The Coffee Chronicles

With all the noise coming from the religious right all of a sudden, it may have been difficult to hear that today the Supreme Court has made a landmark decision that makes it possible for individuals to keep the government out of their bedroom. That's a good thing, in case you were wondering - what with the small apartments they're renting today, I don't know where you'd put the government, anyway.

With the majority ruling in the case Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, the Court has overturned a 1986 ruling that upheld an earlier Georgia statute criminalizing consensual male homosexual relations. The word used in this case for such relations is, of course - say it with me now, friends, sodomy - which creates a tacit stigma in the first place, but never mind. It will be repeated here, by me, that the government has no place in the private, sexual lives of its citizens and must respect the sovereignty of consensual agreement among adults. This is, of course, pretty much what the Court has said today. A victory for gay rights? Maybe. I say it's a victory for all of us. But not everyone agrees, of course.

If you look into the language that litters the paper trail of this legal decision, I think you'll shed quite a light on the dark underbelly of American so-called "morality":


This, pulled from the Court's 1986 decision, underlines the kind of thinking that pervaded the legal/moral climate of the time. What kind of family and marriage were they talking about, anyway? Imagine Melissa Etheridge or Rosie O'Donnell trying to raise children in such a climate, not to mention other, less visible individuals trying to do the same in this conservative world - but then, perhaps we owe all of them a debt of gratitude. And to continue on this thread, another snippet of legal ingenuity from the decision, an "escape clause" of sorts, relating to the fact that the Court's mandate in this case was clear-cut and inarguable:


The above emphasis on "long time" is added - and here is the real indication that the conservative right is standing on relatively thin ice. Do we take this to mean that a law remains correct and proper just because it's never been overturned? Do bad laws get better the longer they stay on the books? It's a very "pay no attention to that law behind the curtain" kind of legal system we have here, isn't it? Now, to suggest what sort of "family" the Court was referring to at the time, we can turn to a randomly selected sample of the more conservative websites out there today, www.family.org. The particular brand of conservatism exhibited here is an extreme case, as you'll see. I link to it in the spirit of free speech, of course, and as a warning to you all:


Wha? Where'd incest come from? Pretty crafty, I'd say, lumping this issue in with all the classic taboos. But then, I'm pretty sure that letting homosexual persons have any rights is pretty taboo for an organization that worries about how


Wait; isn't that exactly what we're talking about? Oh, right - they're worrying about such things because they disagree with them. Sheesh. But if you think that's bad, wait; this'll surely light your pants on fire:


Uh-oh. There they go again, dragging religion in to the argument. It's been pretty clear throughout history that the best way to get the masses all frothed up about any issue is to spit on, lionize, conjur up, or otherwise invoke a deity or two. You know, should such a being exist, I'd think that it would spend less time worrying about who we want to have sex with than, say, whether or not the Earth was going to crash into the Sun or how to keep all the atoms in the Universe from suddenly rushing apart at the speed of light - which, as Egon from Ghostbusters has said, would be "bad". In any case, if that's what the Ultimate Being spends time worrying about, then I sure as hell aren't going to pray to it. In any case, I'm not surprised that the religious right operates on such a pretense - that to them, homosexuality continues to be an aberration, a sin, and a crime. But I'm surprised as hell that Justice Scalia, who dissented in today's decision, should say the following, according to the Associated Press:


Yeah, right. And I'm sure he knows lots of gay people. They're really great at dinner parties, I hear. What's with this "homosexual agenda", anyway? What, are we being overrun with rainbow flags? "Gay rights on the horizon, captain!" It's like there actually is a war to be fought - which, if you believe quotes like the above from people like Justice Scalia, is obviously true. And if there are two sides to every conflict, one of them, so the religious right would have us believe, is divine:


To this, I can only respond in kind with a quote from the musical Rent, which stated defiantly in a chorus of jubilant voices,


As for the Fall of Civilization and the coming of the whore Babylon, I can only say amen.

Okay, I'll admit it. I've been a litle self-involved lately - but all in all, everyone should be allowed to take a break from reason, and place their mind on the hook for a while. But we can all take some consolation from the fact that I am, for the time being, done.


So, how much freedom would you relinquish for shelter and security? Is this an easy question to answer? Well, it really doesn't matter what you think, because the federal government is going to make you pay, all the same. And the price, it would seem, is a mere Amendment or two.

The Supreme Court recently upheld a ruling that mandates the installation of Internet filtering software on any public computer in a US library that receives federal funding. When reading the news about this issue or listening to the audio transcript, you'll hear the software called "anti-porn filters". This suggests that the primary use of such software is to block out - be still our puritan hearts - Internet pornography. But it should be pointed out - by myself, if no one else cares to at the moment - that such software does not know the difference between porn and, say, the mid-1980s presidential campaign of Republican senator Gary Hart. Okay, bad example; no-one could have divined the difference in that case. But the issue is clear, at least to this dissenting writer: software used in this way requires, by definition, human programmers to decide what is and is not appropriate for the public to view. The information filtering that results is necessarily subjective by design and cannot possibly be generally appropriate. As a result, I can only suggest that such a policy is not only censorship, but actually borders on wholesale extortion, as our guaranteed freedoms are literally held ransom by the conservative right.

Don't start smashing the state just yet. I'll be back with a more mollified approach shortly.

[edit: 6/24/03 2:50pm] All ranting aside, it should be clear that this initiative is directed squarely at America's youth, who apparently cannot be counted on to police their own use of public information. Such an opinion can only be a close judgement call; differing approaches to the problem of self-government of the young are legion, and couldn't possibly be reconciled in a mere commentary such as this one. But I can't help but think that we've allowed ourselves - and as such, our elected officials as well - to lose sight of the point. To illustrate what I mean, I offer the following options:

1. Create a structured society that our young can live within.
2. Instill our young with a sense of moral self-direction that can thrive in any environment.

Okay, so I'm over-simplifying. But no-one can argue that there is a significant difference, both philosophical and actual, between morality by choice and morality by royal fiat. And don't think I don't know that by simply mentioning morality - henceforth to be known strictly as "the m-word" - in print that I'm calling down a world of hurt. I'm aware of the risk. Bring it on.

But while you're bringing it, you'd better stuff your pockets full of good reasons why we should let the government - rather than our communities - teach our children about values while throwing away the Constitution in the balance. It's a challenge to minister to a society that demands to be treated with equality and yet be protected from evil; but that doesn't mean that we should be blind to what may be the greater evil in the end.

It would seem that the world - or, in this case: two jobs, an ultra-low-emission car, a nice place to live, and the largest city in America at my feet - is not enough. And why, pray tell, does this meta-social depression settle upon the fair suburb of Pasadena? What, a winter of discontent at the summer solstice? Surely there is some other explanation.

No; not an illusion, this disillusion - indeed, having spent an hour discoursing with my other half in the kitchen, we two have come to the conclusion that there is Something Wrong with our little world. Such philosophy, of course, is all fluorescent and linoleum; artificial and non-stick, we just might wake tomorrow with no sign of our troubles - and yet, it's still pretty even money that I'll spend the morning under a cloud, the hangover of discontentment leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

And yet, we await the diagnosis. Well, what with me taking jobs as they're offered (and even merely suggested) for fear of having - *gasp* - empty free time, and she fighting off the TV with a never-ending list of to-do lists for herself, it can only be a fear of lethargy that keeps our motor humming. As one might think, given the evidence.

Ah - but now! What we'd give for the luxury of lethargy...no, fair reader, that's not the end of things. In actuality, we've found that - in all that this great Los Angeles has to offer, with this city of 13-odd million souls literally teeming with promise, we have found that we have, quite literally nothing to do. When in the past - a different time, in a different city - we'd race through our days to spend our nights flung upon the nighttime city, here we come home, instead, to an empty house and heads full of spinning wheels. We have somehow turned our energies from friends and the aspirations of a seething, pleasure-seeking society to the aggravations of the workplace and diffuse, unresolved frustrations with corporate ambition.

All we have, it would seem, is work. But what work! Some days, opportunity just about rises up off the road and glances off our windshields as we drive, blindly, on our way. Ideas and schemes are borne upon the air here, and fall thickly, too numerous to count. I can't remember another time when plans seemed to come so freely - and yet often evaporate, unexecuted. We are burning out the best parts of ourselves here, suffering the acid air of America's first suburb; poisoned, parched, and thirsting for...something. Too many choices, too little motivation, too full of ourselves to care...

...too late, perhaps, for philosophical pose. Oh my soul, what I wouldn't give to wake up in NYC.

I wonder sometimes about the true meaning of laziness. Will it spell the downfall of Western Civilization? Perhaps it's just the sociological equivalent of entropy, a general malaise of sorts that accompanies each and every human interaction like the period at the end of this sentence. Kind of like a sales tax on life, in that regard.

Entropy, it should be noted at this point, is a concept apparently so complex and difficult to explain that my high-school Physics teacher - a pedagogical giant, in her own right - was able to direct an entire semester of study to its discovery and yet fail to clear up the extent of it to me, as an eager high-school senior, before I was able to graduate. I don't blame her methods, though. Quite the contrary, really; as I can fondly recall, she provided ample opportunity for me to uncover entropy's mystery on my own. It wasn't her fault.

I was probably being lazy.