easy answer – religion. But maybe my meaning isn’t what you think.

I propose that most people, and especially those opposed to same-sex marriage, think of marriage as an essentially religious event. And they see the support of same-sex marriage as getting the government involved in their religion. They forsee government telling them who they have to allow to marry in their church, and it makes them crazy. And you know what? They’re right.

Marriage is a religious event masquerading as a civil event, or rather as a series of civil events. It’s a financial and legal joining of two households, a simple substitute for a will, medical power of attorney, financial power of attorney, a joint custody agreement (in case of children) and so on. I’m sure there’s a list somewhere online that details all of the things marriage represents in law. My point is: it shouldn’t.

Perhaps marriage should be left up to the churches. They could decide who can get married, how they can get married and whether the marriage is under any circumstances allowed to end before the end of time. But (and here’s the important part) it wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) have any force or meaning in civil law. Just as baptism/christening doesn’t (and shouldn’t) determine what your legal name is. Domestic partnerships would take up the legal end of things.

What is the possible objection? It provides freedom of religion without making anyone a second class citizen. Government still gets to push around the same people it was pushing around before, only religion doesn’t tie it’s hands. Religions get to set clear rules… or byzantine structures that can only be interpreted by the chosen initiates – as they wish. And we, the people, can get on with our lives, and stop butting into everyone elses. Pretty much the only people who will see this as a loss are those who think Christian Morality (read as /their/ morality) ought to have force of law for all people. And quite frankly, I’ve had about enough of their bullshit.

There’d be a lot of legal issues to get straight before it could be put in place of course. For instance, what if you get married in church, but do not put a domestic partnership in place to support it? How will existing marriages be handled? What if you have an existing state marriage, but object to the domestic partnership on philosophical or religious grounds? Do you have to accept it? I’ll leave all of that to the lawyers.

And for the future, I forsee arguments about multiple domestic partnerships, group domestic partnerships, and customized domestic partnerships (with prohibitions on certain behaviors (sex ouside of partnership, smoking, drug use)? financial restrictions? expiration dates? Lotsa fun. The lawyers should love it, too! See, everybody wins.

And excerpt from President Obama’s speech to the NAACP. I think this is the most important part:

We've got to say to our children, yes, if you're African American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that somebody in a wealthy suburb does not have to face. But that's not a reason to get bad grades -- (applause) -- that's not a reason to cut class -- (applause) -- that's not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. (Applause.) No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands -- you cannot forget that. That's what we have to teach all of our children. No excuses. (Applause.) No excuses.
You get that education, all those hardships will just make you stronger, better able to compete. Yes we can. (Applause.)
To parents -- to parents, we can't tell our kids to do well in school and then fail to support them when they get home. (Applause.) You can't just contract out parenting. For our kids to excel, we have to accept our responsibility to help them learn. That means putting away the Xbox -- (applause) -- putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. (Applause.) It means attending those parent-teacher conferences and reading to our children and helping them with their homework. (Applause.)
And by the way, it means we need to be there for our neighbor's sons and daughters. (Applause.) We need to go back to the time, back to the day when we parents saw somebody, saw some kid fooling around and -- it wasn't your child, but they'll whup you anyway. (Laughter and applause.) Or at least they'll tell your parents -- the parents will. You know. (Laughter.) That's the meaning of community. That's how we can reclaim the strength and the determination and the hopefulness that helped us come so far; helped us make a way out of no way.
It also means pushing our children to set their sights a little bit higher. They might think they've got a pretty good jump shot or a pretty good flow, but our kids can't all aspire to be LeBron or Lil Wayne. (Applause.) I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers -- (applause) -- doctors and teachers -- (applause) -- not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court Justice. (Applause.) I want them aspiring to be the President of the United States of America. (Applause.)
I want their horizons to be limitless. I don't -- don't tell them they can't do something. Don't feed our children with a sense of -- that somehow because of their race that they cannot achieve.
Yes, government must be a force for opportunity. Yes, government must be a force for equality. But ultimately, if we are to be true to our past, then we also have to seize our own future, each and every day.

I fervently hope that this message will be absorbed by the families of Racine Unified School district. We’ve got a HS grad rate hovering around 70% in RUSD, meaning that more than 1 kid in 4 isn’t graduating from high school. If the community can't fix this, we'll soon have no one left except the 30% that is OK with not even having a diploma in an age when degrees are nearly mandatory.

More New Quarters!

So with the end of 2008, the US Mint's 50 State Quarters program is complete. TheGirl is still missing a couple of quarters, but we should find them soon. But did you know what's on tap for 2009 and beyond?

First, it's the DC and US territories program. The DC coin is already out (Viola Zupa showed me one). It doesn't have the slogan asked for by the Mayor of DC ("Taxation without Representation" Go figure. Heh.), but I guess the slogan they used ("Justice for All") could be considered a compromise. Other quarters will be issued for Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Brings to mind questions of Statehood, but that's another post.

After 2009, they'll be launching their new Quarter Program: "America's National Parks". There'll be 56 differet quarters issued (that's one for each state and territory, plus DC) , 5 per year, so this'll take us into 2021 or 2022. The selection process is apparently ongoing. According to the
website:

"National sites for consideration include any site under the supervision,
management, or conservancy of the National Park Service, the United States
Forest Service, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, or any similar
department or agency of the Federal government. "

So... I'm guessing that means the Apostle Island National Lakeshore for Wisconsin. Not that exciting, but at least we've got something distinctive! Not every state has Federal Site that is visually interesting enough to put on a coin. I mean, you can only have so many picture of forests and rivers before they all start to blur together. And poor Illinois only has the Lincoln Home National historic site. Another Lincoln coin... yawn. Worse yet, Connecticut has a farm, and Deleware doesn't seem to have anything at all! This should be an "interesting" decade for US Quarters.

Feeling Wasted

Why, oh why, are we still doing daylight savings time? I mean, it runs from March to November now. That’s nine months out of the year. Why not just make it year round, and save us the trouble of adjusting to this twice each year? The whole thing is basically a trick, after all, designed to get us to spend more money. Apparently people spend more money if it is light out when they’re shopping. But if it’s good for 9 months of the year, why not go whole hog? Besides, I’ll bet a lot of people don’t even know if we just came OFF of DST,or just sent ON DST.

By shifting to 100% DST, we could avoid the annual loss of sleep. More importantly, it would allow the daylight to ebb and flow naturally. These sudden shifts are not good for our natural body rythms, and the nation (heck, the World) suffers for it. Check out this study regarding the increase in traffic accidents in the days following the time shift. Seventeen Percent! Think of the damaged vehicles! Think of the injured drivers! Think of the injured passengers, some of them likely children!


- Say, that gives me an idea. Maybe I can get MADD or AAA to start campaigning for this. They always claim to be about safety (though I’d say MADD is actually about a return to prohibition), they’d be perfect for the job! I envision a world where daylight ebbs and flows naturally, a world where I'm not exhausted each spring and depressive each autumn due to sudden shifts in my schedule. Is there really any reason we can't just go there?

An Apple You Grapple!

February has been a drought on this blog - couple of tiny posts, then silence. A few of my readers have pointed this out, wondered when I’d start posting agin. I’ve been wondering that myself. Lately, I don’t seem to have anything to say. Looking back to what started going through my head around the time when posting tailed off, I see one topic popping up again and again. The Bail-out.

It seems like the Bail-out should be a mother-lode of material. And yet, I seem mined out. Well, that’s not really the case. I think the problem is, I’ve finally encountered an issue about which I can not make up my mind. Should our government spend an extra trillion dollars or two trillion dollars in an attempt to jump start the economy? I don’t know.

In general, I oppose government intervetion in the economy. And the amount of money involved here is staggering. If we end up spending around $2 trillion that’ll be roughly an extra $7,000 per US citizen. And that’s on top of the $11 trillion ($37,000 per US citizen) we alread owe. So my household’s share of the national debt is around $175,000. There’s only one way the US is ever going to pay this thing off: rampant inflation. So we’ve got that to look forward to sooner or later.

On the other hand, if we don’t do this, a lot of the top guys are predicting that the country slides deeper into a depression which may take a decade or more to climb out of. On the other, other hand, that may happen anyway… and it’s got to be better to have a depression where we’re $11 trillion in debt than one where we’re $13 trillion in debt. Not the either sounds very good.

So, if anyone has some insight into this situation that will blow everything else away and crystallize the situation for me, I’d appreciate hearing it. Until then, I’m vapor locked. It looks like I’m just going to have to accept this and move on. In any case, my lack of a firm opinion on the subject won’t keep things from happening.

My situation reminds me of a certain Underdog cartoon. As you may recall, Underdog was fond of rhyming as he aprehended the bad guys. In this particular episode, the bad guys realized that this was less a habit than it was a compulsion. So they stole a bunch of oranges. With no clear rhyme for orange, Underdog was stymied. Sure, he could have called it fruit, or used the latin name or whatever, but he froze up. Without a rhyme, he vapor locked. The bad guys then started stealing things colored orange… orange cars, orange fur coats, whatever. He didn’t even really need to rhyme with orange for these, but he was fixated on it by this point, unable to function. Finally, the badguy henchman made an error. Whilst passing a fruit stand, he grabbed an apple to munch on. Underdog, immediately himself again, leapt up full of vigor and pointing madly at the henchman, uttered “A ha! An apple you grapple!” and took the two off to jail. It didn’t make sense as a story, but it makes great sense to me.

Was this intentional?

I heard Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the radio today. I wasn't sure I'd heard what I thought I had, so I dug up the quote off the net. Here's what she said:

"[W]e are moving the ship of state in a New Direction, in favor of the many, not the few."

Which is strangely reminiscent of a famous quote from Spock:

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few … or the one.”

So, is she quoting Spock, or is there some alternate source that they're both referencing? And if she's quoting Spock, how long will it be before she's opening her statements with the current stardate?

I am a Constitution Voter

Apparently, I'm a bit late to this, but I thought I'd share it anyway. The ACLU is hosting a petition drive that I quite like. By signing the petition, you agree to this pledge:

• I believe that no one -- including the President -- is above the law.
• I oppose warrantless spying.
• I believe that government officials, no matter how high-ranking, should be held accountable for breaking the law and violating the Constitution.
• I believe that the Constitution protects every person's rights equally -- no matter what they believe, how they live, where or if they worship, and whom they love.
• I reject the notion that we have to tolerate violations of our most fundamental rights in the name of fighting terrorism.
• I am deeply committed to the Constitution and expect our country's leaders to share and act on that commitment -- every day, without fail.

Now, these are very topical, and I like them all, but they are a bit... pointed, shall we say. I'd be happier if they added some more timeless ones. For instance,

• I believe that, in accordance with the 10th Ammendment, the federal government's actions are restricted to those specifically listed in the Constitution, and that the interstate commerce clause does not give congress carte blanche to control everything goddamn thing it sees.

or

• I believe that when the members of one branch (say, the legislative) attempt to delegate one of their powers (say, the power to declare war) to another branch (say, the executive), that their attempt should be struck down and a suitable punishment should be applied.

But, the list of points is a fine thing, as far as it goes, and I'm proud to sign on. Objections to any of the points are welcome in comments!

PS: Russ Feingold held hearings in September on essentially this same topic. He's calling it Restoring the Rule of Law. He pitched it as a means of generating a blueprint for the next President to restore executive respect for the Constitution and the law. I doubt he's be asking for veto on spending laws not authorized by the Constitution, but you take what you can get. A quote from Russ:

"As we celebrate the 221st anniversary of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, I want the next president – whoever that may be – to pledge his commitment to restoring the rule of law. It is a sad fact that for the past seven and a half years the Bush Administration has treated the Constitution and the rule of law with a disrespect never before seen in the history of our country. The years that follow this president’s shameful legacy will be the true test of the strength of our democracy."

Wouldn't it be cool if the right and the left both started hammering on each others' unconstitutional actions and we ended up with a federal government that operated within the bounds of the Constitution? And also if Santa brought me a pony this year?

Supremely Interesting

The New York Times has just reported that US Supreme Court has ruled today that the "right to keep and bear arms" described in the Second Ammendment to the Constitution is to be construed to protect:

"an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia,
and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense
within the home" - District of Columbia v. Heller

This should be good for a decade or so of lawsuits!

I'm trying to stay open on the issue of the Second Ammendment. It's one of the few issues where you can actually find meaningful discussion of the issue (as opposed to emotional wailing and gnashing of teeth) without too much effort. (Of course, you can find emotional wailing, gnashing of teeth and macho posturing with even less effort).

The source of the Second Ammendment argument, it seems to me, is that the ammendment was generated by politics. It was carefully reworded numerous times in its development so as to say nothing that would offend any of the groups whose votes were needed to get it to pass (hunters opposed to British poaching laws, states rights proponents worried about the their state's ability to keep the federal government in line, revolutionaries wondering if they might need to go through all this again, and on and on). This means that it's a bit vague, and that certain definitions included in earlier versions have been purposely ommitted. It's basically designed as an argument in written form!

Since there were as many intents for the ammendment as there were people working on it, an appeal to Intent is doomed to fail. We can only worry about what it says:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.

If you're politically minded, dig into this one a bit, you'll no doubt find it fascinating. I've particularly enjoyed these takes on the issue:

David Brin sci fi author, futurist, and philosopher on a possible approach

Dave Kopel of the National Review on the grammar of the ammendment

Wikipedia, of course, has a lot of good background (though I haven't sifted through all of it yet)

If you have any good ones I should read, mention them in the comments!