Question of the Day

If an unmarried female Cabinet member had a baby with an unnamed father and returned to work several days later, what would the biggest issue be?

If you live in France, apparently the fact that returning to work so quickly makes other women look like wimps.

I think I may have to retire from reading the news

It has finally happened. It has gotten to the point where I read or watch the news and I find it indistinguishable from reading satire. I submit to you, two recent items.

1.



Okay, it's Sean Hannity. It's Fox News. But this, more than most any serious reports I've seen from them before, is like some sort of absurd self-parody, that Sean Hannity is perhaps unaware of. I actually am having trouble telling whether or not this is supposed to be a serious report. I mean, at least when Fox News usually reports on absurd bullshit, it has some sort of basis in reality. I think they are running out of terrorism stories to scare us with, because I think Sean Hannity seriously just tried to warn his viewers about the imminent threat of vampires. They are all around us.

I wonder how much further removed from reality Fox and their viewership will get in the coming years. It would be frightening if it weren't so ball-raisingly hilarious. I don't know what that means.

2. Another recent item, this one taking place outside of the fantasy bubble of Fox News and inside the realm of what I am supposed to believe is the real world.

For those not inclined to read the linked story, Australia may have just set the most absurd precedent I could possibly ever think of. They have granted cartoon characters with human rights.

I...I don't even know where to begin here. Did this really just happen? Am I dreaming?

Yeah cartoon porn is a little weird on its own, especially so when the cartoon characters depicted are children. But illegal?

Who has been victimized? Bart, Lisa and Maggie are not traumatized because they do not exist. There has been no harm brought to any human children and the fact that someone was punished for this is completely insane. While they're at it, why doesn't the court declare that Homer and Marge are unfit to care for children and take the kids into protective custody. After all, this incest was going on right under their noses.

It just raises the question again: How far removed from reality are these people? I mean, I've become accustomed to assuming that Fox News and parts of the American South are trapped inside of a fantasy bubble and that I shouldn't take anything they say or do seriously (except when it escapes the bubble and affects the nation at large, i.e. in a national election). But the entire nation of Australia now? I just don't know what to do.

And as if it wasn't bad enough that cartoon characters are now treated as people, they're really taking it to its limit. Since, of course, cartoon characters often don't have established ages because they are not real people, apparently if one owns a nude drawing of a girl that looks like she might be below legal age, that's not okay either.

I can imagine the court case now.

Judge: You are charged with the possession of some underaged cartoon titties. How do you plead?

Dude: Not guilty, your Honor. That girl is 18.

Judge: How do you know this?

Dude: Well I created her. She's 18. She just looks kind of young is all.

Judge: Can she produce a birth certificate or other identification to prove that she is of legal age?

Dude: I can draw them for you if you'd like.

Judge: Bitch looks like she's 15. Guilty. For having the audacity to draw something, give us a few thousand dollars, k?

Let's just keep in mind here that comic and animation fans in general, not just guys that are into seeing Bart Simpson's dick, are potentially affected by this. Hell, I'm pretty sure Bart has been naked several times on the actual show. Let's hope Matt Groening and friends have no intention of going to Australia any time soon. But beyond that, what of us who are into more mature comics from artists like Alan Moore? The guy made Lost Girls. Is Alan Moore, perhaps one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, a kiddie porn salesman? I'm pretty sure Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan has a side story at one point about a child prostitute. While I'm not sure if the kid is actually shown naked in the story, one could still say he is being exploited. You know, the fictional child that doesn't exist by any stretch of the imagination. It's been a while since I've watched it, but I think some of the girls in Neon Genesis Evangelion who are supposed to be about 14, are nude at times and in somewhat ambiguous sexual situations a couple of times as well. And I don't think this is terribly uncommon in just regular anime, as opposed to explicitly pornographic anime, which is just rape central. The list goes on.

Perhaps this is making a big deal of nothing. I don't live in Australia, but there have been similar cases brought to trial in America (a citation is eluding me at the moment. Sorry). It may not be something that affects everyone, but it is such absolute nonsense that I can't believe anyone would actually be punished in a real life court of law for it.

I just don't understand.

Question of the Day: Portrait of the Artist?

More on this to come, but am I the only one who thinks that pictures of yourself are yours to do with as you see fit, under any and all circumstances whatsoever?

More Than A Legal Institution

For those of you who haven't heard the good news: Connecticut's Supreme Court overturned a legislative ban on same-sex marriage, becoming the third state in the union to rule the legal distinction unconstitutional.

As in California, Connecticut's legislature had previously enacted a law establishing civil unions that were, in theory, legally identical to heterosexual marriages. The majority decision reminded legislators that marriage is not simply a legal institution - it is a social and cultural institution, and "carries with it a status and significance that the newly created classification of civil unions does not embody."

This is a strong argument, a perceptive criticism of why "separate but equal" does not work. It's so perceptive, in fact, that it's a shame it misses the point.

Marriage is, indeed, a social and cultural institution as much as a legal one - more, in fact. It does indeed carry with it a status and significance not embodied by civil unions - and without which civil unions will never have true social legitimacy. The problem, however, is that nobody agrees on what that significance is.

The dissenting opinion of Justice Zarella is illustrative of this point. He agreed with the state's attorney, who argued (to quote the New York Times) that "the plaintiffs had no case because they were free to marry, just not someone of the same sex." He further asserted that the purpose of state marriage laws was to cement a procreative union, which gay marriages (unarguably) are not. "The ancient definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman has its basis as biology, not bigotry," he concludes.

Contrast this with the language used to describe marriage by New York Governor David Paterson, who praised the court's decision: "Marriage equality is not about challenging anyone’s personal values. It is about giving committed couples the basic rights that heterosexual couples have enjoyed for centuries, and official recognition of their commitment."

So what is marriage, then? Is it a procreative union, a social unit, or an 'official recognition of commitment'? Conservatives tend to take one or both of the first two interpretations; liberals tend to take the latter. Who's right?

Is it even possible to be right about something like this?

If the question is, who can make the argument from history and precedents, the conservatives have it locked up. The concept of marriage as a formal recognition of commitment is pretty much brand new; love matches were considered dangerous and irresponsible for most of recorded history. Certainly you should love your partner, although whether that love would precede or follow after the wedding was open for debate; you would never get married because of love, however. To do so risked destabilizing the social order.

The most telling point here, in fact, comes from the historical societies most accepting of homosexual intercourse: Ancient Greece and Rome. Both cultures saw recreational sex with more or less anything as a-ok; neither Greek nor Latin, to my knowledge, has an actual word describing a specifically homosexual individual. They both have words translating to something like "dominant" and "passive," which describe whether you preferred to be the top or the bottom; who was in the other position, however, was considered largely irrelevant. Heterosexual and homosexual intercourse were considered two flavors of the same food, so to speak.

Marriage, however, was unquestionably a social institution, designed to signify a woman's departure from one family and her membership in another. This distinction was important, of course, because the patriarchal family was the basic legal unit; in Rome, for example, your paterfamilias was considered to have total control over your life and possessions. Roman law recognized two types of marriages, but they had nothing to do with sexuality: one meant a woman remained under her father's control, and the other meant a woman passed under her husband's control. In the former arrangement, her children would stand to inherit nothing from their father; the disposition of family property was the main concern in a Roman marriage.

The point, you ask? Well, the point is that when Justice Zarella talks about "the ancient definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman," he's got it right. That really is the ancient definition, sad to say. Not only that, but many modern families handle marriage almost exactly the same way the Romans did: in traditional Italian households, for example, a father must not intervene if his daughter is beaten by her husband. She's joined a new family, and is no longer any of his concern.

To liberals, of course, society has changed to the point where the patriarchal family is no longer the basic social unit. We see nothing wrong with an unmarried individual; we see nothing wrong with a childless couple; we deny that Woman plus Man is the only formula for a stable childhood home. Times have changed; children can happen out of wedlock; individuals can marry late, or not at all. The world is different; society is different. Welcome to progress.

The question, I suppose, is this: can we really pass useful legislation about such a culturally loaded concept? Can our laws really define marriage when we can't define it ourselves?

The solution is obvious, if unorthodox: eliminate marriage as a civil institution. It is too controversial, too cumbersome, too hotly contested for the government to handle. We have to do away with it.

A civil union essentially provides (or should provide) family benefits to individuals with whom one has chosen to form a family. It is not the place of a democratic government to decide how one should choose those individuals; it is not the place of a democratic government to decide how society should be ordered.

Leave marriage out of it. Leave the past behind. Leave the choice to us.

Election season...

...always makes me wish I was Dutch.

Straight Marriage Must Be Abolished

The gay marriage debate is one of many, many areas in which liberals have misunderstood the argument they're supposed to be making. The mere mention of gay marriage tends to send liberals into rhapsodic tales of "two people whose love the government refused to acknowledge, simply because their sexuality deviated from the norm." I can understand what you're doing there, but the fact is that two people's love is irrelevant. Much more relevant, from a legal and traditional standpoint, is whether they are capable of engaging in intercourse and procreation.

Don't think the marriage laws reflect this view? I'd urge you to take another look. An unconsummated marriage remains one of the only grounds for annulment in the United States today; to many citizens of your country, a marriage is an explicit agreement to have heterosexual intercourse for the purpose of reproduction. Keep in mind the definition of annulment: the marriage is not ending, it is considered to have never existed. No sex, no marriage: a childless couple are either victims of ill fortune, or perpetrators of a good-faith violation.

This seems like a totally ridiculous view to most secular liberals, who see marriage as a public expression of love. It's understandable, however, for many religious people and social conservatives (I'll do the former group the courtesy of not assuming they all belong to the latter) to assume certain things about marriage as a result of its history. We are, after all, probably in the first age of the world wherein secular life is even possible: separation of church and state was not a huge concern for premodern governments, most of whom had an implicit or explicit state religion. Whether marriage was a religious ceremony or not (and let's not forget - it almost always was), it existed within the social and cultural framework of religious life. Put simply: the word "marriage" has more cultural/religious connotations than secular, and liberals who think otherwise are kidding themselves.

The problem, of course, is that liberals almost all think otherwise. I recently watched an episode of "The Daily Show" where one of the correspondents was grilling an RNC delegate about gay marriage. "Gays already have the right to marry," he said calmly, "so long as they marry a person of the opposite gender." The audience laughed, jeered; how cruel the Republicans are. You have the right to do whatever you want, they say, as long as you do it our way.

Except they don't think it's their way; they think it's the only way, and there is absolutely no precedent for seeing it otherwise. What does it matter that you wouldn't enjoy exercising your right to a straight marriage? You have the right to set yourself on fire, and nobody thinks that's much fun. Almost never in history has marriage had anything explicit to do with celebrating love - in most premodern cultures, marriage for love was considered socially irresponsible and possibly immoral. Marriage is a cultural institution designed to legitimize procreation and divide family units according to social norms. Our social norms are religious, even the seemingly secular ones. Deal with it.

Deal with it how, you ask? Well, that depends on if you really want separation of church and state - don't forget, by no means has the nation agreed on that particular principle. If you do, however, there's only one way to eliminate all the confusion: get rid of civil marriage altogether. Stop allowing the government to legitimize a religious ceremony; divorce civil from religious union, and eliminate the legal basis for discrimination. The notion that the nuclear family is the basic unit of society became outdated decades ago; if you agree, fight to spread a new one.

Because, of course, we haven't; liberals have not fought to spread the notion that single parents, and adoptive parents, and gay parents are legitimate members of society. As usual, we have looked around us, seen nothing but other hippie progressives like ourselves, and concluded that the world has moved on - except for a tiny, yet puzzlingly influential group of Mean Little Men.

They're not tiny, their influence should not be puzzling, and they aren't all trying to be mean. History is not on your side; logic is. Stick with that.