On Civil Rites

     In the course of only an few years same-gender marriage has changed from a raging controversy to a fact of life. The only remaining question is how many more states will legalize it before either Congress or the Supreme court does so on a national level. Soon after that we will move on to the next controversy: Polyamory.

     While a lot of people who practice polyamory are what we used to call "swingers" in the 70s and 80s, a lot of others are forming long-term complex relationships of more than two people...stable relationships. I expect this demographic to continue to grow over the next decade and the one after that until before long the state will have to grant polyamorous relationships some sort of legal status. There are several compelling reasons why I believe that to be the case.

     One of the primary reasons why over half of traditional marriages end in divorce and that percentage is steadily climbing is the weakening of the extended family. Fifty years ago a couple just starting out would live and work in the same city as their parents, their aunts and uncles, and more than a few cousins. This meant that when they hit a rocky patch, there were lots of people they could turn to for advice or support. Today most career paths involve several interstate moves and the nearest relative may be a thousand miles away. The complex marriage may actually strengthen relationships by recreating that larger support network.

     In any case, the question of what business the government has in regulating a religious rite has already been raised. It was just raised by the wrong side. The government's only legitimate interest in regulating marriage is to prevent child brides and to insure consent. The religious right wing raised the specious issue of their being forced to preform a wedding they did not believe in, knowing full well that the First Amendment guaranteed that would never happen. 

     The proper question is, if I choose to preform a marriage ritual for a complex of three men and two women who all love each other and consent to the joining, what business is it of the government's? 

     I am a sixty-one year old hetero White male and more of my circle of friends are in non-traditional relationships, or have been, that are "normal". I personally know nine close friends that are, or have been, in polyamorous relationships. I am sure there are more who have never mentioned it to me. I know one group who have been together for several years. If one of them becomes seriously ill who has legal consent for treatment? How about next of kin status in case of death? What if they decide to have children?

     If these people have committed themselves to each other, then the state ought to make provision for their rights under the law to protect them. A year ago a friend of mine died. Because she was Gay and was not able to be married under the law, her friends spent weeks in a fruitless search for next of kin in her country of birth, England. Because she never drew up a power of attorney, she was cremated by the county. This did not happen because no one could afford to pay for the funeral. It happened because no one could claim the body.

     Everyone in a loving relationship should have certain basic rights...and rites, if they so desire.

     Be seeing you.

     Schrodinger's Apocalypse

      Inside every British nuclear missile submarine there is a safe. Inside of that safe there is another safe. Inside that safe there is a sealed envelope that contains a letter from the Prime Minister to the sub's commander with instructions on what to do if Mother England has been annihilated by a nuclear strike. 

     That's what I love about the Brits. No coded cypher messages for them. Instead there is a nice sheet of vellum or foolscap, probably with a wax seal and ribbon affixed, and doubtless with a lovely crest of a lion and a unicorn humping a coat of arms to give the commander his marching orders for the apocalypse.

     Each new P.M. upon election creates and signs these doomsday letters for each of the U.K.'s four nuclear missile submarines, instructing them either to retaliate upon the presumed likely perpetrator, or to decline to compound the folly now that "there is really no point, old chap, now is there", and sail for some place less radioactive. No one knows what the letters say. They are burned unopened when a new P.M. comes to power.

     They exist in something rather like Schrodingers box, only instead of a cat, there are forty or fifty million people in the box who live or die the moment it is opened in some deadly quantum eigenstat.

     Be seeing you.

The Momentum of Mortality

   



     "We must honor while we can

      The vertical man

      Though we value none

      But the horizontal one"



     W.H.Auden



     Yesterday I attended a celebration of the life of my friend Brian. As is usually the case, the celebration was held after said life had ended. I spent time with friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in over a decade. More than a few I no longer was able to recognize. We shared happy memories of an old friend and celebrated all that we cherished about him. Each of us learned something new about the departed.



      Most of all what we learned was that we wouldn't be seeing him at the next SCA event, or the next role-playing game, or the next party.



      And so we filled our paper plates with finger food and cheese and cold cuts and we shared old memories and vowed to keep in touch, but we all knew that we were more likely to meet again over a bier than a beer.



      The crowd began to thin. I dropped off the friends that I had brought with me and made my way to a smaller celebration at the home of a couple of other dear friends who had invited me. For a moment I had the mad impulse to roll down the windows, crank up the radio and barrel down the highway like Hunter S. Thompson.



     I turned up Charlie Musselwhite on the radio, rolled the window down and felt the unseasonably warm California January wind on my face, pretending for another few moments that we were all still young and immortal.



   





     Be seeing you.

The Mouse of Eternal Summer

   



       Nobody ever dies at Disneyland.

       At least that's the buzz from some employees. Oh, people undoubtedly cease to breathe there, but it is said that unmarked emergency vehicles respond and paramedics murmur words of assurance to the corpse on the stretcher as they wheel it through Tomorrowland to the waiting hoodoo wagon.

       No clouds are allowed at the Happiest place on earth (TM).

       This is as it should be. In an America where the consumer economy is the only true religion, Disneyland is Paradise...the Tir na O'gath of the free market if you will. It is the final reward of the faithful consumer where a wage slave might go to his eternal reward after am lifetime of punching clock and buying kitsch.

       Some day they may come to call dying, "Getting your E ticket punched".

       Be seeing you.

THE RETURN OF THE JAUNDICED EYE

   I have been off line at The Town Scryer for so long that I felt it better to start a new blog. If you are meeting me for the first time, you might want to check out some of the material I have posted there. Much of it, sadly, is still topical.

    I apologize to those of you who follow me for my long absence. Health issues and a mind-numbing day gig have conspired to silence my Muse of late...

....Then came Snowden and the obscene over-reaction by THE AUTHORITY to his revelations.

    Like the good Dr. HST was known to say, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

    I will try to blog on a regular basis henceforth.

    Oh yes, on the off chance that one of my old readers from my days with The Comic Press News stumbles across this, yes it is the same Jaundiced Eye.

    I'm more cynical these days.

     Be seeing you.