Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"What really struck me is how I used to think that what Washington (or government in general) truly needs is people with a sense of humor, i.e., someone to deflate all of those hard-ass politicos who take themselves way too seriously, someone --- like all of those joke candidates we used to vote for student council back in high school and college --- who would bring some fresh air into the process, get people to the point where they can laugh at themselves, mend their differences, and concentrate on the stuff that really matters. Note that the student government entities at Princeton and Stanford had budgets in excess of $100,000 to spend (and that was 15-20 years ago); there are quite a few things you can do with that kind of money at that level. And the amazing thing about it all is that I remember the joke candidates often did a pretty good job once all of the dust settled, i.e., once they realized that they were in the hotseat now and had do something useful, and once the poltico types stuck in the room with them got over their outrage at what the election results implied, realized that their goals and the joke-candiate's goals weren't actually all that dissimilar, and settled down to work. This occasionally happens in real governments, too (cf. Jesse Ventura in Minnesota)." -- wrog, 2004-02-10

(And by the way, happy birthday to Interrobang.)

So yesterday while I was out running errands, history was made. Yeah, I'm being hopelessly US-centric regarding the importance of the first same-sex marriages performed in the US. Stealing MA's thunder, CA married some couples.

If these marriages stand, they're historic firsts, starting with the first of the day. The dawn of a new phase in the debate over this topic, an marker of when the "world" changed, and an example of how nothing suddenly falls apart just because somebody got married.

If they're struck down and declared invalid next week, they still signal that the ante has been upped. (Hmm. Does anyone happen to know whether a same-sex marriage snuck through the cracks in the past and was later caught and voided, back before this became a hot-button issue? Not because one or both members of the couple decided they wanted an annullment, but because the state stepped in?) They'd become either a footnote or part of the back-story for the first to be fully recognized, but they'd be important footnoes and back-story.

If the marriages stand in California but the Federal government refuses to recognize them, major state's-rights lines are drawn and we see a game of tug-of-war with the Constitution in the rope's role. (Not that the possibility of such hasn't been hanging over our heads for a few years now on this issue, but this would change it from potential to actual.)

There are several ways this could go, but in any of them, history has been made.

---

The issue isn't complicated.

There are reasons for opposing same-sex marriage, and there are excuses for opposing same-sex marriage. Most of the reasons boil down to religious issues, with the leftovers amounting to homophobia. The excuses make good sound bites but don't hold up to actual discussion.

The homophobic reasons aren't good enough as a basis for law, because the law must not discriminate on the basis of gender. And the religious reasons aren't good enough as a basis for law because of the first amendment. No outsider is going to tell a church whether that church has to marry same-sex couples, but the churches that would do so must not be barred from doing so by the churches that won't, and completely secular marriages by a justice of the peace must not be restricted on religious grounds.

It's allisona's fault because she asked:

Are you a fan of The Beatles? Why or why not? Do you think their reputation is justified or hype?

First-Generation fan: Did you see the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in February '64? Did you ever see The Beatles live? Or just tell me any Beatle story you like.

Second-generation fan and beyond: When did you discover The Beatles and how? Did you ever see any of the Beatle re-creation shows ("1964" or "Beatlemania!", for example)? Or just tell me any Beatle story you like.

But now I've got this seriously wedged in my brain:

Whoa, whoa, I
never realized what I kiss could be
this could only happen to me
Can't you see, can't you see

And I just know I'm going to go from one Beatles tune to another for the rest of the day. It's a good thing I like The Beatles. And it's a good thing I wasn't counting on getting any composing or arranging done this weekend.

---

Got the morning off to a reasonable start, though I did notice that I was especially tired. But as I crossed midday I noticed that I was moving more and more slowly. So plans for this afternoon have been pushed back to dinnertime, and with any luck I'll be packed by then and will have sorted out the Samba problem that's keeping me from accessing the spreadsheet I use for my checkbook so I can pay some bills (I know aproximately how much is in each account, so worst-case I can just be very conservative and tally everything up later, but I get twitchy about it).

My congressman just sent me email. (No, not personal, I think he's announcing something.) So he's got a clue about using the net to talk to constituents ... Make that half a clue. The mail is very difficult to read. It hurts my eyes badly enough not to want to bother extracting the message from the formatting by eye, and I'm annoyed enough not to want to bother piping it through Lynx to render it (because I get ticked at HTML mail (much more so when there's no plaintext version included)), but I'm feeling snarky enough to do a few search-and-replace commands in 'vi' to make it appear here the way it did on my screen when I first saw it (see previous parenthetical comment).

( fugly mail )

I wrote back, explaining that his mail was essentially unreadable at my end, and that if he wants me to read what he has to say, he should send it in a format that doesn't require more work from me. Ideally plaintext (drat! I forgot to mention that lines should be shorter than 80 characters) though I'd settle for two-part (plain + HTML). I'm not familiar with his mail program, KMail, but it appears to be a Linux/KDE application. I'll be surprised and disppointed if KMail turns out not to have a way to specify that mail should be sent in plaintext.

EDIT, a moment later: Wow, it's actually much easier to read the text in a browser window -- even with the HTML codes visible -- than in my telnet window where it's wall-to-wall. So this doesn't really convey the mangnutide of the fugliness. But now that I'm seeing it more legibly, I find myself thinking things like "you need tables for a #$*%ing email message???".