Two Cheers for Gay Marriage

You probably know that the Washington State legislature has passed and the Governor was signed an act for the recognition of gay same sex marriage.

(As a side note, If you are interested in a perspective on the same-sex marriage issue and how elected political in Washington state -- and in what my mother used to call goo-goos -- fails, I suggest you look at When there's no cost to them, Olympia's liberals stand strong. It make a very good case as to why in a special session devoted to a budget deficit, this is all that would be produced.)

The debate about same-sex marriage, on both sides, misses the main point: marriage is not about "love" or "sex".  It is about the creation and accounting of economic units which can accumulate property (which historically includes children), and the maintenance of kinship organization (which is also about property).

Societies and the state need to track such units so as a resolve problems of ownership.  Marriage law, even and especially religious marriage law ,is dominantly about property -- who has access to it, how it is inherited, how it can be separated.  That is, it is contractual.  Definitions of marriage, and its legal status, have always reflected this, for example the reason that monogamous marriage is the norm in west, and now the world, that it simplifies property issues. 

Gay individuals are forming kinship units, accumulating property, having offspring in significant numbers.

It is in the interest of the the state and society that such units be allowed to be regularized, as it would  to facilitate the management of property, assign responsibility the care of children, and clarify kinship relations (for example next of kin in medical cases).

For the most part, I have supported domestic partnership laws over same-sex marriage as they could be tailored to satisfy these interests with minimal change to existing law -- a Fabian approach.  I am always chary of changing something with a lot of history. Granted this is perhaps pettifogging.

(Interestingly, in the United Kingdom they have a fairly strong domestic partnership law and little agitation
for same-sex marriage.  Also in the UK, according to surveys, males have a greater interest in partnership than females -- which is the reverse of the US and Canada.  These differences might make an interesting research topic for someone.)

There probably has been enough experience with domestic partnership laws and examples of drafting same sex marriage laws here and around the world, that the reasons for my preference are no longer relevant.

So, let's proceed with this.  Hopefully, we will survive the referendum -- it would be nice to solve a social issue without recourse to court intervention -- and the statute will be maintained.

But please, let us not talk about love, human rights, or values -- we are talking about a property issue.

Put another way, I welcome same sex couples to the right to pay alimony and child support.

Just, bloody, ducky.

From Occupy the Ports: How the Occupy movement has flipped the script on left-wing activism. - Slate Magazine

A middle-aged woman, who’d been chanting along with the usual stuff—“Whose ports? Our ports!” and “What’s the direction? Insurrection!” —
started in on a version of the labor movement’s unofficial anthem. It’s supposed to go like this:

Solidarity forever
The union makes us strong

The new version went like this:

Solidarity forever
Occupation makes us strong

Occupiers would like to think that the “us” is the same from song to song. That’s not really clear.

Of course it's not clear: no ground work, no solid alliance, no infrastructure, no plan of action. The reactionary enemy will,
legitimately, ask, how do you know you're "us."

My advice to the Occupy movement, if it wants to avoid being the useful idiots of the 1%, is try thinking.

One of the first rules of political organizing is recognize talk from truth -- your own that is -- not believing your own propaganda.

When protestors were removed from the Washington State Capitol in Olympia, they threatened to come back and be back and protest to "hold the legislators responsible."

When the Tea Party holds legislators responsible, they cost people their seat.

If we accept the Occupy position, anti-corporatist have assumed a strategy that is losing this from the get go.

One has the suspicion, that is a desired out come of the participants.

Why I Started Worrying and Learned to Depise the OWS Protests

In his article How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests | Politics News | Rolling Stone Matt Taibbi opines that:

It's about dropping out, if only for a moment, and trying something new, the same way that the civil rights movement of the 1960s strived to create a "beloved community" free of racial segregation. Eventually the Occupy movement will need to be specific about how it wants to change the world. But for right now, it just needs to grow..

As long as I have been able to distribute leaflets, stuff envelopes, and/or vote , I have been hearing that left movements "right now, ...just needs to grow."

It is nonsense. Or perhaps more accurately, there is no growing.

To affect change, it is necessary to get out there and organize, to develop candidates at all levels of government who a) can govern (e.g. fill pot holes) b) adhere to a program, and c) agree with a movement program, and get these people into office.

That is, if you want change, you must take some power into your hands.

Instead of knowledge about the system, there is cherry picking information provided in teach ins -- which do not provide the understanding of basic economics, corporate structure, and finance needed to do solutions.

Instead of understanding the need to discipline and sacrifice and compromise, there is consensus decision making and paralysis.

Instead of actually reaching out, which would mean some compromise, there is utopianism. Can you imagine this movement wanting accountability to stock holders?

So, instead or coordinated action, there are people playing. People with powerful political tools in reach, but are ignorant of how to use them.

Nothing demonstrates this more than the failure to understand the difference between civil disobedience and peaceful protest. While both are useful, and sometimes laudable, one is be definition illegal, the other is protected.

There then come the whiny expectation of institutional powers that they opposed. Consider the petition text I received from moveon:

We demand that you call off the police and that Occupy Seattle be allowed to exercise free speech and voice its opposition to corporate control by demonstrating in Westlake Park, which is in the city center where the targets of these protests—the multi-national corporations and banks—are located. We demand no restrictions on First Amendment rights to assemble, including attempts to seek protection from the weather, any time—day or night.

I wonder how that got into peaceably assemble.

In the end, there will only be people wonder why the stars didn't line up to help them change matters in society, as there is a dearth of mirrors in the land.

Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.

MAtthew 7.3 -- and you thought I'd never quote the Greek Bible.

In the Anna Russel* vein, one has to laugh at this news Julian Assange Unauthorised Autobiography Published Against WikiLeaks Founder's Wishes.


Irony, like beer, may be proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

As a noted special prosecutor remarked Is nothing private".









*I'm not making this up you know....

When there is no cost for evil, there is no change

My younger brother has a blog (40 Years in the Desert), which frequently brings items of interest to my attention.

A recent entry When a 'Phant Calls Another 'Phant a Stupid Classless Idiot…  about
Brian Miller, the former head of the Pima County (Tucson) Arizona Republican Party, attacking his successors classless dolts for raffling off a Glock handgun as a fund raiser.


 
What I found interesting was one section of a quote here that Miller made about the reactionary bloc, who he described as being:

"...'my way or the highway' wing of the GOP who don't pay much thought  to the political fallout [emphasis added] from their actions..."

This is a "curious incident of the dog in the night-time" (The Silver Blaze).

There is no fallout.

There is no a concerted campaign to broadcast and hammer this sort of actions, despite the fact this tactic has been so successful for the reactionary bloc.

Where are the adds from the DNC, MoveOn, and rest of the 'progressive' community calling this out, pointing out that this sort of behavior is the core of the political right.

These attacks should be such as to force less extreme rightist to choose between their base, and being hammered.

The idea might be likened to the non-use of poison gas during WII, when the use was deterred by the knowledge of the other side responding.

Of course, this implies that the reactionary block has as much sense at the OKW.

This is probably not the case. In which case, you just have to use poison gas..."the war is thrust upon us...",

In political terms, if the reactionary block has to face effective character execution*, it will either stop character assassination, or take damage.  Either situation is desirable.

But this idea doesn't seem to percolate through the skulls of people who think community organizing, or triangulation, or patronage is the peak of politics. So we drift on unarmed.


---
   *Killing a reputation by using facts and history, and weighing publicly the issues, is execution. I will admit it is whose ox is gored issue, but it's my damned cow.

Call Jewish Fundamentalism What It Is

My father has a cute phrase: All fanatics are cousins.

I think that over all this, article by Mr Matthew Nussman is reasonably correct, ZEEK: Articles: Call Jewish Fundamentalism What It Is.

The additional point I would add is all fundamentalist need to be understood in terms of reactionary mind set and treason.

A reactionary wants a sudden return to an supposed past state. The essence of this past is one where the group they represent had power.

The treason goes beyond the attempted assassination of the the truth about the past.

The treason rests in the assault on the full community (in this case : klal yisrael כלל ישראל‎, "All of Israel", in other cases, it would be the republic).

They are quite willing to make war on the rest of the community, drive away, or deny disagreement. Making war on the community is the core of treason.

This is sufficient to be treason without even examining the giving aid and comfort.

It appears to me that this sort of assault is justified by 'separate nationalism,' where the remainder of the community is defined so as not be be of the same community. But this is psychologizing and not entirely useful at the moment.

Instead, what perhaps one might consider what to do now that the de facto declaration of war has been made?

Such conflict will continue as long as it is profitable and as long as the perpetrators feel they are winning the civil conflict. There are a limited number of ways of dealing with an insurrection and subversion. Personally, I would like to 'make Georgia howl.'

The art of the snark

Every once in awhile, there is a rude, snarky comment which just fills my heart with glee.

In Why the GOP Loves the Debt on the Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky quotes Sidney Blumenthal and then expands with a little twist "

'In the words of Sid Blumenthal, the hard-right GOP governors “are the Koch brothers’ suicide bombers.” Seventy-two Fox contracts await them in a future life.'

I wonder whether Coulter might be included to?  Well, given its recent endorsement of jello wrestling, one wonders.