Far Far Away Blesses Civil Unions

Figures.  Get your guy elected President and all hell breaks loose.

Who even knew Hawaii had gays and lesbians, let alone Anna Paquins?  Isn't it all pineapples, leis and surfing?  Is there a gay or lesbian on "Lost"?

Most non-Hawaiian Americans bristle at the idea of a "Civil Union".  How odd.  After all, some distinguished Bloggers' own mothers were wed at least once in purely civil ceremonies.  Whether they subsequently soared up to Heaven or kayaked the Styx is another story for another blog.

The US (less Arizona, of course) has a Constitution that says, "Please leave religion pretty out of the law books."  It is othen said that between law and religion America has erected a Chinese Dry Wall.  If you wall off religion from marriage, say replace the rabbi, minister or priest with a judge, Elvis or The Love Boat's Captain Stubbing what do you get?

Uh huh.

The government simply deputizes religious officials to perform the civil bonding of individuals--and probably, now, corporations--and if the souls get hooked, too, well, that's just for the parents and their friends.  The Honeymoon is something else altogether.

Howt about "What God has Joined, Let no Man put Asunder"?  That is pure religion and about as yesterday as Latin.  Dozens of men put asunder their joint-ships every day and take fire hydrants along for the ride, the latter clearly a civil matter.  Under the First Amendment, God does not get to own any fire hydrants in this country.

Politicians already know this, which explains John Edwards Syndrome.  But not the actual haircut.

Think about those weddings performed at City Hall.  They are clearly nothing but civil unions, executed without the holy water or glass-breaking.  Kissing the bride is something else altogether.

In US law, then, only the civil union part matters; the religious part is on the far side of the Dry Wall with the included embalming vapors and the corroded copper piping.  So, get out the dictionary and the Elmer's glue.  We are Americans and we redefine terms all the time:  For example, a jump to 27.24% interest rates used to be called "usury" or "loan sharking" but is now called "your Amex default rate".  (You get to plug in your own examples, like Visa or Macy's, so as to keep this post short.)

Starting today, all the atheists and their near-atheist kin, the liberals and moderates, can proudly state, from now on, that they are "civil unionized" instead of married.

Doesn't have much a lilt to it, does it?

Better to call on the Old English for a suggested rewording:  Wedlock is what's left of the Old English words wed and lac, which combine for pledge-giving; and, we already freely substitute wed for marry. That should please Republicans and TP'ers, who long for the good old days, but hate Latin.

And wedlock echoes nicely of ball and chain, too.

Supreme Court: A Cross is Almost Pagan

At the Supreme Court, that's what Tony ("That's-Why-The-Other-Guy's-Scaley") Kennedy basically wrote in his majority opinion.  The cross in question is in Middle of Nowhere, California, erected as part of a memorial to WWI's fallen.

The VFW put it up ages ago, when the US was still a Christian country. At the time, everyone knew what it meant and loved it, not that they ever saw the thing, it being in the Mojave Desert. You had as much chance of seeing that cross as a Wampanoag does a thousand wind turbines off Nantucket on a foggy day.

The cross is only a little taller than Megan Fox who you would miss completely if she were wearing flats...  Okay.  The cross is not even as high as, even if as inert as, Nichole Kidman's forehead.

The problem lay in its desert home being on public land, that is, land owned by The Government.  Now, had the land been owned by Arizona, we would not be talking about it at all, that state being beyond constitutional enforcement.

Some atheist federal judges from WhereElseButt, California, perhaps projecting their own guilt, said that, in the late, late afternoon, when the sun is low, you can make out a shadow that looks like Jesus' big toe way low down on the the cross.

(Oh, don't go planning a pilgrimage already! It's poetic license.)

The upshot is that the judges ordered the cross covered with Chinese Drywall, because no will use the boatloads of it sitting in Long Beach and, come on, like it can hurt Jesus.

It fell to the few remaining Christians in California to come up with a scheme to molify the judges.  The goverment would sell the hillock with the cross impaled on it to a non-government, maybe one of those free-speech loving corporation Justice Tony loves so much.  The rogue circuit judges were not fooled one bit and did everything but nail up the drywall themselves.

The Christians looked at the Supreme Court of the United States and liked their chances at 5 to 4.  A lot.

Justice Tony, perhaps with Scaley's whispering, figured it out.  The cross wasn't about Christianity at all.  The cross was Latin, the Roman culture before Sophia Loren.  This was the culture that crucified malcontents for kicks thirty  years before Christmas Day went wholesale; the culture that put Spartacus, Tony Curtis and so many of their slave army up on crosses they had to use Velcro.

The cross is an ancient, way-pre-Christian symbol evoking all the thousands of miniture pre-Christian crosses planted across Europe where Ameican soldiers were buried in presumably Latin ceremonies after de-empiring the Germans.  Those small Latin crosses were only used to define the uncountable rows and photograph really well.  Nobody's religion, or lack thereof, was involved.

And besides, Tony (the Justice not the Curtis) says, the cross would be someone's private property before anyone actually saw Jesus' shadowy if sacred big toe and built a church around it.