Allowing Four Lawyers to Marry

         The truly serious issue on marriage in the US and elsewhere isn't on gay marriage as such but the issues implied in Justice Samuel Alioto's asking if four lawyers could marry. 

         The core system on marriage for the last few millennia centers on a sexually reproducing heterosexual couple. And this makes excellent sense if "The world must be peopled!" Over those millennia, society and then the State came to reward heterosexual marriage out of "pronatalist" policy: "People are the riches of a nation," and the idea was to increase the number of people.

         Okay, but what about nowadays, when the world's been peopled and then some, with seven billion of us and counting, and a strain on the environment and on resources? If we want to be less "natalist," we want to encourage arrangements that are not sexually reproductive at all, or less so, but which might allow raising adopted children — plus providing companionship and economic advantage.

         Soooo ... Mr. Alioto perhaps spoke better than he knew. We need to look at alternatives to reproducing couples and we need to rethink the incentives given to people to form reproducing couples and then reproduce. Such rethinking, and then acting, could include shifting tax burdens away from the childless and more toward those overly enthusiastic about reproduction, celebrating Childless People's Day once a year (or twice, to balance out Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day), toning down the praise of families and family values, noting that the nuclear family sucks for raising kids — putting too much burden upon one couple — and moving toward the old extended family.

         I'm not sure I'd like to see four lawyers raising a puppy, let alone children, but we do need to start talking about allowing such relationships the privileges and advantages of married folk.

         And with that we can start our serious arguments over marriage: the mostly economic ones that will seriously question who gets what, just how much, and for how long and for how many offspring.

Gay Marriage: The Thin Edge of the Camel's Nose Heading Down the Slippery Slope

[Justice Samuel Alito] went on to ask why, if

marriage were a fundamental right, four people —

“let’s say they’re all consenting adults,

highly educated. They’re all lawyers” —

could be denied the right to marry and form a single union.

 — Jeffrey Rosen, Yahoo News

            We should take seriously what Amy Davidson has called "Justice Alito's Polygamy Perplex" and the possibility that the legalization of gay marriage in the USA and elsewhere will be what's facetiously called the thin edge of the camel's nose heading down the slippery slope … in this case a slope leading to a reexamination of not only marriage under the law but also new thinking about family formation.

            Good God, I hope so! I hope we slide down that slope with literally "all deliberate speed" — in the old sense, before that line became a sick joke with resistance to desegregation.

            Jeffrey Rosen tells us that "[…] Justice Kennedy has insisted that laws disadvantaging gays and lesbians violate their dignity and their constitutional rights to liberty and equality," and Justice Kennedy is correct. What I'm interested in, though, includes the disadvantaging of gays by their not being able to take advantage of the crasser advantages of marriage.

            I'm an unmarried/never-married guy with some background in history and ecology, and I understand that marriage has long functioned and functioned well for what is known as "natalism" or "pronatalism," the encouragement of the production and raising of children for the security of the State (see Exodus 1.8 f.) and prosperity of society: "People are the riches of a nation." But some time after Earth's human population hit three billion, pronatalist theory became pretty problematic ecologically, and military engagements throwing mass armies at one another haven't worked out that well from, say, the Napoleonic Wars through the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-89. And with a current human population of over seven billion and rising rapidly, with a significant number of countries with nuclear weapons for serious warfare, with climate change offering significant challenges and nonrenewable resources increasingly not renewed — let's say that nowadays natalism as public policy is a bad idea.

            So non-reproductive unions can be in themselves a good idea.

            Non-reproductive marriages where the couple adopts are an even better idea.

            It could also be a good idea to have reproductive and family-raising units of more than two consenting adults.

            The nuclear family has been a pretty popular way to manage marriage and child-rearing, but it has hardly been the only way; and the sort of rigorously nuclear family that's the dominant ideal in America nowadays — Mom, Dad, kid(s) — is a relatively new invention. Until recently, many children grew up in households, with a grandparent or two around (if they lived that long), and in the house or fairly close by, there were relatives, friends, and often a servant or, for the rich, a staff.

            Indeed, I'm not that ancient, and I grew up in a functioning neighborhood in Chicago where there were significant adults in my life beyond my parents, and who helped raise me.

            Anthropologists and science fiction writers have documented (anthropologists) or imagined (fiction writers) complex ways for getting children a good deal of adult attention in a manner that offers a range of models somewhat beyond Mom and Dad and without, as in the nuclear option, exhausting Mom and Dad — especially Mom — and often driving them, and the kids, up the wall.

            There are alternatives: "line marriage" is suggested in at least four novels by Robert A. Heinlein, and various forms of threesomes are suggested in novels such as Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17 and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. And Ursula K. Le Guin, author of much anthropological science fiction, has a good deal of fun with the anthropologically baroque family life on her planet O, where the people are divided into two pretty much arbitrary "moieties" — halves — and "Marriage […] is a foursome, the sedoretu — a man and a woman from the Morning moiety and a man and a woman from the Evening moiety. You’re expected to have sex with both your spouses of the other moiety, and not to have sex with your spouse of your own moiety. So each sedoretu has two expected heterosexual relationships, two expected homosexual relationships, and two forbidden heterosexual relationships." Le Guin concludes her explanation drily with "It’s just as complicated as it sounds, but aren’t most marriages?"

            What Justice Alito sees as a possible reduction to the absurd of the logic of gay marriage might turn out a good idea for variations on the theme of marriage.

            Among other things the debate on gay marriage should encourage consideration of alternatives to the nuclear family, and the debate should combine that consideration of examination of real conflicts on marriage and, well, money. We need to debate vigorously the crasser advantages of marriage in tax breaks for married couples as such and tax deductions for children, even as those children are eligible for public support: for a major example, public schools.

            I'm a former teacher and was raised a Chicago liberal; and I believe with all my heart in well-funded public education such as I got. I support downright generous public funding of schools and childcare and preschools, plus generous tax breaks for the first child and for adopted children. And for the second child for a couple, and maybe a third, in case, as my mother would've said, "In case, God forbid, something bad happens." Beyond that third kid, however, we need to talk.

            In a world of seven billion people, should couples get tax breaks for exceeding a sensible bag limit for children?

            Gay couples not reproducing are moving in the right direction. Gay couples adopting, are doing even better.

            And a reproducing foursome that wants a third biological kid — well that's good, too.

            From the Old Stone Age into the middle of the 20^th century, encouraging families was an excellent idea. It can still be a good idea, but we must expand the definition of family to include various combinations of consenting adults and, sometimes, their kids. And we must get down to wonkish details about tax codes and crass discussions of advantages for families in terms of money.

Limiting US Campaign Contributions: One Tiny Hope (3 April 2014)

Let me offer this thin ray of hope for anyone hoping for eventually limiting the money going to buy US elections: there's the possibility for some strange-bedfellow alliances.

A decade or so ago, maybe two, during an earlier round of debate on limiting political contributions, one corporate leader/rich dude was asked about how valuable he saw the influence he was buying for his money. He was willing to allow, indeed insist, that some corporations and individuals got back plenty on their political investments, but such fictive and actual folk were a bit above his pay grade. "You may see buying influence, and that is happening; but to me it feels more like extortion."

This guy felt he had some decent arguments to make for legislation and he really, really, really didn't like having to "pay for access": pay off legislators — sorry, contribute to campaigns — to get a chance to be heard.

That top 1% are 1%, and only some of them get off buying politicians. There may be a sufficient number of rich and influential people getting increasingly tired of being shaken down by politicians — and politicians getting tired of (from their point of view) begging for money — that a potent coalition could offer a vision of a world where there are limits to the shake-downs and a cap on how much a politician may, and therefore has to, beg (and/or extort).

There may come to be enough for A Coalition of the Annoyed to push through a Constitutional Amendment allowing serious campaign reform.  

SCOTUS on Christian Prayer at Town Meetings (6 May 2014)

This much on the early May 2014 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States allowing specifically Christian prayers to open town meetings:

     First, I'd like to be the 215^th Bible-educated liberal to quote at the Supreme Court Jesus's injunction to pray in private, to wit: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. [...] But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. [...] And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words" (Matthew 6.5-7).

     As an occasional and selectively-observant Reform Jew of Leftist and religion/State-separatist inclinations, I'll note this much positive in the decision: It should remind politically conservative Jews (and some non-SCOTUS Catholics) that their allies-of-convenience who talk of the USA as "a Christian nation" mean exactly what they say. In this theory — or doctrine — the USA is a nation and that nation is Christian; to be outside the true Church is to be outside of the nation and just a guest on that Christian nation's territory. (And as a nice young student once said to me in [mostly] innocence, "I used to be Catholic, but now I'm a Christian."). A bad possibility that's been brewing for a generation or so is that doctrinal tolerance among the various faithfuls will allow them to work together to impose a vague "nondenominational" religiosity on us all. This Supreme Court decision may help put that off.

     Meanwhile, I suggest that readers suggest to the City Parents of the Town of Greece and similar pious places this highly appropriate, and now perfectly legal, opening for their meetings: "Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam, asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav, v'tzivanu la-asok b'tsorchei ha-tzibur." Or, for those of us who don't do Hebrew, "Blessed are You, Eternal our God, Ruler of the Universe, Who has sanctified us with Your mitzvot and enjoined us to occupy ourselves with the needs of the community."

     The next week they might open with this poetic prayer of beginnings:

                     In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
                     Praise be to God, the Lord of the Worlds,                     The Merciful One, the Compassionate One,                     Master of the Day of Doom.
                     Thee alone we serve, to Thee alone we cry for help.                     Guide us in the straight path                     The path of them Thou hast blessed.                     Not of those with whom Thou art angry                     Nor of those who go astray. 

    If your town council aren't much into subtlety, use "Allah," the Arabic for "God."

    I'm dead serious here, people: If we're gonna play, let's play, and — to repeat an obvious suggestion — that means you, too, Scientologists and Satanists, laconic neo-Pagans (though Jesus may've been prejudiced there), and Awaiters of the AI Singularity. Let us make members of that Christian nation welcome as we begin some meetings our way (many of our various Ways). 

Hobby Lobby, Zygotes, Gays, Death & Damnation

Just as you do not know how the lifebreath passes into the limbs

within the womb of the pregnant woman,

so you cannot foresee the actions of God […].  

— Koheleth (Ecclesiastes 11.5, Tanakh)

            Behind the Hobby Lobby case on one side are two points of doctrine in everyday Christian theology and a question of definition. On another side, there is the conflict over what we Americans want America to be.

            The Nicene Creed requires Christians to believe in "the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." So Christians may be "mortalists" and believe that when you're dead you're dead, until the Resurrection and the lifebreath reanimates your body. Most, though — the great majority of Christians and many Abrahamic believers — take real life to be "the life of the world to come" for each individual soul, after death, either with God in heaven or emphatically without God in hell. Body is one thing, and the soul is separable from it and definitely another thing; the mortal body is, at best, the temple of the immortal soul, at worst the soul's prison and a constant temptation to sin and damnation.

            For the second point, How is that immortal soul to be saved? Well, "By faith and faith alone," but most Christians believe that our choices, intentions, and desires are important and not merely reflections of whether or not we're saved. Most Christians believe themselves free from the Mosaic Law, but they are really fond of a few of its provisions. Puritans really like the Mosaic rules for sexual purity.

            Most serious Christians, then, believe that it's eternal life for the soul that's really important, not the transitory life of the body, and that the salvation of the soul depends on true faith and in following a handful of the 613 Mosaic injunctions, especially those on morality, with "morality" a short form for "sexual morality" (however much Moses and Jesus and the Prophets had a whole lot of other issues in mind).

            Now, to say that political decisions about abortion hinge on "when life begins" is ridiculous if by "life" you mean "biological life." Eggs are alive; sperm are alive; and zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are obviously alive. Life does not begin; Bible and biology agree it began, and has been passed on. Considering "when life begins" makes sense, however, if one is talking about human life, or real life: the life of the reborn in Christ, the "life of the world to come." Or the potentially reborn: the life of any creature with a soul.

            So, two questions.

            First of these two, there's that question of definition, plus a technical distinction and some factual details.

            "Birth control" usually involves contraception: preventing the merging of sperm and egg to prevent conception. A "morning-after-pill" or possibly an IUD, however, may prevent not conception but pregnancy, where pregnancy is seen as the implantation of a developing embryo into the uterus and development thereafter. Most birth control methods, then, would be contraception, but some birth control may function as abortifacients, if you define abortion to include anything resulting in the death of a fertilized egg ("zygote") or embryo.

            And this returns to the background and foundation for Hobby Lobby issues and much else. In this case: when does the soul enter the child in the womb? One can say that it doesn't: one may not believe in souls, or one may believe the lifebreath is a rather literal breath and comes with the first breath a (now) baby takes. Christians generally believe in a soul more refined than breath, so it can enter the womb earlier. How early? Koheleth, the "Preacher" in the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, tosses off as something unknowable how the lifebreath comes to a fetus, so Jews, Christians, and Muslims — peoples of The Book — ought to be cautious in speculating on when it happens. Still, one elegant answer is, At the beginning of individual human life: "ensoulment" occurs at the moment of conception, at the creation of a unique, individual human being (with "monozygotic siblings" — identical twins and such — a limiting case, but not a contradiction).

            If zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are ensouled, then abortion is (or at least may be) not only murder but potentially worse than murder. With ensoulment at conception, a fertilized egg is an unbaptized infant, unwashed of Original Sin and — unless saved by a special grace — in big trouble. As God tells "reprobate infants" in Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom (1662), however individually sinless they are, these kids are descendants of fallen Adam:

A crime it is, therefore in bliss

     you may not hope to dwell;

But unto you I shall allow

     the easiest room in Hell. (stanza 181)

            From this point of view, abortion involves two impure fornicators — in one standard scenario — who have produced an unborn bastard; then, piling sin on sin, they refuse to "be fruitful and multiply" and sentence the innocent child to death and eternal torment (though relatively mild torment, if Wigglesworth is right).

            Abortion on a large scale, in this argument, is arguably worse than genocide.

            A similar argument, if less sensational, can be made with homosexuality.

            Since the Fall, sex is at best problematic and needs to be redeemed. The most central method of redemption is to have as sex's goal, reproduction, thereby fulfilling the commandment to both Eve and Adam and Noah to multiply and fill the earth. Plus, a pronatalist policy is good for national defense (as Pharaoh recognized in Exodus) and good for business: "People are the riches of a nation," which isn't exactly Biblical but has a point.

            And sex is useful to reinforce the marriage bond between man and woman, established in Eden and reaffirmed by Christ by His attendance at the marriage feast at Cana.

            Homosexuality is explicitly forbidden to Jews in what Christians call "The Old Testament," and even if Christians are free of the Law generally, they aren't free of some laws. If our generation can say that homosexuality is OK, how about the other abominations forbidden in Leviticus, such as sex with nonhuman animals? (It's OK though to engage in the abomination of eating shrimp: St. Paul freed Christians from Jewish dietary law — and the rest gets complicated.)

            And so forth, including with "the homosexual agenda" the seduction of the young into sin and hence damnation.

            Such arguments are logical and elegant. The problem, of course, is that they don't pass (as the cliché has it) Constitutional muster; so we get inelegant arguments, often, in the mouths of politicians talking outside of the religion ghetto, arguments that are intentionally confused and misleading.

            So I'd like to hear more from honest Christian Right-wingers who emphatically do want to follow through to the end (reductio ad finem) the logic of their faith, and impose it on America as a Christian nation, not a secular republic. Or, perhaps, it is a proper faith for an America parallel to a restored Caliphate: in our case a renewed Christendom, where no secular law may contradict God's doctrine.

            And let's hear more from American small "r" republicans, who don't want imposed upon us a Christian nation or Republic controlled by any of our religions.

            But, please, no more bullshit distractions like asking "When life begins." Yet again, it began. There are technical questions about how IUD's work and other recent methods of birth control, but let's just start with allowing "There's always a death in an abortion" even as there are over 100 million little deaths with every human male ejaculation and at least one dead egg with each menstruation and many, many zygotes and young embryos not getting implanted and getting, so to speak, flushed out to die. One serious question is what dies and how much legal protection to give it/him/her, if any. Another serious question is what extent beliefs on such basic issues should be applied to public policy. A third serious question adds to "What are they" the equally contested issue of "Who are we?"

            I'm a citizen of the American Republic, and not part of a Christian nation. I kind of like the idea of "lifebreath," but as a figure of speech, not a theory for how (land) animals function. I don't think I'd get far in an argument with a logically-consistent Christian, let's say a devout Jesuit. But I think we everyday American can work out compromises that are logically incoherent and maybe philosophically disreputable — but that allow policies that are respectful, compassionate, roughly just, and practical.

            Someplace along the line, an embryo becomes a human being; we can recognize that, and respect the rights of women to control their bodies, and the rights of citizens generally to be left the hell alone ordinarily, and given help when its good policy to do so.


            If we argue sensibly enough, we may even get health care for all Americans and can start to work on population policy, immigration, preserving resources, rebuilding infrastructure, ameliorating climate change, nuclear-weapons reduction: well, the wonkish issues we ignore to get to round 457 of our much figuratively sexier Culture Wars over sex.

Hobby Lobby, Contraception, Cats — & the "Goal" of Sex (18 July 2014)

      It's significant that in deciding what's being called The Hobby-Lobby Case the Supreme Court of the United States found, in the words of Justice Samuel Alito, that "The owners of the businesses have religious objections to abortion, and according to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients." Writing in Mother Jones, Erika Eichelberger and Molly Redden — like many others — have taken issue with this finding since "According to the Food and Drug Administration, all four of the contraceptive methods Hobby Lobby objects to [...] do not prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg into the uterus, which the owners of Hobby Lobby consider abortion. Instead, these methods prevent fertilization." I.e., these methods are not abortifacients causing, well, an abortion, if a very early one, but contraceptives, preventing conception: the uniting of egg and sperm to make a zygote, in this case a unique human individual (either immediately or down the line of development with poorly-labeled "identical" twins and triplets and such). Eichelberger and Redden assert that Alito "and the other conservative justices are saying that in a conflict between a religious view and scientific research, religion wins."


      I'll put it provocatively (and alliteratively) that five male Roman Catholic Justices prudently set a precedent privileging belief on the issue of contraception — and will be able to back that up down the line with adding traditional beliefs, even if those beliefs aren't exactly scientifically correct.
There are Biblical injunctions — mitzvot —  to be fruitful and multiply, injunctions we humans have fulfilled faithfully and probably excessively, dangerously excessively. (Caring for the poor, honesty in our business dealings, loving one another, welcoming the stranger — these we've been less good at, but let that go.)

      There are complex Biblical views on "levirate marriage," and you can argue if you like whether or not the Biblical character Onan did evil and deserved to die because he wouldn't impregnate his bother's widow  (Genesis 38.8), but it's a stretch to go beyond that reading of the story to condemn all "spilling of seed" by human males.

      And, in general, Scripture is screamingly silent on contraception, condoms, "Plan B" and other matters. To get the (pro)natalist job done, the Judaism and Christianity had to go outside Scripture.
Roman Catholicism went to Natural Law, and that's where Justice Alito knew what he was doing to privilege personal belief over science and the Court later will be able to bring in traditional belief over what seems to be pretty clear science.

      A strong traditional Roman Catholic position contra contraception is that contraception violates Natural Law because the natural goal (finis, telos) of sex is reproduction.

      And what if there are strong reasons to believe on scientific grounds that such beliefs are wrong and wrong-headed?

      Consider a profound "stupid question" (my phrase) I'm getting from somewhere in the work of the ethologist Konrad Lorenz: probably On Aggression —  or maybe out of the textbook Ethology: The Biology of Behaviror by Lorenz's student Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt. Ready? Then, Why do cats hunt?

      The teleological answer is that cats hunt, and hunt very well, in order to eat. Okay, but do this thought experiment: Take a hungry cat and put him/her into a large room. (I'll now switch to "her" because English mildly genders cats female.) Introduce into the room in some humane way — the nastiness will come soon enough — a mouse.

      The cat spots, tracks, and stalks the mouse. If all goes well, from the cat's point of view, she approaches, pounces, bites, shakes, and kills the mouse, and then eats it.
The cat has hunted and she has eaten.

      Introduce another mouse.
The cat will spot the mouse, track, stalk, pounce, bite, shake, kill, and then eat at least the good parts.
Introduce another mouse.

      The cat will spot, track, stalk, pounce, bit, shake, kill — probably — but, if no longer hungry, leave the mouse or look for some hunting-challenged human to give it to as if that human were a mildly retarded kitten who just couldn't get the hang of mouse hunting and needs help ("Look, dear; this is what we hunt and kill and eat").

       Throw in another mouse.

      Or don't, since by now you should have figured out where this is going.
At least if I remember the experiment correctly — and if this interpretation has held up — cats' hunting is not some sort of holistic instinct with the telos of mouse-eating but an ordered series of stereotypical, genetically-based (although that's complicated) behaviors that in this weird experiment will finally get the cat just sitting there while mice run around it.

      In nature, however, the natural order of things is that this series of behaviors will — increasingly as the cat learns her craft — result in the cat's catching small critters of various sorts and eating them. Common cats hunt as a hierarchy of behaviors and eats and frequently go on to reproduce as excessively as humans.

      Why do humans have sex?

      In some cases human beings engage in vaginal intercourse with the intensely desired goal to have children. But not often. Usually we have sex to "get off," for pleasure.

      And, often enough, and nowadays more often than is good for our survival, human beings will get off in such a way that they eventually (re)produce more humans.

      Is sex an instinct? In the old ethological sense of an innate and species-stereotypic pattern of muscle movement, the only thing instinctive about sex is that final, semi-convulsive humping before climax. The rest is a vastly complicated superset of behaviors resulting from intricate interactions among culture, immediate social structures, individual history, and maybe even some freely-willed decisions.

      Maybe sex is a "drive," if such terms are still used.

      It does not seem likely that sex is, scientifically viewed, a goal-directed, "teleological" ... whatever, as suggested by Aristotle, accepted as commonsensical by generations of anyone who thought about such things at all — and pretty much dogmatized by the Roman Catholic Church.
Arguments from "Natural Law" are helped a good deal if it turns out that scientific inquiry shows that what's argued is indeed what's taking place in (small "n") nature. Such arguments are undercut when scientific study indicates — and I paraphrase here — Nope, that ain't how things work.
There is no Mosaic injunction "Thou shalt not wrap thy willy, guys" — or Jewish guys, anyway — "or otherwise practice the perversion of contraception." Moses and the pronatalist tradition didn't get specific on that one because condoms were a long way in the future, to say nothing of "the Pill" or "the morning-after pill."

      Nothing in Christian Scripture either — and I invite comments on the Quran.

      The Arustitelian  tradition and Natural Law have been the Church's best argument against contraception for centuries, and Aristotle, though still respected, just isn't the scientific authority he once was.

      We look more empirically at nature nowadays, and that kind of research hasn't been kind to the idea of goals in nature.

      So Justice Alito did well to privilege what is strongly believed to be true over what may actually be the case — at least when it comes to contraception. Down the road just a bit will be the sort of disasters that will make the Church's position of contraception very, very controversial, and what the Hierarchy believes to be the law of nature will need all the privilege it can get.