Proposition 8

It was semi-refreshing news last week that a three-judge panel of the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to declare that California’s Prop 8 violates the civil rights of folks like me. The “semi-“ part of this news is about the dissenting judge’s vote. Generally I approve of dissent. Democracy works best when we all can speak what’s in our hearts. However, I’ve spent much of my nearly eight decades overhearing the comments of folks who think folks like me should be snuffed, or at least denied the rights and privileges of ordinary American citizens. I quake at this glimpse into the thought processes of that third judge. I’d thought judges were folks who’d gotten farther along than most of us toward balance and fairness.

On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if a lot of this bru-ha-ha could have been avoided if we’d all understood two things. The first is that “Civil Union” is a very sweet phrase. It can describe a kind of marriage more rewarding than the “only-one-person-can-wear-the-pants-in-this-relationship” kind of marriage that all too many folks settle into. We might do well to adopt it as the defining phrase for the legal and financial aspect of marriage for all of us. If a couple seriously agrees to attempt the discipline of a truly civil union, with all the on-going consideration of the other this would demand of both parties, there might be less incivility in marriage, and fewer divorces. When divorce is unavoidable the parting partners might more readily be restored as friends.

This should work, if the license issued or cancelled gives us equally the thousand or so federally sanctioned economic and political benefits that married couples today get from the feds. Certainly it should not give some of us only what our particular state grants us, while others get the whole enchilada.

After getting that license, we might go to our houses of worship to share this pledge with beloved family and friends for a marriage ceremony, if those traditions are meaningful to us. Certainly we wouldn’t want to coerce anyone to marry us who would prefer to have us snuffed.

This society was, after all, from the time it was defined by our Constitution, one that claimed it would not coerce anyone into believing or disbelieving any particular religious doctrine. Though we have not always lived up to that fine sentiment.

This brings up the second thing that might have helped us avoid much of this mess, the beliefs of the “Pilgrims”. Every Thanksgiving we honor, in caricature, the Plymouth Colonists, who ended up contributing in a profound way to our Constitution’s First Amendment.

The Mayflower passenger roster was about 40% made up of church separatists (later known as "Pilgrims") who played a critical role in the middle of the Atlantic, averting a mutiny against the captain. The crew would have turned the ship toward disaster in trying to return to England across the stormy Atlantic in November. As a result of this skillful negotiation, at landfall our Pilgrims were put in charge of organizing the colony. The “Mayflower Compact” deeply influenced the writing of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. 

The Pilgrims were deeply religious, but their “separatism" was about keeping the secular affairs of state and the strictures of church separate. Mentioned specifically in their doctrine is belief that marriage is not a sacrament, as claimed by other Christian sects. It is merely an economic pledge to protect spouse and children. This was one of the “heresies” that brought persecution and imprisonment on them in England, first under a Catholic king, and then under Church of England and Puritan regimes. These Separatists thought of themselves as First Century Christians hewing to a doctrine preceding later accretions of more imperialistic intent.

Our democracy is trumpeted around the world as the best form of governance for all people whatever their religious bent. So we must include our forebears' insight that, whatever religious constrictions might apply, marriage is a secular matter that has legal and financial consequences impacting a couple’s inheritance rights, taxes, passports etc. quite separate from their religious affiliations. Not allowing some loving unions the same Federal financial and legal benefits as others makes no sense if this really is to be a model for governance worldwide, as our politicians claim.

We still have a long struggle ahead, all the way to the U.S Supreme Court.

Singing Candidates - Who's the Better Artist for President?

Whoopeee! Finally some of my ideas are being taken seriously at the highest level!

This past week both President Obama and his closest (for now) competitor Mitt Romney were auditioning for “Singer for President”. In jurying their performances it seemed to me that Prez Obama has the better ear, sense of timing and overall higher rating, but I’d like to hear from the other judges.

Of course in my suggested guidelines for a chakra-balanced Presidential Cabinet the art of song was assigned to the Secretary of the Department of Treasure. A fully qualified Artist for President would have to pass scrutiny in the arts of gardening, portrait painting, fine cuisine, sculpture, poetry and dance, as well as song, in order to have lines of communication fully open between the President and each member of his or her Cabinet. Therefore these two candidates will both have to submit to at least six more contests. Score so far: Obama 1, Romney 0.

The main focus of my 1983-84 campaign was the idea that if every citizen were truly an artist, any president we elect will by default be an artist. “The Nation is the Artwork; we are the artists creating it” and the only difference between being or not being an artist is that artists take aesthetic responsibility for what we create, and for cleaning up the messes we leave in the creative process. Ronald Reagan was an artifact, not an artist, a highly skilled practitioner of the art of persuading people to believe things harmful to public benefit, while ignoring the messy consequences of his artistry. Today there is so much mess around us because too few see ourselves as artists. Few are willing to take on the disciplines.

Think of this: If we live as if the future will reveal itself as the consequence of rigorous art practice, it just might do that! 

Follow Up to : Science As Art

Last September CERN’s physicists announced they had observed neutrinos exceeding the speed of light by about 60 billionths of a second. Theoretically since 1905, light speed, 186,282 miles per second, has been the limit. Enthusiasts claimed this was proving Einstein wrong, but I’m not so sure. I think they forgot something that sci-fi addicts will never forget, once we returned to the planet of the apes only to discover a great deal more time has elapsed on Earth than it did for us while we were gallivanting around in space in our warp-speed vehicle.

In November CERN reported on a repeat of the test with essentially the same result. Questions remain. Might time dilation explain the difference? The receiving site is several hundred miles south of the originating site, at a latitude closer to the Earth’s larger wasteline. As the planet turns on its axis the destination site is traveling at slightly higher speed than is the more northerly origin site, thus creating a minor distortion in measuring the neutrino’s travel time.

My sci-fi question is a little different. At light speed, the hypothetical internal clock of each neutrino runs slower, so, in effect the neutrino is traveling faster than light speed as measured by clocks at either end. Wouldn’t the only way to measure the actual speed of neutrinos moving at or near light speed be to invent a clock that could travel with the neutrino? Probably this is out of reach of currently available technologies. How can Einstein’s limit on light speed be invalidated before someone’s calculation can show the 60 billionths of a second of excess speed is more than the tiny difference in what those stationary and moving clocks would have recorded?

Still, I kind of like the idea that the light speed barrier may have been penetrated, because this opens a door for study of spooky things I’ve experienced, like psycho-kinesis, extra sensory perception, entrained thoughts and images between people separated by great distances, karma and such. Some such things are hinted at in the private writings of quantum physicists as well as the public works of artists.

After all, science is the art of discovering really new things, not just the collection of data on what is already known, isn’t it?