Phule For Thought

Two related news items today.  One is the Larry Craig scandal.  The other is the Iowa gay marriage crisis.

Frequently, members of the media show signs of bias.  While not a great thing, to some extent it cannot be helped.  Some folk complain about the “liberal media bias” as though it is some kind of great conspiracy.  Fewer folk insist that it is really a “conservative media bias” — these folk pretty much all insist that yes it really is a conspiracy.  Jaq can’t comment on this, never having worked in media.  One of these days, Jaq will have to ask their one journalist friend for the inside scoop on the inside scoop.

Often times, it’s hard to say in what manner exactly that media shows bias, and these are among those cases.  But it seeps through nonetheless.  The … feeling … is that Craig somehow did something horribly wrong, but that the possibility of gay marriage licenses being granted is a good thing.  Jaq believes this all to be an effect of wooly thinking.

Craig alledgedly made an easy-to-ignore pass at an undercover cop.  If he had pushed his claim into rejected territory, then clearly he would have passed into the realm of harrassment, an infringement on someone else’s rights.  But not even the cop is saying that this took place.  If the soon-to-be-former Senator had made a pass at a human of female persuasion, there may have been some minor fallout, but this is expected behavior out of Senators.  It’s practically compulsory, and a sex-drive in overdrive seems to be one of the requirements for that particular job.

But no, Craig’s offense, while termed as “lewd behavior”, really just means “bein’ gay outside a gay bar”.  Democrats aren’t exactly screaming for his ouster — Butch Otter is certain to appoint another Republican to fill the soon-to-be-vacant post, after all — but there is no end to the scorn being heaped down in the blogosphere.  Are they happy because of an act of alledged justice?  Or because someone on the Republican team got caught?

Meanwhile, Republicans are screaming about the Iowan constitutional crisis over gay marriage.  Some few lucky couples managed to tie the knot in the few hours the ban was lifted.  Civilization did not fall, but Republicans insist that this kind of thing undermines traditional American family values.

This has the virtue of being true, but it’s not the whole story.  Far from!  American family values have always been in flux.  In the late 19th century, families had far, far more children out of agricultural necessity.  Everyone was poor, worked long grueling hours on the farm, and froze their derrieres off in the wintertime.  The basic political unit was the family, and the closely related clan.  The assembly line and the spinning jenny changed all this when all those spare chillens were tempted away from standing behind a horse’s ass to move into the city for better pay.  They were still poor, and worked even longer hours, but they weren’t as poor as they had been.  Because of the interlocking opportunities of commerce to be had in the cities, they were sure that if they worked hard, their children would have even more opportunities and live even better.  And to this end, since children were no longer productive members of society, families began to have far fewer children, and stuffed them into schools where they were supposed to get a scientifically created education.  And what do you know?  Life slowly improved — not perfectly, but hey, you can’t beat a hot shower on a cold dark winter’s day.

American family values changed.  Civilization did not fall.

There’s a disconnect in this even closer to home.  Once upon a time, within Jaq’s living memory, “conservative” groups were all in favor of “keeping government out of the bedroom.”  Jaq’s not entirely certain how this particular issue switched polarity, but switch it did.  Larry Craig wasn’t hurting anyone by looking for love in an airport bathroom.  I mean, all kinds of ick for the venue, but who was injured and required a legal remedy to solve their injustice?

No, now the Republicans are in bed with the Democrats.  In YOUR bed, actually.  And they’re having their typical tiffy tryst.

“How do you mean?” Jaq hears you cry.  Or not, since no one is actually reading this.  “Democrats are in favor of gay marriage!”

That’s not really the point.  The point is that both sides want to legislate about it.  Republicans want to define marriage as “a union between a man and a woman” and the Democrats fight for other definitions like “between two adults”.  The problem is that it needs to be defined by some “authority” at all.  The power to tax is NOTHING like as to the power to define terms.

Once you’ve defined a thing, each word in the definition is subject to interpretation.  If it’s been long enough, this bizarre idea called “framer’s intent” takes over, and judges speak to what the original definers might have meant if that judge were them.  Someday, one might insist that “adult” has implications about one’s socioeconomic status, or racial background.  (“Boy” is still used as a racial epithet, after all.)  “Union” might come to mean any form of sexual activity, or economic activity, or anything.  Many states recognize a hotel register as sufficient evidence of a common law marriage — at one point in Florida, since overnight cohabitation between unmarried men and women was illegal, they were considered married if caught, whether marriage was wanted by the newlyweds or not.  Sort of a shotgun marriage with Big Brother standing in as father of the bride.  Is any of this right?

An even creeeepier problem with the Republican definition is that it says nothing about marriage being voluntary.

And might someone who attempts a non-officially sanctioned marriage, who is in violation of the “highest law of the land,” should a Constitutional amendment be passed, be guilty of treason?  Of being redefined as a “terrorist”?  It only sounds goofy until you see what the current feddle gummint’s definition of “terrorist” is…

Ohio law defines marriage as a union with three parties; the happy couple, and the state of Ohio.  Oh what, they weren’t invited to the ceremony?  Too bad!  They’re there anyway.

And then of course there are the problems raised by voluntary polygamy.  Sure, when it’s between scary dude and his twelve year old nieces, this is a problem — the union ain’t fully voluntary.  But Jaq is certain that it happens all the time, and informal surveys hint at the possibility of thousands of such relationships.  Jaq is even fairly certain there is an extremely clandestine example within Jaq’s own family tree, several generations back.  (And no, they weren’t living in Utah.)  No one living anymore can confirm or deny.  But it all seemed to work very happily for all of them.  Why should they have been made to suffer for someone else’s definition of marriage?

No matter what kind of theological proclivity Jaq is feeling at any time, it never ceases to piss them off when at weddings, the words “by-the-power-vested-in-me-by-God-and-the-state-of-Whodafunk” are uttered in one breath, as though they are supposed to be one and the same, or at least equals.  Jaq can see marriagees inviting God into the union.  But not all the potential gubernatorial administrations for the next several decades.

Marriage should be defined by the parties getting married.  And as that is true, the operational definition of anything in your life should be defined by you and the people around you.  Be very, very wary of bureaucrats bearing dictionaries.

You never know who they’re going to define as a terrrrrist yet.