Well I guess it’s official, with that PSA during some big sports game or other over the weekend, Clint Eastwood has joined the Occupy movement. What I don’t understand is the surprise expressed out there. I never figured Eastwood for a tea partier. Far from it.
The Catholic Church seems to be standing up to some small part of ObamaCare. Odd. As near as I could tell these last several decades, they’ve been on board with most Progressive ideas. Oops. I guess they didn’t think it through. Oh well. May the backpedaling be strong and long lived. So if they get a waiver for their religious beliefs, you know what comes next. That’s right– Millions of brand new “Jack Catholics”. “Yeah, Mr. Bureaucrat Doofus, I converted, like three seconds ago, as soon as I learned that I could get a waiver.” So I guess the next step would be a requirement for some sort of official certification of membership from the church, etc., etc. Measures, countermeasures. As always in any statist system, we have, officially, different sets of “rights” for different classes of citizens.
If you want to get Gay Married, forget the lobbying, the sign carrying, the stupid politicians and the dog and pony shows and come to Moscow, Idaho. I’ll marry the two of you. My fee is fifty dollars. Of course I’ll require that each of you sign a legal document, transferring all your future earnings and assets to the other, and likewise with power of attorney. No double standards here. If you ever want a divorce, you’ll need a team of lawyers to decide who gets the house, the cars, the fashion design show, the various bank accounts, etc. You want equality, you can have it. But that was never what you really wanted, was it? Right now you have the best of all worlds– you can shack up with no legal or financial consequences, and split up easily and relatively pain free. With marriage it’s a whole different ball game, kids, and with marriage comes common law marriage too. But I guess it’s about the money either way you look at it. Spousal benefits are nice, but there’s always another side to it. You sure you’ve thought this through? Depending on what state you live in, how many of your past relationships could have resulted in a separation that would involve lawyers and splitting up of the financial and other assets? Really? You want this? No. You don’t, but you’ve been led to believe that you do. Suckers. Anyway; my offer still stands, if you think you have the guts. I have no legal authority of course, but it’s about the commitment anyway. Until death do you part, and we can combine your assets through simple, easy legal means. If I had my druthers, I’d get the government sanctioning nonsense OUT of my marriage. My personal life is not their business. Leave me alone. I just can’t identify with people who are dying to get the government IN to their private lives.
I was thinking, which is usually dangerous. A lot of men divorcing from women complain of the inequity of the divorce laws (in the sunny state of People’s Republic of California, it is referred to as dissolution of marriage. Why use one word when three will do.). Now that the anti-American Ninth Circuit has rendered a decision on Prop 8, the Marriage is between a man and a woman in California proposition, it’s sure to go to the US Supreme Court. If the decision stands, California will have Same Sex Marriage. I doubt there will be many men marrying men, although a former boss and his guy had been together for 40 years. The marrying will be by women. Gay women get “baby rabies” just like straight women. Some of those marriages with children will end (or in California, dissolve). If those divorces had been vicious before, wait until it’s two women; 1. the court won’t know who to favor, and 2. How will the child support formula work? I guarantee that neither woman will want to become the man in the divorce proceeding and pay the father’s share of child support according to the law. The court will have to actually decide something, and once it deviates from the existing law, BAM! Some divorcing man somewhere will have an equal protection argument for why his divorce and child support should be calculated according to the same formula as the divorce and child support between two women.
And then the feminists will scream. Either that, or the legally and traditionally exempt sperm bank will be named as a co-respondent.
Some of the criticism against the Catholic Church and it acquiescing to progressivism is justified, although not all. It’s complicated: not only is there a gulf between nominal and practicing Catholics, but (broadly) an older generation of priests and bishops and the newer generation. In each comparison, it is the latter group that has been both growing and resisting progressivism. Unfortunately, it is the progressive-leaning groups who have many (although a decreasing number) of the Catholic institutions.
So, in a nutshell, what you have is Catholic “elites” and the Christmas-and-Easter types supporting Obama, while the Sunday Faithful and their priests (and increasingly, bishops) who either already distrust Obama or are finally having the scales fall from their eyes.
My concern is that the Obama administration will backpedal until after the election and lull the temporarily-outraged nominal Catholics into voting for him again.
Government licensing of marriage started as a way to prevent miscegenation, and ought to go the same way as that prevailing attitude has. Do you need a government license to get confirmed, do penance, receive the last rites, or take on holy orders (the other Catholic sacraments, besides marriage, that are not recognized as sacraments by Protestants)?
[On a side note, I’m sick of hearing these Southern Baptist politicians go on and on about how marriage is supposedly a sacrament that has to be protected legally. First of all, they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Second of all, I wasn’t aware that the other ones were in any pressing danger requiring government intervention, and I’m not clear on what makes this one so special.]
No? Then why do we need one for that? Go ahead, have a party, call yourselves married, knock yourselves out. If it means that much to you, find someone to say some words over you. If it has to be a religious official, I’m sure you can find a church that will accept your situation (however many & whatever variety of people you have in mind). But I think there is a very strong argument on 1st amendment grounds that this government practice is in fact a sort of establishment of religion & as such has to go. Unfortunately, I doubt the courts will listen.
What PSA? I did hear about a Chrysler ad. I watched it and had no problem with it at all. Overall it was relatively neutral other than the fact that the company was one of those bailed out. Had the ad been run by Ford it would have been a slam dunk without much in the way of political furor.
As an FYI, Eastwood leans heavily to the libertarian view point. That said, it did surprise me he would do an add for either of the Government Motors.
Barron,
Yeah, WRT that I figured they offered him money to do the ad & he took it–I don’t take it so much as a personal endorsement per se. Nothing wrong with a little voluntary exchange in pursuit of one’s own self-interest where no one’s rights are violated.
No one will convert to Catholicism if we get an exemption as it will just be an out from having to cover certain things in insurance. If you want to opt out of Obamacare completely you will have to be either a Christian Scientist or Amish. Every Catholic Bishop in the US except for 6 so far have come out with a statement against the requirements. So it definitely could be a problem for Obama if they start reading letters across all the parishes about the attack Obama is making on the church. HokiePundit is right it is a certain Vatican 2 generation of Catholics that is pushing the progressive crap and most of the liturgical abuse. I would say the younger generation of faithful is much more traditional as is the Pope so things are going in the other direction in the Church.
Ann Barnhardt(annbarnhardt.biz) has a really good explaination in her blog about how the problem(s) the Catholic Church is having came about.
I’m a coward. I’ve been watching the Washington news get all exercised about gay marriage and not said a thing. Not for wont of -thinking- it mind you, but with a lot of LGBT friends and some conservative friends who I don’t particularly want to drive off… I didn’t say it. But Joe summed it up nicely and inspired me to type. COME ON! If this is the institution you want to check into you really ought to be noticing it’s statistical outcomes! And the other posters covered it well on the sacramental front. Your God is way to powerful to need to puff up my laws any more then they already are. And, if he/she/it/they is/are concerned about making more babies maybe we could pray/meditate/respectfullyRequest a refocus to matters like the Arab Spring and Humanities inability to balance a checkbook.
Meanwhile, if you watch the news in Washington our legislatures shining moment this year is the passing of Gay marriage (I’m sorry Ray, please stop reading now…). Folks, the state economist (you know that dude who more then 10 years ago came out each year and told the Legislature they could keep buying our votes if they laid off the rainy day fund a little) is resigning and leaving the state. Umm, hello? We cant constitutionally run a deficit so they shovel revenue forward on the books and pretend that expenses and liabilities aren’t there. Education costs? What education costs? We gotta fix this constituent problem over here… meanwhile the supreme court (the freakin’ “this will take years to decide and then we’ll send tablets down the mountain”) state supreme court has finally said “ya know that constitutional mandate to fund basic education you’ve been pretending isn’t there? IT’S THERE”. To a Legislature whose books would make a mob accountant blush and whose dependence on the pork barrel would make heroin junkies cry. Yeah, so great we got gay marriage. CAN WE HAVE A WORKING BUDGET NOW?!
Barron; “We all came together and acted as one” speaking specifically about the bail out of a company that set up its own destruction, knowing all the while that its policies could not be sustained. Now it depends on the viewer of course, but what I got from it sounded like it had been created (as a PSA) by the Obama Core. More insidious was the reference to the second half of America’s story, which I could only interpret as a New America as defined by the bailouts. The ad’s decrying our “discord” is something the lefts does, while a supporter of liberty would complain about the government encroachments. And of course there’s going to be discord when there’s a large contingent in America that blames America for the world’s problems (both real and non-existent problems) and that contingent is now in power.
I’m all for coming together and rallying for a new drive toward liberty, but that also means fighting and defeating a large number of Americans.
I think that everybody talking about religion and divorce in this context is missing the point. Gay people already have the same problems with divorce as everybody else. What they are trying to get here are the legal rights that other kinds of partners already have, like being allowed to make medical decisions for an unconscious partner, being able to pick up/visit their children from school, hospitals, and other places where being a parent is required, being able to claim ownership of funds and property of the partner after death.
You might say that those are not important, or worked around with some legal hoops to jump through, but really, is that something that we should be rooting for? It is a HUGE pain to set all that up. I looked into it, because my wife and I really didn’t like the idea of having the state involved in our relationship. And I had a friend who’s 20 year partner was killed in a motorcycle accident who had to spend years getting all of their retirement funds, home/car/etc titles/loans/etc in order at great expense and time spent. All of which would have been trivial had they been married.
It’s silly, but it’s true. It kinda makes sense. You need a way to independently specify “these people act as one” so that families can work in our world. Otherwise, when you get sick, some random person will jump in and say “I’m his next of kin!”, or an estranged lover might lay claim to the kids.
Unfortunately, the default way for doing that seems to be through marriage recognized by the state. So given that there aren’t good alternatives, this process should be available to everybody. Heck, I’d go even one further, and make it so that it’s not limited to just two people. 🙂 Read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress for more details. 🙂
Whatever. I’m not getting legally married unless it’s going to be a traditional breadwinner-homemaker type relationship, in which case if it does come to divorce I don’t begrudge her half of my stuff. The system is such that there is too much for me to lose otherwise.
Tim; I’ve heard those arguments. Our problem is that we’re not thinking “free society”. In a free society it would be trivial for any two people to grant any or all of those privileges to each other. You sign a simple contract (and what’s stopping you right now?). As for schools and hospitals, those are either totally government run or they’re extremely government controlled. If any one is having problems because of that fact, then address that fact. Let’s not demand more government in response to too much government already.
Besides; really? What public school takes on a student without already knowing the identity of the parents or guardians, and what private school? Sorry; I don’t buy that one. I think (no, I know) that some of these things are brought into the argument to fit the agenda, rather than the agenda having been created to address them– cart leads horse.
Think Free Society and most of these silly, contentious issues get a hell of a lot more simple and easy. Actually HAVE a free society and they’re just gone. Like right now.
So; thinking free society– first, what is the problem? The first “problem” is the desire to be validated by government. OK, that one goes away instantly, because in a free society no one wants or needs to have their personal relationships validated by government, except through enforcement of contracts. I believe that the driving force behind this demand to be validated comes from spite. It’s fun and exciting to piss off the straw-man conservative, Bible-thumping Dana Carvey’s Church Ladies out there. OK; you’re all real cute. Funny funny hah hah. As for inheritance rights– contract. Problem gone. As for the hospital thing; ditto. One little piece of paper, and it won’t cost you more than the price to get one off of legalzoom, print it off and sign it. Done. So all the jumping and screaming and picketing and finger-pointing is for nothing but spite. And it’s pointless if we have a free society. Without a free society, all the jumping up and down will only dig us deeper into a pit of darkness.
So one way you don’t need a bit of it, and the other way you’re totally screwed anyway. Take your pick.
But then there’s the issue of how to stay in the public lime light and be the center of attention, so forget everything I said and keep dancing in front of the cameras at the pride rallies.
Lyle
The Free Society is a looooooooooong way off. Gay marriage cures inequality of freedom now.
No, the point is that gay people are (pretty much) free now. There is no law saying they can’t have a party. There is no law saying they can’t wear rings. There is no law saying they can’t call themselves a married couple. There is no law saying they can’t live together. There is no law saying they can’t do whatever it is that they do behind closed doors. There is no law saying they can’t sign legally binding contracts giving each other power of attourney, or making each other beneficiaries of each others’ wills. There are several states in which they can adopt children (and I don’t see any evidence why they should not be able to do so in any other state). What freedoms do they lack that married couples have? Any other “benefits” I can think of involve social security benefits and other artifacts of the welfare state.
[Side note: I think that the welfare state needs to go. However, since a large percentage of the populace has made itself dependent on said welfare state, as a compromise/stopgap measure for those who cannot tear themselves from the totalitarian tit, I propose the following: You may designate a maximum of one beneficiary for purposes of survivors’ benefits. You may designate multiple people, but the fractions have to add up to one. If there is more than one person you wish to designate as a beneficiary, you must specify who gets what percentage. If one or more of the designated beneficiaries kicks the bucket before you do, and you do not update your preferences before you croak, the surviving beneficiaries will receive the same dollar amount they would have received anyway (this helps keep the system from going more bankrupt than it already is).]
I can tell you what they *do* have that married couples don’t: the freedom to terminate the association peaceably under mutually acceptable terms without the involvement of the court system. Why they would give this up, particularly in the community property states, is altogether beyond me.
Speaking of which, I don’t want Social Security. So why is it that I have to pay the taxes and [presumably] have other people’s wealth redistributed to me when I’m old? Why can’t I opt out? It’s not like I signed myself up for it or anything…my parents did it when I was born, primarily so they could get the tax deduction. And why is it that no one could hire me if I didn’t have a SSN? I was still born here, after all. Also, note that social security is one of the 10 planks in the Communist Manifesto, FWIW 😛