Don't rain on my gay parade: Equality and the future of marriage

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought. --Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
     President Obama's recent statement - his personal support of same-sex marriage and rejection of civil unions, putting him in stark contrast with Mr Romney - has given everyone a lot to think about. While I am not ignorant of the campaigning dynamic going on in such an unambiguous admission, neither am I interested in it. Rather, I am interested in the question it raises for the future of American society. Should we, like the President, embrace homosexuality as equal under the law in all respects? Or should we, like the soon-to-be Republican candidate, embrace the preservation of traditional, monogamous, heterosexual marriage?
     First, a preliminary philosophical observation. Always and in every society there is an Other (a group generally viewed as outside the accepted circle of good, God-approved individuals) who is denied social equality and legitimacy. We see a long list of Others in our society's history. Women, visible minorities, religious minorities, disabled persons, subcultures, and so on.

     Some societies perpetuate these prejudices and preserve social and legal inequality. This is done by squelching the voice of the Other and preventing it from being heard as a valid point of view. In some societies prejudices increase because of economic rivalry, a historical wrong or sociocultural resentment. However, as a democratic society evolves, these prejudices have generally been eroded by other more enduring values and principles.
     In a democratic society it is inevitable that, once they are considered persons and citizens with the right to vote, the voice of the Other will be heard. That voice will complain of the prejudices endured and their manifestation as gross legal inequalities. It is always in the legal arena that any issue in inequality will first come to a head.
     A democratic society will invariably increase legal equality of non-destructive preferences and behaviors, whatever these may be, and regulate or ban preferences and behaviors that hurt those besides their practitioners. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859. This ranges from sexual self-determination to the use of narcotics to ethnic background to religious belief/practice to protesting to riding a bicycle without using a helmet. Our legal courts are charged with seeing the basic trajectory of our country and, when it is time, creating or altering laws to increase equality and decrease destructive acts.
     Legislation in a democratic society cannot be coterminous with morality. In the United States we expect to enjoy personal freedoms, even if we do not always follow the status quo. We are allowed to live in peace with differing views and practices on many subjects. We understand the difference between morality and law - no wonder that so many moral people break laws on a regular basis without a single pang of guilt.

     You don't see pornography or other sexually explicit entertainment outlawed, do you? People who see homosexuality as immoral almost certainly view these other practices as immoral - and many others, too. However, it doesn't matter how many people believe watching porn is wrong. Laws are not written based on what the majority believe is moral or immoral. Laws have to do, as I said already, with stopping people from hurting others, and granting equality to groups disenfranchised in older generations. It is unethical to write a law stopping someone from doing something just because you think they shouldn't. That's called bigotry.
     Therefore, there is no basis whatsoever to outlaw minority practices unless they are destructive to others. I have the right to believe an act to be immoral but I do not have the right to impose my view on others. I have the right to believe an act to be moral but I do not have the right to require others to do it, or to see things the same way. A democratic society believes in free thought, which stands and falls on free speech, which stands and falls on free action - so long as my free action does not impinge on the rights of someone else.
     Only if gay marriage is destructive to others, therefore, can there be any basis for outlawing it. Otherwise it's simply a clear-cut example of an oppressed minority finally having an opportunity to receive equal treatment under the law - the constitutional right of the GLBT community as much as it is mine or any heterosexual person.
     So, does gay marriage hurt others? I don't think that it has ever hurt me. No gay or lesbian has ever hurt me by simply being the way they are, much less hurting me by committing themselves to each other in monogamous, life-long union. I can't see how that could ever hurt me. Am I missing something here?
Here are some possible arguments of how homosexuality and gay marriage could be destructive to others:

1. God will punish the entire society for its immoral conduct. The biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is the chief example supporting this argument. However, if you read the story carefully, you'll note that Abraham only has to find ten righteous people in the whole city to save it. As long as heterosexual marriage is resolutely preserved, then, I can't see why even the most superstitious person would worry about being turned into a gigantic salt shaker. 
2. Homosexuality will be approved by society so it will harder to convince our children that it is wrong. Exposure to a different idea or way of life is not the same as actual harm. If it was, we could not stop until we had a morally homogeneous society, and this conception runs contrary to every fiber in my democratic body.
3. Gay marriage will lead to gay adoption. Let's assume it does, or will, eventually, given the view of democratic society I outlined above. I've never heard of a study showing that a child raised by a gay couple is more likely to have some serious psychological trauma, or be abused, or anything else. Again, it's pretty clear that the horror of the idea of kids being "raised gay" is a result of moral prejudice. Such prejudice is the right of anyone, but by no means can it determine the direction of new legislation.
4. Gay marriage will lessen the validity of heterosexual marriage and lead to the destruction of the institution of marriage, raise divorce rates, corrupt society because the family unit no longer passes on valuable moral teachings to children, etc. I say, there's some truth in that. But the bigger truth is that Western society lost that battle almost one hundred years ago with the legalization of birth control methods as part of the early feminist movement and the liberation of women to be more than baby factories.

     The fact of the matter is that marriage isn't primarily about babies anymore. Society has changed, for better or for worse, and there's no going back. To try to salvage an obsolete notion of marriage is hopeless. In fifty years no one outside of extremely conservative religious groups will even bother. I can visualize the Catholic church continuing to maintain strict policies against both contraceptives and gay marriage for maybe that long, but not much longer. American society, meanwhile, will continue to develop and update its laws to reflect its nature - assuming the political scene is fixed sometime before the Union of States utterly dissolves. If you want a society that considers marriage to be primarily about progeny, you'll have to go to some other part of the world (not Europe). But I predict as their populations stabilize and the middle class becomes wealthier, as health care quality and availability increases and infant death mortality drops, the urge to define marriage in terms of procreation will weaken and ultimately fade.
     Folks, it's a brave new world out there, and we need to go and be part of it. Instead of pining for a lost era where black was black and white was white, we need to figure out how to make society work as best as it can.

Sex at school

     The other day I told my Creative Writing students, "Your job is to make your topic interesting. The only subject that's interesting by default is sex. No other topic is interesting until you make it interesting."
     The point I was making was valid, but I almost regret putting it that way, because simply mentioning sex in class gets them thinking about sex, rather than about writing. Case in point, right? It's such a powerful part of human existence. Those who treat sex casually are at war with the bulk of human societies and civilizations since the dawn of time.
     (I suppose I just enjoy being unpredictable. How often does a high school teacher mention sex? It's nice to be absolutely sure now and then that your students are actually listening to you.)

     Today I started the most ambitious instructional unit of my career -- sexual ethics. It's coming at the tail-end of a semester of ethics, starting with ethical issues relating specifically to young people, then environment, education, war and politics. It's been a great class. However, our school district has failed our students insofar as it does not require each of them to take a course on sex, sexuality and gender. This is my chance to fix that grievous error.
     Unfortunately I've only left myself two weeks to cover the material, so we'll have to move fairly quickly through some of the most controversial issues that will be raised this year. Homosexuality. Premarital sex. Age of consent. And once again, I think I will be able to hold my students' attention without too much difficulty.
     Of course, the challenge of an ethics course is to let the students arrive at their own conclusions instead of being told what to believe. Not only is it the ethical way to go about instruction -- as opposed to taking advantage of your position of authority and trust to preach your personal viewpoints -- but it will also result in a far more lasting impact on the way the students think.
     This is basically what distinguishes a teacher from a parental figure. Parents are keen to pass on their values and beliefs to their children. I, however, cannot adopt one hundred teenagers for 180 days, and repeat the process from scratch every year. For one, I'd probably kill myself. But the larger issue is the fact that they are not little mes, in any sense. Some might respect me and some might hate me, some will idolize me and others filled with disdain and scorn. Yet their background is not mine, their home life is not mine, their past is not mine, and although I can impact their future, it is not irrevocably tied to my own.

     Sex and sexuality is sort of like religion and tradition. It's hard to break away from your roots. Students learn math, English, history and science at school, but when it comes to sex, they come with a set of presuppositions, sometimes hardened by specific theological premises. In the United States, anyway. In more secular countries  -- Britain comes to mind -- would have many parents who tell their kids, "Think about it, and go with what makes sense." Americans are more dogmatic. And by extension, whereas in Britain a teacher could have a full curriculum about sex, that's not true in Oklahoma. It's safer to skirt the most important questions, lest an instructor call down some serious parental wrath.
     Still, I don't deny that I have an agenda. My devious plan is to get them to reflect on their own assumptions, the traditions they've inherited, the biases the embrace as part of their subconscious endeavor to be accepted by their peers. Strong opinions in controversial matters are part of the adolescent experience and the search for one's personal identity. I get that. But they can't stay teenagers forever.
     When I was a high school student, like them, I had strong opinions about many hot topics. Then I grew up. At university I experienced the process of letting go of my purported wisdom, and much to my dismay, I was wrong on pretty much everything. Is it egotistical to want my students to similarly reject the simplicity of their youth? Do I claim that a phase of intellectual rebellion is necessary to internalize one's values and thus ensure that one is not merely a creature of habit but an empowered individual?
     I suppose so. And frankly, if a teacher can get a kid to rethink what she thinks she knows about sex, then pretty much everything is up for grabs.

Politics away from the dinner-table

      The two topics you're not supposed to discuss at the dinner-table are religion and politics. Well, I've been interested in the former since the middle of tenth grade, and comfortable discussing it after the middle of six years of post-secondary study on the subject, after traversing the spectrum from theological conservative to liberal. And the latter? Well, we'll get to that.

      A bit o' life contributed to what I'd call an inevitable change in my opinions in such matters. First, my distaste for authority. Second, a belief in social and cultural influence. The origins of both lie in my upbringing. My mother was laissez-faire, my step-dad was an unclear parental-guardian figure, and my father strongly encouraged me to think for myself, argue, reason, and who to this day maintains incredible dissonance with pretty much every social, political, military and religious institution on the planet. Contrary to most children, then, the education system never successfully taught me to do what I was told.

      Add to this the reality of my cultural diversity. My grandfather grew up on a Navajo reservation in Arizona, my grandmother moved from Arkansas to Fresno during the Great Depression, and my mother's parents a pair of middle-class Englishwomen and Scotsman who became life-long missionaries to China, Mongolia, and Taiwan.

      It was a foregone conclusion that ultimately I would give up the claim of my youth that the Bible was an absolute authority, that morality was absolute, and to subscribe to the murky waters of ideological relativity. The fact that I'm now analyzing my own ideological development in terms of personal experience only confirms the persistence of this sordid tale. And so it goes to this very day.

       For a long time I was content to restrict my philosophical interest to the spiritual realm. However, since moving to the United States I've had to give up my precious apathy in matters political. Growing up in Canada, receiving a socialist education and enduring a traumatic religious transformation has resulted in my rejecting the moralizing sympathies of the Republican cause. As for their cry for smaller government, I cannot see the point. At this stage in economic history it simply means we trade a federal puppet for fifty state puppets, and all the while corporate powers are holding all the strings. Washington's great fall to the evil of money – currently enshrined in electioneering and lobbying – is troubling indeed, and the terrible polarization of a broken two-party system refutes any hope for deep and lasting policy changes to defeat this corruption. A minority in Oklahoma, I silently count myself a Democrat and try not to engage many of my colleagues in serious political discussion.

      My best friend in high school, Jay, always joked that a benevolent dictatorship was the most reliable and efficient way to run a country, and I sympathize with the thought. Unity without all the red tape and time-consuming procedure. An emperor to run the galaxy a la Palpatine. If Hitler had been for vinyl flooring instead of genocide, would fascism have such a bad name? In every strategy game I play, you don't win through democratic process. You win by being in control and making all the right decisions to grow your civilization economically, militarily, and culturally. And in nearly every one of those games, you are practically forced to adopt a militaristic ethic toward neighboring nations. Otherwise, the game is boring. Maybe real-life dictators experience similar internal naggings for conquest and... peace, of a sort.

      Sometime ago I ran across some youtube videos on anti-statism which, after years of living in Oklahoma, was a breath of fresh air. I'd heard about it in high school but the word "anarchy" was filled with frightening associations and I never seriously considered it as a political option. After listening to several long-winded but well-reasoned arguments and counterarguments, however, it gained my respect. Just like totalitarianism is the final form of political control (Democratic Party), anarchy is the final form of political freedom (Republican Party). And while neither will ever have a prayer of significantly impacting American politics, considering these extremes was helpful in trying to make sense of why the bulk of Americans are able to respond so emotionally and vehemently against one political party or the other. In a two-party system, the easiest way to discredit "the other" is to exaggerate its distinctive features – much like Nazis illustrated Jews with long noses in anti-Semitic propaganda. In reality, President Obama and Governor Romney are chiefly centrist, regardless of public perception, and whether one is in office or the other is in office will make very little difference to my life, socially or economically.

      Nevertheless, exhausted as I was from political nitpickery so popular in my new home, I repeatedly promised myself, my friends and my family that I will leave the United States as soon as possible. It's the simplest way to voice my real and well-earned distaste for American politics. For a country to come so far and yet be disabled by pointless bickering and in-fighting is so maddening, how could anyone look at it straight in the eye without wanting to flee?

      Desperation forced me to consider absurd options, like a benevolent dictator, the end of the state entirely, and... a third party. I've always thought that minority governments are relatively effective. The balance of power dictates that they compromise in order to rule, and this greatly slows the push toward the corruption and abuse of that power. However, in the current political climate the rise of a third party and the transition of American politics toward a Canadian or European likeness seems as absurd as the voluntary self-annihilation of the government, or the ascension of a true totalitarian to the White House.

      Like the unending Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it feels as if there is no end in sight. We were driven here by unyielding historical forces, and those same forces are keeping us from discovering a solution. On the other hand, the best part of history is its unpredictability. Ten years from now I might be lamenting an entirely different set of seemingly insurmountable challenges, having forgotten the progress from yesteryear and taking for granted our new-found freedoms. Pie in the sky? Probably. But in the end it's optimism that keeps away defeatism and keeps me thinking and engaging a system that does change, albeit slowly and spasmodically.

      Here I am, on the cusp of a new chapter in my life, one I've been pining for all year, and it's still hard to believe it's finally on its last approach and descent. Perhaps America, too, is on the verge of something new. After all, aren't we overdue? Like the movie I saw last night – Cabin in the Woods – can we finally step down from our position as ruler of the cosmos, and give someone else a turn? The world badly needs a fresh hand at the wheel.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion—several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. -Mark Twain
The full text free: legal download.
Further thematic reflections on the novel.
Sparknotes summary and analysis.
Caution: spoilers.
     Many students of great literature will come across Tom Hardy's magnum opus of the Victorian woman and have a hard time seeing beyond the protagonist's suffering, and, more troubling still, her apparently stubborn refusal to reject the system that belittles and hurts her, poor and female as she is. However, there is more to Tess than meets the eye. She is not so blind or foolish as it would seem. Moreover, Hardy writes her brutal story not to celebrate her misery but to show its philosophical moorings and effectively to unharness it. This he does with much success.
     First, we note that Tess does not believe that she is treated fairly - rather she is quite aware that her station in life is ugly. Her conversation with her younger brother, Abraham, reveals her awareness of the injustice of social inequality. It could be written off as a Victorian sensitivity toward sin, but the universal tone of the subject at hand (other worlds) suggests otherwise.
     "Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"
     "Yes."
     "All like ours?"
     "I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted."
     "Which do we live on - a splendid one or a blighted one?"
     "A blighted one." (p.26)

     This being at the beginning of the narrative, I see Tess as being aware of class inequality but entirely ignorant of gender inequality. She maintains a staunchly Victorian attitude toward her sex, namely, that God intends her to be chaste, demure, delicate, subservient to men, and religiously devout. Throughout the entire story she never shirks this God-given identity, and this is her mantle of honor.
     The reader cannot question her integrity - and this is precisely what makes the story so compelling. Unlike The Jungle, which I read in December, the awful and horrific series of events the protagonist endures does not result in moral corruption here. While her naïveté disappears, the strength of her will never falters.
     This vignette concludes a couple pages later, when Tess falls asleep and Prince, the horse pulling her and her brother's wagon, is killed when he runs into a mail-carriage.
     " 'Tis all my doing - all mine!" the girl cried, gazing at the spectacle. "No excuse for me - none. What will mother and Father live one now? Aby, Aby!" She shook the child, who had slept soundly through the whole disaster. "We can't go on with our load - Prince is killed!"
     When Abraham realized all, the furrows of fifty years were extemporized on his young face.
     "Why, I danced and laughed only yesterday!" she went on to herself. "To think that I was such a fool!"
     " 'Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it, Tess?" murmured Abraham through his tears.

     The self-reproach that Tess endures for the consequences of slight errors (due to her naivete - this is her only vice) is harsh, to say the least. And this is entirely consistent with the Victorian model of the ideal woman.
     It's discouraging to read about such a noble and selfless character so little rewarded for her virtues. Tess is certainly a Christ-like figure. Look at her end. She is hung for murdering an evil man, the pretty boy who wooed her and stole her virginity. Hardy makes several religious allusions (e.g. the Two Apostles painting) to tie her death to the crucifixion and suggests her death was inevitable, the expression of the blind justice created by a society that successfully exploits the working class every day.
     "Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals... had ended his sport with Tess... The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless; the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again, and went on.
     Morally, Tess is as pure and spotless as Christ himself. However, she is woman - without power and the scourge of her society, guilty of all human sin solely because of her sex - and she is not divine - she has no great omniscience or omnipotence to tide her over until God can justify her. She can work no miracles to prove her virtue, and when walking through the wooded regions of southern England, she believes - falsely - that she is out of sync with God himself:
     A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in the mind of some vague ethical being whom she could not class definitely as the God of her childhood and could not comprehend as any other.
     But this encompassment of her own characterization.... was a sorry and mistaken creation of Tess's fancy - a cloud of moral hobgoblins by which she was terrified without reason. It was they that were out of harmony with the actual world, not she. Walking among the sleeping birds in the hedges, watching the skipping rabbits on a moonlit warren, or standing under a pheasant-laden bough, she looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts of Innocence. But all the while, she was making a distinction where there was no difference... She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly. (p. 85)

     The same language surfaces when Tess's bastard child dies and she asks the vicar for a Christian burial. Social convention makes such a request impossible. The vicar, sympathetic to Tess's dignity and tenderness, brings about an internal battle "between the man and the ecclesiastic," or rather, between his instinctive human impulse and the mechanical social function called propriety.
     He refuses. Tess begs, reasons, threatens, abases herself, and ultimately the vicar tells her that a Christian burial is "just the same" as being thrown into the earth. Convention be damned! And the narrator vindicates the truth in his word, not his mind:
     In spite of the untoward surroundings... Tess bravely made a little cross of two laths and a piece of string, and having bound it with flowers, she stuck it up at the head of the grave one evening when she could enter the churchyard without being seen, putting at the foot also a bunch of the same flowers in a little jar of water to keep them alive. What matter was it that on the outside of the jar the eye of mere observation noted the words "Keelwell's Marmalade"? The eye of maternal affection did not see them in its vision of higher things.
     Tess's persistent self-doubt continues to plague her. Leaving home in an attempt to make a new life for herself and lift the burden of her presence - the consumption of three squares a day, and the loss of her virginity, the Victorian working woman's only prized possession - she sings some ballads to herself, some psalms, but stops suddenly "and murmured, 'But perhaps I don't quite know the Lord as yet.' " (p. 104)
     It is this self-doubt that cripples her one chance at self-preservation at the key moment when, after telling her husband, Clare, of her past inglories, he utterly rejects her.
     There was, it is true, underneath, a back current of sympathy through which a woman of the world might have conquered him. But Tess did not think of this; she took everything as her deserts and hardly opened her mouth... She might just now have been Apostolic Charity herself returned to a self-seeking modern world. (p. 242-43)
     Clare, too, is no less bound to convention than his wife:
     No prophet had told him, and he was not prophet enough to tell himself, that essentially this young wife of his was as deserving of the praise of King Lemuel as any other woman endowed with the same dislike of evil, her moral value having to be reckoned not by achievement but by tendency. (p. 267)
     In other words, morality is not a question of perfection but of intention. Because Tess is incessantly victimized as a woman, her intentions far exceed her degree of perfection; contrast this with an upper-class male of the same era, who only fails to achieve perfection as a result of his own moral determinations.
     Especially revolting is how Alec d'Urberville (the man who deflowered her, thus ruining her life) repeatedly castigates Tess for his own moral imperfections - a practice that still continues in many socially conservative communities today:
     He stepped up to the pillar. "This was once a Holy Cross. Relics are not in my creed, but I fear you at moments - far more than you need fear me at present; and to lessen my fear, put your hand upon that stone hand and swear that you will never tempt me - by your charms or ways..."
     Tess, half frightened, gave way to his importunity, placed her hand upon the stone, and swore. (p. 315)

     And Tess, named the temptress of the garden and the witch of Babylon, continues steadfastly to defend her husband of his innocence.
     Tess is repeatedly accused by d'Urberville to have rejected or recanted the true faith. Angel Clare, her husband, having studied theology and having readied himself to serve as clergy, ultimately chose a path closer to nature, with less deceit and hypocrisy on the way. While he and Tess were close, he imparted to her his more liberal understanding of matters theological. Later she hears d'Urberville expostulating a fundamentalist vision of salvation - he had turned preacher during their years apart - and she has a brief occasion to pass on what her husband told her, which to her instincts rang true, since (I suggest) it gave priority to morality over dogma.
     D'Urberville ceases to be a preacher as quickly as he became one, telling Tess her words instantly eroded his religious conviction. As soon as he saw her, he says, he instantly realized his conversion had been a lie, because he knew he would trade it all to possess her again. He admits to the thinness of traditional Christianity but cannot see how morality can exist without it:
     [Tess] tried to argue and tell [d'Urberville] that he had mixed in his dull brain two matters, theology and morals, which in the primitive days of mankind had been quite distinct. But owing to Angel Clare's reticence, to her absolute want of training, and to her being a vessel of emotions rather than reasons, she could not get on. (pp.334-35)
     Is Hardy offering a critique of the Victorian philosophy of the sexes, or a statement about the nature of religion generally? I'm inclined to find both in this classic work.
     On the one hand, we see a clear indictment of the nineteenth-century model of womanhood. It takes a woman comfortable in the diverse avenues of social manipulation - thus betraying the very ideal she pretends to achieve - to play the desired role convincingly. For the high-minded, working-class woman, however, such niceties are impossible, for if you truly buy in to the model, you cannot maneuver your way out of the social sins you will surely commit. The ideal is fundamentally flawed in its conception and demands a hypocrisy to operate - and this very inconsistency is what destroys its spirit.
     On the other hand, Tess's religion is true and her intentions pure. Through her character Hardy espouses a religion of morals rather than of propositions. Clare rejects the religion of his father - the very same religion that Alec embraces, but to no avail for his spirit - suggesting that traditional Christianity is vanity, perhaps even destructive (but I am not sure if Hardy takes it this far).
     All three main characters - Tess, Clare and Alec - come into contact with natural religion - primarily moral and wonderfully simple in nature. Tess embraces it from the start, and at most the thicket shrouding the truth in darkness is hacked away. Clare experiences a true battle between the two - his mind embraces natural religion, but when confronted with social law returns to the ungodly propriety taught falsely as religion. In the end he realizes the error of his ways and turns around - too late, alas, to save his wife. The damage had been done and nothing could undo it.
     Last, Alec was Tess's opposite, in that he was fundamentally irreligious or immoral. For a while religion hid his true nature, but never had the power to change it. He pondered both propositional religion and moral religion, could never understand the latter, and in the end rejected the former as being equally incomprehensible.
     Ultimately all three characters are true to their inner identity, and no professing or pondering will change it. What a different story it would have been if Tess had given up her religion (and if anyone had just cause to do so, it was her), or if Alec had converted his heart to the religion of grace, or if Alec had never grasped Tess's true quality and rejected her finally.
     Much like Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamozov, Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles can be read as a guide to the three kinds of people in the world: those who embrace moral (true) religion, those who embrace propositional (false) religion, and those who live in confusion and contradiction by attempting to use the rules of the latter to grasp the former. It is only when you finally let go of your need to understand everything that you can experience true morality.
     Romantic? Absolutely. Simple? In theory, yes. But the book displays age-old wisdom beautifully and that's what's most important.

The pill or the cross? A trumped-up debate

This is a carefully balanced proposal. I think it's high-minded, but I think it's fair-minded. In other words, it's got something to offend everyone. -The Firm (1993)
     Today in the teacher workroom one of my colleagues declared that President Obama is attacking the Catholic Church with a vengeance. And this teacher is not alone. Obama is currently envisioned by many as the contemporary incarnation of the Roman emperor Nero, burning Christians in the backyard of the White House, feeding them to starving circus beasts at the local amphitheater, and cackling gaily all the while. Recent polls show more than half of Catholics taking issue with the President's recent decision regarding enforced health care coverage of contraception.
     Nevertheless, there is no great conspiracy by the current administration to aggravate one of the largest voting bodies in the country. There is no secret plan to undermine the Amendments to the Constitution in order to install an oppressive bureaucracy to control hard-working American men and women. Obama is not a Jew-hating, anti-papal Muslim brother. For the record, he's an intellectual Christian drawing from many traditions. He's not Jacobean.
     What is going on is a centuries-old war between the current liberal landscape, whose crown jewel is the utterly dispassionate and fair medical establishment, and the awkwardly-defunct-but-in-denial religious establishment, codified supremely as the Catholic (=universal! at least claiming such) Church. Sadly, this much more interesting issue will not be addressed in this article. Another time, perhaps. (In the meantime I will refer you to a related issue I wrote about last month.) The scope of this post is simply to outline the facts of the debate and argue its present status as being no longer front-page news material.
     The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, which constitutes the chief legislative reform to the American health care system, is known pejoratively as "Obamacare." It requires health care providers to offer coverage for pre-existing conditions and preventative services. It also increases nationwide coverage by thirty million. The majority of states have appealed PPACA as unconstitutional, hearings in the Supreme Court will take place in late March, and a decision is supposed to be reached by June.
     The health care controversy is obviously complicated enough to reach the highest Court in the land, and I only wish to address the issue of requiring religious organizations to provide contraceptive coverage. This issue has been raising hell for a month or so, now, and like the proverbial bad penny, won't take a hint and go away.
     Let's look at the facts first.
     Before PPACA, women were protected from paying higher premiums for medical coverage just for being women if they received that coverage through their employer. However, if they were shopping for individual coverage, no such protection existed. Women paid higher premiums on average (legal in 37 states), even though they did not receive a corresponding increase in service. Since women are more likely to be unemployed or only employed part-time and in 2010 made up 55% of the individual health care market, this is a substantial problem.
     Let's be clear why. Women who got pregnant could suddenly lose their health insurance coverage without remuneration. Other cost sharing such as additional deductibles because they were treated as a rape victim or got a C-Section (regularly required by a medical doctor as the safest procedure for both mother and infant). Because of this legal discrimination, many women chose not to get any health coverage at all.
     I believe that one of the fundamental marks of authentic civilization, alongside universal education and transparent political system, is a universal health care system. When a society lets its poorer and more vulnerable members suffer physiologically, it is violating their right as human beings to physical dignity. I don't care if you're a crack addict, a pedophile or a jobless ninny. As long as you're a citizen of my country, if you have a disease - even one you suffer from because of your vice - you have the right to receive quality medical treatment for your ailments.
     PPACA stopped this gender-discrimination and requires all employers to provide women with preventative services such as gestational diabetes screening, regular gynecological checkups, contraceptives and related counseling, breastfeeding supplies and relevant support. An exemption to this rule (for contraceptive coverage only) exists for for employers defined as religious institutions.
     The first amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
     This exemption is rife with potential for abuse. Let's say I'm a health care provider and I want my individual rates (not through an employer) to be competitive. Covering women raises the average cost of my plans because women require more medical service than men. I need to find a way to offset that additional cost. PPACA prevents me from raising premiums for women simply for being women. However, if I can legally choose to withhold certain medical coverages that women typically want, they will be less likely to purchase health care coverage from me. In this way I can still encourage them to find coverage elsewhere. To benefit from the exemption clause, all I have to do is claim that I morally oppose contraception on religious grounds. According to the First Amendment, the government cannot legally force me to freely exercise my religious beliefs. I get to exert my religious beliefs over my employees' and beat my competitors' rates.
     Thankfully the writers of the PPACA were smart enough to limit the exemption to religious employers. To qualify as a religious employer, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, the institution must "(1) Have the inculcation of religious values as its purpose; (2) primarily employs persons who share its religious tenets; (3) primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets; and (4) is a non-profit organization[,in other words,] churches, their integrated auxiliaries, and conventions or associations of churches, as well as to the exclusively religious activities of any religious order."

     In the case of a religious employer and a woman who needs contraceptive care we have a conflict of interest. Both parties have rights. Women as human beings have a right to quality health care (as stated above) and that includes contraceptive treatment. If you are an employer and you deny that coverage, you are discriminating against an employee. That's illegal. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, "Religious discrimination involves treating a person (an applicant or employee) unfavorably because of his or her religious beliefs. The law protects not only people who belong to traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, but also others who have sincerely held religious, ethical or moral beliefs." Many women sincerely believe that it's morally right to have an active sexual life without overpopulating the planet with additional mouths to feed, that it's morally right to enjoy sex for the purpose of interpersonal intimacy rather than procreation. An employer must respect that belief. That's the law. Otherwise, why shouldn't an employer choose not to hire you because of your religion? your lifestyle? your ethnicity? your sexual orientation?
     The EEOC has been around for more than fifty years, and it's the reason employers are no longer allowed to discriminate in covering their employees. In 2010 PPACA took that same principle and extended it to health care providers, because even though they aren't employers, they shouldn't have the right to discriminate either.
     So how do we uphold both the woman's individual rights and the institution's rights? The solution is simple. Provide coverage to the woman without going through her religious employer at all. The health care provider must offer it without charging the church. Now the church is not spending its monies for what it perceives to be a sinful action. No cost sharing on the part of the employer or the employee.
     And that's exactly what the rules are.
     So why are people still accusing Obama of attacking the church?
1. People think the definition of "religious employer" is too narrow. Catholic universities and hospitals should be included, it is said.
Response. Maybe the definition could be widened. But we still need to provide contraceptive coverage to the woman. She has her rights too, as explained earlier. And in no way does the nuance of the definition of "religious employer" constitute "an attack" on Catholics. It's something to be considered by people of intelligence and experience.
2. People generally want to blame the President for everything. This is especially bad during a recession, and especially especially bad during the last year of his first term in office.
Response. People love to complain and find someone to blame. Frankly I can't think of a perfect solution to this problem, but I certainly can't think of a better solution than the one currently in place. Every alternative I've seen crushes the rights of either the employer or the employee.
3. The President doesn't have a positive religious identity. As a Democrat, Obama is already on the back foot, and worse, was labeled a closet Muslim, despite clearly being a liberal Christian. Contrast Obama with Bush Jr., who during his first term claimed to read Oswald Chamber's classic My Utmost For His Highest (a daily reading of wishy-washy Christian moralisms) on a regular basis.
Response. Personally I don't think Obama's religious beliefs are a problem. I'm betting he's fairly non-committal, which means as a politician he's looking to create and maintain a system in which the beliefs of all are respected, as long as they don't impinge on the beliefs of others. And that's exactly what the government of a religiously free country is supposed to do.
     Since representatives of the Catholic Health Association and Mount St. Mary's University not only accepted the accommodation (while reserving the right to negotiate certain minor details), but praised the President's willingness to listen and respond to legitimate concerns, we can confidently declare that the rest of this nonsense is no different than the long-winded spectacles of Obama's birth certificate, Solyndra, and the Ground Zero Mosque.
     Ongoing questions: The battle between the medical establishment and the old, defunct religious establishment.

The Decalogue (1989): Promise-keeping

     The Decalogue (1989, released on DVD in 2000) is a series of ten hour-long films, each representing one of the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament. Directed by Krzyztof Kieślowski and filmed in Polish, the collection explores a modern interpretation of the words Moses received from God on Mount Sinai, so the story goes.
     You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
     The second film explores the issue of the oath, vow, promise, or more generally speaking, the contractual "statement of intent." Contrary to popular opinion, the second commandment does not condemn foul language ("Jesus, that hurts!") nor is it so narrow as to only apply to judicial hearings ("Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"). Rather it is an invective of the rather sorry state of the human condition from prehistorical times right up until the present day, characterized by the making of promises one has no intention of keeping.
     For example, last week I told someone at church I would call him before today (Sunday) to let him know if our Sunday School class was canceled. It was. I called him Friday afternoon, left a message on his voice-mail telling him the class was, in fact, canceled, and entered the weekend with a clear conscience. I kept the second commandment.
     On the other hand, last summer when I was interviewed for a teaching position at a local high school, the principal told me he would call me and let me know his decision. After a couple weeks of fretting and pacing, I finally realized the man had no intention of calling me. That was just something interviewers say, in order to avoid an awkward or unpleasant telephone call, but at great expense to my own peace of mind over the course of a couple months, at first due to my growing but ever uncertain feeling that I hadn't landed the position, and afterward because I was mad at my interviewer (and our culture) for being so casually dishonest. He broke the second commandment.
     I want to live in a society where a person's word is her bond. As Jesus taught during his Sermon on the Mount,
     Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
     Jesus lived in a culture where there were "little oaths" and "big oaths," "small promises" and "real promises." If you swore by Jerusalem or by heaven or by my head, it was a biggie, and if you should not carry through on the intention you communicated, you were in trouble with the Man Upstairs. Traditionally, Christianity has followed suit and made a distinction between promises and oaths, only the latter being taken as binding.
     In characteristically sage fashion, Jesus sweeps all of that nonsense away. If you tell someone you're going to do something, you should do it. Period. If you let your words fall without meaning - or if a community should fall into that same habit - you've lost something that makes you human, and you've added a destructive element to the world's composition. Shame on you.
     There's one exception to the rule. If something ridiculously serious takes you by surprise, you shouldn't be held accountable to your promises. For example, if I told a friend I'd pick them up at the airport tomorrow at 8:00 PM, and at 7:00 PM I get a call that my wife died, I'm sure, even if I forgot to text my friend that I'd be unable to fulfill my responsibility that evening, that when they found out what had happened, they would immediately and unconditionally forgive me. Only a completely unreasonable person would be disappointed that I had not still managed to follow through with my pledge.
      Of course, not every situation where breaking a promise "makes sense" is as dire as the situation I describe. The Hadith teaches that if a Muslim makes a promise but then is confronted by something better to do, he should do the better thing, and afterward make atonement for what was left undone. For example, if I ask someone to meet with me at a certain time, but then I find out I need to spend an extra hour grading my students' assignments, I should ask for forgiveness, and... what else? I'm not sure.
     After watching only the first two episodes of The Decalogue, I'm fully convinced that I've underestimated the universal and timeless significance of the Ten Commandments. I think the second commandment was targeting a ubiquitous ailment that poisons human relationships at all levels, whether between strangers, colleagues, or friends, whether between child and parent, spouses, or employer and employee.
     And thus, my question to you, reader, is simple. How important is your word? Do you make promises so casually that you can't keep track of them all? Do you have your excuses lined up, like I do? I was just so busy I forgot. Something came up. I meant to. You should have e-mailed me. You should have reminded me. And so on. Shame on us all. Together, let's pledge right now to find ways to break that awful habit and be known as people on whom others can rely without worry.
     Amen! (Heb. "So be it")