Mario, I don't want to quarrel with you, but it is an insult to say that a person who doesn't believe in the existence of a god lacks a sense of what is good and what is evil, or that that person would chose evil as a preferable alternative.

Thoughout the ages and right up to the present time, there have been god-believers who perpetrated the vilest evil on their fellow man, often, perhaps even usually, under the belief (or excuse) that God (by whatever name) wants, commands, them to do it.

That video might indoctrinate five-year-olds, but I cannot see how any critically thinking adult would find wisdom in it. If it were a text rather than a fast moving animation it would be easier to list the absurdities.

Mary, congratulations to you and your people.

I'm happy with the outcome but not terribly happy that it is the product of a 5-4 SCOTUS ruling. As a matter of best practices, I pretty much agree with the dissenting Justices that such matters are best left to the legislature, and the trend in state legislatures was moving with extraordinary rapidity towards recognition of gay marriage. So there are good arguments that the Court could have sat out this battle.

On the other hand, things can get very messy when state laws are different on a subject matter such as this but federal laws (such as tax laws) follow state laws. One of my colleagues has written about problems of tax treatment of married couples who move to states in which their marriages are not recognized.

The right solution would be comprehensive federal equal protection legislation to prohibit any discriminatory treatment against gays or gay couples, but I haven't seen any pigs flying recently. Still I am uncomfortable with this decision. But for Kennedy's liberalism on this particular issue, it could just as easily have gone 5-4 the other way, and Kennedy opinions tend to rest on shifting constitutional grounds.

Janice, I am not interested in a quarrel either, but please don't misquote me as I clearly never said anything to suggest that a person who doesn't believe in God lacks a sense of good and evil, nor was anything like that in the animation either.

Conscience
 

Without recourse to a god, Thoreau's source of knowing good and evil (in Civil Disobedience):

[4] After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys,(5) and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.

The ancient Pagan argument of God being the absolute Good leads to the Christian justification for "God's" biblical commandments to massacre innocents (such as infants), rape and genocide as being ultimately for the good (and theological speculations/excuses as to how such could possibly be, e.g., the souls of murdered infants go straight to heaven ). God having commanded such, and being Good, such must be good (if done in the name of/under the command of God) -- though we in our relative (mis)understanding may consider such 'evil' (a simpler explanation based on the same premise maybe that the apparent evils of the Old Testament shows it as anything but the word of god). That is the argument, as I understand it, of the Christian apologist William Craig -- the (im)morality of which is the cause the likes of Dawkins refuse to debate with him. (?)

I think Aleister Crowley said something about, when invoking a God, if it requires you to do something you wouldn't as a gentleman, treat it as an evil spirit, and reject it.

The principle strikes one as OK in a way -- though Crowley rarely acted as a gentleman, one could argue. But then the religious rarely strike one as particularly 'godly' either. But I suppose what one considers gentlemanly or godly maybe relative...

Today as elsewhere in the world we had Pride March here in Turkey. It has been going here for 13 years or so. The date, venue, route was agreed with authorities beforehand. People had met at approved/agreed points to commence the route. Then the police turned up in force and tried to disperse the crowds with pepper spray, water cannons and rubber bullets. On the day, without warning, a pre-planned and authorized public march was banned after everyone had turned up for it. Local authority had suddenly decided it was inappropriate for such a celebration/march to be held during the holy month of Ramazan. Last week a transgender parade was held in the same district, without incident or complaint, also during Ramazan. What has changed since then? I wonder if the anti-gay opponents of the USA decision, portraying it as somehow a 'persecution' of the religious, resulted in a backlash from the socially conservative, religious authorities over here? (Although Turkey is a secular state, it's position as such is more fragile than the USA, and the religious social conservatives have been eroding the separation for the last ten years or so).

bloodied stones
each stone a stone
from a House of God

Why not, any act can be a sacrament - and a shoe is highly symbolic, e.g., of a walk towards something, or as a coming togehter of the higher and lower, heaven and earth -- as it represents as a symbol of the patriarch Enoch:

"The patriach Enoch, who according to an old tradition was taken from the earth by God and transformed into the angel Metatron, is said to have been a cobbler. At every stitch of his awl he not only joined the upper leather with the sole, but all upper things with all lower things. He accompanied his work with meditations which drew the stream of emanation down from the upper to lower, so transforming profane action into ritual action, until he himself was transformed from the earthly Enoch into the transcendent Metatron, who had been the object of his meditations." [On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, p.132].

The tale of a cobbler who brings together heaven and earth is an old one that exists in various versions around the world, the oldest extent version being a Buddhist tale. In Jewish terms the cobbler is a symbol of the Jews wandering in exile (in which circumstance they wear out a lot of shoes!). By unifying heaven and earth the cobbler hastens the return of the Jews to their homeland.

According to Scholem the earliest reference to this is among the German Hasidism in the 13th century. In the same period there arose in Germany a Christian legend that seems to have mixed this tale with that of Aristeos in Greek myth. According to this version Christ, carrying the cross, rested on the doorstep of a cobbler. The craftsmen told him to go away to which Christ responded "I will go, and fast, but thou will tarry till I come again."

The cursed cobbler becomes an immortal witness to the Christ, a wanderer through the nations of the Earth until Christ comes again. According to the legend he ages until 100 when he falls into a trance from which he awakes restored to the age of 30. This tale became very popular from the 13th to the 18th centuries with reports of the appearance of the 'wandering jew' appearing in Europe and America under a variety of names. He appears as Buttadeus in Antwerp in the 13th century, in Milan in 1413 and again in 1415, a second time in Germany and the low countries in the 15th century and a third time in Germany in the 16th century. He is reported in 1774 at Brussels but reappears shortly after in Venice under the name of Gualdi. In France he was called Laquedem, other names under which he was reported to have made himself known are Ananias and Ahaseur. The tale of the 'Wandering Jew' has been adapted to numerous poems and novels over the centuries.

I am a magus of laws new,
A madman whom a star's made blind,
Who strayed far wide to bring to you
The stories of my land.

I among you my burden carry,
In dirt befouled and in laugher scorned,
For woe to him bereft of country
That begs his home to be returned.

(part of the poem 'With no Country' from 'songs without a country' by Octavian Goga, 1916).

Anyways, having celebrated the USA's progress towards equal citizenship for all, let me take off my shoes and tarry awhile, that is enough wandering (off topic) for now...

[Never mind, not really relevant. As you were, everyone.]

Oh, I think it was. But you know best, Julie.

Shaun, are you any closer to being able to imagine why anyone would dissent from the majority opinion in Obergefell? The multiple traditions of constitutional interpretation that exist reflect multiple cultural traditions among our people. The Supreme Court mediates among them. Some level of so-called federalism is acknowledged by every justice, as is some level of central authority. "The pit of rancor" (thanks, Michael) is an apt phrase for the attitude that rival traditions of interpretation should be exterminated. That attitude may reflect a pre-postmodern view that there is a unitary, tradition-independent Reason of which one's own tradition enjoys the monopoly, or from a more hard-bitten acknowledgement that politics is war by other means and that lying about one's own strengths and the enemy's is perfectly appropriate. In short, dissenters adhere to different interpretive-political-cultural traditions, in which the role of courts vis-a-vis other branches, the role of state governments vis-a-vis the federal government, and the role of civil society vis-a-vis government regulation may differ.

In his interesting and informative Age of Jackson, Arthur Schlesinger makes much of John Taylor as the constitutional thinker who helped lead the Democracy from the Jeffersonian to the Jacksonian era. Eager to protect the rights of the people from domination by money and power, Taylor opposed judicial review and federal supremacy. He describes how the monarchist Hamilton and the centralizer Madison were defeated at the convention, but used the Federalist to get control of interpreting the resulting document, as the ruling Federalists got control of interpretation in the first decades of the Republic. So it appears these opposing traditions were present at the founding, and that the defeated Hamilton and Madison succeeded in making their traditions permanent and prevailing if not altogether exclusive powers in our politics.

Much as I heartily approve of the outcome...and agree with the SCOTUS majority's statement that the delay if the SCOTUS had declined to rule on this question would have caused significant harm to a large number of people...I think the dissenters make good and important points about the dangers of this outcome having been achieved in this way (i.e., via the judicial interpretation of a narrow majority of unelected officials, rather than legislatively).