This recent post by Andrew Sullivan articulated what I guess has frustrated me of late. It seems like the Republican party has re-fashioned itself into an opposition party whose sole principle is opposition. Perhaps this will just take a bit of time to adjust being in the minority in the government, but as far as I can tell, the most important issues for the Right are the President’s birth certificate and how many czars he has. Now, I’m conflating “the Right” and “Republicans,” which is likely not fair nor accurate, but I also don’t see elected Republican representatives telling me anything different: telling me that they have a different vision for health care reform (which, I’d assume, everyone agrees we need to have) or for international relations (outside of abolishing the UN, or, as Mike Huckabee suggested, cutting it loose from New York City), outside of just hating the vision that the President or Democrats have. It seems very short-sighted, awfully counter-productive, and ultimately detrimental to not only their party but to the health of our democracy. This kind of politics where the opposition merely opposes without offering a positive agenda of their own coupled with a media that only reports on the back and forth instead of the actually issues truly results in a negative outlook for our democracy.
Patricia J. Weight August 13, 2009
This is the obituary I wrote for my grandma, in case anyone is interested. More ruminations to follow no doubt…
Patricia J. Weight passed away on July 31. She was 80. Pat shared most of her life with her loving husband Wally, but she also shared so much with so many others. As a foodservice manager with Edmonds School District, she shared food, laughter, and care with hundreds of students and staff who loved and respected her. As a transplanted North Dakotan, she shared news from the Northwest with her extended family through myriad letters and lengthy calls that showed her need to connect with others and demonstrate her love for them. As a host to friends, she greeted you at the door with an endless list of the contents of her cupboards and fridge, all available to you – and despite initial protestations that you were fine, you always partook, knowing that she was offering more than food: she was offering you her love. As a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, she offered a lap to relax and feel safe in, a voice that boomed with wit, confidence, and interest, a mind that was razor-sharp and filled with stories and history, and a heart that brimmed with pride and unconditional love. All of these roles that Pat so masterfully played made her someone that all of us – her loving husband Wally, her innumerable friends, her devoted siblings, and her grateful children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren – will desperately miss and forever cherish.
Zzzzzzzzzzz June 30, 2009
Wake up!
Lauren has shamed me into returning. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say. I suppose. It’s just that when I typically decide to turn back to the blog, I’m tired or something.
No excuse though. So, fewer excuses, and more writing. It will be good for me. No kidding.
So, this is the kind of season it will be May 4, 2009
A season where our first regular season Phillies game is rained out.
A season where the Mariners come back innumerable times to win a game they had no business winning. Like, really.
It’s going to be a season where the Phillies will string me along, and the Mariners will force me to watch them because they’re crazy, making me lose much sleep.
Because I love them.
Thoughts on Iowa April 3, 2009
Thanks to work I did with a student two summers ago, I’ve had occasion to read all of the state Supreme Court decisions on same-sex marriage, so it’s interesting to compare Iowa’s decision (of which I have only read the summary) to those others.
First, the decision connects the decision with the best historical principles of the state:
Equal protection under the Iowa Constitution “is essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated
should be treated alike.” Since territorial times, Iowa has given meaning to this constitutional provision, striking blows to slavery and segregation, and recognizing women’s rights.
I remember explicit references in the New Jersey decision to its historical freedoms, etc. It is an interesting rhetorical move because it places the granting of such rights within the state’s narrative of itself, rather than as an aberration.
In discussing how they counteracted the argument that same-sex couples do not meet the threshold of being similarly situated as opposite-sex couples, the court said
The purpose of Iowa’s marriage law is to provide an institutional basis for defining the fundamental relational rights and responsibilities of persons in committed relationships. It also serves to recognize the status of the parties’ committed relationship.
I think some of the most interesting elements of these cases are how they discuss the purpose of the state’s involvement in marriage. For Iowa, as with many others, children are not mentioned, but rather that there is something beneficial to the state to encourage and recognize committed relationships.
To determine whether the classification of sexual orientation warranted a more demanding constitutional analysis, the court said it would have to meet four factors:
(1) the history of invidious discrimination against the class burdened by the legislation; (2) whether the characteristics that distinguish the class indicate a typical class member’s ability to contribute to society; (3) whether the distinguishing characteristic is “immutable,” or beyond the class members’ control; and (4) the political power of the subject class.
The court establishes: that gays and lesbians “as a group have long been the victim of purposeful and invidious discrimination” (note the inclusion of purposeful); that their orientation does not preclude them from contributing to society; that “sexual orientation [is] central to personal identity and that its alteration, if at all, could only be accomplished at the expense of significant damage to the individual’s sense of self”; and, that they have not gained enough power to “overcome the unfair and severe prejudice” that inhibits them.
The immutability question here is the interesting part here for me, as the court comes squarely down on the side of immutaibility, and on the importance of sexual identity to selfhood.
Having established that it merited further scrutiny, the court then had to determined “whether exclusion of gay and lesbian people from civil marriage is substantially related to any important governmental objective” based on the reasons the county offered:
(1) tradition, (2) promoting the optimal environment for children, (3) promoting procreation, (4) promoting stability in opposite-sex relationships, and (5) preservation of state resources.
For #1, the court got at the heart of this argument:
When a certain tradition is used as both the governmental objective and the classification to further that objective, the equal protection analysis is transformed into the circular question of whether the classification accomplishes the governmental objective, which objective is to maintain the classification.
Exactly.
#2 was easily swatted down; #3 is fun: “The court concluded the County’s argument is flawed because it fails to address the required analysis of the objective: whether exclusion of gay and lesbian individuals from the institution of civil marriage will result in more procreation.” Again, exactly: “dear, the gays can’t marry: let’s make some more babies to celebrate!” #s 4 and 5 were also summarily dismissed.
The court then went on to talk about religious arguments, and I think this one is fascinating, particularly since previous cases didn’t really bring up religion that much. Perhaps because this is Iowa and not godless Hawaii or New Jersey, but the court felt the need to address it:
Recognizing the sincere religious belief held by some that the “sanctity of marriage” would be undermined by the inclusion of gay and lesbian couples, the court nevertheless noted that such views are not the only religious views of marriage. Other, equally sincere groups have espoused strong religious views yielding the opposite conclusion. These contrasting opinions, the court finds, explain the absence of any religious-based rationale to test the constitutionality of Iowa’s same-sex marriage statute. “Our constitution does not permit any branch of government to resolve these types of religious debates and entrusts to courts the task of ensuring government avoids them.”
I mean, how refreshing: it’s the job of the courts to make sure that government gets out of religion, not into it.
Finally, the court declared the marriage statute “constitutionally infirm,” which I think is a fascinating way of describing it. It’s not unconstitutional, it’s constitutionally infirm — corporeally sick or even diseased.
I think what is most interesting about this decision for me is that it feels like there was a shift here from other cases (or maybe I’m reading into things and/or mis-remembering): instead of forcing same-sex couples to prove that they deserved this, the state was forced to prove how they didn’t deserve this, how the state benefitted from excluding them from this. I think it’s an important shift — essentially providing these couples with the standard of innocent before proven guilty.
Interesting times.
Sundry February 10, 2009
- Been a wee bit busy. Last weekend was the big trip to DisneyWorld for a certain someone’s birthday, which was tons of fun (except for AirTran, which deserves its own post at some point for their idiocy); this weekend it was lots o’ chorus and chores (what I did there has to be some poetic device. I wish it was chiasmus, just because I like thinking I write in chiasmuses). In between has been a fair amount of work, leaving me tired and unresponsive to important phone calls. And such.
- This weekend includes two fabulous things. First, the reinvigorated Oscar Movie Marathon. So, cinephiles, were one to choose two nominated films to see (and not Slumdog, since a member has already seen it), which would they be? I’m leaning toward preferring Milk and The Reader; we’ll see what’s still playing this weekend. We will quickly dash off from Princeton to make it in time for the Valentine’s show featuring Rufus and Martha. It’s really too much to bear. I’m praying there will be commemorative t-shirts.
- I’m both out of it and in it when it comes to music it seems. FFing through the Grammys, I was excited by Radiohead’s performance, bored by most, and nonplussed by others. All the while, I was saying, where’s The Bird and The Bee, Vampire Weekend, Fleet Foxes, or The Calculus Affair? Also, who knew Adele was white? Another fine descendent of Mother Dusty and Auntie Annie. I think I prefer Duffy to her though…and of course there’s Amy.
- I hate having poor vision. I’m still getting used to my new contacts. There is too much adjusting in the morning, and I can’t look down without things getting cludgy. I will never get used to the expense of them though. I think I may go to glasses. I mean, if I can get Michael Kors glasses, why wouldn’t I?
- Someone needs to make a movie version of The Female Quixote. I think it would work well, updated of course.
- When we’re in Vegas next, I’m totally putting down a lot of money on the Phillies repeating. I’m also a bet mule, if you’d like to drop a line:)
Proofreading…and my iPod January 15, 2009
First, a poetical reading of what happens when you trust spell check (h/t Sully):
Second, my iPod has been slightly strange lately. I play it on shuffle in my office the whole day. Yesterday, it turned up Prince’s “P Control,” (warning that the lyrics are NSFW, in case you couldn’t figure out what P stood for) a song which, if I’m in the right mood, I can listen to just fine, but I wasn’t in the mood; it brought it up again this morning. Then, my fast-forward on my speaker’s remote control wouldn’t work. It was as if my iPod was telling me that I just had to listen to this song. Freaky.
However, it also brought up this morning, “A Few Simple Words,” by Cowboy Junkies, which contains one of my favorite lyrics: “Honey, you’re a bastard of great proportion.” Excellent.
Huh? August 29, 2008
Wow, McCain just got way random with this pick. I like that she wears funky glasses and has a child named after a Buffy character. Other than that, huh? They look just strange together. She will obviously help us with our current Russia problem, or at least be our first line of defense against the invasion. Huh?
The The July 29, 2008
Yglesias via Drum discusses the SoCal propensity to provide determiners to their highways. In the places I have lived, there have been no rules: obviously, LA appends a ‘the’ to just about everything and infuriatingly switches between the names and numbers of highways, such that for newcomers it’s just about impossible to follow directions or make sense of traffic reports. In Seattle, LA’s ‘the 5′ is ‘I-5′ while 405 and 99 are just that (though 99 may be called Aurora in some spots accurately, but that road changes names about 5 trillion times, so that too is annoying). In Philly, well, we do things strangely:
- 76 functions sometimes as the Turnpike, where it is the Turnpike (though that is also sometimes 276 and 476), but is more often called ‘the Schuykill’ in the Philadelphia area since it runs along the river (but that can get confusing because are you talking about the road or the river?). There is no ‘the’ before 76.
- 476 is The Blue Route from Chester to Plymouth Meeting (and it’s free) or the Northeast Extension running from Plymouth Meeting, well, northeast (and it’s a toll and part of the turnpike). These terms are LA-like used interchangeably. (Blue Route comes from the color of the route on a map when it was first proposed 50 years ago, as opposed to the green or red routes).
- 676 is the Vine Street Expressway running through Center City Philadelphia. Also used interchangeably. The tricky thing about 676 is that it extends into New Jersey, so you have to know which state you’re talking about (which is probably why the Vine Street Expressway is used more often).
(I got used to the names relatively quickly, but I had (and still slightly have) a problem figuring out which way was west. See, to me, water = west; here it’s the opposite, so I often have to actually think about that when choosing an onramp)
So, as ever, Philly is slightly strange, but much more sensical than LA.
Stupid Questions July 26, 2008
- Where did July go?
- What does Rufus mean when he sings, “When I am older than these small, god-damned hills, there’s no reason for my mind to be still.” (It actually doesn’t matter, because I love it so much)
- Why do the Mariners suck?
- Why can’t I keep my room clean?
- Why do I like planning trips so much?
- Why must Arial be the official Ursinus font?
- Why is it that we can’t get Snapfish to print our pictures after we transfer them to my computer and iPhoto apparently makes the resolution suck?
- Why isn’t Eddi Reader the most popular singer on earth?
