After a Bit of a Hiatus | Main | Muckrakers, we hardly knew ye.
June 30, 2003
Hey! Ho! Let's Gomorrah!
The rhetorical tack that opponents of last week's Supreme Court decision seem to be market-testing is, if you think what gays and lesbians do in private is their own business, then you must be in favor of incest--or you might as well be, because as sure as candy's sweet that'll be legal tomorrow, too. (Between adults, anyway.)
Which is, of course, horseshit six different ways, but it's interesting that I've heard the word "incest" a half-dozen times since Thursday, and not once from somebody who actually wanted to do his own sister. Am I so out of touch? It never even occurred to me that there might be a Brother/Sister Love Lobby just waiting for the right cultural moment to bring their shame into the sunlight. (To think I used to work in a liquor store that carried "Family Love" magazine on the porn rack. Right under our noses, people!) And Rick Santorum sternly intones that marriage isn't open to man and dog (no matter how committed their relationship)--but that could change.
I'm not ignorant of the Abyss that beckons in the heart of Man; I know there is vile business being conducted in attics, cellars, and darken'd apartments the world over. But if religious conservatives truly believe the Rehnquist Supreme Court has set a course for the depraved dystopias that burn blackly in their tortured sleep, they ought to be spending more time in therapy and less in church.
I'm a card-carrying Married who's successfully bred once. There are a lot of things I worry may threaten my family. This isn't one of them.
Comments
You know... I wonder about these things. In a political environment where the landscape has been extremely skewed to the right, how could such a landmark supreme court decision come about? Is this a piece of meat thrown to the hard-scrabble dogs, an actual aligning of the supreme court with general public opinion, or ammunition to further erode the political left from a tenuous toe hold in Washington?
I've never been one for grand conspiracy theories past watching my share of X-Files, so I don't believe there is a vast right winged conspiracy coordinated enough to plan Juggernaut schemes. But I do believe there was certainly a measure of calculated cost benefit analysis on this decision. And I believe there was some sense of "this is probably the right decision" along with it as well.
The opportunity here for the hemorrhaging political left is to use the vulgar and sophomoric responses from republican leaders and start showing how radical our current administration truely is.
Before that can happen of course, the democratic party must actually embrace some ideals - something sorely lacking in any plank of their storm tossed agenda. Health, worker's rights, and minority representation planks on the democratic side all seem water logged and pockmarked with cannon holes from the republican ship, SS Compliance. It's time for a regrouping and resanding of the entire deck before the democratic party can be of any use to anyone, much less themselves.
Oh, and incest is like not cool and stuff.
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Posted by: Michael Burton at June 30, 2003 7:37 PM