Utah, of all states!

Marriage is really a social contract between the partners and society as a whole. As hippies from the 60's and free spirits today will tell you, no one needs a piece of paper to cohabit, or even to have children together. In many poor countries, and in the past it was common for people to simply live together without the expense or bother of a ceremony. This was recognized in the concept of common law marriage. So why bother? Why does the state even need to get involved?

Because marriage is good for society as a whole. Unattached young males are a tremendously destabilizing factor in any culture. Marriage gives a format for young men to take on important roles in the family, and settle down. Marriage gives a structure for two people to work together toward common goals, and to take care of each other, reducing the burden on society, or the state. People in secure settled relationships can contribute a lot more to the community in which they live. Single people can become a burden when they become ill or old. Most if not all cultures recognize this and create incentives and support for marriage.

What's the problem with gay marriage then? It provides stability, structure, and all the benefits of heterosexual marriages? There is no logical reason to deny  gay people  the benefits of legally sanctioned and supported marriage.It just makes sense.

Religions often denounce homosexual relationships because those relationships tend not to be as fertile as heterosexual relationships. Religions rely on reproduction and proselytizing to survive and propagate. Religions that don't emphasize fertility tend to get out-competed by religions that do emphasize unrestricted breeding. Mormonism, Islam, and fundamentalist Christianity grow so fast in large part because they restrict women's roles to  childbearing and therefor have lots of baby Mormons, Muslims, and fundamentalist Christians.  While it's great for the religions, this is not so good for the individuals, or for the society we live in today. Today our kids need access to good educations, and it's darn hard for the average family to send 6 or 12 kids to college. Overpopulation is a serious concern for our whole planet; energy and resources are rapidly becoming depleted.  It's better for our society if most people have one or two kids, and take really good care of them.   Gay families that don't reproduce, or adopt, place fewer demands on limited resources.

There's no reason to discourage gay marriage anymore.  It's actually a really good thing for society. Thank goodness most of us are coming around to see that. Yay Utah!

American Exceptionalism

America, love it or leave it. The greatest nation. Patriotism. When did it become a conservative value to brag and boast about yourself?

We have vast territories with great climate for agriculture, mineral resources, forests, rivers, and tremendous scenic beauty. Our people bring with them tremendous diversity of culture and ideas. Why then do so many live in poverty? Why are so many unable to access basic health care? Why are our kids dropping out of school by the millions? Why are there no jobs?  Why are we lagging behind in technological innovations that will be necessary to provide energy and sustenance for our grandchildren? 

We can't afford to waste time and energy patting ourselves on the back and basking in past glory. We need to put aside  tribal squabbles and start investing in the future. How do the tiny Scandinavian countries with no resources to speak of manage to provide education, health care, and high living standards for all their people? They work together because their survival depends on it. 

I don't think we have that much to brag about. Yet. If we can get beyond the divisiveness and meanness created by political factionalism maybe we  can create something of which we can be really  proud. A country where every single child is born to parents who can provide a safe home and all the resources to give that child a strong foundation. A country where old people can retire with dignity and comfort, where sick people get the care they need without stress and worry about how they will live after going bankrupt to pay for it.  A country that invests in infrastructure, and education, and research, providing jobs and full employment for all. A country where people who work full-time at any job can live a decent life and provide the basics for their families.  

We are not there yet, but it's possible. 

Sister wives

I am watching the reality show Sister Wives, with  obsessive fascination recently. The family of fundamentalist polygamists are exposing their lives and feelings to the public view in a kind of group therapy session every week. Kody Brown, the patriarch, has 17 kids and 4 wives. He doesn't seem like an old Testament Bearded stern god-to-be. More like a play dad who is living a fantasy life. His wives seem to be rather uni-dimensional, each with a clearly defined role. There is the  accountant and breadwinner, the nanny, the trophy wife, and the eldest wife who is the director, but considers herself a failure at the main job of wives, which is producing many children.

Kody himself doesn't seem to do much except have fun with the various families. He manages to go on honeymoons and anniversaries with each of his four wives every year, but we don't hear about how they manage to pay for the sports cars, vans, 4 houses, and adventures we see every week.

The whole sister wife concept appears appealing. I can see  how they benefit and it is pretty cool for the kids to live in a child-centered commune. But it is not sustainable in the long run. Each wife is younger than the last. We have to wonder if grey-haired Kody will continue producing progeny in his 60's and 70's with a new generation of fertile wives. What happens to the young men who are left without partners? And who will the children marry if most them are related to each other?

There is at least one documented  epidemic of severe recessive disease in the polygamous community of Short Creek due to inbreeding. The polygynous lifestyle (not true polygamy because it is always one husband with many wives, not the reverse) can only survive if it is rare in the community. When it becomes prevalent we begin to see the dark side, where young males are driven out, where young girls are coerced into relationships with old men, and where inbreeding creates genetic problems. The polygynous family is by necessity parasitic on society. Many, if not most rely on social services to feed the many children they have. One man is not enough to give 17 kids the financial emotional support they really deserve. We see only the fun times, and the good times in the Brown household.

The Browns seem like decent people other than being a bit short-sighted and selfish. They really want to fit into society but don't see the  harm they are doing.

2014

It still seems odd to write the numbers 20... in the date. I was born and raised in the twentieth century. The twenty first century sounds like science fiction to me. I remember when young men used to raise money for college expenses selling encyclopedia sets door to door. Each set cost hundreds of dollars ( a LOT of money back then) and had to be updated yearly with annual supplements. The volumes were instantly out-of-date as soon as they rolled off the presses but somehow it didn't seem like things changed as fast back then. Now we can find instant, in-depth answers and analyses of everything within 45 seconds (thanks Google and Wikipedia!). The world of information available is changing every second and I can wish my friends in England and Brazil a Happy New Year for free, and instantly. I see their baby pictures 10 seconds after they are made.

But my grandson may never know what it's like to spend long summer days playing in the woods and fields. He may never find and keep a box turtle for a pet. He may never see the vast flocks of birds that used to darken the sky as they migrated. He probably won't spend the summers on his bicycle riding down to the corner store and cruising for miles in the neighborhood. His life is already centered around electronic media. At 4  years old he can manipulate an iphone like a master.
I'm not sure if the tradeoff is worth it.

The common theme that runs through all the right wing arguments for tax cuts, is that high taxes discourage the " producers " from working and doing whatever it is they do that is so important. Ronald Reagan famously told us that he cut back on making movies because his taxes were so  high that he didn't think it was worth his time to make more.
It occurs to me that we didn't lose very much by this. His movies stunk. Same thing with all the bankers and Wall Street jerks who claim that they need massive bonuses and low taxes to do what ever the hell it is they do. Maybe we would all be better off if they did something else with their time. The people who do the really important work, the medical health professionals, the teachers, the scientists, the janitors, the farm workers,  are all out there performing for wages that the one percent considers pocket change.

Raise those taxes again for heaven's sake, and let those John Galts retreat to their social darwinist enclaves. It will be fun watching them try to get by without all the little people who do the real work in this world.

Big fleas have little fleas

Interesting fact. There are more parasites than any other life form. Think about it. Every organism on the planet has at the very LEAST one, and usually many many more lifeforms that parasitize it. There's a little ditty based on some verse by Jonathan Swift -" Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite' em. And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum."
We humans are parasitized by fleas, ticks, face mites, pin worms, and many other relatively harmless creatures. We are also host to some more serious parasites, such as tapeworms, roundworms, filaria worms, and liver flukes, among many many more. For all of these nasty biting blood suckers and thieves, it is their ability to  infest us in great numbers that causes problems. We have evolved to tolerate moderate predation by most parasites and a tapeworm  or a couple of roundworms, disgusting though they be, won't hurt us too badly. There is even a school of thought that our immune systems need to be challenged to some degree by some sort of worm. According to this hypothesis -sometimes called the hygiene hypothesis- autoimmune diseases such as asthma, allergies, Crohn's disease, and others are caused when the immune system lacks exposure to parasites and bacteria in the environment.
But when the parasite load becomes too great, we are weakened and likely to succumb to predators, or illness.

There are some parasites that are much much more deadly. There is, believe it or not, a parasitic barnacle, called Sacculina. This barnacle creature injects itself into a crab's body and begins to grow roots, or tentacles that invade the crab, feeding from its blood, but keeping the crab alive. It takes over the crabs body systems, and rides the animal, but invisibly from the outside.

Other parasites are smaller, like the toxoplasma gondii that gets picked up by rodents, and then subtly alter the rodent brain in such a way that it becomes likely to be eaten by a cat. The parasite then infects the cat where it finishes out the reproductive cycle.

I hear conservatives complaining all the time about how they don't want to be taxed in order to support single moms, or students, or lazy crack addicts, you name it. Right-wingers call them parasites on society. Maybe so. But they are the face mites on society. The real parasites we need to fear are more subtle and dangerous than that. They are ones who worm their way into the brains, the government, and take over. They use their influence to write laws (or have laws written by their slaves, bought and paid for) that change the mission of the US government. The real parasites don't want our resources to go to promoting the general welfare, but rather to enriching themselves even more. They are the Wall Street execs, the bankers, the oil barons.

We can stand to support a few crack addicts, to provide food stamps to lazy bums, or mentally ill people, or students, or old sick people. They won't bleed us dry. But the bankers and corporate CEOs will kill us if we let them.

Science education or alchemy?

The Louisiana Science Education Act is one of the latest fundamentalist attacks on science in the modern world. It allows teachers to use supplemental materials that directly oppose the best scientific knowledge and methods available. This act is child abuse. It's not OK to teach kids lies. It's almost treasonous to use public funds and public schools to do so. If parents want their kids to be superstitious and ignorant, they can take them to a fundamentalist church. The rest of us need our kids to be educated.
Let's hope that Senator Peterson succeeds in her third attempt to trash this piece of crap. Louisiana already has David Vitter to be ashamed of.