Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Funny, the only danger *I* see to my marriage is that marriage rights aren't fairly and equally extended to all. If the government can arbitrarily deny marriage rights to one group (a lot of groups, actually), why am I to suppose that any group is safe?" -- kathrynt, on Tuesday

I did make it to Homespun Ceilidh Band rehearsal last night, but I got there extremely late. I got there despite feeling all crashy again -- looks like my circadian rhythm has a suboptimal phase relation to my schedule. Then I found out that the person who'd said sie'd drive me home from Bowie afterwards (so I could return the van to my mother) couldn't do so after all. I managed to arrange a last-minute alternate ride, another friend who had been just about to go to bed. (Still, knowing how I am about grocery shopping when I have a rough week, she insisted on dragging me to the grocery store despite how I was feeling at the moment, so I would have food in my house today and tomorrow even if I didn't feel up to going out again. It was the right call, despite the pre-migraine aura I was experiencing.)

I mentioned before that at Pennsic I wrote a tune and had typeset printouts of it the next day. Well when I got back from Pennsic, I passed out copies to my bandmates. I've missed the last fewseveral rehearsals. It was cool to see last night that one of the sets we're rehearsing now includes that tune.

This morning when I checked my mail, I saw a message from one of my scripts on Eon (Linux box with the modem in it) alerting me to a disk-space crisis. The root partition was full. ( This turns out to be an annoying puzzle. )

( The rest of today (in theory) )

I've been thinking a lot more about this "Marriage Protection Week" thing ... some of what Bush said in that proclamation would make sense if any of us believed it was the real reason behind it. (Yes, even taken that way he managed to blow it by saying too much -- about definitions and using religious language.) The problem I have with it -- and I think what many (I'm not going to be so bold as to say "most", though that might be the case) of my friends object to -- is that first of all, it "tastes" wrong in that it doesn't feel, on first reading, as though the explanations given within the proclamation are real; secondly, that the presence of the "one man and one woman" language plus a tiny bit of digging reveal that the idea for this thing came from "defense of het privelege" folks, not from a Looming Crisis Affecting Existing Marriages, and that it's really just an excuse to wave that "one man and one woman" language around; and the fact that he (deliberately or otherwise) confused religious marriage and civil marriage and put religious language in a State document. I'm not against marriage -- I wouldn't have married the couples I married if I were opposed to it (yes, I can perform weddings in Maryland). And I do want to see marriages supported -- I'm not sure "protected" is the right word, because marriage as an institution just isn't under attack in any meaningful way, but I would like to see fewer marriages fail, whether that's by somehow magically making it easier for folks to figure out whether they should really get married in the first place, or supporting folks who are trying to fix problems in their marriages, or getting "the masses" to take the institution more seriously than a "reality television" show and to commit to working through the rough spots. But -- and this is a pretty big "but" -- I don't think a tax break, even if it's the right thing to do, is going to make the really big difference, and I'm not in a position to tell other people about their marriages since I've never been married myself. So to a large extent when I describe what I'd like other people to do differently to "support marriage", I'm talking out my ass and I know it. Yeah, I've got some knowledge from watching other people and talking to them about their relationships, but I haven't walked the walk.

In any case, "Marriage Protection Week" bugs me in a big way, but not because I think marriage is unimportant. It bugs me because the plattitudes in the proclamation seem silly, and because the real point of it isn't even about protecting marriages -- or even the institution of marriage -- in the first place: it's about finding a "who dares say they're against this?" issue to use as a mere carrier for the real message, a message of hate and exclusivity. It's not "marriage protection"; it's "defense of heterosexual privelege". And even though I think of myself as heterosexual in a confusing way (I'm intergendered: what's my "opposite gender"? (but more on that in a separate entry sometime)), well even thinking of myself that way, why do hets need special treatment that's denied to others? It's not a zero-sum game. Increasing fairness benefits us all.

In short, my problem isn't with the idea of "protecting marriage" despite problems with that conceptualization; it's that "Marriage Protection Week" is in no way about what it's named for. The name is a feint, a facade, an outright lie.

And, of course, I'm apparently preaching to the choir here anyhow.

Oh, I did find a good quote to end the week on. It even addressses things from a Christian traditionalist point of view. But I'm going to make y'all wait until Saturday for it.

Now to go back to looking for my missing disk space. [rubbing fingers, hand outstretched] "Here sector sector sector. Heeeeeere sector..."