Gay Marriage and the So-Called Religious Left

Pennsylvania continues down the well-tread path to legislative prohibitions on gay marriage. The language of the non-debate exists almost entirely in the realm of cliché and euphemism: "traditional," "marriage equality," "civil union," "protect marriage," "sanctity of marriage," etc. On one hand, it’s argued that marriage—monogamous, financially codependent, cohabiting, sexual-romantic, familial partnership—is the most fundamental organizing principle of "society." On the other hand, it’s argued that only by denying institutional access to people whose sexual practices are deemed incompatible with ancient moral-sexual proscriptions can the "institution of marriage" be "saved," "protected," "preserved," or what have you.

It should be noted that state recognition and licensing of marriage is an unnecessary and invasive mechanism of social control. It should be noted that advocates for gay marriage are in some ways no better than their opponents; they too accept a standard that says the state has some business in and right to confer its approbation—and therefore legitimacy—on sexual and familial decisions made by consenting adults. It should be noted that using the Christian Bible as a moral fountainhead from which waters flow the social policies of the state (apparently!) is problematic not, as "progressive" religionists claim, because the Bible is un-homophobic—it is very homophobic—but rather because the Bible is a collection of primitive sexual non sequiturs; it spends a good deal more time telling men not to fuck their wives when the womenfolk are on the rag than it does on all that man lying with mankind (or is it vice versa) nonsense.

In any event, I understand the atavistic dreams of religious conservatives. Capitalism, far more effectively than its much-demonized, various-and-sundry Marxian nemeses, culled the herd of old moralities by letting—by requiring!—that people buy, sell, and browse as they like. Capitalism hitched to the political freedoms of the United States or Western Europe is structurally inimical to religious authority, which asks that people don’t buy, sell, browse, and think as they like. It turns out that people like slutty clothes, fart jokes, booty-shaking, bling, and yes, even butt sex. It should be noted that despite the gays-are-icky sentiment swimming just beneath the placid "I don’t have a problem with homosexuals, just with homosexual acts," there’s hardly a straight man in America who wouldn’t put his cock in a woman’s ass if only she’d let him. Any woman will tell you that much. A woman who says she’s never had a boyfriend, husband, lover, etc. who "wanted to try anal" is as bad a liar as a man who says he wouldn’t be into it.

But still, the Bible. A fat turd full of undigested moral peanuts and kernels of moral corn. Oh, there’s some very lovely poetry in it, which is the principle animating force behind leftish religionists. Let’s be plain. It’s preposterous to reject the veracity of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, Jonah and the Whale, Elijah riding heavenward on the you’ll-pardon-the-expression flaming chariot, while simultaneously claiming to believe that yes, Jesus was the son of god, born of a virgin, died for the sins of the world, resurrected, bodily assumed, whatever. The story of Jesus’ life and death is equally preposterous. Only two types of people could believe such a thing to be true: morons and children. And they’d have to be pretty moronic children. But even many non-morons who reject the literal truth of this last story, just as they reject the literal truth of all the rest, finally come to believe in some quasi-mystical God-and-Heaven hogwash through sheer surfeit of poetical feelings. Exhibit A is such personage as Karen Armstrong, who became an atheist when she started studying religion, and then converted back toward heaven with vague statements about the "immaturity" of atheism and the essentially good, unified, beautiful, beneficent, magnificent . . . poetic nature of the divine. This god, more East than West, exists as a sort of endless metaphoric vehicle for some universal demiurge whose impersonality is taken by proponents to be somehow more mature, more complex, and more true than either the various pathetic fallacies of traditional religions, monotheisms in particular, or the null-set pantheon of genuine atheism.

It’s a curious characteristic of this era of ours that a surplus of vagaries is taken as a mark of intellectual maturity—in politics just as much as religion (cf. Peter Beinart).

I’m not certain, in any event, how the self-nominated religious left proposes to transform its self-indulgent ephemera into positive social policy, but then again, I’m not certain what purpose "social policy" serves in the first place. Governments—"liberal," "conservative," it makes no difference—engage in their neverending projects of socio-moral engineering in order to circumscribe personal, aesthetic, economic, and ethical choices, which by extension delimit acceptable political choices. The religious right wants the state’s express disapproval and disavowal of "gay marriage"; the religious left wants its express approval. In both cases, the purpose is limit the other’s political and rehtorical arsenal.

If you care about rights and equality for gays, then you don’t ask that the government approve. You ask that the government sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up already. Your penis and your love are yours alone to give.

Close Read

The President snuck of to Baghdad. Again. Without a turkey. Got the unmarked helicopter from the White House. Then onto Air Force One with a retinue of "close aides" and a number of scribes, each sworn to secrecy over a triple-martini and personalized set of incriminating photographs. Across the ocean in dead of night. Steep spiral into the Baghdad Airport. Mustn’t get shot down. Then back into the helicopter; chopper fast and low over the city to the, ahem, "heavily fortified Green Zone." Hardly a victory march down the Champs, was it?

The panegyricists, of course, wrote it up as if our Keystone Crusader had just bumbled into the Kingdom of Prester John, rife with miracles. Or something.

It was powerful political theater, choreographed by an experienced team that played up the drama and secrecy of the moment, and were rewarded with a day of relatively unfiltered cable news coverage. The trip, including a stealthy nighttime helicopter departure from Camp David, unfolded with the precision of a campaign event, complete with the image of the commander in chief addressing cheering American troops.

But it was also a gamble. For Mr. Bush, the new Iraqi government is a life preserver, evidence of progress toward the goal of establishing democracy in a hostile environment.

Since the killing last week of the jihadist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, polls have shown some tentative signs of a reversal in the slide in public support for the war.

Here you have the so-called independent press reporting on what the reporter herself identifies as "political theater" in the style of substantive reportage. Here you have the so-called independent press repeating the idea that a staged event that was "choreographed by an experienced team," that "unfolded with the precision of a campaign event," represents "unfiltered coverage," by which I suppose they mean unmediated re-presentation of an event notable principally for its self-evident artifice.

Here you have the so-called independent press conceding, even as it reports the "carefully calibrated message" that "Iraq and the administration's strategy there appear to be turning a corner," that:

There is little evidence that security is improving, and the president has long said American soldiers will not leave until the Iraqis assume that responsibility. So instead, the White House is turning to a strategy that proved successful in the elections of 2004, insisting Mr. Bush will stay the course while at the same time making Iraq a proxy for the broader national security debate.

I had an excellent professor in my more literary days who chided me for insulating myself in scholarly writing using precisely this method: to observe that so-and-so is doing or arguing such-and-such without implicating myself in the further dissemination of the argument, the idea, the strategy. Here you have the so-called independent press reporting on "a strategy that proved successful in the elections of 2004" without making a single concession to its own instrumental role in that strategy.

Here you have the so-called independent press repeating that role:

As Mr. Bush pledged to Iraqis in Baghdad that he would stick by them, Democrats in Washington were debating whether the United States should set a deadline for withdrawing troops, creating precisely the contrast the White House sought to establish.

Here you have the so-called independent press bundling off in the middle of the night without telling anyone in order to report on "political theater" and a "strategy" for creating "precisely the contrast the White House sought to establish" without noting the tree-falling-in-a-forest quality of the whole shameful farce.

And look! "Spate of Good News Gives White House a Chance to Regroup." Whaddayaknow.

The Trial

Once the lawyer thought he had humiliated K. sufficiently, he usually started something that would raise his spirits again. He had already, he would then say, won many such cases, partly or in whole, cases which may not really have been as difficult as this one but which, on the face of it, had even less hope of success. He had a list of these cases here in the drawer—here he would tap on one or other of the drawers in his desk —but could, unfortunately, not show them to K. as they dealt with official secrets. Nonetheless, the great experience he had acquired through all these cases would, of course, be of benefit to K. He had, of course, begun work straight away and was nearly ready to submit the first documents. They would be very important because the first impression made by the defence will often determine the whole course of the proceedings. Unfortunately, though, he would still have to make it clear to K. that the first documents submitted are sometimes not even read by the court. They simply put them with the other documents and point out that, for the time being, questioning and observing the accused are much more important than anything written. If the applicant becomes insistent, then they add that before they come to any decision, as soon as all the material has been brought together, with due regard, of course, to all the documents, then these first documents to have been submitted will also be checked over. But unfortunately, even this is not usually true, the first documents submitted are usually mislaid or lost completely, and even if they do keep them right to the end they are hardly read, although the lawyer only knew about this from rumour. This is all very regrettable, but not entirely without its justifications. But K. should not forget that the trial would not be public, if the court deems it necessary it can be made public but there is no law that says it has to be. As a result, the accused and his defence don't have access even to the court records, and especially not to the indictment, and that means we generally don't know - or at least not precisely—what the first documents need to be about, which means that if they do contain anything of relevance to the case it's only by a lucky coincidence. If anything about the individual charges and the reasons for them comes out clearly or can be guessed at while the accused is being questioned, then it's possible to work out and submit documents that really direct the issue and present proof, but not before. Conditions like this, of course, place the defence in a very unfavourable and difficult position. But that is what they intend. In fact, defence is not really allowed under the law, it's only tolerated, and there is even some dispute about whether the relevant parts of the law imply even that.

From The Trial by Franz Kafka

The government's main argument today, repeated numerous times, was that more facts are required in the case but that more facts cannot be disclosed. Judge Taylor asked few questions but at one point appeared frustrated by this approach.

"You have conceded, have you not, that a program has been authorized?" she asked Mr. Coppolino. He responded that the administration's public defense of the program has been too general to serve as the basis for judicial adjudication. "There is very much a difference," Mr. Coppolino said, "between the existence of an activity and the details of that activity."

Even portions of the government's brief that were said to demonstrate why further information about the program cannot be disclosed have not been filed in court. Instead, the government "lodged" the brief and other classified papers at the Justice Department in Washington, inviting Judge Taylor to make arrangements to see them. At today's hearing, she shook her head no when Mr. Coppolino asked her whether she had "had a chance to review our classified submission."

"U.S. Asks Judge to Drop Suit on N.S.A. Spying" in The New York Times

"Orwellian Doublespeak" is the phrase getting a current tossing-about, but "Kafkaesque absurdity" is more accurate. Orwell’s vision of a directed tyranny plays nicely into some very culturally narcissistic ideas about the scope and capacity of our government and our technologies.

The Panopticon is a myth now as it always was.

It may be the desire of certain factions in the American governing complex to observe every action and transaction, to sift and sort their way toward perfect control. Conversely, it serves the interest of oppositional figures to evoke a tyrannical and omnipresent über-State; Big Brother is, after all, someone or something to combat. But that’s all illusory.

We aren’t poor Winston Smith, but poor Josef K. Our situation is tragically absurd. The self-propagating arguments for secrecy; the veiled nature of all our legal and legislative processes; the contortions of logic; the inconsistencies; the overstuffed cast of characters; the tawdriness and shabbiness of it all . . . The institutional inertia of a many-million-person bureaucracy, with combative nodes of power here or there, sometimes in cooperation and sometimes at total cross-purposes: this is what drives the Once-Republic-Now-Whatever forward, inexorably.

That is why "reform" is such a delusion. Was Josef K.’s judge free to set K. free?

The governors, too, are trapped.

It ends with bickering. Then, a knife in the heart.

Once again, what the fuck, Andrew Sullivan?

(Viva viva viva viva) You're a Euroboy (Euroboy)
(Viva viva viva viva) You're a Euroboy (Euroboy)
(Viva viva viva viva) You're a Euroboy (Euroboy)
(Viva viva viva viva) You're a Euroboy (Euroboy)

(Viva viva viva viva) You want a lover, you want a new lover
(Viva viva viva viva) You want a lover, you want a new lover
(Viva viva viva viva) You want a lover, you want a new lover
(Viva viva viva viva) You want a lover, you want a new lover

from "Euroboy" by The Petshop Boys

From the sublime to the ridiculous and back again. Andrew Sullivan will be in P-Town. The vigil will be in San Fran. The commemoration? The execution of teenage gays in Iran a year ago.

What does it mean to "look evil in the eye?" How do vigils and commemorations from two of America’s foremost national gayborhoods offer anything but self-satisfying pseudo-moral uplift to the unafflicted American homos carrying them off? Who the fuck cares what The Petshop Boys think about anything?

If I condemn "Islamic Totalitarianism" while fucking a stranger in the ass in the scrub pine on Fire Island, does anyone hear it?

God, how I hate the language of condemnation. It absolutely infects our discourse. Democrats demand Republicans condemn Ann Coulter’s 9/11-widows-are-disaster-pimps bit. Republicans demand Democrats denounce International A.N.S.W.E.R. So-and-so is always "distancing" himself from such-and-such. Needless to say, no one can say a goddamn thing about anyone or anything from the Maghreb to the farthest fucking island of Indonesia without muttering, "Of course, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator."

To Andrew Fucking Sullivan: Most of the world isn’t Provincetown. Most of the world is sunk in a mire. In much of the world, people struggle desperately to eat, to drink clean water, to give birth without dying in the process. It takes exactly zero moral courage to light a fucking candle on the veranda in Provincetown and pop off blog posts about dead teenagers.

That’s all I have to say, but someone can surely articulate more precisely what it is about that post that makes me so damn pissy.

And I thought my folks were libertarian!

I used to think Mom and Dad were pretty fucking cool for the whole, "Yeah, we used to smoke a lot of pot," thing, but this is way cooler.

But can the ages be right? The mother is reported as 31, the father as 23! And the ages of the chilren are 12, 11, and 4.

I was a relatively early bloomer, but I don't recall having the ability to successfully impregnate my 19-year-old girlfriend when I was 11!

¡ FIESTA !

Q: Why is Stevie Wonder always smiling?

A: Because he doesn't know he's black.

If you haven't already had the pleasure, Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Vernon Robinson, a guy who'd sic the LAPD on Uncle Tom.

He's produced the greatest radio spot ever:

"If [Congressman Brad] Miller had his way, America would be nothing but one big fiesta for illegal aliens and homosexuals."

If any one of you, dear readers, happens to be a young, smooth, VGL, femme bottom Rican from north of 96th or so, I'll personally front airfare so you can get yer fine ass down to North Carolina in order to show up and scream, "Aye, Papi!" at Vern at every campaign stop.

Music Monday

Progetto Martha Argerich is a really fantastic site with streaming recordings of excellent, idiosyncratic performances of great classical and twentieth-century works by a whole host of composers.

On another note entirely, and with the caveat that the whole "we come into this world to transform the darkness into light" shtick was already un petit peu played out by the time they paved paradise and put up a parking lot, Matisyahu, the Hasidic Reaggae-Rapper, is pretty fucking great in the Live at Stubb's album.

Finally, I had the opportunity to hear brief, intimate recital by Nathan Gunn, a young bariton with, I hope, an excellent career ahead of him. He sang some selections available on American Anthem: From Ragtime to Art Song. He's an excellent, honest interpreter of song without artifice, and next year he's engaged to sing Billy Budd in the Pittsburgh Opera's production of Britten's eponymous opera.