The case of Rowan County KY clerk Kim Davis and her biblically rooted refusal to license gay couples could be an episode of "Modern Family." Federal Judge Bunning says she'll remain in jail until she complies. What is this Cuba? It reeks of an eerie and creepy totalitarianism. Even the first gay couple to get their marriage license in that somewhat hostile county didn't want to see her go to jail. Why not start with a fine and see how it goes? Maybe Rosie O'Donnell can waterboard her:)
We ponder the Jehovah Witness emergency ward physician. He strongly believes that blood transfusions are a mortal sin and refuses to use any on the accident victim whose tourniquet slipped off. BTW, judge Bunning is the son of a former very
ReplyDeleteconservative Kentucky senator and an appointee of George W. Bush. Would that more high judges would interpret the law and set aside their personal opinions in favor of objectivity.
It's not so much that BB as I was somewhat taken aback by this being an arrestable offense or that arrest and jail was used as a first resort rather than say a fine. So she's jailed until she complies, how long is that gonna take? An idiotic judicial decision imo.
DeleteDave had a good point recently. By what legal reasoning can we not allow polygamy since gay marriage opens up other marital configurations now? Someday in the near future you can have another obstinate clerk objecting to another arrangement.
ReplyDeleteWell that is the well known "If, but that" argument. NRA has utilized the concept that we permit any dingbat to own an arsenal of assault weapons less creeping legalities result in confiscation of all weapons. But, yeah, I
Deletecan't figure gays any more than polygamy, being sort of a straight old duffer
married going on 51 years.
Still trying to wrap my limited mind around the concept that birth control
Deleteis biblical horror, while Viagra is the word of the Lord. Any help on that?
There is a polygamy lobby in this country and many legal experts are saying the same thing I am. What I can't figure is you can destroy a fetus at various stages, gays can now marry but prostitution is mostly illegal.
DeleteNow there's female Viagra. At a time when we might be on the cusp of getting a handle on the abortion rate and STIs are still out of control do wr need to make the country more horny? I'm warm-blooded too just sayin'.
DeleteCodification of morality invariably muddies the waters-
Delete"Law does not and cannot cover all the ground of morality. To turn all moral obligations into legal obligations would be to destroy morality. Happily it is impossible. No code of law can envisage the myriad changing situations that determine moral obligations. Moreover, there must be one legal code for all, but moral codes vary as much as the individual characters of which they are the expression. To legislate against the moral codes of one’s fellows is a very grave act, requiring for its justification the most indubitable and universally admitted of social gains, for it is to steal their moral codes, to suppress their characters."
R. M. MacIver (1882-1970)
So how long does she remain in jail before the whole thing becomes Rod Serlingesque?
ReplyDeleteGood point. We recall the Scopes Monkey Trial in little Dayton, TN in 1925,
Deletea similar if somewhat diametrically opposed situation involving shifting cultural mores. To wit-
"Planet of the Apes was directed by Franklin Schaffner from a screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling. The first film’s satirical reimagining of the Scopes “monkey” trial and its themes of race, religion, class, the fear of science and the destruction of the environment, are still relevant today. “Beware the beast Man” indeed." So you touch on the type of thing
that old Rod would jump on. Who would play Judge Bunning and the incarcerated Kim Davis? Set in little Grayson, KY and inevitably comparable to little Dayton, TN, both hamlets filled with 'Christian heros'
and mobs bearing similar signs, the dramatic possibilities abound. Who
would play her three ex-husbands? Who would play her nepotistic son,
still working in her office and also refusing to obey state law? How do
Huckabee and William Jennings Bryan compare? Perhaps as the Serling
Film 'Nepotism Meets Bigotry' opens over a sepia overshot of a little inconsequential village, the overscroll reads'
"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone."
OK, class. Your theme today is to compare and contrast the above scenario.
The judge's decision just struck me as weirdly totalitarian. This wouldn't be an issue if we actually practiced 3 co-equal branches of gov't. The old liberal argument applies: there's too many people in jail.
ReplyDeleteOdd thing, there ARE too many people in jail. IMO, there are a whole lot of
Deletepot smoking young people doing time and a few too many deranged ex-cons
NOT in jail planning their next crime. Go figure.
The potheads should not be in jail and neither should Kim Davis. Free up somespace.
DeleteFree at last!!
ReplyDeleteYou need a new cause. You gonna picket Pope Francis when he is in the
Deletebig apple?
She's a minor cause celebre in the larger scheme. Gay nups are not my cup of tea but I would've chosen the path of least resistance as a practical matter. It was the autocrat that bothered me.
DeleteRe Francis I read something today that got my dander up. He wants to simplify and streamline the whole annulment business. I've long held that the practice of most annulments is hypocritical so what difference does it make if you streamline it? A couple wakes up together every morning for 5 or 10 years and they didn't have a relationship? You could give me free tickets to MSG and I wouldn't go.
DeleteSort of thought of Annulment as Catholic Divorce. If the Pope wants to streamline the process, he need check with the recently released county
Deleteclerk in Kentucky, being as how she is on marriage #4. Heck, maybe even some $$ kickback to ol Huckabee. BTY, being a bit challenged in the details of Canon Law, what is the fate of children of an annulled marriage, one that by definition never existed?
Good question, are they a bunch of little bastards? BTW can I get an annulment from my boss basically saying our working relationship never existed?
DeleteSort of peculiar, bastards. Society shuns them, biology lets them shine.
DeleteThomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, William the Conqueror, Lawrence of
Arabia, Erasmus, Eva Peron, Leonardo Da Vinci, Sophia Loren, etc.
As for 'job annulment', it may fall under item #2:
noun:
1. the act of annulling, especially the formal declaration that annuls a marriage.
2. Psychoanalysis. a mental process by which unpleasant or painful ideas are abolished from the mind..
Okay... so now she's out and apparently did not get permission to use the song, "Eye of the Tiger." Again, an infraction, if minor legally, but I'm guessing she also did not pay royalties.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, she took an oath to uphold the law... all the law, not just part.
If you cannot do that, don't take the 80K a year job.
French theologian Jacques Ellul makes a strong case, based on Jesus' noninvolvement in his "trial" that Christians are not to participate in the affairs of the unholy government. Where he differs from conservatives is that he sees no possibility that givernment can ever rise to a level of purity and Godliness of which Jesus would approve.
Of course that level of Christianity might make folks like Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee wince.
I was thinking though MLK had a few things to say about blindly following the Law so the question becomes for me is when is civil disobedience ok and when is it not ok?
DeleteCivil disobedience is OK if one is prepared to pay the price. Like genuine heros, not some overpaid county clerk flaunting US law.
DeleteSure she has the same gravitas as Honey Boo-Boo but looks like she was willing to pay the price.
DeleteNow don't get me wrong as a general rule of thumb and in the practical matters of good citizenry you should obey the vast majority of laws even those you disagree with BUT maybe not always. As with any new or even older law your mind has to do a rough quick calculation even if it's subconscious - How is this law? - so let's say that according to law every morning at 9AM you have to go next door and slap your neighbor in the face. Ya still gotta evaluate the law BB and Dave otherwise you might be on the road that leads to Totalitarianism. BTW be a good neighbor:)
DeleteI still prefer a SCOTUS that interprets the law and doesn't make up the law.
ReplyDeleteA judge that 'interprets the law, especially the law that legalized gay marriage? Here's a remarkable fellow that may meet your requirements .
DeleteNot so fast. Technically Judge Bunning did interpret the law correctly but the law was made up by the SCOTUS just like the right to abortion. My beef with Bunning is he opted for jail first.
DeleteIt's interesting how we interpret all of this... If we like the result, it's interpreting the law... if we don't, it's making up law.
DeleteDidn't the segregationists say SCOTUS made up law when the killed jim Crow laws?
How do we decide these things in a way that satisfies people? If we say we go with the majority, most conservatives ain't gonna like that, because they are currently on the wrong wide of Roe, gay marriage, Citizen's United and many more.
But Dave in '73 the SCOTUS invented a whole structure of abortion law. They went into trimesters and everything.
DeleteIf we had any mature liberal SCOTUS jurists out there they'd see that Roe is sorely in need of an update. We update apps all the time why not Roe? The Roe thing came down in '73, what was on tv then? I think The Mod Squad was winding down. I mean God!!! The thing is as broken down and flawed as Roe vs. Wade is we're used to it even if it is a time warp (viability going down down down).
DeleteWe all do, but for a number of different and sometimes diametrically opposed reasons. Me? I'm not real keen on Citizens United and Scalia stating that the causative phrase " well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" is meaningless. What is that? The founders wrote that precisely, not
ReplyDelete"to keep the NRA delighted", or "the makers of assault weapons require". IMO,
corporations that are citizens, a gun business that is the only business that cannot
be sued, unlimited special interest election money, the right to mow down first graders with impunity, the threats to EPA, Social Security and the down grading
of the teaching profession present challenges far more insidious than some half
baked overpaid born again gay divorcee who misunderstands both US law and
the Christian religion. Call me a curmudgeon, if you must.
Didn't the EPA itself accidentally poison some major river out West recently? I remember reading about that but if it were John Q. Citizen dumping toxic sludge off a bridge he'da been hauled off by now.
DeleteT'was a hundred years of unregulated mining and processing.
Delete" And for years, Silverton residents resisted EPA involvement out of fear that the “Superfund” label given to the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites would jeopardize the tourism industry — the only source of income that could replace the vanished mines. A few even hoped that the mines would reopen one day."
"But agency officials said that the toxic flood just highlights the need to deal with the rest of the state’s 22,000 abandoned mines.
“It’s very unfortunate,” Bruce Stover, the Colorado Department of Mining official in charge of dealing with abandoned mine sites, told the Associated Press. “We’ve been fighting this war for years, and we’ve lost a battle. But we’re going to win the war.”
John Q. Citizen, IMO, misplaces the blame.
Over in Piermont NY folks got signs in their yards saying don't let the DEC destroy Piermont Marsh with herbicides and yet some people worry about Fox News.
DeleteHomo naledi, ya gotta be excited BB!
ReplyDeleteThanks for drawing that to my attention, hadn't heard of it. Now they are trying to
ReplyDeletedate the fossils. A brain the size of an orange...just like us!
Since Trump is so upset with Fiorina's looks I'm sure he has a position on the migrants.
ReplyDeleteJust wondering how come the pc crowd hasn't gotten around to homo erectus yet?
ReplyDeleteOriginally, those finds were termed 'pithecanthropus erectus'. They mistakenly changed pithecanthropus (=ape=man) to homo (=man) as
Deletethe type was found in areas beyond Java. PC-wise, they should have
addressed 'erectus', and the PC crowd may have been appeased by
perhaps "Australopithecus Flaccidus". IMO, upon pondering PC, I'm
of the thought that it is what used to be called 'politeness", that any term
that is insulting should be avoided. Sort of like when Trump noted that
upon seeing Carly Fiorina, blurted, "who would elect a face like that?"
Not polite, ya know? We note, police = pig, chemist = satan, liberal=
communist, tea party = undereducated, draft deferment = patriot, politician =
rat, Yonkers= the lost borough, rocky mountain oyster= sheep testicles,
dentist = pet lion killer, etc. the list is endless. My 7th grade English teacher,
Mrs. Garlie (call me Garlic and you're on detention) was dedicated to sticking
with original definitions. But, I guess old Ms. Garlic is dead and gone, so what the heck?
I mean yeah there's nothing wrong with the Donald's looks.
DeleteI'm chuckling at Homo Erectus... great name for a bar in certain parts of the country... although there are a few drinks I'd avoid at all costs!
DeleteA brain the size of an orange - an early forerunner of upper management.
ReplyDeleteYou know the old adage- those that can, do. those that can't, teach. Those that can't teach become administrators. Would that people understood that
Deletethere are 'ivory towers' in academics, government, business, religion, most
any organized social construct. And they are very similar. Talking oranges,
here.
With all the archaeological hoopla in the news the other day I'd have thought they discovered the world's first transgendered caveman.
ReplyDeleteKaitlyn Schwarzenegger, Homo Giganticus Sasquatchius?
DeleteThe big one with the pink club?
Where does Z-Man stand on the hypothetical case of "Amish County Clerk Refuses to Issue Driver's Licenses" claiming God's laws supersede those of her county, state and nation?
ReplyDeleteShouldn't take the job. Now I don't know how long Kim Davis has been county clerking but just to add some perspective not that long ago the idea of gay marriage was sci-fi. Bear in mind. Libs are always for that tsunami of social change and some of us aren't ready yet. How many gay marriage licenses has ISIS issued btw?
DeleteISIS has no liberal problem. Cripes, they make Dick Cheney look like a
Deletepink lady, ya know? I'm not particularly enthused by gay marriage either, not quite understanding the need, other than what used to be in the closet
nor longer is.
First cronuts, now sex robots . We presume robot marriage will be the next challenge to the courts?
ReplyDeleteI honestly don't get the attraction. What do you use WD-40?
DeleteDepends on what apps they come with.
DeleteBB you'll be happy to know I got the vascular version of a colonoscopy yesterday. Actually it wasn't all that easy. The vein near the crook of my left elbow wasn't cooperating so she switched to a nice one on my right wrist. Afterwards while I was waiting for the elevator I got a few looks. Must've been the bandages.
ReplyDeleteIs that the one that involves a CT or MRI scanning? Did you have to drink a ton of
ReplyDeleteawful stuff?
It's simply the new blood screening version for colorectal. It's known as Colovantage. Probably the old hardcore procedure is still considered the gold standard but it's what I opted for. My body my choice. Besides I probably have a herniated disc (intermittent sciatica in my left leg).
ReplyDeleteQuite new; developed by Epigenetics with most of the research and development done in Europe. As of late US pharma prefers to spend on
Deletepaying for rights rather than paying for their own research, US profit margin vs European, I think. In addition, with the studies concentrating on methylated DNA from gene region Septin-9, we might suspect European
research, while top notch, isn't as squishy about about fetal tissues work as stateside. Your choice, and good at identifying colorectal cancer, but I suspect your Doc is mumbling under his breath. :)
The old ways die hard BB, lol. I explained to him one day I researched the whole colonoscopy topic and honestly gave it a fair hearing but I'm not doing it. Case closed, period. My choice for the blood test was a kind of compromise with him and you're right, he probably did mumble a few things. Probably lamenting "I hope this doesn't become a trend."
DeleteBlood tests are getting pretty sophisticated anymore. They have one for
Deletethe breast cancer genes BRCA1 and 2, one for Alzheimers probability,
celiac disease, hemochromatosis, HIV, Huntington's and thyroidism.
And many folks prefer not to know if they have some incipient problem.
Then, DNA testing has revolutionized the crime fighting business: if they
can find some from a Pleistocene individual, they can look around Yonkers and find yours. Hard to keep up and as you note 'old ways die
hard'.
I'm thinking one of the worst places to get a colonoscopy might be Los Angeles......earthquakes. Wouldn't want to get one in Tokyo either.
DeleteIt is said the colonoscopies are much cheaper in Europe. Either we jack the price way up, or they are using old Brownie cameras duct taped to a
Deletecloths line pole.
Didn't you say once they don't use anaesthesia for colonoscopies in some of those countries? Rugged. Old school. Real men BB!
DeleteCameras and orifices, a real art form.
DeleteThe polygamists down in Hildale, UT accepted help and aid after their awful flashflood. Now they want all 'outsiders' to go away. With their leader in jail for
ReplyDeletesexual abuse of minors, will Huckabee take over?
Here's a rather untoward thought: gay polygamy.
DeleteI rather thought that may have occurred sometime in history; you know-
Deleteodd tribal customs, dissolute Roman emperors, etc. But a cursory review
finds no examples. You have invented a new one, Z-Man!
FF to the future. Kim Davis refuses to marry Brad and his five husbands. Any sympathy yet?
ReplyDeleteWe note a polygamy conundrum: Ol Kim was married to 4, but sequentially.
DeleteBiologically speaking she was a polygamist, just not all at a single node in time. Whether divorced or annulled, her Apostolic Church believes in the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit, not unlike our feline friends. Not sure how many gifts she has left. She doesn't need my sympathy, with Huck standing by.
BTW, I have friends whose son married a divorced Lutheran Pastor, whose
two teenagers are raised by sort of an inconceivable ménage a trois involving an understanding ex wife. Back to biology, and particularly evolutionary and epigenetic biology, we not that homosexuality is evolutionarily maladaptive , eg, the Dawkins 'selfish
gene' paradigm that the mammalian sex drive relates to species procreation.
Not sure of Mrs. Davis and Mr. Huckabee's understanding of that, given
their distaste for evolutionary theory, but admittedly human society is an
extension of biology; and neither seems to have come to grips with the
phenomena.
We seem to be approaching the forseeable eunch marriage controversy.
DeleteJust asking slippery slopey questions. 'Twould be nice if Duggar and that Subway guy would seriously consider eunuchhood.
DeleteFrom the 'slippery slopey' category of biblical hermeneutics, we note:
Delete"For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."
-Matthew 19:12
Not sure how to interpret that, although Michelle Bachman's husband,
Huckabee, Abelard, Blaise Pascal and a half dozen sheiks probably have conclusions.
Before we close the lid on this topic are there any dating sites for eunuchs? "The place for fine companionship but don't expect too much."
DeleteProbably not, although considerable dating genres exist. As for 'expecting much' we refer to the great
DeleteByzantine general Narses . the Patton of
his time who likely was not called eunuch to his face..
This is amazing. You can dredge up links to Sasquatch roadkill but no eunuch match.coms?
DeleteI see Scott Walker pulled out. Word has it that the Kochs found him a job
Deletefracking with Perry down in west Texas....
The ones who are in single digits in the polls are all gonna drop out so I'm waiting for Christie's announcement any day now.
DeleteA secret meeting with blown cover. Was Francis seeking a marriage license
ReplyDelete?
Conscientious objection, libs used to be into that. If only Kim Davis were a hippy chick trying to save the snail darter.
DeleteTrue. She would have gotten stuck for more than 5 days though;
DeleteNun protesting Oak Ridge Nuke work- 3 years, Woman protesting a farm
that produced fois gras- 30 days, Kathy Kelly protesting drone strikes at
a USAF base, 36 months. Meanwhile, Hannity hero Cliven Bundy, the
rancher-squatter on Federal land who gathered the militia creeps continues to run free. I knew a conscientious objector, a Quaker, who
spent WWII in a US prison lab volunteering for starvation experments.
Do your time, don't whine. Five days? Heck, Z-man, you've gone longer than that without sleep! :)
My personal record for insomnia is two nights in a row. Happened twice.
Delete