Sic dolet

 (Posted to my MySpace Weblog on September 29, 2007) When you hang around libraries as much as I do, even indices become exciting. Some indices are shoddily done, and many books nowadays because of the hectic rush to market do not have any indices at all. After all doing an index is slow and plodding. The only people that like doing it are sycophantic grad students and, of course, German eggheads. The latter actually live for this stuff. Germans have to have everything catagorized, filed, and indexed, even their underwear (after it is dutifully ironed, of course). In fact, the best way to drive a German to existentialist, slit-wristing despair is to take away his index. And then the whole world becomes a disjointed Humean chaos. The index for the German is more than a reference tool, it is the very structure of Being itself, and so it is very important to get it right. A German index  is  indeed a thing of beauty and, of course,  Gruendlichkeit  (thoroughness). ...

 In the penultimate paragraph of his majority opinion in  Obergefell , Kennedy writes, "Their [same-sex couples'] hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions." By "one of civilization's oldest institutions" Kennedy must mean a civilly recognized marriage because that’s the institution from which same-sex couples had been excluded. They were never prevented from co-habitating or even from participating in “wedding” ceremonies. These relationships and ceremonies were not prohibited but simply unrecognized by the state. Even if you are in a relationship, but one that is not recognized as a "marriage" by the state, Kennedy declares you condemned to the outer darkness of loveless loneliness. Okay, well, fine, I was not in a civilly recognized "marriage" with my mother. That means that all the time I thought I loved my mother and she loved me, I was really lonely and incapable of lo...

 Scene: Typical middle-class suburban living room. A woman in her mid-thirties is pacing up and down with a cell phone pasted to her ear. Woman: Hello? Kate? Is Tommy there? No, he hasn't come home from school. It's 5:30. Is Larry there? Has he seen him since school let out? Yes, yes, fine, I'll wait. No? Does Larry have any idea where... (knock on the door) Kate, there's someone at the door. I gotta go. (opens the door. Two Police Officers are at the door.) Oh my God. Has something happened to my son?! Cop 1: (to Cop 2) It insists upon gendering the child. We've got a live one. Woman: What's going on here? Do you have information about my son? Tommy. Where is he? Cop 2: Person, may we come in? Woman: What? Cop 1: It asked if we may come in. May we come in, person? Woman: Why are you addressing me as "person"? Cop 2: Because you are a person, a sentient human being who is capable of Public Reason. Cop 1: Or should be capable, at least. Cop 2: So, may w...

 [Nota Bene:  Lest any reader think that the argument below is evidence of what happens when the American School System keeps its charges in the dark about all things sexual, I would kindly tell him to check out the New Hampshire Case  Blanchflower v. Blanchflower  (click on the link, please; I'm too lazy to summarize the facts of the case here).  The argument I give below was not taken from NOM, any other SLPC-designated hate group, or any seemingly sexually unenlightened group like, say, the Catholic Church.  Rather, the argument is pretty much the same one which was given by the Liberal (and, therefore, enlightened) Majority.  The knuckle-dragging Conservatives dissented!  Furthermore, the Liberal Majority Opinion was a victory for a Lesbian, who was, as co-respondent in the original divorce case, one of the plaintiffs.] The legal recognition of same-sex "marriage" has nothing to do with the societal approval of whatever same-sex couples may do...