It's my world, Andrew Sullivan is just living in it

I actually beat Sullivan to the punch on his Don't Divorce Us post which appeared today on his blog referencing the Courage Campaign's efforts in California to save the existing same-sex marriages in the state from being invalidated ex post facto by the court.

And, no cross-link by Sullivan back to the GingerMan?!? Where's the love for us straight, ginger white-boys, Andrew??

In fairness, the video was all over the web, so it wasn't like it was some scoop on my part, but it was odd to see it show up on Sullivan's blog after it appeared on my own, given that many of my posts are riffs on items he has posted first.

Please don't divorce my dads

Ken Starr returns (yes, *that* Ken Starr), much like a horror movie zombie who simply will not die, with a legal brief -- on behalf of the "Yes on 8" campaign -- that would forcibly divorce the 18,000 same-sex couples married in California last year before the passage of Prop 8.

California Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on March 5, and will then make a decision within 90 days on the validity of Prop 8 and these 18,000 marriages.

Info above and the video link below are courtesy of Crooks and Liars, but don't watch without Kleenex nearby.

Sullivan on Gay Marriage and Prop 8

To any that did not see it at the time, I can highly recommend Andrew Sullivan's response to Rod Dreher's post on this topic as one of the best defenses of gay marriage that I have come across:

Rod longs, as many do, for a return to the days when civil marriage brought with it a whole bundle of collectively-shared, unchallenged, teleological, and largely Judeo-Christian, attributes. Civil marriage once reflected a great deal of cultural and religious assumptions: that women's role was in the household, deferring to men; that marriage was about procreation, which could not be contracepted; that marriage was always and everywhere for life; that marriage was a central way of celebrating the primacy of male heterosexuality, in which women were deferent, non-heterosexuals rendered invisible and unmentionable, and thus the vexing questions of sexual identity and orientation banished to the catch-all category of sin and otherness, rather than universal human nature.

To tell Rod something he already knows: Modernity has ended that dream. Permanently.

[snip]

But how do those who are ready to live in this modern world coexist with those who still believe that it is not only misguided but evil? And, of course, vice-versa? There is only one way.

That way is to agree that our civil order will mean less; that it will be a weaker set of more procedural agreements that try to avoid as much as possible deep statements about human nature. [em: mine]

[snip]

Sorry, Rod, but you and I have to live in the disenchanted world our generation was born into. The dreams of total pre-modern coherence - whether in the malign fantasies of the Taliban or the benign aspirations of theocons longing for the 1950s in the 21st century - are dreams undone by freedom. We live in a new world, and we can and should create meaning where we can, in civil society, in private, through free expression and self-empowerment. But we cannot enforce that old meaning on others by law.

The great thing about this post is that it gets beneath the surface legalisms at issue and exposes the heart of what is really under debate, which is the philosophical conflict between traditional conservatism and modernity itself. Gay marriage is simply the battle de jour upon which "deep statements about human nature" are being argued.

As Dreher himself writes even on the heels of the Prop 8 "victory" in California:

The concept of marriage has largely been severed from established norms in the popular understanding and is now seen as a contract formalizing the love a couple (for now) has for each other. Today, marriage has no intrinsic meaning that people are meant to serve; rather, it can be shaped to support people's desires.

This is the logical next phase in the development of modernity, whose 500-year project has been the gradual emancipation of the individual will. When gay marriage proponents argue that conservatives are on the wrong side of history, they're right. [em: mine]

Moreover, the prejudice – both in the bad, bigoted sense, and the good, Burkean sense – that protected traditional marriage is evaporating. Conservatives will lose this war because they have lost the young. And they have lost the young because they have lost the culture.

And, this is the "loss" that conservatives such as Dreher are really inveighing against. It is not about marriage per se, but rather about the long, slow loss of unquestioned cultural authority that is now being realized via modifications to our formal systems of legal authority (e.g. divorce, abortion, gay marriage).

Notice Dreher's obvious lament of the "gradual emancipation of the individual will." Taken as a standalone statement, one might be tempted to label a "gradual emancipation of the individual will" as freedom, which within the secular ethos of the American polity is always categorized as an unmitigated "good."

But, within a philosophical framework of Original Sin and the inherent fallen nature of man, emancipation of the individual will, by definition, leads to evil. There can be no good outcomes for mankind or society without the constraints of religious doctrine to check our baser impulses. The apple beckons and we are futile to resist.

Or, as Wilkinson more succinctly noted in a discussion of Atheists vs. Pedophiles and which group was more despised by the American public:

Wilkinson (facetiously):

I mean it's kind of obvious. If God is dead, then everything is permitted. And if everything is permitted, the first thing you want to do is abuse children.

Oddly, I think somehow that this moment provides an opening for religious conservatives to advocate more effectively for the positions they hold dear, since (in a modern context) they will be forced to justify and argue for the utility (moral or otherwise) of the positions they espouse. There is no unified cultural North Star doing all the heavy lifting of justification for them.

And, my sense is that those elements of religious faith that serve humanity (the Golden Rule, et al) will survive unscathed from the confrontation with modernity, while those that are merely relics of a different social order will simply fall over time, since the weight of cultural inertia alone is no longer enough to sustain them.

Prager Counsels Wives of the World

I don't understand people who read the blogosphere, or any media, seeking only the safe harbor of opinions they already hold, such that their own perspectives are constantly and seamlessly validated.

However, sometimes efforts I make to "enlighten" myself as to the perceptions of others leave me truly dumbstruck. As in, I feel less enlightened and less hopeful about the nature of our common humanity than I did before.

Witness the marital "advice" of one Dennis Prager on the issue of wives who withhold sex when they are not "in the mood":

Incredulity is certainly the reaction most women have when first being told that a man knows he is loved when his wife gives him her body. The idea that the man she is married to, let alone a man whose intelligence she respects, will to any serious extent measure her love of him by such a carnal yardstick strikes many women as absurd and even objectionable.

But the question that should matter to a woman who loves her man is not whether this proposition speaks poorly or well of male nature. It is whether it is true. And it is true beyond anything she can imagine. [em: mine]

Prager constructs these paper-thin, cartoon-like Ken and Barbie-doll images of "men" and "women" in a manner that is deeply de-humanizing. And, from my point of view, even more offensive to men than to women.

The essence of his argument is that I, as a man, can barely contain my carnal urges and, if not placated unremittingly by my wife, will end up humping furniture at holiday gatherings and the like. So, she just better learn to live with it.

Telling your husband to control it is a fine idea. But he already does. Every man who is sexually faithful to his wife already engages in daily heroic self-control. He has married knowing he will have to deny his sexual nature's desire for variety for the rest of his life. To ask that he also regularly deny himself sex with the one woman in the world with whom he is permitted sex is asking far too much. Deny him enough times and he may try to fill this need with another woman. If he is too moral to ever do that, he will match your sexual withdrawal with emotional and other forms of withdrawal. [em: mine]

Didn't bang the secretary at work today? Well you, my friend, are now a certified hero!! Are they giving out Purple Hearts for this kind of thing yet?

It may not surprise to note that Prager is twice divorced. I really can't imagine why.

But maybe the Daily Kos post titled "Dennis Prager Woos His Imaginary Wife" can shed some hypothetical light on the matter.

"My, your marital obligation looks lovely tonight. And, in the light of these florescent tubes (candles are for sissies), may I tell you that I treasure your choice to submit to the duties of your vows MORE today than on the day you signed your name to a contract dooming you to a life of faking it for sake of my self-image!"

Can I get an Amen on that?

Love and Little Wing

Little Wing (though it was the Sting cover version) was the song we played as our first dance at my wedding reception.

The lyrics always touch me, both due to my personal connection to the song, and because it seems to capture the essence of what it means to love:

When I'm sad, she comes to me
With a thousand smiles, she gives to me free
It's alright she says it's alright
Take anything you want from me, anything
Anything.