Topic: The Culture
A bit more on the gay marriage issue...

I'm not a fan of George Will, the somewhat dyspeptic (ill-humored) conservative (not neoconservative) columnist. But he speaks often of baseball and writes about the game, so he has at least one other side to his soul. In this Sunday's Washington Post he has a column on the gay marriage stuff that is quite good.

Here's the link:

Culture and What Courts Can't Do
By George F. Will
Sunday, November 30, 2003; Page B07 of The Washington Post

Will opens with this:

When Massachusetts' highest court asserted that same-sex marriage is a right protected by the state's constitution and entailed by recent U.S. Supreme Court reasoning about the U.S. Constitution, the president vowed to "do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage." His vow implied two empirical premises for which conclusive evidence is lacking.

One is that law can do what the culture - immensely powerful and largely autonomous - has undone.

The other is that the social goods and individual virtues that marriage is supposed to buttress are best served by excluding same-sex couples from the culture of marriage, lest that culture be even more altered than it recently has been.

More than 40 percent of first marriages in the United States end in divorce. Cohabitation by unmarried heterosexual couples has risen rapidly, from 523,000 in 1970 to 4.9 million today. Procreation outside of marriage, although the seedbed of millions of individual tragedies and myriad social pathologies, has lost much of its stigma now that 33 percent of births -- including about 60 percent of births to women younger than 25 -- occur to unmarried mothers.

So the "sanctity" of American marriage is problematic. ...

Well. That got me thinking. How many laws do we have that were developed to "do" what the culture has, in fact, pretty much undone? I'll have to think about that. Certainly such laws are often proposed. Some are enacted into statutes that are enforced. One might think of America's great experiment with prohibition in the last century. People were drinking. Tell them they can't. Didn't work out.

Much of the law regarding marijuana is, similarly, an attempt to lock the barn door after the horse has run off - as the stuff is widely and generally used - and the efforts by the Republican right to use federal law and the full force of the federal government to trump state law in any state anywhere that seeks to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes strikes me as a type of the same foolishness. And I am by no means a big "states rights" kind of guy. It just seems to me like spitting in the wind. People know better - at least most people do. Yeah you can make it illegal. Won't do much good. People will use it. Marijuana is, under federal law, a Schedule One narcotic - just like heroin. Oxycontin, the "hillbilly heroin" that got Rush Limbaugh is such trouble, is a Schedule Two. Go figure.

As for gay marriage, we can indeed pass a Constitutional Amendment to overturn what happened in Massachusetts, and what might happen in other states, with a federal change that overrides such "local decisions" - and thus make "gay marriage" entirely illegal. But I suspect gay couples will still commit to each other, and form households, and make do with what they can arrange by way of fiddling with the system. It's a pain to work around the tax and insurance and inheritance issues, but people manage. And many of us will still recognize these two particular folks are together and wish them well, and treat them as one would any friends. A good number of people will shrug at the "illegality" of the "committed relationship," just as they shrug at a number of other laws.

Consider that a mild form of "civil disobedience" - one just simply refuses to take a blue-nose law about what is "moral" very seriously. You do what you feel is right. And you are careful to avoid notice - and keep out of confrontation and trouble. And you work quietly to get the law changed, or let it implode from its on weight (its inherent mixture of profundity and absurdity).

[ Recommended Reading: Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Peri Bathos: On the Art of Sinking to the Profound, 1727-28 ]

George Will goes in another direction:

Amending the Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman would be unwise for two reasons. Constitutionalizing social policy is generally a misuse of fundamental law. And it would be especially imprudent to end state responsibility for marriage law at a moment when we require evidence of the sort that can be generated by allowing the states to be laboratories of social policy.

Opponents of same-sex marriages argue inter alia that such marriages will weaken marriage and injure society's interest in stable family units. Proponents argue inter alia that giving same-sex couples the choice of marriage, with its presumption of permanence expressed in a network of responsibilities and privileges, will reform not only homosexual life but society as a whole by strengthening the virtues that marriage is supposed to sustain.

Evidence is inadequate to confirm either proposition.

Yeah, yeah. We see this. So?

George Will then goes on to get really quite upset about polygamy. I'm not sure how he got there, of all places. Maybe that's logical. Add a comment if you follow what he's up to.

Try the whole thing. It's a good read.

Topic: Oddities
You saw it here first! Well, maybe.
France's art world is in a flap!
Claude Monet's legendary "Water Lilies" causing trouble once again!
Odd news from l'Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Sudden Archeological Find Near Louvre Upsets Monet Museum Renovation
PARIS, Nov 28 (AFP) -

France's art world is in a flap. The discovery of a massive 16th century wall buried under the Tuileries gardens flanking the Louvre, has halted a vast and costly scheme to revamp the old Orangerie museum in order to give Claude Monet's legendary "Water Lilies" a better home.

The Orangerie, set in an obscure corner of the Tuileries gardens by the Seine, was closed in 2000 and due to reopen late next year after a 25-million-euro facelift aimed at putting Monet's mammoth works back in the limelight -- precisely by giving them new light.

The museum, originally a 19th century hothouse for oranges, was to be given a newly refurbished glass roof and galleries for the "Water Lilies" as well as freshly-dug underground exhibition space for its other prestigious collections.

But workmen scraping away to clear room for the new underground space last August hit a major obstacle -- two metres (six feet) sticking out of the ground of a fortified outer wall almost three metres (nine feet) thick that is 59 metres (yards) long and a total seven metres (21 feet) high.

"L'horreur!" (Horror!) reportedly exclaimed museum curator Pierre Georgel, who was forced to suspend the works the following month pending a decision by the authorities -- expected by year's end -- on whether to maintain or to raze the wall.

All the details at the link provided, of course...

Background:

Monet was over 80 and losing his sight when he put the finishing touches to the eight giant panels making up the "Water Lilies" in the early 1920s, works inspired by his water garden at Giverny, outside Paris.

Hailed by critics as the culmination of his life's work, he donated them to the French state to celebrate the victory of World War I.

The government in turn offered Monet a special museum to house them -- the Orangerie -- placing the panels in two spacious oval galleries opening onto the gardens, with natural light pouring through the glass dome overhead.

But in the 1960s, the Orangerie was given one of the most fabulous private collections in existence -- the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection comprising 144 works by Cezanne, Renoir, Rousseau, Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Utrillo, Modigliani, Soutine and others.

The donation however was made on condition it be exhibited permanently and in its entirety at the Orangerie. So a concrete floor was put in above the "Water Lilies", shutting out their sun but providing an extra floor of space for the new treasures.

Visitors from 1965 thus had to go upstairs first to see the Walter-Guillaume collection before descending to see the former centre-piece of the museum, the Monet panels, deprived of natural light and airy exit-ways, relegated to a kind of backstairs second-best position.

Oh well.

Topic: Iraq
Not all the Brits agree with Tony. Oh well.
- or -
"Here come da Judge! Here come da Judge!"

Here's something from Johan Steyn. Lord Steyn is a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, one of twelve judges who sits on Britain's highest court. This is from the 27th F.A. Mann Lecture, delivered in London on Tuesday - a lecture series with which I am, sadly, unfamiliar. This judge fellow seems to think the United States is doing a bad thing.

Guant?namo is the subject, specifically our detention of a few more than six hundred folks for more than a year and a half. Here's the judge's summary:

The regime applicable at Guant?namo was created by a succession of presidential orders. It can be summarized quite briefly. The prisoners at Guant?namo, as matters stand at present, will be tried by military tribunals. The prisoners have no access to the writ of habeas corpus to determine whether their detention is even arguably justified. The military will act as interrogators, prosecutors, defense counsel, judges, and when death sentences are imposed, as executioners. ... The number included children between the ages of 13 and 16 as well as the very elderly. Virtually all the prisoners are foot soldiers of the Taliban. By a blanket presidential decree, all the prisoners have been denied prisoner-of-war status.

And the problem is? We get what information we need from them, try them, and execute them. That's what they clearly deserve. Heck, Dennis Miller says so - even Bill Maher has said something like that. Well, what then is the problem?

The trials will be held in secret. None of the basic guarantees for a fair trial need be observed. The jurisdiction of U.S. courts is excluded. The military control everything. It is, however, in all respects subject to decisions of the president as commander in chief, even in respect of guilt and innocence in individual cases as well as appropriate sentences. The president has made public in advance his personal view of the prisoners as a group: He has described them all as "killers."

George Bush says they are. Why not trust the man?

This judge does not:

As a lawyer brought up to admire the ideals of American democracy and justice, I would have to say that I regard this as a monstrous failure of justice.

The question is whether the quality of justice envisaged for the prisoners at Guant?namo Bay complies with minimum international standards for the conduct of fair trials. The answer can be given quite shortly: It is a resounding No.

The term kangaroo court springs to mind. It conveys the idea of a preordained, arbitrary rush to judgment by an irregular tribunal which makes a mockery of justice. Trials of the type contemplated by the United States government would be a stain on United States justice. The only thing that could be worse is simply to leave the prisoners in their black hole indefinitely.

Looking at the hard realities of the situation, one wonders what effect it may have on the treatment of United States soldiers captured in future armed conflicts. It would have been prudent, for the sake of American soldiers, to respect humanitarian law.

Clearly the judge does not know America today. Angry - and ready to torture and then kill, without "due process." Due process, in the current post 9-11 world, is for wimps. As is "diplomacy."

And the courts are a joke. It's obvious who the bad guys are - like Michael and Kobe and Scott. Trails and evidence are something liberals insist on, and we sometimes humor them.

For those of us who think differently, well, what we think about what is right has been labeled as treason - not just by Ann Coulter. Check out the first media advertisements the Bush team is now broadcasting nationwide.

The judge also worries, "what must authoritarian regimes, or countries with dubious human rights records, make of the example set by the most powerful of all democracies?"

And "the type of justice meted out at Guant?namo Bay is likely to make martyrs of the prisoners in the moderate Muslim world with whom the West must work to ensure world peace and stability."

Why worry? Cannot sheer military strength and threats of force stop these last two thoughts from occurring to other nations or guerrilla / terrorist movements? Of course.

Well, I am skeptical. But I wasn't elected president - so what do I know?

Lord Steyn here reviews how this all came about at Guant?namo - who passed what and when to make this our way doing business. And he offers alternatives for how to handle this matter from this point forward.

All bullshit. The government we have elected to make such decisions in our names has decided. Let the world call it a kangaroo court and all that. What are they going to do about it?


A monstrous failure of justice
Johan Steyn
International Herald Tribune Friday, November 28, 2003

Topic: Oddities
A Thanksgiving extra!

The International Herald Tribune this Thanksgiving has republished a classic piece on the day. Click on the link below for the whole thing. I quote a bit of it, but the whole is a classic. It's a Frenchified version of the day.

Meanwhile: The dinde is dandy, so let's give thanks
Art Buchwald The International Herald Tribune
Thursday, November 27, 2003

And a bit of it goes like this ...

One of the most important holidays is Thanksgiving Day, known in France as le Jour de Merci Donnant.

Le Jour de Merci Donnant was started by a group of pilgrims (P?lerins) who fled from l'Angleterre before the McCarran Act to found a colony in the New World (le Nouveau Monde) where they could shoot Indians (les Peaux-Rouges) and eat turkey (dinde) to their hearts' content. They landed at a place called Plymouth (subsequently a voiture Americaine) in a wooden sailing ship named the Mayflower, or Fleur de Mai, in 1620. But while the P?lerins were killing the dindes, the Peaux-Rouges were killing the P?lerins, and there were several hard winters ahead for both of them.

The only way the Peaux-Rouges helped the P?lerins was when they taught them how to grow corn (mais). The reason they did this was because they liked corn with their P?lerins.

In 1623, after another harsh year, the P?lerins' crops were so good that they decided to have a celebration and give thanks because more mais was raised by the P?lerins than P?lerins were killed by the Peaux-Rouges.

Every year on le Jour de Merci Donnant, parents tell their children an amusing story about the first celebration.

It concerns a brave capitaine named Miles Standish (known in France as Kilom?tres Deboutish) and a shy young lieutenant named Jean Alden. Both of them were in love with a flower of Plymouth named Priscilla Mullens (no translation).

...And so, on the fourth Thursday in November, American families sit down at a large table brimming with tasty dishes and for the only time during the year eat better than the French do.

No one can deny that le Jour de Merci Donnant is a grande f?te, and no matter how well fed American families are, they never forget to give thanks to Kilom?tres Deboutish, who made this great day possible.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Be thankful.
Eat too much.
Watch the Detroit Lions game, maybe.

Here?

No entries for a day or two.

I'm off to Carlsbad, California, a two hour drive south of Hollywood, almost to San Diego - almost to Mexico, actually. Thanksgiving with my sister and her family.

Back late Friday afternoon.

Everyone, enjoy the day.