Marriage: Let's Define

Several years ago I was making my way from the redundant misery of an undergraduate class to the parking lot, when I was asked about my position on gay marriage. You can picture the scene: me back-packed up and hungry for lunch, approached by a pollster full of purpose with his clipboard ready. "Do you think gay marriage should be allowed?" he asked, waiting for a simple yes or no but phrasing the question to make that impossible.

But wait, let's put this in historical context—that's always a good idea. This was before Massachusetts, and certainly long before New Jersey. This was back when gay marriage was just beginning to catch the attention and eventual fury of the evangelical community.

You know, back before bumper stickers broke the sacrament of marriage into two stick figures and an equal sign. As if slapping that on the ass end of your Ford Taurus is the height of reverence.

This little pollster had no idea of whom he was asking this question. My brain obsesses over politics. CNN is my entertainment (because I know it is just that, entertainment), and most days I agree with Bob Dylan: "If my thought-dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine." Right on Bob, right on.

Not to mention my growing alienation with religion and the ideology it forces on me and those like me (yes, there are lots of us). The 2000 election started that process of alienation—kicked it off with a bang and a ballot. And religion—if you know anything about anything—definitely enters into the question of marriage. Implications of homosexuality aside.

Do we define marriage in terms of church or state?

It is this simple conditional which made a quick response to the pollster impossible, and which forced me to respond, "Well that depends on what you mean by marriage." It all comes down to that, although you won't hear it on CNN.

"It's OK if you don't have a position," he comforted, and moved toward another hapless, hungry student.

It's OK if I don't have a position; oh, but I do. My position is we should be clear about what we're speaking. We should be clear exactly what someone like Mr. Campus Pollster means when he says "marriage." Is it the Catholic sacrament? Or is it that thing you can do at any county courthouse?

The devil is in the details.

Recently, in her article for the National Catholic Register ("Catholic Vs. Clinton"), Sabrina Arena Ferrisi used quotes around two words as she discussed Hillary Clinton's position on gay marriage: "(Clinton's) reasoning was that this was an issue best left to the states, and that the Constitution should not be amended to deny a 'right.' Same-sex 'marriage' advocates have been angered by Clinton's refusal to specifically endorse their position." The general theme of the article isn't what is relevant to my discussion here. What is relevant is the purposeful (for everything in writing is purposeful, if it is worth reading) use of quotes around two words: "right" and "marriage."

You see, Ms. Ferrisi—and those like her who wish to blur the division of church and state—has a vested interest in keeping those quotation marks exactly where they are. Ms. Ferrisi doesn't want marriage to be defined during this debate. Oh sure, she wants it defined as "one man, one woman," but what exactly is she defining?

Which takes me back to my point. Let's be responsible about this, on both sides please. Let's take the quotes off.

Should homosexuals be allowed to marry inside the Catholic Church? The question is absurd. But if we're going to ask it, let's ask it properly.

Should homosexuals be allowed to enjoy the same civil definitions of marriage—call it whatever you want, the name is unimportant—from a secular standpoint, and the benefits therein? This question is far less absurd. Yet how often it is confused (purposefully so, as we see with Ms. Ferrisi) with the former. It does us good to examine who is confusing it and why. It does us good to remember what we mean by marriage.
 

What Official Language?

A few weeks ago, Bill Maher invited actor Ben Affleck onto his late night panel (click for clip). Now, I've never much cared for Affleck, and I don't consider his acting to be particularly profound. I found myself, however, appreciating his viewpoint and his willingness to challenge the consistently hyper-liberal thinking of Maher's show. Or at least his willingness to think before parroting (both "sides" fail at this).

Don't get me wrong; I'm a hyper liberal myself. I'd tell you what I really am if you wouldn't instantly associate that political label with the concept of communism with which your were indoctrinated. Socialism has nothing to do with state controlled capitalism, after all.

But I digress.

It is about the question of English as an official language that I sometimes disagree with my fellow liberals. In general, liberals see the establishment of English as the official language of the United States as an attack on other cultures—as racism even. This kind of response nauseates me: it is far too easy to undermine someone else's (possibly valid) position by pointing a finger and calling them a bigot. This kind of dialogue is destructive not constructive. It is shocking that we still practice this juvenile tactic in the 21st century. (I am talking about the immigration debate here too.)

Perhaps not so shocking when one considers our broken education system.

Am I digressing again? Maybe.

What surprised me most was Affleck's contribution to the liberal witch-burning of English-as-the-official-language. He didn't defend it or berate it. He cut through the smoke to issue one of the most illuminated directives I've heard of late.

It isn't a Spanish versus English question, if one considers the sad reality of the United States. The fact is, most English speakers don't know English! That is to say, they don't know the rules and they certainly don't apply them. Affleck asserted that people should worry about learning the English language—about speaking and writing it properly—before we discuss it as the official language. How true.
 

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help. help.

"Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window." Steve Wozniak
 

Server Complications

A server upgrade (from "shared-server" to "grid-server") has caused a landslide of problems. Five years of scripting refuses to function. Frustrated only begins to cover my feelings here.

Posting may be irregular over the next few days. Barely able to get this message up.

*sick*
 

Gays Invigorate

Gays invigorate
the Republican base. All
the people knee-jerked
into action by the threat
of reciprocal love.

The Bible, they say,
forbids it. As if Jesus
didn't footnote everything
with love.

Gays invigorate
the Republican base. All
the people tricked
into faith for Caesar's
loveless state.
 

Traveling Sitting Still

(From "Traveling Sitting Still," the title story of an unpublished collection.)

The old woman has skin like dough, floured white and smooth. Stacy imagines she is a fixture of the bus, like a tobacco store Indian. In the mornings the driver carries her onto the bus and places her on the bench, smoothing her skirt so it covers her bony knees. Each evening he carries her away from the cold, black, staring glass and metal. He carries her to a storage shed or an oversized closet where an embroidered chair and an age-yellowed lamp wait dustless, a humidifier humming in the corner. The driver grooms her hair with an antique ivory brush and pats her doughy face while she stares at the wall, anticipating sleep. He wipes the spittle from the edges of her mouth, says nothing.

Like something petrified, she needs no water, no food. She has become a living artifact to be moved wordlessly from place to place, and in the morning he will return her to the bus where she will once again travel sitting still.

(Coming in 2007)
 

Black Widow

All day long I've been thinking of you,
kissed red on your belly,

of how I should have moved you—
black exoskeleton and slender legs,
spinning your web and trapezing
above the seam of stucco
and concrete.


Nothing you'd done,
but beauty
and simple purpose
and the legacy of your ancestors,

made me kill you—

made indignant
your innocent form.


To move you,
dead branch in hand,
carefully amidst the moonlight,
past the toddler carried by sleepy parents,

that should have been my design:

To trust you to behave
as you at first trusted me.
 

John White Pictish

John White was sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to be Sir Richard Grenville's artist-illustrator, on Grenville's first voyage to the New World (1585-6). White was responsible for producing sketches of the landscape and any inhabitants they encountered. The images produced seem to be as much propaganda as fact—but that's nothing new. There's a lot to be learned by examining the imagery here.

White was encapsulated in history. Just like everyone else and all of us.

Eventually White became governor of the newly established Roanoke Colony and welcomed its first baby, his granddaughter, Virginia Dare. It is generally recognized that the colonists never fully accepted an artist as a governor. After leaving the colony to gather provisions from England, White returned in 1590 to a ghost town: No one was left in Roanoke and the colony was long abandoned. He relocated to Plymouth on October 24 of the same year—the same month and day this blog was established.

The images appearing on the sidebar of this blog are those among many, published by Thomas Harriot.

(So What's a Pict Anyway?)
 

Auschwitz Artist Told "Arbeit Macht Frei!"

Work will make you free—the haunting placation above the entrance of Auschwitz, the Germans' largest extermination camp outside Krakow, Poland—is taking on a sickening new light. How many of the incinerated Jews believed those words? Auschwitz survivors like Dina Babbitt might be the best ones to ask.

Babbitt and her mother were spared the gas chamber thanks to her training as an artist. Babbitt spent her days painting portraits of Auschwitz's Gypsy prisoners—a population which Nazi ideology considered inferior—for the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. She traded her craft for survival. Now, in an effort to keep her paintings from her, the terrible situation she faced as a prisoner is being treated as an employment contract.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is refusing to relinquish Babbitt's paintings to the 83 year old artist—who has been requesting their return since learning of their existence more than 30 years ago, in 1973. "A museum official wrote me saying that legally the only one who might have a claim on the paintings was Dr. Mengele, and he wasn't likely to excercise it," Babbitt recently told Ron Grossman of the Chicago Tribune. Mengele died in February of 1979.

Work for hire is the legal principle being invoked by the museum: the concept that the patron, not the artist, holds the rights to a commissioned work of art.

Commissioned? Patron? Let's be honest here. We're talking about a "patron" who illegally imprisoned non-combatants based on race, religion, and sexual orientation, participated in their torture and extermination, violated any reasonable sense of humanity, and "commissioned" work under the threat (obvious even if unstated) of death.

A fifth grader could see the insanity in this argument.

Should the artists at Auschwitz have refused? Would they even have been permitted to refuse? Certainly these issues come into play if Babbitt's paintings are to be considered part of the historical domain, accessible only by the imprisoner and never the imprisoned.

Questions of legality aside—duress, for example, which invalidates contractual ownership—the museum's willingness to cloak the issue in the guise of public or historical service is nauseating: As if returning these works to their rightful owners would open a Pandora's box of holocaust deniers; As if history is better served by legitimizing an activity at Auschwitz in a legal sense; As if placing the rights of war criminals above those of their victims does anything other than honor the legacy of the Third Reich.

It seems to me, even considering that such items should be preserved and made available to future generations, that if an Auschwitz survivor—who created the work—wants it back, it must be given. That's just the right thing to do. And it's only a start: a beginning toward reconciliation, a way of acknowledging the individual over the state.
 

So What's a Pict Anyway?

If you live in the UK, or have recently moved from there, you already know. For the rest of us ...

The Picts were a confederation of tribes in central and northern Scotland from Roman times until the 10th century. They lived to the north of the Forth and Clyde. They were the descendants of the Caledonii and other tribes named by Roman historians or found on the map of Ptolemy. Pictland, also known as Pictavia, became the kingdom of Alba during the 10th century and the Picts became the Albannach or Scots.

All of this and more can be discovered by clicking here, if you are further interested.

The Floydians among you will recognize the title of this literary blog—and particularly its subtitle—as the modification of a rather innovative and interesting Pink Floyd song from their 1969 Ummagumma album. If you know me, then you've never met a bigger Pink Floyd fan—whether you realize it or not. Call it homage to my heroes, call it inspiration, call it whatever you want. I call it logical. I call it creativity.

The Pictish images included along the sidebar of this blog are etchings created by John White and published in Thomas Harriot's exploration narrative in the late 1500s. Special thanks to Lance Newman for pointing me in their direction.