Plague on Both Houses

Plague on Both Houses by MSW.  My response: I don't particularly like O'Donnell's tone either. He seems a bit smirky to watch before going to bed (or instead of Castle, the Mentalist or Lost Girl) or simply sleeping. They don't even put him on Friday nite.


As to the nature of marriage - when the rabbinical writers of Genesis during the exile were writing, it was radical stuff to say that men and women were of one flesh in marriage, rather than keeping women as property. Jesus echoed the same sentiment, which went against the classical notion that women were breeding chattel and the highest form of love was between two men. One wonders whether some of the early bishops were more classical stoics than followers of what Jesus and the Rebi said, given how they marginalized women -a practice that continues to present day.

Marriage is essentially about love in modern times - at least as far as the celebration of the sacrament is concerned - where love includes acceptance. Marriage is the creation of new family units and the joining of two families as part of that new unit. If the Church applied that standard to gay weddings, there would be a lot less stress over gay marriages (which are made by God and the couples involved, not the priest or state).

Marriage has always been the basic unit of family law, no matter how many spouses or their genders. To contract marriage is the basic adult right, without which an individual is forever bound to their family of origin for primary kinship. Until this basic fact is acknowledged, rational discussion on marriage equality is displaced, with most objections existing simply as an appeal to authority (rather than reason). This has been my consistent position, which is likely why MSW has excluded me from those blogs he acknowledges (even though my Christian Left on Blogspot predates both this blog and his prior America Magazine blog).