A Short Story: why not?

I know I've been absent lately, and that I have yet to really get my series on Same-Sex-Marriage off the ground.  But I wrote this.  Feel free to read it.  Or don't.  But you're already here, so go ahead and read it.

“I’ll do it”, the creature cried from the high place.  “I’ll jump, I’ll do it.”

The place was indeed very high.  The fall would be fatal.  A group of people gathered below the creature.  A woman stepped forward.  She was too old to go dancing, but too young to know the terror of a grown child.  “I’m sure you have a family somewhere, she said, and I’m sure they wouldn’t want you to do this,” she began.

“Just think how horrified they’ll be if they learn you’ve done it.  Think of your mother, think of how she’ll be horrified.  What about your Dad and how it will shake his confidence in himself?  What about all the cousins and aunts and uncles that will miss you at Christmas and Thanksgiving.  Think about how sad everyone will be when Uncle Bill says, ‘if only it hadn’t happened’  and when cousin Angela says ‘it really was such a terrible loss’.

The creature was silent.  A man stepped forward.  He was the kind you would see in a coffee shop, not a regular, just a visitor, or the kind who lines his walls with classics he does not read.  “But wait,” he began, his well-trimmed goatee lifted high above his clever corduroy jacket and his color-coordinated fitted pants of indiscriminate stylish material.

“Surely you know that your life has meaning in and of itself.  All life is valuable, especially sentient life.  You carry within yourself a divine spark.  If you believe in God, be assured that he loves you.  If you don’t, be assured that your life carries value, regardless of all external circumstances.  Be of good cheer, oh friend I have yet to meet, for whether it be Darwin or Falwell who is correct you are the product of a long, ingenious process and you have value for simply being yourself, a unique and improbable expression of a unique and improbable species.  Descend, therefore, and follow not this terminal course of action.”

The creature was once more silent.  A young woman stepped forward.  Her bright, mismatched colors said more about her personality and life experience than any words ever could.  “But most of all,” she began, “remember that life is just worth living.”

“I mean, come on, think about it for a second.  Life is just so wonderful if you look in the right places.  Go out for a cup of coffee, listen to a songbird, go to a concert or whatever you want to do.  There’s so much of the world out there that you probably haven’t even started to explore.  Come down and go find life the way it’s meant to be lived.”

Still the creature was silent.  The three who had stepped forward were perplexed.  The air hung still, and the thought of death hung heavy and cold over the scene like a wet woolen coat.

An old man didn’t bother to step forward.  His rosewood cane, onto which he had failed to mount a rubber stopper, took the place of a gavel as it racked about and broke the tasteful silence.  As the persons near to him inched away, he let out a long, deep cough that trailed off into sputtering and then more silence.  Deliberately silent, he pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket.  This whole rest was followed by a sforzando of coughing and hacking which subsided into a decrescendo deep breath which stood at a nice mezzo piano.  “Do it,” he sputtered out, flatly.

“This bitch over here thinks you have yet to consider your family or how they’re going to feel.  We both know that you have.  You’re standing up there, relishing the fact that news crews and policemen and paramedics are on their way.  You’re going to love all of that attention, however this works out.  You don’t think you did it for the attention, but whether or not it was a motivation, that’s why you’re standing up there.  If you really wanted to go quietly into that dark night, there are a few thousand ways an idiot like you could kill themselves quietly in an apartment or a back alley.

No, you’re here, at this high place, so that all of them can see, aren’t you?  You want them to hurt and languish and say ‘oh if only I had done this’ or ‘why didn’t I pay more attention when such and such a thing happened.’  That’ll show ‘em, right?  That’ll make ‘em wish they’d treated you better.

And this jackass over here thinks you have somehow managed to not absorb the McPhilosophy that’s seeped into the deepest corners of every educational system and every movie and every dramatic TV special everywhere, or that if you have absorbed it, you need only be reminded of the orthodox opinion to return once again to the great conformity.  He believes that bullshit, but you and me, we know how to call a duck a duck.

You know you’re fucking worthless, or at least you want to think you are.  If you don’t think you are, or if you’re not sure, I’ll tell you now that you are.  There’s no such thing as a sure-fire inalienable human center that gives us a special privilege over the beasts of the earth, and however fantastic our circumstances are we both know that perhaps you and I and everyone else are products of an incredibly, complex, well-organized pile of steaming shit.

And then this one here wants you to take a deep whiff and call it roses.  She’s close to correct, closer than she thinks.  There is a big, beautiful world out there, there are places to be and people to see and things to do, but in ascending the mountain of self-devaluation you have made it clear to all of us that you don’t want to do any of that.

You are worthless, so get the hell down, one way or another.

You are wasting my time, their time and your time.  You have decided that life is not worth living and that your oh-so-sensitive soul can no longer bear its slings and arrows.  Fine.  Do it.

You are worth exactly nothing until you decide that you are worth something.  At this point you seem to have decided on the former.  So either commit to that decision and embrace your meaningless end or get down here and decide that you are worth something.  Go out and make yourself worth something.  Do some important shit in some unimportant place to make it, and yourself, important.  Or don’t.  Until you do one, you’ll just be standing there, wasting my time and wallowing in your non-existant worth.”

The creature was silent.  And then, in an instant, the creature decided.

Mawwiage: The Surface of the Same-Sex Debate

"The word of the Lord came to me: 'Son of man, speak to your people and say to them: ‘When I bring the sword against a land, and the people of the land choose one of their men and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming against the land and blows the trumpet to warn the people, then if anyone hears the trumpet but does not heed the warning and the sword comes and takes their life, their blood will be on their own head.  Since they heard the sound of the trumpet but did not heed the warning, their blood will be on their own head. If they had heeded the warning, they would have saved themselves.  But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes someone’s life, that person’s life will be taken because of their sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for their blood.'"
-Ezekiel 33:1-6

Given the recent public light that has been shed on same-sex marriage, I have decided to tackle the issue for own writing pleasure.  I would like to set forth as a disclaimer now that I do not mean to offend anyone with anything that I say on either side of this issue, but in a similar vein I will not apologize for offending anyone.  I intend no harm, and I assure all of you that I will avoid being disrespectful, but I cannot predict the myriad of ways that anyone may be offended by what I say and I do not intend to compromise any of my positions in the slightest.

Now that that's over with,

The central question here, as I understand it, is whether or not same-sex marriage should be legal in the United States of America.  I do not know the legal systems of any other locales well enough to judge them, but I will do my best to base my arguments on generalized systems of morality and legality.

Speaking of which,

Most people, especially Christians, have an annoying habit of separating morality and legality on tough issues like Same-Sex Marriage, Marijuana, Abortion, Torture, and Underwater Basket-Weaving.  Somewhat obviously, I oppose the separation.

There are those who say, "You can't legislate morality."

Those people are wrong.

You can't legislate people into a corner where they have to behave morally (I mean, you can, but it doesn't work out and it usually violates civil liberties), but legislation is nothing more than general morality applied to specific situations with punishments attached to infractions.

Example:
1)  It's wrong to kill people
2)  Sometimes, people kill other people (often with guns)
3)  If you kill someone, you will face legal recourse.

Bam.  You just legislated morality.

This being the case, the most useful place to start in asking the question, "Should guys be allowed to marry guys and girls be allowed to marry girls?" is in morality.

As a firm Utilitarian, I am compelled to start with Utilitarian morals.  Does preventing Same-Sex Marriage cause any suffering?  Yes, it clearly does.  Clearly, people who are homosexual and want to marry experience some level of suffering at not being allowed to legally marry, otherwise they wouldn't seek the right to marry.

More importantly, does allowing Same-Sex Marriage cause any suffering, or at least are there any obviously predictable negative effects?  Well, gay couples as parents are statistically no better or worse than straight parents at raising their children, according to most normative standards of child-rearing, so there's no obvious detriment to the children.

As far as others are concerned, certainly there will be a number of people made very upset by the marriage of dudes to other dudes and girls to other girls, but I frankly have to say that the pleasure gained by people allowed to freely marry one another is probably amazingly greater than the frustration and suffering of those who don't want people of the same sex to marry one another.

I can't think of any obvious societal cost to allowing people of the same sex to marry one another.

Some say that it will degrade marriage as an institution, but I, for one, think that's a bit of a moot point in a society with divorce rates somewhere around 50%.  

Some say that the infertility present in same sex couples sours marriage by making it primarily the concern of two adults, not the concern of a family unit.  Again though, I think a 50% divorce rate is solid evidence that we as a society have abandoned the concept of marriage as concerning a family unit, so while the point is true, it is not obvious that same-sex couples would in any way worsen a trend that already exists.  Furthermore, many same-sex couples adopt, which further weakens this point.

So why not?  Why not have the Pope perform a ceremony between Adam and Steve, and for the hell of it have him do the ceremony live on Ellen?

We'll let that one stand until the next post.  Until then though, it's been wonderful.

-J.R.M.C.

School's out.

So the other day I was muching on some sausage (NOT LIKE YOU'RE THINKING DIRTY INTERNET!)  Anyway I was chewing a delightful fried polish sausage with garlic-wasabi fried rice, carrots and celery when I decided to hold the biannual Rob-pulls-his-head-up-out-of-the-sand-rubs-his-eyes-and-decides-to-look-around-and-see-what's-going-on-in-his-life session.  Then I decided it sounded like more fun to watch the newly added Cartoon Network lineup on Netflix and I postponed the session until the next day, I wasn't doing anything important like re-watching Batman Beyond the next day.

So there I was the next other day, calmly walking along in the woods, minding my own business and bothering no one at all when a coordinated set of inbred expectations snuck up and jumped me just past the bubbling creek.  While one of them was busy whacking me about the head and face with my imminent graduation from college, another was punching me in the stomach with time-based development objectives, another still was kicking me in the kneecaps with career uncertainty, a fourth stood there yelling, "WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?!"   All the while a final one seemed content to hop around on a neon polo stick while consuming a delicious burrito.

I was more or less instantly beset with anxiety about more or less everything.  Beyond the normal "Who am I", and "What is my purpose", there were creeping in "Where am I going to live", "How will I pay for food", "What if I can't get a job", and "How the hell am I supposed to get a job with my degree that does not involve either changing religions or giving up the womenfolk?"

Clearly it was a desperate situation.

I like me some womenfolk.

Being terrified and frozen in place (metaphorically of course, a walk where you're frozen in place quickly becomes awkward, what with all the just standing there) I decided to go back to my room and hop onto the PS3, where I committed acts of brutal competitive violence on complete strangers for a few hours, after which I had a nice dinner, a soothing warm bath and good night's sleep.

The next day I woke up with that awful feeling of regret and terror that comes with ignoring expectation-based fears, when I suddenly realized that what I had done (the whole ignoring it and doing anything other than worrying bit) was really the best thing I could have done at all.

The scriptures say "Today's trouble is enough for today," and "who, by worrying, can add one minute to his life?"  I don't mean that playing video games and eating fried sausage and yellow rice topped in french cut green beans with a cream-cheese/wasabi gravy is always the right decision, but I do mean that when one is tempted to worry, my experience leads me to believe that worrying is the last thing one should be doing.

Again, I don't mean that everyone should become a couch potato and throw caution to the wind.  Caution is a good thing, and it helps us avoid stupid decisions.  But sitting there, languishing in terror of what's to come is something the scriptures (and all common sense) advise against.  I have no idea what I'll be doing or where I'll be in May or in September, but I'll be somewhere and things will take care of themselves.  I know where I want to be, I have a solid idea of some places where I don't want to be, and I think I'm smart enough to avoid the latter and pursue the former.

Relax.  Don't make stupid decisions, but keep on living.  Things will probably work out okay, and if they don't, how much does it really matter?

It's been wonderful,

-J.R.M.C.