Thanks for the Mencken, Julie. This is the majority and its supporters: "Why should I be said nay when I am bursting with altruism...?" It is instructive that some of our citizens cannot imagine why anyone would object to having fundamental social and political legislation enacted by appointed, virtually unaccountable judges, while others cannot fathom how citizens who purport to value self-government would be satisfied to take such legislation out of the hands of elected, locally accountable representatives. Adherents of different political-cultural traditions seem delusional to each other, and mutually unintelligible.

John, Acton thought a constitutional monarchy was a better protection for rights than a democratic republic, but I doubt he would say that now. Our written constitution has the value of lending prestige to past arguments about the limits of government, including the argument that those limits are actually the law. Such arguments become more persuasive from time to time when circumstances change and the expanded powers of government fail to justify their costs.

Hey Bill,

Thanks for your reasoned feedback.

Just a question, when the Supreme Court, the very liberal Warren court, in Loving v. Virginia in 1967 unanimously struck down anti-miscegenation laws, the majority of Americans at the time, according to polls, was against “inter-racial” marriage. The court thereby acted against the will of the people and against state laws. Was that decision, then, wrong?

Of course, my question also applies to the recent court ruling, based in part on Loving v. Virginia. By contrast, a slim majority of Americans today favors civil marriage for gays.

To be clear, I would have preferred a Federalist approach of state-by-state change of laws to favor civil gay marriages. Eventually, virtually all states would have voted down laws and overturned state constitutional amendments against civil marriage for gays. I am pretty confident about this because the generation to come is bored about the whole gay thing.

Something Quentin Crisp once said many years ago, which on the surface seems flippant but is actually profound: “tolerance comes out of boredom.” I can’t disagree. The post-Boomer generation is so unexercised by gay people that civil gay marriage is for many of them a no-brainer.

Having said that, Kennedy’s point about not wanting to wait because of exigent circumstances is laudable but he sacrificed the Court's trust in the eyes of a large chunk of the populace. But what is done is done. Then there is the huge and complex question to what extent do we weigh the will of the people vs. the liberty of a minority?

You could say in this case that the decision had for its fulcrum two opposing minorities: gay people and the minority of Americans who are against gays getting married legally. That is, the majority of Americans is entirely immune to the court’s decision.

As Roger pointed out, Roberts comment “who do we think we are?” also resonates with me. He invokes the Han Chinese, the Aztecs, and other disparate peoples who didn’t allow for legal unions between two persons of the same sex: more to the point, would it even have occurred to them?!

Some brief thoughts. Slavery has been valued and excused for millennia in many civilizations. In fact, there are forms of slavery being practiced today, but the wholesale ownership of humans for free labor is not only a sin of the Christian West but a global phenomenon going back thousands of years. Not all globally and time-honored traditions are good.

The absence of “gay marriage” in world history (with the exception, I suppose, of John Boswell’s same sex unions in pre-modern Europe and the practices and customs of a number of other peoples) doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be such a thing today. I realize I’m using the converse: presence of slavery throughout history vs. absence of legalized gay unions throughout history. But the point still holds. Both the presence of one and the absence of the other have been time-honored traditions and assumptions. That doesn’t mean either of them is correct.

Mencken also wrote in his diary, which he instructed should not be released until 25 years after his death: "It is impossible to talk anything resembling discretion or judgment to a colored woman. They are all essentially child-like, and even hard experience does not teach them anything." But the truisms you quoted him saying about the Constitution are still true.

Mencken said a quite a number of other things that I also find reprehensible, Roger...including a number of virulent statements about "the yellow peril" of the Chinese and Japanese. But Mencken's Constitution essay came immediately to mind in response to John's comment, and I didn't think quoting it constituted an endorsement of every thought that Mencken ever expressed.

Julie, would it be fair to say that Mencken was speaking of the Communists when he was quoting the "yellow peril"? Not Asians in general? He was not the first to use that term. I did not take him or Gen. Douglas MacArthur or Harry Truman as Zenophobes, did you?

Do a search, none of his examples supports in any way the concept of 'traditional marriage between 'one man one woman' either (neither does the bible!). The Han chinese Emperors virtually all had same sex lovers (and several wives and concubines), there was even a tradition of marrying corpses! The Kalahari were polygamous with no particulary marriage rituals and in which homosexuality (male & female) was common and accepted. Polygamy and concubines was common among the Aztecs (at least amongst the nobility which could afford such) -- is this the 'norm' that is invoked for 'one man one woman'?

Sadly, no, Charlie, Mencken's comments predate both Pearl Harbor and the coming to power of the communists in China. He was simply a racist who was sure of his own superiority. As were most white Americans of his time.

And yet he sometimes overcame those attitudes to do things like promoting the black writers of the Harlem Renaissance, defending black journalists, and publicly decrying the situation of the Jews in Nazi Germany, very early on. A very complicated character. Was a vehement critic of democracy, but said he could find nothing better.

Not a red scare quote. I believe he was speaking of the Japanese and the rising militarism in that country.


(cross posted)

Julius Caesar had male lovers according to Suetonius. Just saying.

Wasn't marriage between 'two spirits' (feminine men who dressed as and performed the duties of women or as shamans) and other men an accepted practice among several native American tribes? I seem to recall reading that somewhere -- not sure if authentic or not, or memory playing me tricks ... I vaguely recall reports of 16th century Jesuits executing transvestite 'wives' for homosexuality c. 16th century in S. America too (the 'husbands' being given a lighter penance).