Earlier this week Robert Maher Jr., age 14, was murdered by Dominique Antonio Richard Harris, born in 2008, and Jarreth Joseflee Sabastian Plunkett, born in 2009. The killing seems to have been planned for several days prior to the assault in the Eastridge Mall that lead to Maher's death. Plunkett did the actual killing, with Harris slamming Maher to the ground beforehand.
The technical origin of the fight was that Maher had called Plunkett and Harris "freaks" during Spring Break (something that didn't exist when I was in school) and that enraged the two of them. He called them that has they went into a porta potty at a local park together, which is odd, but insulting them wasn't very smart. This raises the specter of the Matthew Shepherd killing, which had elements which never really seemed to be accurately reported. More likely, however, in the exaggerated juvenile maleness of the rootless and (I'll bet) fatherless mid teenage boy, that was an implied insult that had to be addressed.
Maher never seems to have gotten in a single punch in the assault. The two assailants, who had stolen their weapons along with Red Bulls and candy that day, acted in such a fashion that, whether Harris intended it or not, gave Plunkett the opportunity to viciously knife him.
There's no reason here, we'd note, to use the classic "alleged" assault language. The two teenage boys killed the third. They're going to be tried as adults. They ought o be put away, forever.
But what else does this event tell us?
Casper's a rough town.
One thing that I saw soon after the murder was a comment by somebody on Facebook noting how they have moved from New Mexico, where their son had been knifed in a fight, to Casper under the belief that this was a quite safe town.
In another context, we've already spoken about immigrants into the state being delusional about it, and this is one such instance. Casper has never been a nice town.
Casper was founded in 1887, and it was violent from day one to some degree. It was, however, originally a rial stop in cattle company, although it always had its eye on oil. It was the jumping off spot for the invaders in the Johnson County War, which at least gives it a bit of a footnote in that violent event. Casper's first murder occured on Saturday, September 20, 1890, when bartender John Conway shot and killed unarmed A. J. Tidwell, an FL Cattle Company cowboy in Lou Polk's dance house, following a round of fisticuffs. The blood has been flowing ever since.
With the booze and the prostitutes came murders (and no doubt disease) but it went on and on. By and large, however, as odd as it may seem, people just acclimated themselves to it. You got used to a town having a red-light district, and as there were some legitimate businesses in it, you'd go into it for legitimate reasons. As a boy, we walked into the Sandbar in the early 70s to go to the War Surplus Store, which nobody seemed to think was a big deal. The America and Rialto movie theaters were just yards from the district, and the district's bars lapped up out of it into downtown Casper, with some of them being places were to walk around, rather than past, if at all possible.
Casper had quasi ethnic gangs when I was young, and at least in the schools that I attended, that was a factor of attending them. You were careful about it. It was impossible to get through junior high and high school without having been in a fight. Most fights were hand to hand, but a teacher was knifed when I was in junior high breaking up a knife fight, so not all of them were. In high school we all carried pocket knives and none of us were supposed to. They were for protection. While I was in high school, one of our classmates, who had been held back more than once, was killed outside a bar in a shooting, the result of a fight he provoked, which resulted in an ethnic riot at the school in which shots were fired. The father of one of our classmates was killed by our classmate after he turned his molesting attention on her sister, having molested her for years. Neither of these crimes resulted in prosecution.
The point is, for those who are shocked by the arrival of violence in Casper. . .well, it's been here since 1890.
The abandoned males
I keep waiting to hear the circumstances of the murderers' family lives and have not read any yet. I'm sure it'll come out as the story advances. While It's dangerous to speculate, there are reasons to suspect a few things, one being the killers likely had no fathers in the picture. We're going to hear at some point that they were raised by their mothers, or in irregular homes. I could of course be wrong, but I'll bet not.
Fatherless males are a major societal problem. Fatherless males that are raised in an environment of sexual license are an even bigger problem. Indeed, they're often fatherless for that reason in the first place, and they'll go on to spawn further fatherless children, who grow up in poverty and with little societal direction. A minority will find that structure in the Old Law, the law before the law, which reaches back to tribalism in the extreme. It's in the DNA.
The Old Law demanded death for transgressors too, something modern society has moved away from in large measure. I've already heard it suggested that Harris and Plunkett should receive death, but due to their ages, I think that not very likely. It'd be ill-advised, no matter what. But tribalism spawns more tribalism. The real personalities are lost of both the assailants and the victims.
I'm afraid that the West will die. There are plenty of signs. No more childbearing. You are invaded, still, by other cultures, other peoples, who will progressively dominate you by their numbers and completely change your culture, your convictions, your morality.
Cardinal Sarah
I guess because I'm a big reader, I'll get advertisements for books and also book reviews in email form. One that I get is the New York Times book reviews, which I've come to barely notice. A big part of that is because as the Times itself has declined, and it very much has, its book reviews are focused on whiney self-indulgent narcissist who write whiney self-indulgent narcissist memoirs that nobody reads and which are soon forgotten. Stuff like the struggles of a middle class homosexual 1st generation Pakistani American in the big city whose extended Islamic family doesn't get him. M'eh, get over yourself, dude.
Anyhow, I got more than one email on Molly Roden Winter's new memoir, More on her sexual immorality. The first time I disregarded it as it was a New York Times review (of course), but the second time I did take brief note of it.
Basically, she and her husband, who do have children, like to f*** other people than their spouses and for some reason their licentiousness is to be shared with others, making them both not only sexually reprehensible, but exhibitionist as well. They'd define this as being "polyamorous", but that description does violence not only to nature, as we'll see, but to "amour". Polylicentiousness would be a better description, but licentious would simply do, although they apparently (I haven't read it) keep their affairs down to one person at a time. Indeed, one item I found she wrote in an op ed was about her sneaking out to her "boyfriend" during COVID and lying about it to her mid teen son, whom she must think is really dense, so she can screw her paramour in his household while his wife, whom he is trying to get pregnant, is out.
Like all books in this area, this will be read only by people, probably mostly women, who want either 1) a peak into somebody's Fifty Shades of Grey lifestyle or 2) are thinking of cheating on their spouses and want to learn what that's like while being encouraged to do so. I'm not going to bother with that, but instead make an evolutionary biological and medical observation.
Setting aside morality, this sort of conduct can only occur if you've carpet bombed your system into sterilization and have a platoon of antibiotics ready to come to your rescue.
In other words, while the promoters of this sort of thing like to claim it as sort of natural, it's the opposite.
We've dealt with it elsewhere, but the bargain of our species was that the male in a couple got the female. . .you know. . . that way, for his life, and she got food and protection, which she couldn't provide once she had a child or children. Slice it anyway you want, but that's the evolutionary basis of monogamy and that's why our species exhibits it.
People will talk about affairs etc. and the degree to which they've been historically common in our species, but they really miss the history of it. By and large, while they do occur, amongst the masses, which were most people, who lived close to the economic bottom line, or who were aboriginal, or pastoral, or nomadic, the Old Law provided that such offenses were punishable by death, by and large.
People like to claim, "oh that was just for the women", but that's simply not true. Yes, women adulterers were killed, as we all are well aware. The underlying logic of it, as brutal as that was, is that a man shouldn't be forced to raise the offspring of some other man, and death put an end to the chance of that occurring, and perhaps to the offspring as well as the offending woman.
Grim.
But death was the common punishment for men as well, and it was typically directly meted out. The man discovering the offense very often simply killed the other guy, and that was regarded as okay.
Indeed, as late as 1973, the Texas Penal Code provided:
Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband upon one taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided that the killing takes place before the parties to the act have separated. Such circumstance cannot justify a homicide where it appears that there has been, on the part of the husband, any connivance or assent to the adulterous connection.
In other words, if husband came home and found Jim Bob Diddler in bed with his wife, he could kill him.
And we should note that yes, that's completely contrary to Christian morality. You can't run around killing people, even those in bed with your wife.
But the old, pre-Christian, law allowed for this.
Black Buffalo Woman.
Indeed, a famous example of this is given by the example of Crazy Horse, whose early affections had been towards Black Buffalo Woman. In spite of his known feelings for her, she married No Water while Crazy Horse was on a raid. In 1870, he carried her off while No Water was out on a hunting party. The next day, No Water caught up with him, shot him in the face with a revolver (hitting his nose) and breaking his jaw, his shot being misdirected due to a third party attempting to intervene. Crazy Horse was laid up due to his injuries for months, but had escaped death. The blood feud was ended by No Water giving Crazy Horse a horse in compensation for his injures, which must have been galling to No Water knowing that Black Buffalo Woman and Crazy Horse had spent one night together, but which was deemed justified in light of there being questions about Black Buffalo Woman's long term marital intent. Crazy Horse was stripped, in turn, of his position as a Shirt Wearer.
No Water in later years.
I've known, FWIW, of one killing here which was pretty much under those circumstances and I personally know a fellow, who was an FBI agent, who came home to find a coworker of his in bed with his wife. In the latter case, he gave the guy one hour to clear out with the stated intent that when he came back in an hour, if they were still there, he was killing him.
His instructions to his spouse were to clear out as well.
They did.
Anyhow, Ms. Winter's behavior is only possible, as noted, due to chemistry. We've used chemistry to defeat our biological functions, but not our psychological and psycho-biological ones, and at least for the time being, we're not close to doing so. Indeed, if we do, it'll be the end of the species.
Let's go back to Black Buffalo Woman.
Several months after Crazy Horse's attempt at taking her, she gave birth to a light skinned child. That must have been all the more galling to No Water, as Crazy Horse was light skinned as well. Indeed, while people aren't supposed to speculate on such things, his light feature and aquiline nose have lead to some speculation that he descended from a French trapper a generation or two prior to his birth, and I'll just go out on a limb and say it's likely so.1 Anyhow, this gives a biological example of why this is so deep in our DNA. No Water wanted his wife and knew what the relationship between men and women meant. He already had three children by her. Her departure with Crazy Horse was a massive act of betrayal as well as resource disaster. Some nine or ten months later, he likely ended up burdened with the child of another man, but sucked it up and carried on.
And here's a second reason.
Disease.
Whatever the multiple partner of this type has been common in any form, venereal disease has been absolutely rampant. There's really no exception. Indeed, that's probably all the more we need to say on that.
Now, on this, a person might wonder for a second about polygamy. I'm not a defender of polygamy, but polygamy and polygamous behavior aren't the same at all. The wives of a husband in a polygamous society are his, not for sharing. Pretty obviously, if they were shared in any fashion, with our without his knowledge, the disease spreading opportunity is really enhanced.
This shows, once again, how prophetic Humanae Vitae really was.
Consequences of Artificial Methods
17. Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.
Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.
What was warned of here has now happened on a large-scale, with not only men regarding women as mere instruments of satisfaction, and vice versa, but a modern Western society obsession with our lower regions, even basing entire "lifestyles" on it.
None of which is capable without a complete chemical sterilization of our natural systems in a manner that we'd not tolerate on any other topic. It's unnatural on an epic level.
Footnotes
1. One of Crazy Horse's two wives, Helena "Nellie" Larrabee (Larvie), was half French.
History has strangely not treated Larrabee well, seemingly because she influenced him to basically settle down. That's really unfair, quite frankly.
It isn't a court declaration that's binding precedent on the whole state. It's one jury, in a circuit court case. That's it.
It does mean that these four guys are not going to be convicted.
And beyond that, it shows that juries, quite frankly, are unlikely to convict anyone for corner crossing. Not only in Carbon County, but anywhere in the state.
And it doesn't end the issue, actually. A civil suit remains, and it's far more likely to have a bigger impact, as it will likely be the one that ultimately goes to the Supreme Court and the Wyoming Supreme Court will then determine the issue.
It does send a signal, however, both to courts (of course) but to the legislature on how average Wyomingites view these issues, and that likely is summed up by a comment made in court by the defendants' lawyer:
Eschelman is an entrepreneur who is noted for his charitable donations. . . and his donations to right wing politicians as well. He's apparently humble and generous. Not so generous, however, that the South Carolinian saw fit to just turn a blind eye to this matter or to generally allowing some of the less well funded access to public land, not his land, on his Wyoming ranch.
The original encounter, moreover, was caught on audio and video, with Eschelman's employee stating to law enforcement;“Do they realize how much money my boss has? …and property?”
And indeed, his having a Wyoming ranch brings to mind Thomas Wolfe's comment on that in his book A Man In Full.
On the topic of decisions, this also points out the dangers of pursuing something best left untouched, something that was pointed out a couple of years ago in the Wyoming ve. Herrera case. Sometimes, there are issues that you'd rather leave undecided.
Indeed here, the County Attorney, an elected official, made the decision to prosecute, no doubt based on prior interpretations of the law, which would have favored the same. But in doing so, she's accidentally taken the side of a wealthy out of stater against the interest of common Wyomingites. This probably never crossed her mind, but it likely has crossed the mind of a lot of locals by this point, and the effective statements of the defense now doubt have taken root. Eschelman, in the words of the defense, is a would be king and oppressor. I've now seen public comments that the County Attorney prosecuted as she was influenced by his wealth. That's extremely unlikely, she was probably influenced by the law, and may very well not be in the class to whom this issue is dear to the heart, but she's no doubt aware that it is to many now. How this also plays out is yet to be seen.
And indeed, this takes us back to the topic of allmannsretten, which we've addressed elsewhere.
As noted, this story is still playing out. It'll be very interesting to see where it goes ultimately.
Why the teenage waitress from a century ago on that thread? Read it, and it'll become plain.
Anyhow, if you follow the show, you'll learn how Hugh Hefner was totally debased, and how those around him, if male, became debased, and those subject to him who were female, had their lives destroyed. He treated women like toys and there's good reason to believe he didn't like women, really. Not as human beings.
Playboy magazine was part of the Sexual Revolution, that culturally failed and destructive movement that we're still suffering from and living with. Hefner's place in that was something like Goebbles place in the Nazi revolution, if we want to look at the Nazi movement in that fashion, in the Third Reich. If you take his own claims seriously, which there is some reason to reduce, he had a place akin, perhaps, to Hitler in that movement, or Lenin in the Communist Revolution in Russia.
And yes, the comparison to those evil men is intentional. He was an evil person, albeit one, who like those earlier evil people, attracted followers.
The record is far to clear to ignore. The impact of the Sexual Revolution was wholly and entirely destructive, and women in particular, and society in general, have suffered enormously because of it, and they still do.
All of which relates, oddly enough to a series of things in the Zeitgeist in recent days.
Let's start with this headline:
Maren Morris is celebrating the way she shows off "country female sexuality" ahead of her next album release.
What Morris had in mind? Probably not.
I didn't know until I saw the headline who Maren Morris is, and I still basically don't. I don't like country music, which is generally bad music and often has not much to do with actual country things. I learned, however, that Morris appeared topless (at least) in Playboy.
"Country female sexuality"?
Well, given what Playboy is, we could ask if she meant the Frontier brothel variant of female sexuality, as all her photos do is serve to have men check out and her naked boobs and imagine her in bed.
Her photos apparently appeared several years ago, so this revived controversy actually recalls the brothel analogy unfortunately well. It's been in the news as she revived the story, posting, apparently, one of her topless photos on the net somewhere.
This doesn't advance the cause for women in any sense, and certainly not in the bold independent women fashion. It's not a strike for, for example, female farmers, of which there are a lot. No, rather, its a strike for the objectification of women, and through a vehicle associated with their destruction and violence perpetuated upon them.
It can be argued, of course, that that has something to do with "female sexuality", but not in a good way.
We've long held that every time one woman does something like this, it sets things back for all.
Shame.
And then there's a name that's been in the news:
Deporting Alina Kabaeva?
The flag of Switzerland, where Kabaeva resides with her children at least part of the year.
Who?
Alina Kabaeva is a former Uzbek gymnast and Olympian. By all accounts, she was an excellent one. She's also the mother of three children.
Well, so what?
There's a campaign going on to deport her from Switzerland to Russia, along with her children.
Why?
Well, it's consistently rumored that one Vladimir Putin is the father of the children of the 38-year-old Kabaeva, who is a resident, currently, of Switzerland, but who is a Russian citizen (although not an ethnic Russian) who has, in the past, gone back and forth. Indeed, the rumors were so strong that at one time a Russian newspaper reported that they were engaged, which resulted in the newspaper being shut down.
Putin was married to Lyudmila from 1983 to 2014, but they divorced that year. Not a lot, really, is actually known about Putin's private life. The parentage of Kabaeva's children is routinely reported to be Putin, but if he is the father, it's certainly knot acknowledged publicly.
Well, again, so what.
Well, for one thing it brings up, maybe, the odd elements of power and hypocrisy. Part of the reason that Putin claims to have invaded Ukraine has to do with the Orthodox Church.
Now, the largest of the Orthodox Churches is the Russian Orthodox Church. But it's a fundamental element of every single branch of Christianity, Will Smith's apparent views aside, that extramarital sex is a mortal sin, no exceptions (are you listening to that Will?). If Putin has, and maybe he hasn't, fathered three children with Kabaeva, he's acting oddly for a man whose has cited Orthodoxy even as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
Which assumes that he has been acting badly in this area, which maybe he hasn't been. Maybe he and Kabaeva, who was a Muslim but who has converted to Christianity, are actually married. We might very well not know, and we do know that while Orthodoxy frowns on divorce, it allows it under some circumstances.
Or maybe Putin is like some monarchs of old who felt that their positions of power gave them some sort of personal pass in this area. Even Czar Nicholas II, who lived an exemplary married life, and who has been canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church, had a mistress when he was young.
Or maybe Putin is just as Orthodox as his position as a would be Czar requires him to be. It is known that his mother was a devout Orthodox Christian. Putin observes Russian Orthodox Holy Days, so maybe he is an observant member, although former advisor Sergei Pugacheve claims he is not.
At any rate, Kabaeva is a convert, and maybe she's straightened out. Should she be deported from Switzerland?
Well, at first blush that seems silly and cruel. It's not as if she invaded Ukraine, and her children certainly didn't.
On the other hand, such is the fickle fate of courtesans, if that's what she is, or the spouses of monarchs, if we want to assume a marital union. Marie Antoinette didn't retire to Paris, after all.
Choices do have implications.
Blows In Defense of Honor?
Speaking of spouses, and ones with a bit of an odd relationship to each other, the news this past week has been filled with the story of Will Smith striking a blow upon Chris Rock, in defense of the honor of his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
While everyone now knows the story, in spite of the low level of Oscar ceremony viewing, what occurred is this. Rock, who has a sort of rough sense of humor, but who is funny, made fun of Mrs. Smith's baldness, which is due to a medical condition. In this era of intentionally bald women, I don't know that female baldness is the big deal it once was, but it is a medical condition in her case and making fun of somebody's medical condition is rude, no doubt about it.
Having said that, the joke wasn't really all that aggressive, and related her condition to the movie G. I. Jane, which I havne't seen and I'm not going to. FWIW, that movie featured Demi Moore as a woman going through Navy SEAL training, and she had a shaved head.
Anyhow, Smith laughed, but Mrs. Smith cringed. Then, in reaction, Will Smith went up and violently struck Rock, who reeled from the blow. Rock actually recovered his humor, at first, quickly, making a joke of it, but it then ended up in a yelling match between the two, with Rock on the defensive.
Frankly, Smith was lucky. The slap was in the nature of what is sometimes called a "sucker punch", in that it was unexpected. Lots of men in other situations would have hit back, which Rock did not do, to his credit.
There was actually an ovation for Smith's violence at the time, although some were horrified immediately. Denzel Washington took Smith aside. Washington is the son of a Pentecostal minister, and is quite religious, warning Smith that at a person's height is when the Devil comes for them. Smith later, after winning an Oscar, gave a teary speech in which he apologized, but not to Rock (who has been silent on the matter), attributing his actions to having just appeared in The King about the father of the Williams tennis sisters. Mr. Williams condemned the violence later. At any rate, he went on about how he had been influenced by the role and felt God was calling him to protect those he loved at this stage in his life.
Well, to be blunt, he ought to get his own icky house in order in that case, assuming that he hasn't. If he has, given his public declarations on the topic, he ought to clear that situation up.
Smith was raised in a Christian household, but he's actually attended therapy in order to overcome its influences so that marital infidelity, introduced by Jada Pickett Smith to some degree, and in an unapologetic fashion, can flow along in his marriage. Neither of them has been faithful to the other, and it's an "open" marriage, and publicly so. Smith felt guilty about that at first, which apparently didn't stop him, but with counselling he was able to overcome a central feature of being married and a central tenant of his Christian faith.
What that means in terms of his current faith, I don't know, but there isn't any monotheistic religion that looks up infidelity kindly. Apostolic Christianity certainly holds it to be a mortal sin, and the tenants of any other Christian religion does as well, in so far as I know. Even those few monotheistic religions that allow polygamy don't look on infidelity kindly, and the entire "open marriage" thing is an example of the modern disease of thinking every standard of the past doesn't really apply to us as we're so modern, even though they do, and our transgression in that regard have led to untold misery.
None of which means that you can't defend the honor of somebody who isn't really that honorable in general, but this application of The Old Law is really interesting. It's the sort of thing that led to fisticuffs and even duels over the honor of women at some times. An interesting revival of a standard that once was widespread, probably still is, but hasn't been publicly acknowledged for a while.
Of course, the thing about the Old Law is that it brings up the Old Standards. The Old Standards travel together, not by themselves.
The Reappearance of the Old Order
Speaking of the men, women, and old standards, something interesting has been constantly reported on regarding the war in Ukraine, and with admiration by the press.
And what that is, is the that at the borders, most of the refugees are women and children, as "their men have returned to fight".
And nobody thinks that odd or unusual.
It's a roaring example of our Eleventh Rule of Human Behavior, and it's not the only one.
In the Russo Ukrainian tragedy, the Ukrainian men are fighting, and fighting heroically. Women are being heroic as well, taking their children where they can and fleeing, and suffering enormously. The tragic photograph of the pregnant woman being carried on a structure, whom we know lost her baby and died herself as the result of a Russian strike, will likely go down as the most famous photograph of the war.
The old order roaring back.
Now, some Ukrainian women are bearing arms. The other day, a young woman (very young, probably a teen) was interviewed in a village where she was serving as a Ukrainian militiaman. And she isn't the only example. Be that as it may, however, this is a male fight for the most part. Some women will fight in it, as wars involving partisan action have always included.
So far nobody has really remarked, however, how remarkable this really is, in our modern world where we pretend the distinction between men and women in relation to combat doesn't really exist. Not only does it exist, it's very evident here. Almost everyone in the Ukrainian service, regular and irregular, is male. All the Russian troops are male. Almost all of the Ukrainian volunteers are male. Almost all (but not quite all, I saw a photo of an Italian female pilot the other day) of the foreign volunteers are male, probably well over 90%.
Indeed, that latter fact is telling. NATO's public press likes to feature photographs of striking braided women in uniform (it's common enough that it can't be a repeated coincidence, and frankly its slightly weird). Military press photos from the US military seem to omit the secret "look at the cute girl in the beret" feature that NATO photos do, and are genuinely simply more in the nature of a certain type of news photo, which is much more businesslike.
From NATO Twitter feed, typical US non cheesecake photo of a woman soldier, in this case of the Third Infantry Division.
But the concept in the West of women in combat is completely untested and the historical examples grossly exaggerated. The most commonly cited one is the Soviet example from World War Two, which was actually much more constrained than those who cite it would like to admit. Indeed, the Soviets apparently didn't regard it as hugely successful, as limited as it was, as after the war, they eliminated that role for their female citizens. The heir to the Red Army, the Russian Army, is pretty much a male deal, just like the Ukrainian Army. The same is true of the Israeli Army, in spite of the occasional citations to it.
Wars are a cultural test of massive proportions, and the old rules and orders tend to come roaring back during them.
Struggling with the New and Biological Order
Pity poor Judge Blackburn, caught in a confirmation hearing and presented with questions that pit her between the spirit of the age as seen by those who are supporting her and the spirit of the age from those who oppose them, with biology in the middle.
BLACKBURN: I’d love to get your opinion on that, and you can submit that. Do you interpret Justice Ginsburg’s meaning of men and women as male and female? JACKSON: Again, because I don’t know the case, I do not know how I’d interpret it. I’d need to read the whole thing. BLACKBURN: Ok. And can you provide a definition for the word “woman”? JACKSON: Can I provide a definition? BLACKBURN: Mmhm. JACKSON: No. I can’t. BLACKBURN: You can’t? JACKSON: Not in this context. I’m not a biologist. BLACKBURN: So, you believe the meaning of the word “woman” is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition? JACKSON: Senator, in my work as a judge, what I do is I address disputes. If there’s a dispute about a definition, people make arguments, and I look at the law and I decide. BLACKBURN: The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.
Okay, the way she's been quoted, we note, is unfair. She did not say that only a biologist could define what a woman is, but rather she stated, albeit you have to know the context, that the legal definition of a woman in the context of any one case had to be understood from the law of the case. The way that American law is currently interpreted, her answer is quite correct.
But that raises a larger, indeed, an existential, question.
Earlier this week (at the time that I was posting this) there was something called the International Day of Transgender Visibility. Anyone day in the year is now designated for something, and indeed typically a lot of somethings. March 31 was also, for example, Anesthesia Tech Day, Cesar Chavez Day, Dance Marathon Day, Eiffel Tower Day, International Hug a Medievalist Day, National Bunsen Burner Day, National Clams on the Half Shell Day, National Crayon Day, National Farm Workers Day National Prom Day, National She's Funny That Way, Tater Day,Transfer Day (U.S. Virgin Islands) and World Backup Day. Some of these are obviously a lot more serious than others. Transgender Visibility Day, however, got a shout out from the President, who issued a statement recognizing, in essence, their cause and taking a position on bills that have been in this area.
Wyoming was one of the states with such a bill, and like most such efforts in this conservative but not as conservative as people think state, it didn't go anywhere in our legislature. Our bill concerned transgendered athletes, restricting sport participation to your biologically assigned gender. Utah had a similar bill which passed, was vetoed by their Governor, and then overridden by their legislature following that so that it has become law. South Dakota passed one which was signed into law by their right wing controversial governor, Kristi Noem.
Just after all of that occurred, the reason for the entire debate in athletics came into sharp focus as a genetically male swimmer who has undergone medial gender reassignment won a NCAA Division 1 swimming championship in the 500 yard freestyle event.
This does bring into focus the biological nature of the debate, and the peculiar nature of contemporary western liberalism. The swimmer is genetically a man, and he's built, and frankly looks, like one. He has a powerful male swimmers build, although if he was competing as a man, he would not have taken the title. Competing as a woman, which he can only due to surgery and pharmaceuticals, he took the championship, thereby beating out the nearest genetically female swimmer.
In some very odd way, although nobody has noted it, this actually answers the question that the Billy Jean King v. Bobby Riggs match supposed was supposed to years ago. Taking away the circus like nature of that tennis event, males will in fact beat women at sports every time for the most part, save for sports that women are uniquely biologically adapted to. There will be exceptions, to be sure, but if sports were not separated by gender, women would be so rare in most sports as to fade to nonexistent, something nobody wants.
That's what not addressing this in some fashion, however, actually argues for. The unfairness could be eliminated in sports overnight by just not having male and female sports.
Which would operate a larger, and massive, societal unfairness to women.
All of which begs the larger question, which is the one used as a "gotcha" on Judge Jackson. That is, what is trangenderism.
Nobody really knows, no matter what people may wish to claim.
The basic nature of the problem is that it's based on individual perception. That is, people who are "transgendered" have a strong feeling that they should be members of the opposite sex in spite of their DNA. That doesn't make them a member of the opposite sex, however, it only makes them desire to be. They can't achieve that goal without surgery and ongoing pharmaceuticals.
But should surgery and pharmaceuticals be used to defeat our genes? It's clear in the case of addressing a defect that few people would object. I.e., if a person can correct something like bad eyesight, or a defective organ, and return to the established obvious baseline, that's one thing. But what about things that go beyond that and fundamentally alter us in some way.
This isn't the only example, but the curious thing about this that, so far, most of the things that fit into this category involve sex in some fashion. Cosmetic surgery exists to repair all sorts of things, from birth defects to the impact of terrible injuries, but the thing that receives the most attention, and advertising, is expanding the size of boobs. That's one such example, and it's purely cosmetic, but unquestionably related to one single thing, sex appeal. Surgery and drugs to defeat natural sex assignment goes far beyond that.
But to what extent should a person do this, or be allowed to do this, on perception alone, and even if they are fully allowed, to what extent does the rest of society have to recognize the medical defeat of nature in this instance? The following stories in this area don't provide much comfort for the individuals who embark on this path.
Topics Where You Least Expect Them
This entire debate came up not only the Supreme Court nomination hearings, but also on Twitter in the form of a ban on the Babylon Bee.
For those who aren't familiar with the Babylon Bee, it's a satire site that originally was light Christian satire. I.e., the authors of the Bee are Christians, but it poked fun at things that come up in Christian circles and debates.
Early on it was quite funny, but there's probably only so much satire you can really do in this area before it becomes truly offensive or just ceases being funny and, at least in my view, the latter is the case for the Bee. And recently the Bee has crossed over from its original focus into outright satire, something that's actually quite an art to accomplish well (the best online satire entity in my view is The Beaverton, a Canadian focused website).
The Bee was banned on Twitter for its satirical post naming U.S. assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Levine as "Man of the Year". It flew in the face of woke convention by referring to Levine, born in 1957 as Richard and gender reassigned in 2011, at which point changed names to Rachel, as "he".
The Bee's satire was really not very funny, which is perhpas because effective satire is difficult, or perhaps because it was genuinely an attack and was fairly mean spirited, no matter what your view is on this. It ended up getting the Bee banned from Twitter, which hasn't caused it to back down one bit. Indeed, they're seeking paying subscribers by noting that they've been attacked by liberals. And on April 1, April Foods Day, it doubled down by issuing a false apology, which was also quite mean spirited.
Adding to a show on how this is all part of a raging culture war, political figures of the stoke the fires class immediately picked up on it, including such figures as Lauren Boebert, all of which raises a distressing question that was raised without reference to this in another forum, which we'll get to in a moment.
Before we do, however, we'll note that a similiar, but much less pronounced, Twitter storm broke out on the left due to a statement by former Trump spokesman Kayleigh McEnany, who, of course, is now on Fox News, where they all seem to go. That follows here:
The anecdote (sic, antidote) to darkness is light. And the anecdote (sic, antidote) to a really grim future is filling the world with a lot of Christian babies.
This caused a mini tempest in Cybersphere, predictably, no doubt in part because it came up in such a truly odd venue and way. But this also taps into a bunch of stuff in the culture wars.
Right away, some organs on the left went on the extreme opposite. Salon, for example, ran an article that stated "Kayleigh McEnany wants more "Christian babies": It's an overt call-out to racist paranoia". Salon goes on to claim that McEnany is espousing the "great replacement" theory.
That statement only makes sense, if it makes sense at all, from an American or at least an ethnic European prospective and a left wing one at that. Indeed, the statement itself is paranoid. Those familiar with the history of the Church would realize that while Christianity spread extraordinarily rapidly following the Resurrection, one of its claims to truth (it was amazingly fast), the first adherents were of course Jewish and the faith was (and the Apostolic Christians remain) amazingly color-blind, with one of the most important early saints, St. Augustine of Hippo, being a North African of at least half Berber descent (his mother, St. Monica, was a Berber). In the United States, the "black church" remains one of the most culturally influential Christian denominations. Therefore, "lots of Christian babies" doesn't mean a "lot of white babies" by any means. Of course, to those at Salon, chances are that they view a Christian world view as somehow racist, as it isn't an Islamic or Buddhist, or whatever, worldview.
The interesting thing about this overall, however, is how it shows a change in views over time and context, which is part of what this blog tracks.
Traditionally, large families were regarded as a blessing from God, with this view going back into antiquity. Efforts to limit family size are in fact quite recently, having really come in during the early 20th Century. An interesting part of that, however, is that it was part of what was openly discussed as part of the "Battle of the Cradle" in cultural terms, with those discussing it not regarding themselves as racist.
This depended upon the person expressing the views, of course. But in European and European American upper classes it was common to express concern that foreign overseas, non-European, cultures would pose a threat to Europeans due to their perceived high birth rate (which probably wasn't, in reality, much higher at the time, if higher at all, than the European one). None other than Theodore Roosevelt, who was an advocate of Americanism, noted in correspondence that he "had done his duty" in this regard, by having several children.
Whatever a person thinks of that view, it's also the case that birth control of the Margaret Sanger type originally came in, as people like Sanger had noticed the dropping birth rates in the upper class and worried that higher birthrates among African Americans posed a societal threat. Part, but not all, of her early birth control efforts were focused on the hope of dropping the African American birthrate based on that obviously very racist reason.
In the over century long time that's passed since then, the same demographic that Roosevelt and Sanger were part of have had their birth rates drop below the replacement level by a fairly substantial margin. Whether McEnany was expressing a variant of that fear, I don't know, but I doubt it.
I don't know what branch of Christianity she hails from or is a member of. Looking her up, she went to a Catholic high school, but that is not a reliable indicator of a person's religion really, as many non-Catholics attend those. She always refers to herself as a "Christian", but not by denomination, which suggests that she's probably a Protestant, as Protestant's are more likely to self identify in that fashion. Catholics usually identify as Catholics, which is a common way members of a minority self identify. I.e., the US is a Protestant country culturally which is obvious if you are a Catholic, and for that reason Catholics tend to identify themselves as Catholics.
Depending upon the answer to this, there would be different paths which a person might go to dive deeper into her opinion, assuming that needs to be done, or that the opinion has any additional depth to it. Given as we're not really doing that, but looking at other things, as we're inclined to do, we'll keep going down the road a bit.
One way that people can interpret it is the way the Duggers have. I.e., they're part of a "quiver full" movement. I don't know a lot about that other than it emphasizes, apparently, having a lot of children. The other way, however, is more of the traditional Apostolic Christian way, which really doesn't, even though some Apostolic Christians families do not. It might be best expressed by the statements of Fr. Hugh Babour, who is a Catholic intellectual and who often has surprisingly nuanced views on topics that a person wouldn't expect. On this topic, however, Fr. Barbour just always states that the purpose of marriage is to welcome children "and raise them up for the worship of God".
Anyhow, it's interesting how in a century or less we've gone as a culture to a point where the left wing of the culture assumes that making a statement that would have been simply regarded as an expression of faith, that most people probably held, and which the left itself held in a fashion, has gone to being one that's assumed to be racist and can only be stated on the right.
Slow Ride
Okay, onto something else.
Recently, a "trucker's convoy" was in the news, but only briefly.
Their timing was remarkably bad.
The entire concept, of course, came up due to the Canadian "Freedom Convoy" which had its origins in some truck drivers protesting being made to be tested and quarantined if they were unvaccinated and crossed from the US into Canada. It ballooned into a general Canadian right wing protest over . . . well everything. Ultimately, it got so bad in Ottawa that the Canadian government had to declare a state of emergency.
This all got a lot of press.
Then somebody got the idea of doing an American variant.
Well, no sooner had they started putting that together than the Biden Administration essentially gave upon mask requirements for most things and all sorts of states, including Democratically run ones did too. There really wasn't anything left to protest, but nonetheless the convoy got rolling.
And then Putin attacked Ukraine.
At that point, nobody was interested in this story anymore. Indeed, it had become a complete anachronism, and at a point in time in the nation where there's a trucking shortage, and the price of fuel is going up, what the heck?
Well, in Washington D. C. a biker, who may have had enough, got his revenge.
A bicyclist, that is.
He got in front of the convoy, and in spite of the trucks honking their horns and the like, he just peddled along at a crawl, and they had to crawl too.
A video of his actions was viewed 4,200,000,000,000 times.
On September 6, we posted this item noting how the arguments about the new Texas law on abortion are misconstruing what really happened in regard to that aw.:
But almost as misconstrued are the "progressive" arguments that are inserted as "policy" arguments, if they can be called that. The degree to which these fit a certain pattern, is not only notable, but frankly shocking.
Regarding the argument over abortion, it all boils down to two basic arguments, of which there are subsets. Basically, you either 1) feel that people shouldn't kill other people; or 2) you feel that killing people for convenience is okay.
Now, that sounds extreme, and we will get into that, but this is somewhat simplistic. We'd note that most people who don't believe people should kill other people do hold there are exceptions, such as in self-defense, or the extension of self-defense when it's done in the course and scope of a public officer's duties (military and police). And we'd also note that almost nobody actually states that they're for killing people based on convenience, and probably a lot of pro choice people have never really stopped to think about the nature of their argument in this regard.
But beyond that, that's pretty much it. And that takes us, although it's out of order, to the first principal of this. There aren't really any exceptions.
We'll get to that in a minute. But first, the big question.
Is a fetus a human being?
Is a fetus a human being?
Maybe in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was simply made up by the Supreme Court, this could be fairly debated. It seems to be the case that the mushy Roe opinion basically determined that for the first "trimester" a fetus wasn't a human being because. . .well, it depended on its mother.
That was always a way stupid way of looking at things and not supported by facts or science. A baby depends on some maternal support at least for a few years after it's born, for one thing. And viability isn't a good argument for preservation of life. There are thousands of impaired human beings who aren't "viable" in the full sense. If Roe made sense when in 1973, Hitler's campaign to murder the impaired in Germany made just as much sense.
What the court was trying to do, if you want to give it perhaps considerably more credit than it deserves, was to create some sort of strange argument that prior to that time the forming human wasn't quite human, and not endowed with humanness.
People made that argument for a long time, but hardly anyone does now Science has come to far, and we know that a fetus is a human from the instant of conception. We can't escape that, and nobody tries to.
So what we're really arguing about is killing for convenience. When can we kill people because we find them inconvenient?
Most people, we'll note, will not openly resort to that argument as it sounds too brutal, because in fact it is. Indeed, many of the same people who are "pro-choice" are very much against killing people, and indeed sometimes anything, under any other situation. They've separated the reality of human life in this are from their argument of convenience. And that's been made easy by fifty years of mushy thinking on the topic, inspired in no small part by the mushy thinking of the Roe era, and the court decision itself.
But mushy thinking rarely leads to a correct decision. Honest thinking on the topic, particularly one that involves life and death, is mandated by the argument itself.
You can't really hold to exceptions if you believe killing people is wrong, and you really can't limit it that much if you are okay with killing for convenience.
The anti-abortion must be "never" in answer to that question. The pro-choice person's argument ought to be "lots of times", although they'll rarely make that argument.
Again, this is out of order, but let's make it plain. If you believe killing people is wrong, not only is abortion wrong, but the death penalty is wrong. That's just the way it is.
The exceptions most would hold to would be in self-defense of yourself, and in self-defense of the public, such as in the role of policing or legitimate war. But those exceptions, we'd note, are really limited. Indeed, a person sincere in this view really can't take the position that every time there's a war soldiers may kill in it. Only in a just war, which are limited in number.
You really have to take the view that killing for convenience is okay if you are for abortion.
On the flip side, all arguments about abortion made by its proponents tend to desperately camouflage the real issue, as the real answer is extremely disturbing if you are okay with abortion.
As a fetus is a human being and abortion kills it, if you are for abortion, you are taking the position that killing people is okay for convenience. The only question is where does the convenience stop.
Pretty clearly, that line is difficult to draw and is by social construct only. Euthanasia is a close second to abortion and some abortion proponents are okay with it. The death penalty ought to be okay with anyone who is for abortion, as convicted prisoners are inconvenient. Indeed, the old common law application of it, which was for any felony, would make a lot of sense in this context.
So do such things as nuclear war or even genocide, really.
Now, hardly any "pro-choice" person is going to argue that, as they haven't thought it out in this fashion. But that's where it really leads.
The false flag arguments
"The 13 year old victim of rape or incest"
What you tend to hear about instead is the "13-year-old victim of rape or incest".
That's because it's a horrific moral situation which presents a moral response. Ironically, that appeal to emotion is made by the pro killing folks, who otherwise seem pretty immune to emotion in this area. That suggest this argument is a false flag.
It's interesting strikes back to the "old law", which sanctioned death as a penalty for a lot of crimes, although it skews it a bit, and it also hearkens back to our distant ancestry as an argument. Therefore, in making this appeal, an appeal to some really ancient, pre-Christian, principals are urged, showing how deeply ingrained they are.
Part of that appeal is the old law sanction of death to the transgressor, although the mark is missed in this case and hits the fetus. Rape was punishable by death at common law, and going back even further, it was certainly punishable by death in primitive societies. Rape and incest are crimes that authorities will still allow for a lethal act of retribution in some circumstances even now. Indeed, while its certainly not a current example, one of my high school colleagues killed her father after years of enduring rape and the authorities made no effort to prosecute her whatsoever.
The second part of that is a darker part of our past, which is both the historical motivator to rape and the ancient reaction to it. It gets into people's instinct for self-preservation as well as our loyalty to our family and tribe.
Rape is a horrible crime, maybe the worst of crimes, but its also something that was historically common when one tribe raided another. Indeed, it still is. It's been a major feature of modern warfare in northern Africa in recent years. Bizarrely, it's a genetic way for the victor to not only claim his spoils, but spread his DNA as the conqueror. Inside the tribe, however, such things are a horror. Simply killing the offspring of such unions was not uncommon, as well known.
About 5% of rapes, as defined in our society, result in pregnancies. But those tend to be concentrated in interfamily and known perpetrator situations. I don't know the reason for that, but it probably is due to the frequency of the assaults. I.e, most human sexual acts don't result in pregnancy and therefore most rapes wouldn't . A normal young couple that is simply having sex has a 1 in 20 chance of getting pregnant. I.e., a couple acting with complete disregard to the results has a 5% chance of getting pregnant from one act. Therefore, the percentage in rapes is just about the same. Added into that, couples seeking to get pregnant will get the advice to have sex frequently, which is also why of course victims of incest and rape from close contacts is more likely to result in pregnancy than other rapes.
A grim topic to be sure.
As part of that grim topic, a normal person doesn't even want to think about this, for obvious reasons, and therefore the resort to the ancient law is easy to make. It's just programmed into our DNA.
The thing is, of course, is that it also runs counter to our Christian morality, and even though thousands of people who aren't Christians, and even many who are, will bristle at the thought, Western society is basically Christian. Indeed, wherever Western societies have been, and had a major influence, large elements of Christian thought have come into those societies.
And even in pre-Christian societies the leeway on killing the offspring of such horrors was limited. Rome gives us the bizarre example of the "rape of the Sabine women" which is one such example, albeit a very strange one. But others would suggest that it's probably the case that every living human being today has at least one or more ancestor who came into existence this way, which means that we all have ancestors who perpetrated the horrible act. That doesn't excuse it in any fashion, it's just the truth. Indeed, one of my close friends is aware that his grandmother or great-grandmother, I've forgotten which, had her first child, his ancestor, as a product of such an act when she was employed as a domestic servant. She had the baby, and a male friend of her married her prior to the baby being born, raising the child as his own.
Not good argument can be made for compelling a woman who becomes pregnant in this fashion to raise the child. That would be absurd. But in the calculations of life and death, its' hard to make out a rational argument that those who innocently come into being in this horrible fashion should be killed. It's too close to the old old law that held that the infants themselves could be slaughtered, or even the women for having "dishonored" the tribe. Wants death starts being meted out, it's hard to draw that line where you stop it, as in the end, you are back to the fact that there's really not much of a license for people to kill other people.
No man should be able to tell a woman what to do
A common feminist argument is "it's my body" and "no man should tell a woman what to do with a woman's body".
The problem with that is that the entire topic comes about due to two bodies producing a third.
Yes, one of those bodies is the nine-month host for the third, but it still doesn't change the fact that an argument about "my body" shows a profound level of individualistic thought. I.e., it takes the position that "you can't tell me what to do with my body, even if doing that kills somebody else".
This is actually the only area where this argument is actually widely made. There are others, but where they arise, it's a minority view for sure. We do tell people what they can do with their bodies in numerous other areas, including health and safety. No welder could go to the rig site and refuse to wear FRs for example, as it's only his body at risk.
This gets back to the sense of community, which may be why this might be a uniquely American argument. Americans have a strong sense of individualism, even to the point that it's grossly exaggerated in American culture. There really aren't very many "lone wolves" who achieve something, but we like to think there are.
There are no women whatsoever who become pregnant on their own, of course, and that's in part why this argument makes no sense. It almost assumes that pregnancy comes about due to autogeneration.
Of course, we've gotten used to the post contraceptive concept that a man's responsibility is over once he gets up from the bed and puts his clothes on, but that's a deeply barbaric view of the world. Indeed, the acceptance of that view, which has come on since the early 1960s, is very strongly akin to the ancient view of rape in a way which gives rise to the primitive argument about killing the offspring. It's not identical, but its not too far away.
And that's why the occasional effort of men to claim they have a right to voice what happens to their own offspring gets shouted down. But they do.
Now, it's true that the woman will carry that offspring for nine months, and if the mother chooses to keep her child, she'll bear far more of the burden of raising the child to adulthood, at least in the early years, than the father. But what this really cries out for is restoring male responsibility. Traditionally men carried far more of the financial obligation, with men not infrequently working themselves to death in the process. In stable couples, men still tend to bear far more of the financial burden. Allowing men to have escaped this was a terrible societal mistake, and what this argument really argues for is a restoration of more of the old set of responsibilities.
Frankly, to add to it, this argument leads to a real "cop out" opportunity for men, and they frequently take it.
If pro lifers really cared, then they'd support . . .
You hear this one all the time, but it's blatantly false.
The argument tends to be that if pro lifers really cared about the mothers, then they'd support all sorts of social programs that are dear to the left.
The problems, they actually tend to.
If you know anyone in this camp who is really active, they tend to actually pretty liberal on social programs. They're for assisting unwed mothers in any way they can, and often support organizations that do so. They tend to be for "socialized" medicine, as it helps the poor and those in this situation. They tend to oppose the death penalty.
Indeed, some of these folks would nearly be regarded as flower children in any other discussion. The entire argument is just baloney.
The reason I think it tends to get made is that politicians who are pro-life often are on the political right, indeed nearly always so, and they don't appear to be the most sympathetic people in the world That can be deceptive too, however, if you know anything about them personally. Lindsey Graham, for example, isn't somebody I generally am a fan of, but his record in supporting his sister when she was young is a model of Christian charity. One former South Carolinian who was commonly sited as a right wing figure had adopted children that crossed racial lines. Amy Coney Barrett, who was blasted for being a conservative Catholic when she was nominated for the Supreme Court, also has an adoptive family.
Indeed, the counter might be to ask to what degree do "pro-choice" people really directly support the situation of women in this situation. In their minds, they no doubt do, but in reality, their help often seems to be limited to the suggestion to kill.
Keep your Rosaries off my Ovaries
Finally, there's the common suggestion that this is a Catholic issue only and that Catholics should but out. Expanded out, there's the suggestion that maybe this is a Christian issue only, and Christians should but out.
The argument that people shouldn't bring their religions views to an argument is a false one to start with. On the contrary, people who are sincere believers in any religion really have an obligation to be informed by their faiths and act accordingly.
Having said that, while those who are informed by their faiths in this area and act accordingly should be admired, rather than condemned, it isn't the case that all that many citations to religion are actually made in the public argument. Those positions may have informed many of the opponents and brought them to the debate, but they don't tend to cite them in the public debate. And, moreover, some notable opponents of abortion have had low, weak, or no connection with religion and have come about to their position by other means.
The counter to the phrase, moreover, would argue for a complete abandonment of any moral standard. It's the ultimate cry for convenience. It really means "let's keep a moral compass out of this". The problem is, when you do that, the killing really starts.
Given that I criticized the Obergefell decision here in depth, some might find it surprising that I haven't gotten around to commenting quicker on this one.
I meant to and in fact I was prepared to really scoriate this opinion, based on early legal analysis of it. But having read it, I'll concede that the Court did a much better job with it than I would have thought.
It's not as if they've solved the problem they created with Obergefell, but Anthony Kennedy's opinion and the concurring opinions go a lot further in that direction, and even in a legally cogent manner, than I would have guessed they would have. Indeed, a characteristic of Kennedy's personality seems to come through in the decision in that he appears to be a bit miffed that people ignored his comments on how the earlier decision wouldn't result in a big social revolution, when in fact it is being used to do just that. It's known that Kennedy gets upset with criticize of his decisions in the popular venue and it seems that he might also get upset by their misuse.
When Justice Kennedy cast his lot with those preforming a judicial coup in Obergefell it was my prediction that his happy prediction that it wouldn't really impact anything other than marriages between homosexuals was absolute and obvious nonsense. That came to be rapidly true, and it made it up to the Supreme Court pretty quickly in the form of cake.
Indeed.
Well, perhaps another line regarding Kennedy's initial writing might be more appropriate.
Yet Clare's sharp questions must I shun,
Must separate Constance from the nun -
Oh! what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!
A Palmer too!- no wonder why
I felt rebuked beneath his eye;
I might have known there was but one
Whose look could quell Lord Marmion.
Marmion, Canto 6.
Kennedy's original Obergefell decision was always a judicial mess as it was not grounded in the law and didn't develop it in a sustainable fashion. The dissents pegged what really occurred. A group of aged Ivory Tower jurists, attempting to get ahead of a social trend, did what they though hip and cool, thereby giving themselves the credit for what they thought to be an inevitable social trend anyhow. If they were correct in their prognostication, what they really did was to guarantee decades of hostility towards the Supreme Court, which richly deserves it for engaging in a judicial end run, and decades of fighting as Americans do not accept such actions lightly. If they were wrong, they will have created, in the process, misery over misery as people slug it out, outside of their legislatures.
But Kennedy, based upon the original opinion, seemed completely naive to that reality. Now that the first wave has washed up on the shore of the Court, he seems downright irritated that people didn't agree with his view that this didn't impact deeply held religious beliefs and more realistic about what his earlier sloppy opinion meant. So this one is much clearer and, contrary to what the press has indicated about it, it actually decides quite a bit. It may be a limited holding, and indeed it is under its own terms, but it's not as limited as it might seem.
The decision is, I'd note, also exactly legally correct in its procedure, so the pundits that are amazed by that, are basically ignorant of the law.
Okay, let's start there.
Procedurally, the appellant here was found to be in violation of a Colorado law by a commission that's delegated to tell the residents of the Mile High Weedy State what they can and cannot think. Okay, that's not really what the commission does, but the formation of commissions of this type always tend towards that result. The reason for that was that appellant, Masterpiece Cake Shop, declined to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding party based on their moral convictions. Interestingly, and often missed in this public discussion of this matter, Colorado did not recognize homosexual marriages at the time and the service was to be preformed in Massachusetts, not Colorado. Colorado did protect, however, the right civil rights of homosexuals against discrimination, which most people most places are generally in favor of.
To anyone who really ponders it, no matter what their views may be, the fact that a bakery can get in trouble for such things is really problematic. This isn't really the same as refusing to sit African Americans at a diner counter and almost everyone knows that. Obergefell overturned millennia of human practice and is arguably not very much appreciated by a huge section of the public who views the decision as contrary to faith, morals and nature. Moreover, the propaganda of the proponents of the decision leading up to it was that they would never use such a thing to argue for absolute social acceptance at all levels, which they now are. This would nearly require a complete subversion of religious beliefs by all traditional religions and beliefs, which no other earlier civil rights act did. And it also opens the door to any number of really odd results. Can a Christian couple demand that a Jewish delicatessen that caters for weddings provide a pork roast on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) for a Christian wedding? Can a Jewish family demand that a Muslim bakery bake a cake for a Bar Mitzvah? Can a homosexual couple demand that a Russian Orthodox Priest perform a wedding for them in spite of the blistering clear objection to that in that (and other) faiths? These are all questions that were promised to be absurd prior to Obergefell but which are all on the table now.
And this came directly into play in Masterpiece Cake Shop as the Colorado commission dismissed and even insulted the owners religious objections, which extended not only to wedding cakes but Halloween cakes and the like.
So the Court held that the appellants religious objections were not seriously and sufficiently considered and remanded the decision. Yes, it's limited, but that was the right decision and its a pretty serious dope slap to the commission. Now, what we'll see what the commission does but experience shows they usually whine and cry and send back a bad decision again, so we'll likely see this come back up.
But the direction seems clear. In the decision the Court stated:
Whatever the confluence of
speech and free exercise principles might be in some cases, the Colorado Civil
Rights Commission’s consideration of this case was inconsistent with the
State’s obligation of religious neutrality.
So it sent it back for reconsideration, with directions that religious considerations be taken into account.
The Court is correct in all of that and it tried to make it plain, without giving too much direction in one way or another, that it wasn't trying to wad freedom of religion and conscience up in a ball and toss it out. In the decision it noted:
Our society has come to the
recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social
outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth. For that reason the laws and the
Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of
their civil rights. The exercise of their freedom on terms equal to others must
be given great weight and respect by the courts. At the same time, the
religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and
in some instances protected forms of expression.
Of course the Court is treading a fine line between truth and fiction here in that while society came to that recognition, it didn't in the form in which the Supreme Court placed public in Obergefell. That statement by Kennedy, however, is a pretty clear indication of what he thought he was doing, which wasn't really what he did. He went immediately on to haul in part of the decision in the next paragraph as a preventative to what was, and likely is, going to be another challenge sooner or later:
When it comes to weddings,
it can be assumed that a member of the clergy who objects to gay marriage on
moral and religious grounds could not be compelled to perform the ceremony
without denial of his or her right to the free exercise of religion. This
refusal would be well understood in our constitutional order as an exercise of
religion, an exercise that gay persons could recognize and accept without
serious diminishment to their own dignity and worth. Yet if that exception were
not confined, then a long list of persons who provide goods and services for
marriages and weddings might refuse to do so for gay persons, thus resulting in
a community-wide stigma inconsistent with the history and dynamics of civil
rights laws that ensure equal access to goods, services, and public
accommodations.
Yep, that's the problem already.
So we know that clergy cannot be compelled to perform homosexual marriages and we know that objections on conscience are valid. We don't know what the limits to those objections are, and it would have been impossible for the Court to delineate them. This means we're now going to have piles and piles of appellate decisions attempting to define that, and decades of fighting over it, unless Obergefell is overturned in a near term. I know that's regarded as impossible, but we're not living in conventional political times. For example, on the day I'm writing this a massive tariff is being imposed on China due to a campaign promise and that would have been regarded as a political impossibility in any other administration.
Anyhow, assuming that its not reversed soon, it's going to be argued and defined a lot. Kennedy didn't seem to realize that in his earlier decision, but now does, and he's now reminding us that the promise of the Constitution is that religious views will be respected. That was the promise too of the backers of homosexual unions, but they seem to have forgotten that.
Kennedy, it might be noted, is rumored to be considering retirement. Rumors to that affect are constant nearly every term, as he's quite elderly. But this time I'd credit them a little more than usual. Kennedy has been the "swing vote" due to his oatmeal mush like view of the law, which is no doubt not how he views it. He's sensitive to his opinions being criticized and here he has a real problem. It seems that he never intended Obergefell to be read the way it now is being read at the street level and he must surely be aware that out in the commissions and trial courts of the land its in for revolutionary application. We've hardly even begun to see the commencement of the abuse of a decision that could only be used in that fashion. Kennedy, due to his age, is at the point in life in which he's on death's door. Whoever replaces him will swing the Court to the right or the left. The right of the Court, in spite of criticism to the contrary is much more likely to try to keep Kennedy's decision in place in the form in which he envisioned it. The left won't, and instead will take it and run with it until there's a public reaction or societal reformation. If Kennedy left now, ironically, his replacement is more likely to uphold his envision than if that replacement is put on the Court by a Democratic President.
O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!
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