Making Marriage Sound Queer, and the Good Child

The Glair - Making Marriage Sound Queer, and the Good Child

I don't care much for Orson Scott Card's fictional writings, but lately I've read quite a few articles by him and I've got to say, the man is often one helluvah essayist.

Take this article on Gay Marriage.


Now anyone who has ever been married knows that although the sport is a joyful exercise on occasion, and just downright fun and inspiring sometimes, that it is indeed a noble and good pursuit - it is also a tremendously gritty exercise in human suffering, patience, understanding, resentment, miscalculation, reversal, redemption, love, and can even often be terrifically hard work. One thing it rarely devolves into is gayness, in either the original or modern sense of the term.

Yet the way modern people use words nowadays you would think that the very best way to redefine anything, and then act on those newly invented redefinitions, is not through some historically fixed set of rules for human communications, but by the use of some misprogammed and viral-laden version of Babblefish.

At some point a person comes to understand that most problems on the face of this planet don't really stem from competing interests, but simply from the fact that people have decided that by redefining their interests in anyway they see momentarily fit, and then cloaking those misshapen and mutated malformations in the brightly colored fashions of public interest, and understanding, and tolerance, that they can reshape reality. Into what is another question, but why bother with questions when the sport is the thing.

A word by any other word would still smell as funny and still sound as queer, if not for the fact that in modern usage no one can hear you scream in cyberspace. After all, in the modern world, data is completely interchangeable with Truth, and if you don't believe that, then you've got a queer way of looking at things. Try refreshing your screen till it all becomes clear again.


Now for something completely different, Men coming home to be greeted by their neighbor's children. I've often wondered, since reading the parable of the Good Samaritan, what exactly composes the Good Neighbor. Is it in the head, or in the heart where fancy's bred? Is courage born of sacrifice, or does sacrifice breed courage in the passing man? Does it really matter nowadays?

When children decide that part of maturing is to wish their fellow countryman death and destruction when their fellow countryman is engaged in a pursuit designed to prevent death and destruction then I have to wonder who shepherds the shepherds, and when did the sheep gain control of the madhouse?

The thing about sheep is that they are not very smart, but try and tell the sheep that.

I am reminded of Animal Farm and for one brief moment my mind drifts back to a day when allusions, analogies, and symbols didn't have to be explained. To a time of youth when people, even the young, got the idea that a thing represented more than itself and that ideas had meanings even if some people drifted through life as if they did not.

Now what passes simply passes.

There is a sort of poetic irony to it all.

We've redefined things so many times that no one remembers the last definition long enough to care that we don't.




Save This Page

New Jersey Approves Gay Marriage

The Glair - New Jersey Approves Gay Marriage (by any other name)

We’ve lost this in the more liberal areas of the country. This is one fight we will not win nationally, and as far as this aspect of the culture war is concerned, we can just admit the very evident fact that some states, primarily liberal and northern states, will adopt gay marriage as a de facto, if not outright legal, social condition.

Adoption of children by homosexual couples will increase dramatically in such states once the legal aspects become normalized there, and the populations, and especially the bureaucracies in those states become acclimated to the idea.

This will not be turned back in such states, rights, once granted, are almost never thereafter repealed.

Homosexual marriages and civil unions, or whatever terminology is adopted, will not become legal, or even commonplace in all states within the United States but I can confidently predict that some states will adopt this pattern as the norm.

Then comes the inevitable fight, in the Supreme Court, of whether the issue of homosexual marriage, or civil unions, is a State’s Rights issue, or a national and federal equal protection issue.

That will be the real fight.
That and the political fight.



N.J. legislature approves civil unions
Updated 12/14/2006 7:55 PM ET

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Ordered by New Jersey's highest court to offer marriage or its equivalent to gay couples, the Legislature voted Thursday to make New Jersey the third state to allow civil unions.
Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine said he would sign the measure, which would extend to same-sex couples all the rights and privileges available under state law to married people. The bill passed the Assembly 56-19 and the Senate 23-12.
"Love counts," Democratic Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, a chief sponsor of the bill, said as the debate opened. "The gender of whom one loves should not matter to the state."
But Republican Assemblyman Ronald S. Dancer said: "It's my personal belief, faith and religious practice that marriage has been defined in the Bible. And this is one time that I cannot compromise my personal beliefs and faiths."
Massachusetts is the only state to allow gay marriage. Vermont and Connecticut have civil unions, and California has domestic partnerships that work similarly. Since 2004 New Jersey has had a more limited version of domestic partnerships.
Among the benefits gay couples would get under New Jersey's civil unions bill are adoption rights, hospital visitation rights and inheritance rights. Officials could begin granting civil unions 60 days after the governor signs the legislation; Corzine did not say when he would do so.
The bill was drafted in response to a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling in October that required the state to extend the rights and benefits of marriage to gay couples within 180 days. The court, in its 4-3 ruling, left it up to the Legislature to decide whether to call such unions "marriages" or something else.

READ THE RULING: N.J. Supreme Court decision

Gay rights groups have argued that not calling such unions "marriage" creates a different, and inferior, institution. But they welcomed Thursday's legislation as a step toward gaining the right to marry.
Some lawmakers also considered Thursday's action to be an interim step on the way to full marriage rights.
"This should be called what it is — marriage." said Democratic Sen. Loretta Weinberg, a sponsor of the bill. She said the title should be changed after there has been some time to study how the civil unions bill works.
Steven Goldstein, director of the gay rights advocacy organization Garden State Equality, said he expects gay couples to be able to get married in New Jersey within two years.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Posted 12/14/2006 5:46 PM ET