Marriage, A Defining Moment

Link to source: 320331_10151088367411851_811808197_n.jpg

Language is a function of culture. Definitions are a product of language. Cultures, like all living things, evolve in response to changes in the environments in which they exist. As cultures evolve, so do languages and their concomitant definitions.

Yet there are those in every culture who deny any and all forms of evolution while claiming to have knowledge of a "traditional" cultural milieu which must be defended against change. In America, they call themselves conservatives and fundamentalist Christians.

I find it most interesting that such folks are by and large the same people who embraced the myth of the Tea Party, which claimed to be a grass-roots movement and a champion of individual liberty although it was fully controlled by the Heritage Foundation.

They are rabidly opposed to the currently evolving shift in attitude toward gay and lesbian members of our society. They fear it, and are fighting against it just as their philosophical forebears fought against other such cultural shifts in attitude such as racial equality, interracial marriage, unionization of workers in sweatshops, and women's suffrage.

Of course, being the father of three sons, I may simply be envious of those who would have us go back to "traditional" marriage so they can profit from the sale of their daughters.

The Price of Enlightenment

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This Frank & Ernest comic provides a perfect metaphor for what's going on in D.C. on many levels:
1. the electorate looking for change from the D.C. establishment
2. President Obama negotiating with John Boehner
3. Republicans expecting reason from the Tea Party whackos they embraced in 2010
4. Sen. Harry Reid trusting Mitch McConnell on anything
5. Congress giving money to the banks to help folks with mortgage problems
6. ...

The list is endless. What would you add?

There is a lesson to be learned from this, of course.

True enlightenment comes when one recognizes that believing those in power will place your interests above their own is, in fact, ignorance and that those we call leaders hold their position at our behest.

Thomas Jefferson declared as much during The Age of Enlightenment with these words:

...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The price of enlightenment is active involvement in holding one's leaders accountable when they fail to live up to the tenets of the organizations over which we have given them control.

When such a leader is the head of a church or social organization, we are free to leave and join another or none at all.

When the leader is a politician, we can, and we must, vote that leader out of office.

Failure to do so confirms our preference for ignorance and condemns us to climbing mountains in order to squander our most valuable possession on empty promises.

Jurisimprudence? You be the judge.

Last week Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said of the challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act now before the court,

"I think [the repeated passage of the Voting Rights Act] is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomena that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement.  It's been written about.  Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes."

Yes, "it has been written about." However, a bit of digging by investigative reporters at the Baltimore Sun and the Providence Journal has revealed that the writer to whom the justice refers, may be none other than Scalia himself and an article he wrote in 1979.

If this is the case, Justice Scalia's comments constitute a blatant manipulation of the facts by a jurist set to rule on the very law about which those facts are crucial.

Even if he is referring to another writer, Mr. Scalia's comments are clearly prejudicial to the case, and he should recuse himself in order to maintain the honor and integrity of the court as an impartial arbiter of the law.

Either way, I would not be at all surprised to find Mr. Justice Scalia's picture next to the words disingenuous and duplicitous in the next edition of Webster's Dictionary.

Link to Baltimore Sun article

Link to Providence Journal article

Link to Justice Scalia's 1979 article on race