on marriage

A week ago my wife and I told our kids that we would be getting a divorce. I begin with this to provide some context. Though mine will be ending, I believe in marriage. Humanity may not need marriage, may not need monogamy, but we have seen fit to have these things. Plenty of cultures throughout our history have had varying standards as to how marriage works, how it is arranged or spontaneous, how it based on love or tribal politics, how it might involve multiple husbands or multiple wives or just one of each... Or lately here in America, we've spent a lot of time debating the idea that it doesn't have to be one man and one woman. We cite The Bible, whether flippantly with Adam and Steve (or not so much, as the argument goes), or seriously, citing homosexuality as an abomination, a perversion. We argue that marriage has always been between a man and a woman (it hasn't) and we cannot possibly change such a vital definition of what makes our culture what it is. 

But this is something we do constantly. Even marriage--in this country, marriage was not a concern for those writing the Constitution because at the time, marriage was a local concern. The documentation didn't matter; if your community recognized you as a married couple, you WERE a married couple. That you probably had a ceremony in the local church (if there was one) was just a simple way of getting the community's approval.

But, as things went along, marriage became a larger concern. In Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation, Nancy Cott argues essentially that American marriage in particular is defined primarily by the notion of consent, just as our form of government is built around the consent of the people. But, the question becomes, what happens when two adults' consent to one another offends the religious beliefs of others? Marriage had been recognized publicly long before America came along--the support of it helped maintain family structure and the larger societal structure atop it... it also helped avoid what Cott calls the "vagaries" of sexual conduct, the perversions we can cite from The Bible as well as the slippery slope arguments we can lump in with them (the common two: what's next, marrying our pets? what's next, legal pedophilia?). However much Christians--while I acknowledge that other religions also take issue with homosexuality, in America, it often comes down to "this is a Christian nation" vs. two consenting adults of the same gender wanting to have the same legal rights to marriage as the rest of us do... anyway, however much Christians may not like homosexual behavior, outside of a Christian dictatorship, they do not have the right to dictate their morality upon the rest of us. When we put our morality--especially that from The Bible, if we take it seriously and entirely--upon the masses, we endanger so many advances we have made. 

And, now it is my turn for a sort of slippery slope argument. If we argue ancient morality over progressive (and I do not mean Progressive, capital P) ideals, then we must reserve a place for slavery, a place for the right to not only have our wives (plural) but to beat them if they do not obey. We must reserve a place for polygamous marriage and concubines to boot. The notion of being conservative (again, no capital C) is nice--who wouldn't want to revert to a "simpler" time when the thrust of our modern world moves so quickly and so strongly in directions we not only find abhorrent but can barely even imagine sometimes. Personally, I cannot fully imagine having multiple wives. I think a good marriage in the busyness of modern life takes so much time and so much work that anything built on love (or something like it) would not fit into such a plural environment. But, not everyone necessarily needs marriage built around love, and plenty of cultures--including the central one of the Old Testament, mind you--have practiced plural marriage. In America, we didn't officially tackle that topic until the Mormons became a local, then national problem. And the Supreme Court argued that plural marriage was not a right guaranteed under the First Amendment. Yet, for those Mormons, and for those of many other human cultures, this was "traditional marriage." For Mormons, it was ordained by God. Yet, our nation could dictate it away.

And, it can dictate away the one man one woman marriage as well; rather it can add to it. And, when a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 58% of the nation supports gay marriage, why shouldn't we add to the definition? Let us assume for a moment that there is a God and he is the God of The Bible and he will punish homosexuals for their lifestyle and their marriage. What difference does this make to the rest of us? Are we so stuck on Old Testament dictates--homosexuality is an abomination there, not in the New Testament--that we also fear God will destroy our nation like he did Sodom and Gomorrah because we have officially supported a sinful behavior? If this is the case, shall the Christians (and other religious affiliates who also have gods who don't like homosexuality) among us not simply follow Lot's example and be better, be worth saving?

The Old Testament God is an angry god, just as I am an angry man sometimes lately, not because I disagree with Conservative (capital C) values or that I hate the prejudices inherent in this entire debate (or because my own life is about to be twisted around into a form I wished it was not) but because we pretend like this is a simple argument on either side. God says it's wrong, so we must keep it from happening. There is no God and homosexual adults want legal recognition so we should allow it. We must treat debated issues simplistically most of the time; we must deal in broad labels and generic examples or we would never come to any decisions. But, far too often we forget (or deliberately ignore) the fact that real people are involved here. When we--the heterosexual majority, that is--find love and choose marriage, we expect that we will be allowed to express that love in obtaining that marriage, publicly, legally. We expect that we will have certain privileges--hospital visitation, for example--and recognition. The opposition interjects here, of course, that the gays can have civil unions, they don't need "marriage." But, that is the inequality that is unAmerican in all of this. If you want to argue that none of us get marriage anymore, and there will only be civil unions, that's one thing. But, I don't hear many suggesting as much. And, if they did, then "marriage"becomes meaningless as a term. I would interject: If it is only a religious label, then why would any gay couple want it? But, then I am simplifying. Let's backtrack to my slippery slope above. If, rather than freeing the slaves, we simply redefined "freedom" to include their servitude, then nothing has changed. We are still subjugating a people over superficial differences. We are still allowing out bigotry and religious views to overrule that which is humane.

There is no reason that a homosexual couple should not also expect the privileges and recognition that comes with marriage. There is no reason that a homosexual couple should not be allowed to marry just like the rest of us. It's flippant and simplistic, but a group of photos I saw online a few days ago comes to mind. One photo was a couple who, the caption tells us, were drunk and in Vegas and decided to get married. The second photo includes a woman who, the caption tells us, got bored of being alone so found herself yet another husband to marry. The third is a homosexual couple who is not allowed to marry because they live in a state where it is not legal. We value the first two "marriages" the larger caption tells us, but we do not value the third. Personally, as long as marriage has legal ramifications, I value all types of marriage between consenting adults, just as we would "value" all legal partnerships between them. As long as there is some "traditional" aspect to marriage, some "religious" notions attached, as long as our culture believes in love and the allowance that we can build partnerships based thereon, then there is room for debate. But, we choose to fight over superficial differences like gender rather than what we might truly value within marriage deeper within ourselves--or that we perhaps don't actually value that much, which may be why we don't debate it as much. In those photos just cited, maybe we don't value the drunk Vegas wedding, but we DO allow it. That is de facto valuing of it, even if we think little of it, even if it is annulled a day later. And, what is wrong with marrying repeatedly because the alternative is loneliness? And, what is wrong with marrying the love of one's life, regardless of what genitals that person may have? If we are reductionist about it and say marriage is strictly for the purpose of procreation, then there's a whole new slippery slope to go down, forbidding the marriage of anyone who is not fertile. But, we don't go there. Well, some of us may. I try not to.

I try not to make the slippery slope leaps unless at the same time labeling them as such, as I did above.

That being said, I must address the slippery slopes that come from opponents of gay marriage. To leap from gay marriage to bestiality and pedophilia and the downfall of our "Christian" nation is simplistic, misrepresentative, and patently ridiculous. Two consenting adults is in no way the same thing as an adult and an animal or an adult and a child. If I need to elaborate on that point further, then you reading this are too far gone to understand most of what I've already said and you should probably move along... and now I'm being rude. I don't mean to be. 

As I mentioned, I am angry. And, I am sad. The idea that a nation supposedly built on equality can ever pick and choose who gets to be equal or how they get to be is a depressing thing to me. That we have already subjugated blacks, slaughtered natives, and still so often operate under the idea that women are inherently inferior to men is similarly depressing. The idea that we cannot change for the better, to be more inclusive--that is something far worse.

If one's behavior does not hurt another, then it should not be illegal. If a couple's behavior does not hurt anyone... personal offense excepted, then it should not be illegal. It's strange, but it seems like the same people who would say to liberals (no capital L) like me, if you hate America so much why don't you leave, are the same people that don't understand that if they don't like gay marriage so much, they can simply turn away from it. If you turn out to be correct about God and sin and all that, He will punish those sinners. You do your part, be a good person who doesn't hate, who doesn't reduce others beneath human levels over personal offense. You be a good "Christian" and let the rest of us be good, well, good whatever we happen to be. We can actually all be good people, even if we disagree on some of the specifics. There's plenty of common ground on what is good. And, there is certainly some objective standards to what works FOR society rather than against it. Let us all do that. And, when it is, as they say, behind closed doors, let us do whatever we want as long as those involved are able to consent.

And, let us save our rage for things that actually hurt other people, not just things we don't like.

rough draft Article IV (take two) of "On Wage Slavery and Notions of Socialism"

“In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.”

- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 29-2

Article IV

Marx predicted that "the contradiction between ever richer capitalists and ever poorer workers would eventually lead to the collapse of the capitalist system and its replacement with socialism, by which he meant essentially the end of class warfare and exploitation and their replacement by a system in which the benefits of production were shared equitably” (Isbister, 51). But, of course this collapse is taking far too long, and destroying millions of lives the world over in the process, stagnating the lives of the poor abroad and here in America, consistently stripping the middle and lower classes of more and more options and of more and more of their power over their own lives. Leo Tolstoy argued in "What Is to Be Done?" that "it is really so simple. If I want to aid the poor, that is, to help the poor not to be poor, I ought not to make them poor" (54). As Engels suggests in "The Housing Question," the housing shortage, taken as one example of what our system forces upon the poor, is "a necessary product of the bourgeois social order... it cannot fail to be present in a society in which the great masses of the workers are exclusively dependent on wages" (44). In other words, our modern capitalist system not creates inequality not as an unfortunate byproduct but as a necessary piece. And, in response to the resulting, ever-widening gap between the upper and lower classes, it comes to those in charge to do something about it. Richard Cloward suggested the obvious, that "a federal program of income redistribution has become necessary to elevate the poor en mass from poverty." Of course, such a thing is only necessary as long as we remain within the confines of a capitalist system; Engels does, after all, argue that the housing shortage (or, I would suggest, any of the conditions that come with being the working poor) "can be abolished... only if the whole social order from which it springs is fundamentally refashioned" (44). But, in America, to even suggest anything other than capitalism is verboten. And, that same attitude is increasingly the case around the world. So, assuming operation within our modern Consumer Capitalist system, what is to be done?

Before answering what should be a simple question we must come to an understanding, beyond even the previous argumentation in the previous articles above, of what poverty is and how people come to it. As John Isbister describes it in Promises Not Kept, "lack of income is only the beginning of an understanding of poverty... Other attributes include low life expectancy, adult illiteracy, underweight [--or in America, for example, with our subsidized, corn syrup enriched diet, overweight--] children, inadequate housing, child labor, food insecurity, and lack of access to safe water, to health services, and to sanitation." We take many of these things for granted in the core nations, here in America or in her "democratic" allies. We have our own lower classes, our own citizens who live at or below the poverty level, but for the most part, we like to believe our people are doing okay. Economist and social theorist Simon Patten suggested we have come upon a "‘new basis of civilization.’ Industrial society, he contended, had moved from a ‘pain economy,’ where the scarcity of resources demanded a struggle for subsistence, to a ‘pleasure economy,’ in which abundance was potentially available to all” (Kasson 98).

That potential is the key to understanding the American Dream and American refusal to undertake real reform to diminish the economic gap between rich and poor. Fundamentally, it must be understood that "what poverty means is the inability to make choices" (Isbister, 18). Just as the capitalist system constricts all of our options, it restricts even further the options of the poor. But, we like to think that the poor are only poor because they made the wrong choices, not because they have been exploited, not because the system requires some of us to be on the bottom, but because they screwed up. We can blame them, we can ignore them, we can pretend they do not exist, but then, to channel Niemoller, what do we do when poverty comes for us?

It is important to draw a link, and a contradiction, between the American Dream and its notion that we can all have success, that we can all be well to do if we just work hard enough and make the right choices and ideas I proposed in my essay, "For Everyone Everything." The American Dream depends on us all believing that we can have everything. It does not necessarily tell us that in order for we as individuals to achieve the Dream, someone else must be left behind, left beneath. In fact, the Protestant Ethic discussed in Article III would suggest that, hand in hand with the American Dream, we are not only allowed but encouraged to assume that the poor we leave behind deserve to be where we leave them because, as I already said above, they made the wrong choices. And, by obvious inference, if we have success, if we get rich, then we made the right choices. Capitalism under the Protestant Ethic becomes not some objective system dealing in hard currency but a measure of each and every one of us in terms of moral and spiritual currency. In "For Everyone Everything," I suggested something that should befit the American Dream, if America is not a collection of disparate individuals but rather a collective formed by those individuals. Patten's notion that we have potential abundance for all is not far off from what is possible if we are more willing to share, more willing to lift each other up... At this point in our history, it seems, we would rather lift ourselves up by our bootstraps so that we can then stomp down on everyone else, the poor here or the exploited abroad with those same boots.

John Isbister suggests that "living in a world of obscene inequality, the privileged have a moral responsibility to do what they can to improve the lot of the less privileged." This seems like a very moral attitude, a Christian attitude, and yet we claim to be a Christian nation and reject this very idea. This is why, in "For Everyone Everything," I suggested "a new approach--call it socialist if you like...

This new approach: the government exists to promote justice, i.e. to renounce, discredit and disallow racism and sexism and other forms of discrimination, to ensure that those who commit crimes (and not just those who can't afford good attorneys) pay the price as our society sees fit. Also, that housing access is equal...

Remember the Universal Declaration of Human Rights quoted in the preamble above; it says:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (Article 25-1)

Human Rights Education Associates suggest:

Population growth, migration to urban areas, conflicting needs for existing land, and insufficient financial and natural resources have resulted in widespread homelessness and habitation in inadequate housing. In every country children, men and women sleep on sidewalks, under bridges, in cars, subway stations, and public parks, live in ghettos and slums, or "squat" in buildings other people have abandoned. The United Nations estimates that there are over 100 million homeless people and over 1 billion people worldwide inadequately housed.

I further argued in "For Everyone Everything" that the new approach ensure "that access to education and jobs and transportation is equal, that access to healthcare is equal.". In addition to this, the Declaration of Human Rights suggests everyone has the right to equal access to public services (Article 21-2), to social security (Article 22), to "life, liberty and security of person" (Article 3), and even to an education (Article 26-1). After all, Thomas Jefferson called the people "the only safe depositories" of government. He argued that to render them safe from that government, "their minds must be improved to a certain degree." In other words, if we want democracy or any other form of society that includes the populace in the decision making, we need to have a guarantee of education.

My own argument continued with the notion that having access to these things--to public services, to social security, to an education--is what makes "domestic tranquility," the promotion of which I listed, per the preamble to the Constitution of the United States, as another reason for the government to exist. And, my argumentation continued:

This new approach: the government exists to promote the general welfare of all of its citizens, i.e. that, as Alexander Hamilton argued in his "Report on Manufactures," 5 December 1791, "the object to which an appropriation of money is to be made" or for which a law is to be passed (I would add), "be General and not local," that the government not promote, directly or indirectly, one portion of its peoples over another, be it certain corporations, be it certain races or creeds or religions.



This new approach, put simply in perhaps some very socialist terms: for everyone everything.




John Isbister calls the poor the "people on the bottom, the people denied benefits of the society in which they live.” If government is to exist, if government is to have a purpose, then guaranteeing the benefits of society to these people... to all the people should be its purpose. The American Dream--the Capitalist Dream--is something approximating my argument; instead of "for everyone everything," it's "for everyone the potential for everything." But, that simply isn't good enough. Potential means nothing without guaranteed access.

Barry Soetoro (my "after-dinner-speech")

7:24pm, 4 August 1961, a grand conspiracy is put into effect. A child is born in Kenya, but his parents place the birth announcement, as noted journalist Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz put it on his Daily Show, 22 July 2010, “in one of our fringe states’ local newspapers… your Hawaiis, your Alaskas, your Pennsylvanias. You heard me. And then…” they wait… “until this baby is a middle-aged man. Now the trap is set. [They] just [sit] back and let that child go out and win the election for president of the United States.”

But, during the Presidential Primaries in 2008, rumors of the truth begin to circulate, subversive emails calling for us to stop this usurper from coming to power.

This usurper’s name: Barry Soetoro… you might know him better under his conspiratorial alias, Barack Hussein Obama II. A Los Angeles Times op-ed, “Behind the ‘Birther’ Blather,” this past Wednesday, 16 February 2011, cited a PPP poll that “found that 51% of likely Republican primary voters believe that Obama was born outside the United States.” And, 11 states’ legislatures have introduced “birther” bills to challenge Barry’s eligibility in 2012. But, despite even these official attacks on his citizenship, he is still our President.

Today, I will explain how this Kenyan boy has pulled the wool over our eyes, I will show you how we can join the Birther Movement in applying the constitution to get him out of office, and then I will show you the implications of all this.

First, an explanation:

Here is Barry’s real Birth Certificate:

Nevermind that Mombasa was part of Zanzibar at the time, not ceded to Kenya until December 1963. Nevermind that Kenya was not the “Republic of Kenya” until December 1964. And, nevermind, of course, that this document, submitted as evidence by Dr Orly Taitz—orlytaitzesq.com, the “World’s Leading Obama Eligibility Challenge Web Site”—was pronounced a forgery of this Australian document.

Oh, and nevermind the name, Barack Hussein II. As I’ll show you in a moment, his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro filled out an Indonesian school application with the boy’s real name.

But, first, here is Barry’s real Birth Certificate:

Again, ignore the name. And, ignore the fact that, yeah, Mombasa wasn’t part of the British Protectorate of Kenya for another two years. Look at the footprint—it’s black—this is clearly the Birth Certificate for our usurper President.

Now, if you saw the Associated Press’ article “Final Nail in Obama’s Lack of US Citizenship Coffin,” 1 April 2009 (which they conveniently emailed rather than bother publishing), you know that Americans for Freedom of Information released Barry’s transcripts from Occidental College, where he received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia. Americans for Freedom of Information’s website, amfoi.wordpress.com, points out that the organization “is a completely fake organization that recommends hypotheticality to anyone looking to avoid the IRS,” but, if it shows up in one’s inbox, it has to be true.

And, here’s all the proof we need:

Note the name at the top, Barry Soetoro… ignore, of course, the listed birthplace of Honolulu. The key here is we all know that filling out a school application has legal auhority over any… birth certificate, no matter how many birth certificates one has.

But, what does all this matter, as long as Barry won the election? Here’s the thing. In this country we have a Constitution. It’s this long boring document that lays out how our government works and what it takes to be President. Now, while it doesn’t specifically rule out Kenyan “slash” Indonesian boys who may or may not be Muslim (Hussein… really? It’s like they wanted us to suspect him of something.) and may or may not be black, depending on the racial math one uses, Article I does say that only a natural born citizen can be President. And, this is where the Birther Movement gains the higher ground…

See, according to attorney Mario Apuzzo—who because of similarities to a certain author’s name, I will hereafter call the Godfather—in his essay entitled, “The Framers Used Emer de Vattel to Define a Natural Born Citizen,” Before It’s News, 2 November 2010, the framers used Emer de Vattel to define a natural born citizen… the essay title kinda nailed it. Anyway, as the Godfather points out, de Vattel defined a natural born citizen as “those born in the country, of parents who are citizens” in the Law of Nations, Book 1 Chapter 19 Section 212. De Vattel further suggests that if one is born of a foreign father, then his birth country “will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.” He mentions only two paragraphs later, section 214 that “there are states, as, for instance, England”—where we got our common law, I would add—“where the single circumstance of being born in the country naturalizes the children of a foreigner.”

But, nevermind that last part. Since Vattel wrote that first part before the framers used the phrase natural born citizen, and an English translation of his French book was not available at the time, they had to have been copying him. Besides, if a law existed before our Constitution, we have to follow it. Why write a Constitution if not to ignore it whenever we find something that predates it?

So, let’s say, for argument’s sake, all these birth certificates are fake—well not this one:

For argument’s sake, let’s say Barry was born in Hawaii. His father was a British subject, born in Kenya, so by de Vattel’s standard, Barry might qualify as a 14th Amendment citizen of these United States, but not as a natural born citizen, so not Constitutionally eligible for the position he has usurped.

There are two obvious implications to all this:

First, we have a foreign president who has taken office without constitutional right to do so. And, this from a grand conspiracy to—if you listen to Glenn Beck, who did a whole week-long exposé on his hard-hitting news program this past November—destroy America from within… see George Soros and his Shadow Party are using the Cult of Obama to, achieve some sort of, um, socialist, Marxist, Jewish, fascist, communist, Muslim plot—the one started back in ’61 when Barry’s parents signed their newborn up for his future presidency and maybe even Antichrist-ed-ness… It’s a word.

As Joy Tiz put it in “George Soros: International Man of Misery,” Canada Free Press, 18 February 2009: “it’s important to understand that George Soros doesn’t want to ‘change’ America. He wants to destroy it.” A nefarious conspiracy by Kenyans, Indonesians, Muslims, Jews to take down America, begun with a simple newspaper announcement and compounded with fake birth certificate after fake birth certificate. Here, by the way, is the real one…

…nothing suspicious there.

Strangely, the second implication is even scarier. For you see, if Barry was born in Hawaii, if Soros isn’t trying to destroy America, then there is something wrong with all of us that allows for ideas like this to keep going. Brian Montopoli points out, in “Who Are the Birthers?,” CBS News, 23 July 2009: “conspiracy theories often flourish in the wake of traumatic or game-changing events—the September 11 attacks, the moon landing, the Kennedy assassination—and the election of America’s first black president has been no exception. Almost as soon as Barack Obama emerged as a serious candidate for the presidency, rumors about whether or not he is really an American began popping up online.”

The question we have to ask: does our kneejerk reaction stem from racism, from some Cold War remnant fear of socialism, or are we all simply so insane that when something happens we don’t like, there has to be a conspiracy? Montopoli quotes Michael Barkun, expert in conspiracy theories, saying, “there are people who firmly believe that the truth is always hidden, that whatever is presented as public knowledge is necessarily false.” He says, “conspiracy theories are [actually] comforting. They give us a feeling that we have secret knowledge, we know how the world really works.” Of course, they also make us believe some crazy stuff; according to an Onion poll, 22 September 2010, one in five Americans believe Barack Obama is a cactus.

Today, we’ve seen how the facts, or lies, of Obama’s birth have lingered, we’ve seen that the Godfather may have a point and there may legitimately be some constitutional issues involved, and we’ve seen the implications of this conspiracy… even if it is just a crazy theory. While even MSNBC’s Chris Matthews called for Obama’s birth certificate, 27 December 2010, Dr Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health confirmed in USA Today, 28 July 2009, that she has “seen the original vital records maintained on file… verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii.” Then again, Fukino’s last name, transliterated back into the original Hawaiian is… Fuck if I know.

The point is: no Kenyan boy can pull the wool over our eyes if we are onto his plan… unless, we are all so stressed by the economy, so damaged by the shadow of 9/11 and wars abroad, by Jersey Shore, by partisan politics throwing the blame around like a hot potato, that we don’t know how to see what’s real. Maybe we can only see, not what we want to see, but whatever illusion best fits a world so out of our control that it’s easier to believe that a socialist conspiracy has put a foreign usurper in the Oval Office than it is to accept that maybe America just isn’t on top anymore.