Justice Served

Well it's always shocking and sometimes titillating when someone turns up dead who used to be alive, like, a few minutes ago, but there it was: Antonin Scalia's big old face right there on the internets with X's over his eyes, figuratively speaking. And I kind of went huh and I'll be and went about my day, wondering about the circumstances (head first in a platter of manicotti?) and possibly humming Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead to myself--these things come unbidden, you can't turn them off--and maybe I was humming out loud, because I was abruptly reminded that one is not to Speak Ill of the Dead.

I don't know where that rule came from. Seems like once they're dead that's the perfect time to speak ill of them, when they can't come after you by, say, accidentally sitting on you because you're little and they haven't been able to see their own dick for decades. But even if you have been speaking ill of someone for years, once he's dead you're supposed to stop.

"I don't wish death on anyone," people will say, primly, even though that's usually followed by a big "but." I'm just being honest here: there are all sorts of people I think could improve the world by not being on it. I'd trade a thousand poachers for a rhinoceros any day of the week and consider myself money ahead. Most of us are not all that crazy about the fact of our mortality and so we get all precious about the Big D. But my goodness: there are seven billion of us swarming this marble and we can't all of us be worth saving. Nor would it be possible. I think Scalia has ceased to exist in any form but carbonaceous debris, but if it turns out he's working on negotiations for the hereafter--they can get pretty baroque when you're a Catholic--I wish him the best of luck, and a good lawyer. He knew some.

He was in the majority in the Citizens United case, touting the constitutional imperative of protecting expensive speech. Free speech, I mean. One imagines him dutifully appending his name ("Fondly, Nino") to his Christmas cards to corporations without complaint, although he probably had people for that. I believe he would have defended the rights of gay fetuses, but one wonders. He wrote colorfully. And "jiggery-pokery" came up in the Obamacare dissent, not the gay marriage dissent. (At least it wasn't "jigaboo-pokery.") He eloquently enshrined traditional (one might say hidebound) viewpoints on the basis of their sheer historical persistence, but one can't help but sense that his animus toward gays was entirely rooted in his conviction that they're icky.

Oddly enough I don't bear any personal ill will toward Antonin Scalia. I think he was pretty smart, and an entertaining wordsmith, which always puts people points ahead in my book, and he was consistent about his principles. It's the principles that need to die, and since a lot of them reside in a particular generation, maybe it's time to start getting that generation's things in order, bequeathing the china, taking a load to Goodwill, and disposing of the photos in the underwear drawer.

So it's not so much that I want to engineer anyone's death. I can't even skoosh a bug, but I'm not beyond suggesting that they've got to go sometime, and now's as good a time as any.

My Beliefs Can Kick Your Beliefs' Asses

A Colorado baker refused to sell a couple a wedding cake because doing so would violate his religious beliefs. The engine of commerce was chugging along right up to the frosting and sugar roses but as soon as he put the little figure of the two men in tuxedos on the top he felt he would be crossing a line that God had been very clear to him about. Why, you might as well ask him to drive the tour bus to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Elsewhere, the owners of a craft store chain kicked up a fuss over providing insurance to their employees if it meant some of them could get birth control, which violated their religious beliefs. If there was any chance their benefits package might result in a sperm not fulfilling its destiny, they would have no part in it. God had been very clear about his interest in human overpopulation. It would be crossing a line.

It would be like forcing me to sell bed linens to a Klan member, who might decide to make grand wizard duds out of them. Or sell whole cloth to a fundamentalist, who might decide to make divine instructions out of it. All of our precious individual souls are at stake, and we all expect to be indulged and accommodated, even if my blood sacrifice is of your sacred cow.

It would be one thing if everyone agreed on a god to listen to, but it's pretty clear that there is a whole pantheon of them out there, each with its own bizarre bailiwick--this one in charge of what you get to eat, that one in charge of who you get to kill. You spend enough time paying attention to everything that violates someone's religious beliefs, you realize you're in the company of schizophrenics. Everyone's hearing voices.

I always wondered if my eyes could roll back in my head so far they snapped off, but I gave them a good whirl the other day, and they don't. Some woman woke up recently to discover her husband was trying to suffocate her with a bag. Once in custody, he admitted he tried to kill her because he thought she was leaving him, and he didn't think he could live without her. "And it's against my religious beliefs to kill myself," he said.

That's enough. I have strongly held beliefs too. I believe war is a shitty way to make peace. I believe this planet has been rumpling its covers for billions of years and we should not take earthquakes personally. I believe we've managed to squander so many of our limited resources that we are on the verge of making the world fit only for insects and bacteria. If I just went ahead and said God sent me all that on a tablet, could I win a court case?

What The Frock?

A Methodist minister, Rev. Frank Schaefer, is facing a church trial in Pennsylvania for officiating at the marriage of his son to another man.

The General Conference, the top legislative body of the United Methodist Church, has affirmed that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. The Subcommittee On Deciding What Parts Of Leviticus To Ignore, presided over by the Rev. Baconlips, ruled on this and other issues in 2012.

The Subcommittee was originally convened in order to address concerns about Leviticus in light of modern practices. Leviticus has been a flash point for many who point out that the book famously responsible for setting out rules of behavior is about 2500 years old and no longer speaks to a society not composed primarily of goatherds. Decisions were arrived at delicately, though, just in case the third book of the Bible was dictated by God, and was not just something Moses dashed off.

Questions were first brought up by an avowedly feminist contingent that took particular issue with the requirement that a woman needed to atone for having her period, every damn time, as though it were a freaking day at the fair, at the cost of two sacrificial turtledoves. Especially with the ongoing turtledove shortage. Many found the entire area under discussion to be a sticking point. Conservatives warned that ignoring the problem of feminine discharges could lead to a very slippery slope. Moderates prevailed, however, after agreeing that all references to "unclean" might be replaced with "icky."

No one was inclined to quibble with the long list of people one is not allowed to have sex with--although a statement was drafted recommending leniency for those born into particularly large families.

Though there was general agreement on that issue, too many found the easing of restrictions against a man lying with a man to be too much to swallow. There aren't enough turtledoves in the world to clean up that crap, Rev. Baconlips was heard to mutter, before reminding committee members that the penalty for such an act is Death. "Thou shalt not kill," chanted the progressive corner, while traditionalists loudly countered with "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's ass." Discourse was heated but civil, with what all described as a fluid exchange, as members of the body rose one after the other to introduce their positions; but conservatives mounted stiff opposition to change, insisting that the church must take a hard line, in the end, against homosexuality.

Rev. Schaefer, having been forced to choose between his son and God, chose his son, noting that although the other choice worked out all right for Abraham, it wasn't something he felt he could count on.

Church officials say his recalcitrance is likely to result in a reprimand or suspension at the least, with the possibility that he may be defrocked. In the worst case, Rev. Schaefer could also be subjected to a holy wedgie.

May As Well Try And Catch The Wind

Our Wedding Cake Topper, 1983

The good citizens of North Carolina have defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. A union between one single man and one single woman is still called fornication. The definition of marriage is now firmly spackled onto the state Constitution, which only makes sense. The North Carolina state Constitution is exactly where I go to look up words, and I've always been foggy about that one. I get it mixed up with that thing in the desert where you think you see something, but it turns out to be an illusion. A lot of marriages are like that.

I've only been to North Carolina once, when I was a teenager. Dad bundled us all into the Volvo and drove us down to the Outer Banks to see the total eclipse of the sun. It was fabulous, it was divine. The sun grew dimmer and darker and then it went black except for the little light ridgy bits on the outside, which astronomers call the "tiara." I'd just learned how to play guitar and that's what I was doing while we were waiting for the sun to act up. I was probably playing "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen. It only had four chords. Leonard Cohen was thought to be a great songwriter due to his inability to sing. We all thought it was a dreamy and cool song, because she touched your perfect body with her mind. We didn't really know what that meant, but poets were always writing about their minds back then, when we still had them.

There were lots of warnings about looking directly into the sun. You were supposed to punch pinholes into a shoebox so you could see a projection of the progression of the moon across the sun. Of course, if that's what you drive 300 miles to see, you could just stay home and look up a diagram in a book. I stared right at the bugger, and I'm glad I did. I will always remember it. I will always remember it because I still see a ribbon of dots in my vision from where it was burned into my retinas.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina are a series of long barrier islands that were put up to keep the ocean out.  They scrabbled themselves up sometime after the last Ice Age, although nobody's really clear how. If they hadn't existed, the good citizens of North Carolina could always have written them into their Constitution. The ocean is big and powerful and scary and it is only proper of the citizenry to protect itself from it. The barrier islands work pretty well most of the time but they are prone to  destruction from hurricanes. There are more and stronger hurricanes all the time, and there will be until someone works up a good amendment about them.

North Carolina's new amendment was an important definition to put in the Constitution because the state of marriage is in disarray due to incursions from homosexual people who would just disappear if they weren't always being encouraged, and it needs to be protected, in the same way apple pie needs to be protected from nutmeg.

I have a constitution of my own, although it's just written down in what's left of my mind. And I've had to amend it to define North Carolina as a beautiful state I won't be visiting until the sun comes back. Which it will. You can't keep the sun from shining, and you can't stop a hurricane.

D'Oh! A Deer

Much obliged to Murrmurrs friend Jono for alerting me to an incident in Wisconsin, wherein a certain Bryan James Hathaway was brought up on charges of attempting to have sex with a dead deer. Objections did not come from the ungulate, but from offended passersby. Many questions arise. Exactly how public was this display? Was the act performed right there on the shoulder, or somewhere towards the rear? Was Mr. Hathaway merely trying to be helpful on behalf of an overworked ten-pointer with too large a harem? Neighbors of the accused have asserted he would do anything for a buck.

Ultimately Mr. Hathaway, referred to for reasons known only to Wisconsinites as a "Superior man," was given probation for a misdemeanor charge of sexual gratification with an animal. Felony charges were dismissed when it was discovered that Wisconsin had no laws on the books specifically prohibiting intercourse with roadkill. (Screwing the unions is okay with the state, too.) Some years ago Mr. Hathaway was, in fact, incarcerated for the felony mistreatment of an animal after he murdered a horse in order to have sex with it. In fact, he had just gotten out of prison on that charge when he was discovered sampling the venison, but he denies that the incident was a call for help, insisting he was managing just fine on his own. The determination of whether or not sex with a dead animal constitutes mistreatment was argued by city attorney Frog Press, who sounds like something of an expert.

The worst thing about the whole story is that giving it any thought whatsoever inevitably leads to thinking about Rick Santorum.

Mr. Santorum thinks about sex a lot. Sex is a major filter of his world view. He's not fond of contraception, for one thing. He believes it is "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is [sic] counter to how things are supposed to be." And he knows just how things are supposed to be. He got his marching instructions, "be fruitful and multiply," straight from God. ("Be lootful and divide" came from the Republican Party.) He even disagrees with the Supreme Court decision striking down a ban on contraception, but insists that doesn't mean he plans to actually confiscate anyone's prophylactic accoutrements anytime soon, and you should feel free to vote for him anyway.

Speaking of straight from God, that's the other way things are supposed to be. Gay marriage? He's agin it, and not just for himself, although one always wonders if folks who want to keep it illegal are just trying to remove temptation. He does not believe the Constitution guarantees a right to privacy that would protect two men having consensual sex in their own house. God knows (and mentioned to Mr. Santorum), state approval of such goings-on would be like going down a slippery slope. It would be the same, says he, as "man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be." Mr. Santorum is quick to explain that he does not "have a problem with homosexuals, but a problem with homosexual acts," although it is not known whether he tried a lubricant.

This is one of the most salient distinctions between me and the senator, and why, other than that I'm not nuts, I am not voting for Mr. Santorum. I have a problem with festering pea-hearted bigotry, true, but I also have a problem with festering pea-hearted bigots. I'm narrow that way. At any rate, it seems likely that the presidential candidate will be throwing in the towel soon enough.

And when he does, you're not going to want to touch it.

To Have And To Hold Up Progress

Pride Day, Portland, Oregon

The effort to legalize gay marriage in New York is stalled. The Republican majority has been meeting in a closet to discuss the matter and has gotten no closer to a resolution. There's a delicate balance to strike. On the one hand we have the right of adult humans to marry whom they want. On the other hand we have the duty to protect the right of dozens of citizens to be free of the willies.

The Catholic Church, according to New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, is not softening its position. It's still rock-hard. Dolan says that gay marriage is a violation of the natural law embedded in every man and woman. I, for one, am glad for the clarification. I thought I felt something, but I just put it down to a tipped uterus.

Dolan is worried that allowing gays to marry would be like marrying your mother, which probably explains why he hasn't sprung for the ring yet. Nothing against his mom, who, I imagine, has manufactured a holy sufficiency of little Dolans and earned her rest.

Cloudy, mild, no thunderbolts observed.

New York state senators, of course, are politically obliged to take a more nuanced approach than the Archbishop. Although the body appears to be no closer to a vote, progress has been made behind closed doors in the construction of a straw man, who was taken out for a test run the other day. Critical senators have delayed proceedings until they are assured that there are adequate protections for churches and other groups so that they will not be in violation of the law if they decline to perform marriages they find morally objectionable. This is a righteous concern of the lawmakers, who correctly anticipate a stampede of irritable lesbians whose primary motivation to marry is to really piss off the church. It would be a terrible thing to have officers of the law present in church ceremonies to assure compliance, monitoring events so that the wedding vows are not administered with crossed fingers or a tone. They won't stand for that, sir; they won't have it.

Many churches have presided over gay weddings for decades, if not longer, of course. The rights in play here are civil ones. Still, it pays to be careful lest the ministers of New York be strapped to their altars and mandated to bark out a state-issued diversity script before succumbing to the heebie-jeebies. Additional legislation is contemplated that would protect the churches against forced sacrifice of goats. It's a slippery slope. Even Lutherans, not known for agitation, are looking into defining a covered-dish as something involving green beans or tuna, lest a cannelloni contingent gain the upper hand.

Call me nostalgic, but straw men just ain't what they used to be in the glory days of the push for an Equal Rights Amendment. That amendment was a pretty simple proposition on its face, but somehow it boiled down to a threat that women would be required to learn how to use a urinal in public, and sign a guest-book indicating the number of penises they had observed personally, with maybe room for a comment section.

In other creative endeavors, legislators are looking into the possibility of declaring gay Americans to be three-fifths human, for which there is at least some historical precedent. Some sort of compromise might be reached. Gay marriage may be conditionally granted conferring three-fifths of the rights of Reg'lar citizens (hospital visitation, jewelry, joint dog ownership, up to but not including Social Security survival benefits and the holding of hands in public); the ceremony can proceed through "for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health," and so on for three-fifths the customary length, but stopping well before the kiss, which coincides with the onset of the jim-jams in susceptible people.

Failing that, we'll just have to wait a few more years until the actuarial asteroid of youthful ascendancy kills off the dinosaurs.

By The Skin Of My Shin

When I was in seventh grade, some girls trying to get a toehold on the adolescent food chain pointed at me in the hallway and made fun of my hairy legs. They were extrapolating from a fine blonde fuzz above my knee socks. My classmates were wearing nylons with garter belts by then. I found myself incapable of consulting my mother about shaving, let alone nylons. I was the baby in the family, with old parents, and already had internalized my role as the one who would keep my parents young, so I couldn't bear to remind them I was growing up. I shut myself in the bathroom and grabbed my father's razor to take care of this vital issue myself. I remember thinking it would require a lot of pressure. I started with the shin bone and neatly peeled off a long strip of skin. In too big a hurry to put two and two together, I did the same thing on the other leg. It looked like the Bates Motel in there. I pressed layers of toilet paper to the shins and hid them under knee socks until the scabs fell off.

The first time I recalled and related that episode, in my forties, I burst into tears. Over leg fuzz.

You can still see the scars. It's a little reminder of the power of peer pressure. If we'd been expected to shave our wrists, I wouldn't be here today. It's a dangerous age, and those who sprout out a little ways from smooth will get shorn down. The bulletins on acceptable behavior and wardrobe are changed almost hourly and it's essential to keep up. Sometimes it's a matter of life and death.

Right here, we've heard report of a student teacher, Seth Stambaugh, who was dismissed because of a short conversation he had with a kid in his fourth-grade class. Johnny wanted to know why the teacher wasn't married yet. "It's illegal for me, because if I did marry I would choose a man," he told the youngster. Wrong answer. Oh, not wrong in the sense of being anything but the truth. But as everybody knows, the correct answer is: "I just haven't met the right girl yet." Not "I just haven't met a girl with a penis yet." The teacher failed to stick to the script, and the script has been around a long time.

1916, Iowa. Johnny: Who are you voting for for President, Mrs. Bonkworthy?
     Incorrect answer: I am not legally allowed to vote, Johnny, but if I could, it would be for Mr. Wilson.
     Correct answer: Heavens to Murgatroid, Johnny, my brain is far too fluffy to hold facts and opinions in it! Now let's move on to our history texts. Johnny, maybe you can read it aloud, and that way I can learn it, too.


2010, Texas. Johnny: Why is the sky blue?
     Incorrect answer: Well, Johnny, the longer wavelengths of light pass right through the air, while the shorter blue wavelengths of light are absorbed and then scattered off the gas molecules in the atmosphere that God probably didn't whomp up in one day a few thousand years ago.
     Correct answer: Who knows? Purty, though, ain't it?

Kids really shouldn't get too much information. Not in an institution of learning, certainly.

No one has said, but I suspect Johnny was put up to this question by his parents. Somebody had already complained to the school about the student teacher's attire, which was suspiciously neat and tidy. I think somebody's parents tried to seal the deal by putting him on the spot and hoping he'd tell the truth, and then this dire threat to their son's welfare could be excised from the classroom.

He's probably not a direct threat, or he would have answered "I am not married because I am waiting for the nanosecond you, Johnny, turn eighteen, after I have groomed you for ten years."

He's probably just the other kind of threat, the one who demonstrates that it is normal for some people to be gay, thus setting into motion a vacuum of impressionable youngsters into the irresistible gay lifestyle choice. Johnny's parents obviously realize that anyone would choose a same-sex relationship as long as it was acceptable. Who wouldn't?

Odds are, at least one child in that class, maybe even Johnny, has an inkling that he might have something in common with that teacher, and he has just learned the consequences. That strikes me as being a threat, but that's because I've never thought Johnny would be better off dead than with Fred.

As lifestyle choices go, suicide is a poor one, with no future in it. I would have thought it was a more difficult choice to make than, say, snapping out of it and cruising the opposite sex for someone you could always divorce later. But apparently, for some of our children, it's easier.

A Beagle Too Far

If we are to address a challenge as daunting as global warming, it will require unprecedented political will. It will require unflagging energy and dedication and determination from the grass roots on up. And we've got that, people, we do. Unfortunately it's being used to fight gay marriage, but at least we've got it.

I'm not sure why people get so fervent about stuff like this, but I have been trying to put myself in the shoes of the righteous to gain that understanding. I am doing that because I am a liberal, and that's what we do. We try to understand, to empathize, to see all sides, and that, my friends, is why we never get anything done.

But my exercise proved fruitful when I realize how similar the anti-gay-marriage sentiment is to my own aversion to the Humane Society, an outfit that is only growing in strength and power. Now this is an entity with an agenda. They don't try to hide it, either; it's right there on their website for all the world to see. And I will do everything in my power to expose the Humane Society for what it is and what it hopes to accomplish, because if they are allowed to thrive, they're going to force me to adopt a beagle, and I don't want to adopt a beagle. Once they make everyone adopt a beagle, there will be beagle drool everywhere, and there will be no

putting the rabbit back in the hat. Oh, I can hear the beagle advocates now, insisting that beagles don't drool as much as other dogs, which may be true, but it doesn't make it right. And it would be one thing if they just drooled in the privacy of their own crates, but I shouldn't have to see it.

Worse, if we let this go too far, our children will think beagle adoption is just fine and dandy, just another choice. I don't want this for your children, and I don't want it for my children either, if I had any, which I don't, because I was unclear about that being the whole point of heterosexuals getting married, and now it's too late, and here I am with a bunch of legal benefits and no one to help me with my computer. But don't tell me I have a phobia. I do not fear beagles. It's just that some people are born with beagles, some achieve beagles, and others have beagles thrust upon them, and that's where I draw the line, right there. As long as I have freedom of speech and a vote to my name, I will fight against beagle-thrusting.

The more I think about it, the more I see the logic behind maintaining marriage inequality. Still, I can't get behind the movement. I'd like to feel that fire in my heart, but I'm hampered by, oh--my life experiences, friendships, the evidence before my own eyes--you know, "reality," which is just another burden that liberals suffer under. So I do my best to advance the cause of full civil rights for gays, because nothing in my experience speaks against their right

to marry, raise children, grow gradually more annoyed at each other over little foibles they were willing to overlook in the courting phase, drift apart emotionally and eventually divorce, just like regular people.

And I believe I hold the key to resolving this issue. There is a growing movement among fundamentalist Christians to further the cause of Zionism, arming and aiding Israel so that--true to prophecy--Armageddon will arrive as soon as possible, and true believers can be vacuumed up to Heaven and get their personal show on the road. Since

the same factions probably believe that tolerance of homosexuality also portends the end of the world, I believe we can persuade them to encourage gays in every way they can, including supplying them with marriage certificates and surface-to-air missiles. This will hasten the End Days, the time that the world will be purged of religious fundamentalists, and those of us left behind can get on with our lives. I hope they rapture the beagles, too.