Summary: Americans confide our most transfixing issues to the courts, as we have done with the question of marriage equality. At issue in today’s arguments in Hollingsworth v. Perry is nothing less than the question of whether queerfolk have the right to be first-class citizens in their own country. To the extent we cannot now marry, we are shackled with badges and incidents of slavery. Nonetheless, the court may shy away from a merits-based decision, and may simply let Prop 8 fall because its proponents lack standing. It does so, queer wedding bells may soon begin to ring in the Golden State. Of course, if queerfolk are allowed to marry, the radical right will have a fit before turning industriously to the usual “impeach Earl Warren” fund-raising appeals that are its stock in trade. The right will also try to analogize marriage quality to abortion, but it will fail.
By: Paul S. Marchand
In his seminal work, Democracy in America, French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville noted that many of the great and transfixing issues Europeans might be tempted to fight out at the barricades were, in America, litigated in the law courts.
Today, all of America has paid rapt attention to legal arguments being presented in the hushed, excruciatingly dignified courtroom of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Hollingsworth v. Perry. At issue, very simply is the transfixing question of same-gender marriage. Is it constitutional to prohibit Ruth and Naomi, or Jonathan and David from being able to marry one another as can Adam and Eve? A government that forbids me from marrying the man of my choice has in some measure reduced me to the status of a slave, shackling me with its badges and incidents.
Will the Court render a decision on the merits? Or will the brethren follow a more European, more French path and decide not to decide?
My queer heart would like to see a merits-based decision, in which the Court holds broadly that excluding queerfolk from full, first-class citizenship in the commonwealth is not constitutionally sustainable, and that we must have the freedom to marry, notwithstanding the denominational religious discomforts of any other individual or group within the American body politic. My queer heart would like to see a decision that, to all intents and purposes, enshrines in our jurisprudence the proposition that no one’s civil rights are to be infringed, abridged, or denied, solely to assuage anybody else’s religious discomfort, or on the basis of an appeal to Scripture, mythology, or patriarchal male privilege.
Yet, my queer heart and my lawyer’s head are not at one on this matter. Like at least two justices of the Court, I am concerned that the proponents of Proposition 8 may lack standing to argue the measure’s constitutionality. When two successive governors of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, together with two successive Attorneys General, Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris, declined to waste taxpayer money and resources defending Proposition 8, a whole series of officiously intermeddling grandstanders inserted themselves into the litigation to defend Proposition 8, starting with the Deputy County Clerk of Imperial County, who should have been fired immediately by her boss for her reckless expenditure of taxpayer dollars.
Indeed, the name of the petitioner in the very title of the Hollingsworth v. Perry matter is that of sometime Republican state Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, who now finds himself at a loss to identify to a skeptical Court just what interest or standing he has to appoint himself -or, perhaps, anoint himself- as the Great Defender of so-called traditional marriage. At all events, Hollingsworth comes across as just another ambitious termed out politician looking to set the table for a future political run.
The Court may find itself reluctant to succumb to the lascivious oglings of such oily politicians as Dennis Hollingsworth. If the quondam Senator cannot articulate a distinct, palpable, and personalized injury to himself arising from the Ninth Circuit’s holding that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, the justices may well use Hollingsworth’s lack of standing to make an almost classically French decision not to decide.
Already, there is some distinct buzz within the legal community and among Supreme Court watchers that the Court, particularly swing Justice Anthony Kennedy, may be looking for a way to avoid reaching a decision on the substantive merits of the case. A decision to uphold the Ninth Circuit on the grounds that the proponents of Proposition 8 lack standing would neatly fit within the Court’s stated prudential reluctance to decide constitutional issues, and would make same-gender marriage legal again, but only in California. Or, the Court could impose a more radical solution, and could simply DIG Hollingsworth’s petition, that is, dismiss it as “improvidently granted.”
Of course, any decision by the Court not to decide will disappoint partisans on both sides of the issue for supporters of marriage equality, a DIG or a “no standing” decision will leave the issue of marriage equality yet undecided in an uncertain future. For opponents of marriage equality --- and by extension, of the queer nation --- a decision that does not squarely uphold Proposition 8 and smack down all us uppity queerfolk wanting to get themselves hitched would be seen as a shameful withdrawal from godly principle.
Of course, if the Court were to strike down Proposition 8 on the merits and declare that queer couples have the right to marry, anti-LGBT forces will have a conniption, before going off to their right wing lobbying groups and think tanks on K Street and making a queer lemon into lemonade by turning their opposition to a pro-marriage equality opinion into a fund-raising vehicle by which they fleece new funds from their fearful flocks.
No doubt, were the Court to rule for marriage equality, the radical religious right would immediately attempt to frame Hollingsworth v. Perry as “the Roe v. Wade of our generation.” Yet, such an analogy to Roe may be inapt. While marriage equality represents the sum of all of the radical religious right’s fears, it was far easier to sell to a broad middle, deeply conflicted about abortion and reproductive choice, the idea that Roe v. Wade stood for the proposition that evil woman and their evil doctors were “destroying innocent human life” heartlessly ripping "pre-born" babies from their mothers’ wombs.
As awful to the right as the prospect of Ruth and Naomi getting hitched or Jonathan putting a ring on David’s finger may be, public opinion in the United States has come much too far for the radical right to be able to equate two women or two men being civilly wed with abortion. The mechanics of terminating a pregnancy carry a kind of “ick” factor that the mechanics of joining a queer couple together do not. A so-called crusade to end abortion carries more gut appeal than a largely partisan effort to deprive millions of Americans of a fundamental civil right.
For if, as the anti-choice community insists, “abortion stills a human heart,” any wedding, straight or queer, quickens the heart, it brings happiness, however transitory, to the couple, the witnesses, and the guests. Unlike the termination of pregnancy, a wedding --- even a queer wedding --- represents a new beginning.
Even if, as I rather expect, the Court ducks the merits and kicks, as it were, the marital can down the road, and thus upholds a California-specific freedom to marry, marriages may soon begin again in the Golden State, with new queer beginnings for us all.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City. Two decades ago, he brought one of the first marriage cases in California. He continued to be amazed by the speed with which the American public has come to embrace both Ruth and Naomi and Jonathan and David’s right to form honest-to-God, legally recognized families. The views herein are his own, and nobody else’s, and are not intended to be, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Saturday, March 23, 2013
A FOOT-CHEWING "DEFENSE" OF CATHEDRAL CITY’S INDEFENSIBLE MAYOR
Summary: KPSI radio bloviator Steve Kelly tried to carry water today for his friend, embattled Cathedral City Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa. In a column appearing in today’s Desert Sun headlined “proper role of elected officials”, Kelly criticized the council majority that voted to adopt Cathedral City’s pro-marriage equality resolution. Decrying what he perceives to be some kind of politically-motivated effort to “alienate the community” from a mayor to whom he is a willing sycophant, Kelly tries very hard to defend DeRosa’s cynical attempt to have it both ways on marriage equality, though DeRosa’s personal opposition to it is a matter of common public knowledge. Though Kelly claims to support marriage equality himself, his ill- considered column demonstrates that he is emphatically unworthy of being numbered among the straight allies of the queer nation.
By: Paul S. Marchand
In a “think piece” in this morning’s Desert Sun, headlined “proper role of elected officials” KPSI radio talking head Steve Kelly tried his level best to carry water for embattled Cathedral City Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa.
In his eight paragraph effort, Kelly takes a pro forma swipe at Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff, criticizing him for making comments about gun safety legislation to which Mr. Kelly took exception.
The remaining six paragraphs of Mr. Kelly’s finger wagging, tut-tutting piece constituted a dyspeptic, offensively arrogant attack upon the members of the Cathedral City city Council who had had the effrontery, in Kelly’s view, to “punch above their weight” by adopting a resolution in favor of marriage equality. Interestingly, Kelly claims to support marriage equality, but finds it terrible, just terrible that Cathedral City should have gone on record in support of marriage equality, over the blatantly equivocating objections of his good friend Kathleen Joan DeRosa.
Kelly, of course, has a well-deserved reputation for being a reliable water-carrier and a willing sycophant for DeRosa. His column this morning and did nothing to dispel that reputation, as he attacked the council majority of Greg Pettis, Chuck Vasquez, and Sam Toles for having impliedly conspired to “alienate” DeRosa from “the community.”
Really, who does Kelly think he is kidding?
“Alienate the community?” As if DeRosa were Evita Peron on the balcony of the Casa Rosada acknowledging the plaudits of her vast following of delirious supporters. Steve, get real; pay attention to the signs of the times around you; DeRosa has already well and truly alienated herself from a substantial portion of the community. This is Cathedral City in 2013, not Buenos Aires in 1949. The issue is marriage equality, not some tawdry column intended to bolster DeRosa’s risible efforts to fabricate some kind of cult of personality.
Of course, Cathedral City is not the only Coachella Valley city to have adopted a resolution supporting marriage equality. Palm Springs has already done so. And when it did so, what did we hear from Steve Kelly?
Crickets.
That’s right, as long as Kelly’s precious Mayor was not implicated, as long as she didn’t make a bloody fool of herself with almost unbelievably cynical equivocation and tergiversation, Steve Kelly apparently didn’t care; his pecksniffian objections only emerged when his good buddy DeRosa was implicated.
Of course, Kelly comes a little late to the rodeo. The better part of a month has passed since the resolution was adopted, and DeRosa came in for a well-deserved raft of criticism, not only in this blog, but in social media and in print in a “Thumbs Down” editorial in the Desert Sun. So, the mouth that roared has managed to do nothing but call down upon himself much the same kind of criticism that DeRosa earned with her own behavior.
My critique of the poor performance of both the mayor and her council protégé, former police chief Stanley Henry (who, rather than doing the job to which the constituency elected him chose to attend, as it were, the secret policeman’s ball in Palm Springs that evening) is well-known. Readers are free to go back to my earlier posts on this blog to refresh themselves of the outlines of my strong critique of Kathleen DeRosa. I don’t need to keep whipping that horse.
But when a man such as Kelly who is paid to bloviate in true Limbaughan fashion feels it necessary to impute crass political motives to Mr. Toles, and to lecture Mr. Toles and his colleagues in the unbelievably condescending tone he chose to employ, we may not only question his motives, but we may also reject his professions of support for marriage equality.
In his column, Kelly condescendingly advises the council majority to “look where [their] feet are.” Kelly should take his own advice and look where his feet are before he inserts one of them into his mouth, masticates the foot in question down to the bone and then shoots himself in it, as he did in this morning’s effort.
With friends like Steve Kelly, who the hell needs enemies?
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served eight years on the city Council. He is familiar with Steve Kelley’s reputation as a vocal supporter of Cathedral City’s reigning Mayor. The views contained herein are not intended to be, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
By: Paul S. Marchand
In a “think piece” in this morning’s Desert Sun, headlined “proper role of elected officials” KPSI radio talking head Steve Kelly tried his level best to carry water for embattled Cathedral City Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa.
In his eight paragraph effort, Kelly takes a pro forma swipe at Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff, criticizing him for making comments about gun safety legislation to which Mr. Kelly took exception.
The remaining six paragraphs of Mr. Kelly’s finger wagging, tut-tutting piece constituted a dyspeptic, offensively arrogant attack upon the members of the Cathedral City city Council who had had the effrontery, in Kelly’s view, to “punch above their weight” by adopting a resolution in favor of marriage equality. Interestingly, Kelly claims to support marriage equality, but finds it terrible, just terrible that Cathedral City should have gone on record in support of marriage equality, over the blatantly equivocating objections of his good friend Kathleen Joan DeRosa.
Kelly, of course, has a well-deserved reputation for being a reliable water-carrier and a willing sycophant for DeRosa. His column this morning and did nothing to dispel that reputation, as he attacked the council majority of Greg Pettis, Chuck Vasquez, and Sam Toles for having impliedly conspired to “alienate” DeRosa from “the community.”
Really, who does Kelly think he is kidding?
“Alienate the community?” As if DeRosa were Evita Peron on the balcony of the Casa Rosada acknowledging the plaudits of her vast following of delirious supporters. Steve, get real; pay attention to the signs of the times around you; DeRosa has already well and truly alienated herself from a substantial portion of the community. This is Cathedral City in 2013, not Buenos Aires in 1949. The issue is marriage equality, not some tawdry column intended to bolster DeRosa’s risible efforts to fabricate some kind of cult of personality.
Of course, Cathedral City is not the only Coachella Valley city to have adopted a resolution supporting marriage equality. Palm Springs has already done so. And when it did so, what did we hear from Steve Kelly?
Crickets.
That’s right, as long as Kelly’s precious Mayor was not implicated, as long as she didn’t make a bloody fool of herself with almost unbelievably cynical equivocation and tergiversation, Steve Kelly apparently didn’t care; his pecksniffian objections only emerged when his good buddy DeRosa was implicated.
Of course, Kelly comes a little late to the rodeo. The better part of a month has passed since the resolution was adopted, and DeRosa came in for a well-deserved raft of criticism, not only in this blog, but in social media and in print in a “Thumbs Down” editorial in the Desert Sun. So, the mouth that roared has managed to do nothing but call down upon himself much the same kind of criticism that DeRosa earned with her own behavior.
My critique of the poor performance of both the mayor and her council protégé, former police chief Stanley Henry (who, rather than doing the job to which the constituency elected him chose to attend, as it were, the secret policeman’s ball in Palm Springs that evening) is well-known. Readers are free to go back to my earlier posts on this blog to refresh themselves of the outlines of my strong critique of Kathleen DeRosa. I don’t need to keep whipping that horse.
But when a man such as Kelly who is paid to bloviate in true Limbaughan fashion feels it necessary to impute crass political motives to Mr. Toles, and to lecture Mr. Toles and his colleagues in the unbelievably condescending tone he chose to employ, we may not only question his motives, but we may also reject his professions of support for marriage equality.
In his column, Kelly condescendingly advises the council majority to “look where [their] feet are.” Kelly should take his own advice and look where his feet are before he inserts one of them into his mouth, masticates the foot in question down to the bone and then shoots himself in it, as he did in this morning’s effort.
With friends like Steve Kelly, who the hell needs enemies?
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served eight years on the city Council. He is familiar with Steve Kelley’s reputation as a vocal supporter of Cathedral City’s reigning Mayor. The views contained herein are not intended to be, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
Friday, March 22, 2013
LITTLE SNAPPERS: SPRING STYLES,LITTLE SNAPPERS: SPRING STYLES, Herein of the Marriage Equality Debate and the Likelihood That the Chart House Will Be Replaced by a Tacky Piece of Coachella Valley Trashitecture
Summary: A couple of Little Snappers/spring styles for the new season. First, a marriage update. The dialectic of the marriage debate seems to be changing. If, a generation ago, substantive discussion about marriage equality almost always got overwhelmed by a sideshow debate over whether queerfolk should even be allowed to exist in the commonwealth, today our presence is matter-of-fact. Now we seem to be litigating the issue of the extent to which queerfolk can be treated as a kind of ersatz Negro, tolerated in society as long as we don’t get so uppity as to want to marry.
Second, an observation about the demolition of Rancho Mirage’s Chart House. The architecturally unique Chart House has been demolished. In a valley full of faux-Mediterranean trashitecture, in which the spirit of architectural enterprise seems to be long gone with the death of the modernist ethos, it is not unreasonable to expect that whatever emerges from the ashes of the Chart House will probably be just another tacky piece of baby shit brindle brown Coachella Valley developer construction.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Sometime during the spring, every fashion house trots out its latest “Spring styles.” In deference to that custom, allow me to trot out, by way of Spring styles, a couple of “Little Snappers,” brief offerings of opinion similar to the brief draft dissents then-Chief Justice Warren Burger would dash off as a way of venting steam about a majority opinion with which he did not necessarily agree.
A SHIFT IN THE MARRIAGE DEBATE
Something interesting seems to be happening in at least our local iteration of the national conversation about marriage equality --- a conversation that is hopefully approaching endgame.
Time was that any discussion of issues involving queerfolk usually provoked a side-debate about whether we should even be suffered to exist in the commonwealth. Usually fought out in letters to the editor or on comment threads, such side- debates often wound up overwhelming the substantive matter under discussion; the sideshow swallowed up the main event.
Indeed, time was that discussing a drag night at the local minor-league ballpark called forth anguished handwringing from our local newspaper over whether it was safe to expose children to “such conduct.” After much unnecessary and somewhat overly public introspection, the Desert Sun finally concluded that our local children would not be irreparably damaged if they were to behold an individual with an Adam’s apple in a dress.
That discussion occurred in 1997. Since then an entire generation has been born and now has learners permits enabling them to operate automobiles. In just two years, young drivers not yet born when we were litigating the issue of drag queens at the ballpark will be voting in the 2016 presidential election. They may also find themselves called on to vote on issues relating to the presence of queerfolk in the commonwealth.
Statistically, it is highly likely that those yet-unborn-in-1997 young voters will find no objection to the idea that Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David should be just as free to marry one another as Adam is free to marry Eve. Indeed, many of these young voters will themselves be queer, or will number queerfolk among their friends and acquaintances. Sexual differencing will hold no terrors for them; being queer to them will be as matter-of-fact as lefthandedness, hair color, or eye color. It will simply not be strange.
And herein lies the change I have noticed about the discussion over marriage. Outside of the radical right’s self-referential and solipsistic bubble, in which --- like devout sectaries thumbing their beads --- the truest of true believers continue to reassure one another and delude themselves with the same kind of magical thinking that had them believing until election night that Mitt Romney would be the next president, an apparent majority of Americans has moved past the discussion about whether there should even be queerfolk in the commonwealth. We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going away.
For the more principled, and therefore infinitely more dangerous, opponents of marriage equality, the starting point of the discussion has ceased to be whether LGBT people belong in society; that ship has sailed. Now, marriage opponents seem to be arguing from different, it equally specious, premises, conceding our right to exist within the body politic, but insisting (against all legal history to the contrary) that “marriage” is too sacred to be “redefined” by letting Jonathan put a ring on David’s finger, or allowing Ruth to call Naomi her wife.
To the extent that the mainstream debate about marriage has shifted away from the “ban the homos” dialectic that so largely informed it two decades ago when this conversation began in earnest --- when the Hawai’i Supreme Court first suggested in Baehr v. Lewin (on later proceedings Baehr v. Miike) that banning same-gender marriage might be unconstitutional at Hawai’i law --- we can say that progress has been made.
Of course, the hair-on-fire wing of the conservative movement will never concede for an instant that we queerfolk should even be allowed to exist. They will continue to throw Leviticus at us and to seek to compass our vanishing under color of its proscription, but for now, most of the rest of America has moved away from such eliminationist rhetoric. At issue now is the extent to which we will continue to allow queerfolk to represent an acceptable "ersatz Negro," tolerated in society as long as we don’t get so uppity as to want to be able to marry, and who may be legally discriminated against, being reduced with perfect constitutional propriety essentially to the status of slaves by withholding recognition of our marriages.
BULLDOZING THE CHART HOUSE
The once-famous Chart House restaurant in Rancho Mirage, heavily damaged in a fire of suspicious origin, was demolished earlier this week.
It was architecturally unique in our Pleasant Desert. Unlike most of the homogenized, faux-Mediterranean trashitecture that litters so much of the valley, the Chart House expressed a unique, much more authentic architectural idiom. Though some viewed it as a 1970s-era monstrosity, it had the virtue of being unlike just about anything else in the Valley. It was almost impossible not to see the Chart House and not comment upon it.
Now I’m not about to criticize the Rancho Mirage city Council for its decision to greenlight the demolition. The numbers may simply have militated too strongly against any effort to restore the building to its original condition. What does trouble me is that, in all likelihood, any building constructed where the Chart House had once stood will simply look like every other tacky, Mediterranean-ish building in the valley --- with vaguely tan-ish walls, distressingly uniform terra-cotta roof tiles, and the usual design vocabulary associated with the architectural idioms of the Western Mediterranean.
In short, the ersatz Chart House will probably be anything but unique. It will probably look like every other piece of cheap architecture inflicted upon this valley by developers more interested in a bottom line than in a beautiful building.
We live in an environment in which the color palette of our buildings tends to run from tan to tan, incorporating a universe of shades of what can be described as “baby shit brindle brown,” topped off by “Spanish” roof tiles mass-produced in China.
To say that the architecture of our valley has become repetitive and unenterprising would be to understate the case. The architecture of our valley is boring. Even the recent efforts to recapture the modernist ethos so well expressed in much of downtown Palm Springs or in the various Alexander houses around the valley seem pale and emulative, driven more by nostalgia than by any authentic embrace of the modernist ethos. Again, our architecture is boring, bland, repetitive, and generally second rate. The sense of enterprise that once flourished here has vanished, and I look forward with sinking heart to seeing a piece of baby shit brindle brown trashitecture with “Spanish” roof tiles arising out of the ashes of the Chart House.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. The views herein are his own. They are not intended as legal advice, and should not be so taken.
Second, an observation about the demolition of Rancho Mirage’s Chart House. The architecturally unique Chart House has been demolished. In a valley full of faux-Mediterranean trashitecture, in which the spirit of architectural enterprise seems to be long gone with the death of the modernist ethos, it is not unreasonable to expect that whatever emerges from the ashes of the Chart House will probably be just another tacky piece of baby shit brindle brown Coachella Valley developer construction.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Sometime during the spring, every fashion house trots out its latest “Spring styles.” In deference to that custom, allow me to trot out, by way of Spring styles, a couple of “Little Snappers,” brief offerings of opinion similar to the brief draft dissents then-Chief Justice Warren Burger would dash off as a way of venting steam about a majority opinion with which he did not necessarily agree.
A SHIFT IN THE MARRIAGE DEBATE
Something interesting seems to be happening in at least our local iteration of the national conversation about marriage equality --- a conversation that is hopefully approaching endgame.
Time was that any discussion of issues involving queerfolk usually provoked a side-debate about whether we should even be suffered to exist in the commonwealth. Usually fought out in letters to the editor or on comment threads, such side- debates often wound up overwhelming the substantive matter under discussion; the sideshow swallowed up the main event.
Indeed, time was that discussing a drag night at the local minor-league ballpark called forth anguished handwringing from our local newspaper over whether it was safe to expose children to “such conduct.” After much unnecessary and somewhat overly public introspection, the Desert Sun finally concluded that our local children would not be irreparably damaged if they were to behold an individual with an Adam’s apple in a dress.
That discussion occurred in 1997. Since then an entire generation has been born and now has learners permits enabling them to operate automobiles. In just two years, young drivers not yet born when we were litigating the issue of drag queens at the ballpark will be voting in the 2016 presidential election. They may also find themselves called on to vote on issues relating to the presence of queerfolk in the commonwealth.
Statistically, it is highly likely that those yet-unborn-in-1997 young voters will find no objection to the idea that Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David should be just as free to marry one another as Adam is free to marry Eve. Indeed, many of these young voters will themselves be queer, or will number queerfolk among their friends and acquaintances. Sexual differencing will hold no terrors for them; being queer to them will be as matter-of-fact as lefthandedness, hair color, or eye color. It will simply not be strange.
And herein lies the change I have noticed about the discussion over marriage. Outside of the radical right’s self-referential and solipsistic bubble, in which --- like devout sectaries thumbing their beads --- the truest of true believers continue to reassure one another and delude themselves with the same kind of magical thinking that had them believing until election night that Mitt Romney would be the next president, an apparent majority of Americans has moved past the discussion about whether there should even be queerfolk in the commonwealth. We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going away.
For the more principled, and therefore infinitely more dangerous, opponents of marriage equality, the starting point of the discussion has ceased to be whether LGBT people belong in society; that ship has sailed. Now, marriage opponents seem to be arguing from different, it equally specious, premises, conceding our right to exist within the body politic, but insisting (against all legal history to the contrary) that “marriage” is too sacred to be “redefined” by letting Jonathan put a ring on David’s finger, or allowing Ruth to call Naomi her wife.
To the extent that the mainstream debate about marriage has shifted away from the “ban the homos” dialectic that so largely informed it two decades ago when this conversation began in earnest --- when the Hawai’i Supreme Court first suggested in Baehr v. Lewin (on later proceedings Baehr v. Miike) that banning same-gender marriage might be unconstitutional at Hawai’i law --- we can say that progress has been made.
Of course, the hair-on-fire wing of the conservative movement will never concede for an instant that we queerfolk should even be allowed to exist. They will continue to throw Leviticus at us and to seek to compass our vanishing under color of its proscription, but for now, most of the rest of America has moved away from such eliminationist rhetoric. At issue now is the extent to which we will continue to allow queerfolk to represent an acceptable "ersatz Negro," tolerated in society as long as we don’t get so uppity as to want to be able to marry, and who may be legally discriminated against, being reduced with perfect constitutional propriety essentially to the status of slaves by withholding recognition of our marriages.
BULLDOZING THE CHART HOUSE
The once-famous Chart House restaurant in Rancho Mirage, heavily damaged in a fire of suspicious origin, was demolished earlier this week.
It was architecturally unique in our Pleasant Desert. Unlike most of the homogenized, faux-Mediterranean trashitecture that litters so much of the valley, the Chart House expressed a unique, much more authentic architectural idiom. Though some viewed it as a 1970s-era monstrosity, it had the virtue of being unlike just about anything else in the Valley. It was almost impossible not to see the Chart House and not comment upon it.
Now I’m not about to criticize the Rancho Mirage city Council for its decision to greenlight the demolition. The numbers may simply have militated too strongly against any effort to restore the building to its original condition. What does trouble me is that, in all likelihood, any building constructed where the Chart House had once stood will simply look like every other tacky, Mediterranean-ish building in the valley --- with vaguely tan-ish walls, distressingly uniform terra-cotta roof tiles, and the usual design vocabulary associated with the architectural idioms of the Western Mediterranean.
In short, the ersatz Chart House will probably be anything but unique. It will probably look like every other piece of cheap architecture inflicted upon this valley by developers more interested in a bottom line than in a beautiful building.
We live in an environment in which the color palette of our buildings tends to run from tan to tan, incorporating a universe of shades of what can be described as “baby shit brindle brown,” topped off by “Spanish” roof tiles mass-produced in China.
To say that the architecture of our valley has become repetitive and unenterprising would be to understate the case. The architecture of our valley is boring. Even the recent efforts to recapture the modernist ethos so well expressed in much of downtown Palm Springs or in the various Alexander houses around the valley seem pale and emulative, driven more by nostalgia than by any authentic embrace of the modernist ethos. Again, our architecture is boring, bland, repetitive, and generally second rate. The sense of enterprise that once flourished here has vanished, and I look forward with sinking heart to seeing a piece of baby shit brindle brown trashitecture with “Spanish” roof tiles arising out of the ashes of the Chart House.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. The views herein are his own. They are not intended as legal advice, and should not be so taken.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
COMING TO AMERICA: SOME THOUGHTS ON INTEGRATION FOR St. PATRICK's DAY
Summary: The experience of America’s queerfolk has been not unlike that of the Irish in America. Both the LGBT and Irish-American communities have undergone a long process of integration --not assimilation-- into an American community composed largely of immigrants, and in which every person is a member of some minority. Full participation of the Irish as first-class citizens in our American commonwealth is now a matter-of-fact reality. America's queerfolk should be guided by the experience of the Gael in America and take hope and inspiration from it.
By: Paul S. Marchand
"You will be assimilated; resistance is futile."
-Locutus of Borg, from Star Trek, the Next Generation
I refuse to be assimilated!
-Anonymous Queer National, c. 1992
As any aficionado of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or Voyager can tell you, the Borg are a nasty lot. They are a mixture of man and machine, a collective bent on conquering the galaxy by "assimilating" everything in their path, turning conquered races into Borg drones, parts of a hive in which no single member possess any distinct individuality. Among the Borg, the pronoun I yields place to the pronoun we, as it often does in highly homogenous or totalitarian cultures.
As Americans in general, and as queerfolk in particular, lesbians and gay men, together with the bisexual and the transgendered, necessarily live lives in which our definition of ourselves as a community is intimately bound up in our identification of ourselves as individuals, in which I necessarily comes before We, and is its prerequisite. Of all of the great nations of the world, America stands out as the quintessential "nation of immigrants," composed of voyagers and exiles from every one of the worlds tongues, nations, and stations; from every religion or none at all, from every zone of conflict or street of violence, from the vastnesses of continents scorched by equinoctial suns to the fringes of green and seagirt islands such as Éire, granite-buttressed and battered by the ageless pounding of Atlantic breakers.
In a sense, every American is a member of some minority group or other. We queerfolk are no exception. To be sure, our American story has been until recent years largely identified as the history of the white settlers, primarily British and northern European, who came to what is now Virginia and the northeast. Yet in truth, our history is the history of a lengthy series of arrivals, even that of the first peoples who arrived so many thousands of years ago across the now-drowned land bridge between Siberia and Alaska.
On Saint Patrick's day, of course, we recall the experience of the Irish in America, and rightly so, for that experience has molded the history of America and of Éire, and has changed the lives of every Irish-American, and every Irishman. The story of the Gael in the New World is almost a textbook example of the importance of integration as against assimilation. We who are of Irish descent brought with us from the ancestral island a culture, a world view, a faith, and most importantly, a faculty for the written and the spoken word that has been almost without peer in the history of the English language. If nothing else, our own Irish integration into the American commmonwealth has been witnessed by a string of recent Presidents of Irish descent: Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and even Obama (or is that O’Bama?).
Yet the one great sin against blood, faith, and heritage of which the Irish-Americans can never be accused is that of being assimilated into an alien culture and entirely abandoning their own. Instead, the Irish ---like so many others before and since--- beginning as outsiders, integrated themselves into American society, and in so doing, influenced that society in ways both obvious and subtle. Even the Famine Irish, who fled the Potato Famine of the 1840s ---and were often the poorest of the poor and the rudest of the rude--- came as members of a culture that though often dormant under English occupation, possessed and possesses still an ancient and noble heritage. And without the leavening and the gifts of the Irish and of their culture, our own American culture would be perceptibly poorer.
After all, the Irishman James Joyce once asked, who but the Irish could have taken the tongue of the conqueror and made it so brilliantly their own?
On the Feast of Saint Patrick, then, American queerfolk should perhaps look to the Irish in America, not with simple nostalgia, or even with mere pride of ancestry (if, dear reader, you happen like the author to be of Irish descent), but rather as our teachers, from whose example and history in this country we may take instruction and inspiration. For against the Irish immigrants, particularly the Famine Irish, were ranged many of the most powerful social and political forces of the day, united in fear and dislike of a proud but primitive people from a different culture, of a Roman Catholic people in a Protestant republic, of a communitarian people in a land of rugged individualists, and of poor people in a society just beginning to come to terms with the potentialities of staggering wealth.
Why, the nativist element demanded, did we have to admit the Irish at all? And if we had to let them in, why couldn't the Irish just be assimilated until they adopted the faith and culture of the Protestant population? Against such an initial background, the history of the Irish community in this country has been a history of initial rejection, a history of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic bigotry and fear, yet also a history of slow, steady surmounting of barriers, a history of building bridges, paying dues, and establishing bona fides, a history, in short, of integration.
Yet such a history is decades in the making, and true integration is the accomplishment of generations. For Irish-Americans, the struggle to secure equal rights was in many ways closely parallel to the struggle that we are waging today as queer people. Over against us are powerful social and political forces as united in their fear and dislike of us as their forebears were of the Irish. For in a society that still defines family largely as biological units, we define family in other, perhaps more spiritual ways. Indeed, our struggle to be able to create families, and to place those families squarely within the ambit of protection that the law should guarantee to every family, has not been an overnight thing, but has indeed been the outcome of decades, even generations, of work.
In a society that fears any expression of social nonconformity, we queerfolk are cultural subversives, questioning the dominant paradigm at every turn. In a culture that tends to regard aesthetics with a jaundiced and Puritan eye that sees beauty as pagan and per se unacceptable, we embrace beauty, taste, and elegance forthrightly as essential aspects of a life worth living in full. Against a mentality that seems to have little time for joy and the pursuit of happiness, we demand the right to find joy and to pursue happiness, and to live life as if there were twenty five hours in every day; for who (even with HIV/AIDS having been reduced, more or less, to the status of a long-term chronic illness) can truly know how much time he or she has?
Finally, of course, in contrast with a narrow and limited conversation about gender roles, we dare to speak the love that others would constrain to silence, honestly admitting the possibility that two women or two men can love one another, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
In short, we make many of our straight neighbors uncomfortable, in much the same way as the communitarian, Catholic, Irish, must have discomfited their individualistic, Protestant, neighbors. And if we have taken the blueprint for much of the legal strategy of our cause from the struggle of the African-American community, perhaps we ought to take the blueprint for our social and political integration from the Irish. Our community, as such, is in many ways a new arrival on the American scene since Stonewall, and past experience suggests that it is unrealistic to expect the immediate crumbling of all barriers.
Yet, as the Irish demonstrated, open participation in the life of the larger community leads to habituation; habituation leads to accommodation; accommodation leads to toleration, and toleration leads to acceptance and integration. When integration happens, barriers fall and hitherto separate cultures or subcultures can teach and learn from one another, and can enrich one another. Who would have thought, just two decades ago, that we might well be nearing the day on which David and Jonathan (or Sean and Patrick) or Ruth and Naomi (or Bridget and Siobhan) might be able to go and get themselves married, legally and fully, in a nation that has finally acknowledged that it is as okay to be queer as it is to be Irish?
If, then, on Saint Patrick's Day the Irish part of me can say "I'm here, I'm Irish, get used to it," the queer part of me can take the same tack, and together with my LBGT brothers and sisters, also say "We're queer, we're here, we're fabulous, get used to it." The challenge, thus, is a simple one. If today, the presence a contingent of gay and lesbian Hibernians marching in a St. Patrick's Day Parade, or the mere fact of a Pride Parade, can cause controversy and confrontation, let us set our goals, aspirations and efforts toward an ultimate reality of integration such that in due time the presence of lesbian and gay Hibernians in a St. Patrick's Day Parade or a pride parade ---or Bridget and Siobhan’s wedding--- is nothing more than matter-of-fact reality, unremarkable in itself.
When, and only when, our integration is so complete that our participation in the life of the nation is accepted as a matter of course, will we be able to speak of being true, first class citizens in the contemplation of our law, our politics, and our society. Only when our participation is accepted as an everyday reality will we truly be able to say that we -like the Irish- have finally come to America.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an Irish/Celtic-American attorney with a typically French name that would fit comfortably into any Paris or Marseilles phone book. He lives and practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as a city councilmember. The views contained herein are his own, and not those of any entity or organization with which he is associated. They are not intended, and should not be taken as, legal advice. This post is an adaptation of a column Mr. Marchand wrote in 1998 and has been updated.
By: Paul S. Marchand
"You will be assimilated; resistance is futile."
-Locutus of Borg, from Star Trek, the Next Generation
I refuse to be assimilated!
-Anonymous Queer National, c. 1992
As any aficionado of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or Voyager can tell you, the Borg are a nasty lot. They are a mixture of man and machine, a collective bent on conquering the galaxy by "assimilating" everything in their path, turning conquered races into Borg drones, parts of a hive in which no single member possess any distinct individuality. Among the Borg, the pronoun I yields place to the pronoun we, as it often does in highly homogenous or totalitarian cultures.
As Americans in general, and as queerfolk in particular, lesbians and gay men, together with the bisexual and the transgendered, necessarily live lives in which our definition of ourselves as a community is intimately bound up in our identification of ourselves as individuals, in which I necessarily comes before We, and is its prerequisite. Of all of the great nations of the world, America stands out as the quintessential "nation of immigrants," composed of voyagers and exiles from every one of the worlds tongues, nations, and stations; from every religion or none at all, from every zone of conflict or street of violence, from the vastnesses of continents scorched by equinoctial suns to the fringes of green and seagirt islands such as Éire, granite-buttressed and battered by the ageless pounding of Atlantic breakers.
In a sense, every American is a member of some minority group or other. We queerfolk are no exception. To be sure, our American story has been until recent years largely identified as the history of the white settlers, primarily British and northern European, who came to what is now Virginia and the northeast. Yet in truth, our history is the history of a lengthy series of arrivals, even that of the first peoples who arrived so many thousands of years ago across the now-drowned land bridge between Siberia and Alaska.
On Saint Patrick's day, of course, we recall the experience of the Irish in America, and rightly so, for that experience has molded the history of America and of Éire, and has changed the lives of every Irish-American, and every Irishman. The story of the Gael in the New World is almost a textbook example of the importance of integration as against assimilation. We who are of Irish descent brought with us from the ancestral island a culture, a world view, a faith, and most importantly, a faculty for the written and the spoken word that has been almost without peer in the history of the English language. If nothing else, our own Irish integration into the American commmonwealth has been witnessed by a string of recent Presidents of Irish descent: Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and even Obama (or is that O’Bama?).
Yet the one great sin against blood, faith, and heritage of which the Irish-Americans can never be accused is that of being assimilated into an alien culture and entirely abandoning their own. Instead, the Irish ---like so many others before and since--- beginning as outsiders, integrated themselves into American society, and in so doing, influenced that society in ways both obvious and subtle. Even the Famine Irish, who fled the Potato Famine of the 1840s ---and were often the poorest of the poor and the rudest of the rude--- came as members of a culture that though often dormant under English occupation, possessed and possesses still an ancient and noble heritage. And without the leavening and the gifts of the Irish and of their culture, our own American culture would be perceptibly poorer.
After all, the Irishman James Joyce once asked, who but the Irish could have taken the tongue of the conqueror and made it so brilliantly their own?
On the Feast of Saint Patrick, then, American queerfolk should perhaps look to the Irish in America, not with simple nostalgia, or even with mere pride of ancestry (if, dear reader, you happen like the author to be of Irish descent), but rather as our teachers, from whose example and history in this country we may take instruction and inspiration. For against the Irish immigrants, particularly the Famine Irish, were ranged many of the most powerful social and political forces of the day, united in fear and dislike of a proud but primitive people from a different culture, of a Roman Catholic people in a Protestant republic, of a communitarian people in a land of rugged individualists, and of poor people in a society just beginning to come to terms with the potentialities of staggering wealth.
Why, the nativist element demanded, did we have to admit the Irish at all? And if we had to let them in, why couldn't the Irish just be assimilated until they adopted the faith and culture of the Protestant population? Against such an initial background, the history of the Irish community in this country has been a history of initial rejection, a history of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic bigotry and fear, yet also a history of slow, steady surmounting of barriers, a history of building bridges, paying dues, and establishing bona fides, a history, in short, of integration.
Yet such a history is decades in the making, and true integration is the accomplishment of generations. For Irish-Americans, the struggle to secure equal rights was in many ways closely parallel to the struggle that we are waging today as queer people. Over against us are powerful social and political forces as united in their fear and dislike of us as their forebears were of the Irish. For in a society that still defines family largely as biological units, we define family in other, perhaps more spiritual ways. Indeed, our struggle to be able to create families, and to place those families squarely within the ambit of protection that the law should guarantee to every family, has not been an overnight thing, but has indeed been the outcome of decades, even generations, of work.
In a society that fears any expression of social nonconformity, we queerfolk are cultural subversives, questioning the dominant paradigm at every turn. In a culture that tends to regard aesthetics with a jaundiced and Puritan eye that sees beauty as pagan and per se unacceptable, we embrace beauty, taste, and elegance forthrightly as essential aspects of a life worth living in full. Against a mentality that seems to have little time for joy and the pursuit of happiness, we demand the right to find joy and to pursue happiness, and to live life as if there were twenty five hours in every day; for who (even with HIV/AIDS having been reduced, more or less, to the status of a long-term chronic illness) can truly know how much time he or she has?
Finally, of course, in contrast with a narrow and limited conversation about gender roles, we dare to speak the love that others would constrain to silence, honestly admitting the possibility that two women or two men can love one another, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
In short, we make many of our straight neighbors uncomfortable, in much the same way as the communitarian, Catholic, Irish, must have discomfited their individualistic, Protestant, neighbors. And if we have taken the blueprint for much of the legal strategy of our cause from the struggle of the African-American community, perhaps we ought to take the blueprint for our social and political integration from the Irish. Our community, as such, is in many ways a new arrival on the American scene since Stonewall, and past experience suggests that it is unrealistic to expect the immediate crumbling of all barriers.
Yet, as the Irish demonstrated, open participation in the life of the larger community leads to habituation; habituation leads to accommodation; accommodation leads to toleration, and toleration leads to acceptance and integration. When integration happens, barriers fall and hitherto separate cultures or subcultures can teach and learn from one another, and can enrich one another. Who would have thought, just two decades ago, that we might well be nearing the day on which David and Jonathan (or Sean and Patrick) or Ruth and Naomi (or Bridget and Siobhan) might be able to go and get themselves married, legally and fully, in a nation that has finally acknowledged that it is as okay to be queer as it is to be Irish?
If, then, on Saint Patrick's Day the Irish part of me can say "I'm here, I'm Irish, get used to it," the queer part of me can take the same tack, and together with my LBGT brothers and sisters, also say "We're queer, we're here, we're fabulous, get used to it." The challenge, thus, is a simple one. If today, the presence a contingent of gay and lesbian Hibernians marching in a St. Patrick's Day Parade, or the mere fact of a Pride Parade, can cause controversy and confrontation, let us set our goals, aspirations and efforts toward an ultimate reality of integration such that in due time the presence of lesbian and gay Hibernians in a St. Patrick's Day Parade or a pride parade ---or Bridget and Siobhan’s wedding--- is nothing more than matter-of-fact reality, unremarkable in itself.
When, and only when, our integration is so complete that our participation in the life of the nation is accepted as a matter of course, will we be able to speak of being true, first class citizens in the contemplation of our law, our politics, and our society. Only when our participation is accepted as an everyday reality will we truly be able to say that we -like the Irish- have finally come to America.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an Irish/Celtic-American attorney with a typically French name that would fit comfortably into any Paris or Marseilles phone book. He lives and practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as a city councilmember. The views contained herein are his own, and not those of any entity or organization with which he is associated. They are not intended, and should not be taken as, legal advice. This post is an adaptation of a column Mr. Marchand wrote in 1998 and has been updated.
ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: ROB PORTMAN’S VOLTE-FACE ON MARRIAGE EQUALITY
Summary: It must suck to be Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman right about now. The Senator’s dramatic reversal of his position on marriage equality, from opposition to support, together with his disclosure that his 21-year-old son Will, a junior at Yale, is gay, has called forth attacks from marriage equality supporters and from angry, hair-on-fire extremists of the religious right. Marriage equality supporters have condemned the Ohio senator for being insufficiently empathetic, while the angry rightists have demanded that he either “change” or reject his son. Ronald Reagan pointed out that political change usually begins around the dining table, and Harvey Milk noted that the cause of LGBT civil rights usually does better when our straight neighbors actually know queerfolk. Rob Portman is going through much the same evolution that millions of Americans have gone through in the last generation. Those of us who support marriage equality should cut him and Will a break and not demand an absolute purity of motive from him that many of us would find impossible to muster in ourselves.
By: Paul S. Marchand
It seems that Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman has had a “Road to Damascus” experience with respect to the issue of marriage equality, altering his position from “oppose” to “support,” declaring his position forthrightly in an opinion piece in the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch. Such experiences, representing as they do decisive, nay, irrevocable reversals of view, have long been a part of the cultural heritage of the Roman-Christian West.
Since the time of Saul of Tarsus’s dramatic conversion to Christianity which began with his God-confronting experience on his way to persecute followers of Jesus Movement in Damascus, the concept of a dramatic volte-face, of a 180° shift in opinion, has usually been referred to as a “Road to Damascus” experience.
Yet, the road to Damascus differs for every soul that travels it.
Both Ronald Reagan and Harvey Milk understood, perhaps even more than the late, great Tip O’Neill, that politics isn’t just local, it often begins around the dining table. Harvey Milk, in particular, understood that when advocating for equal rights for queerfolk, nothing helped get the point across quite as much as actually knowing an LGBT person.
On marriage equality, Rob Portman’s road to Damascus seems to have run right through his dining room for the most Milkian of reasons; the Senator’s son, Will, 21, a junior at Yale, is gay. Moreover, Will Portman has apparently been out to his family for the last two years.
Yet, as a unique as every human being’s road to Damascus may be, it must suck to be Rob Portman right about now. The Senator has taken considerable flak from both sides of the marriage issue. From one side, the Senator has been excoriated for lacking empathy. The gravamen of such criticism is that marriage equality was not an issue the Senator could support until the issue surfaced right in the middle of his own family; under such a construct, it is apparently more important to be supportive in the abstract than to come round to a position of support because one may have been moved by the compunctions of family.
Social conservatives have excoriated both Portman père and Portman fils, the father for supporting marriage equality, and the son for simply being gay. The Senator has been attacked for allegedly lacking principle and not standing up for “godly ways,” while he has been urged, often in the nastiest terms imaginable, to subject his son to so-called reparative therapy, and to reject his son and cast him out if his son refuses to “change.” The sheer nastiness of the commentors on the discussion thread attached to Sen. Portman’s op-ed piece in the Dispatch, calling down the wrath and ill will of an angry Old Testament deity upon him beggared description, and was some of the most sickeningly hateful speech I have ever beheld on an Internet comment thread.
Assailed as he is from both the purist left and the angry, hair-on-fire “Christian” right over his heartfelt candor, it must suck to be Rob Portman right about now.
Yet, those of us who have been on the side of the angels in the marriage equality struggle should consider cutting Rob Portman of little bit of slack on this issue. At the risk of reifying as canonical Harvey Milk’s observation, or worse, over-linking it with Ronald Reagan’s homely political acumen, we should acknowledge that Pauline conversions like Sen. Portman’s don’t occur in abstract vacuum. Advances in civil rights for queerfolk usually occur when those of our straight neighbors who happily consign our queer butts to the back of the bus suddenly discover, mirabile dictu, that they actually know one or more gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered people.
In 2013, the reality of having a queer friend, a queer coworker, a queer neighbor, or a queer child has become so matter-of-fact that a majority of Americans have experienced it. Notwithstanding such antediluvian fools as Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, who claims that there has never been a homosexual in the recorded history of his family, most Americans are within --- at most --- two degrees of separation from a GLBT person.
Such a reality of nearness, together with the substantial statistical likelihood that while working in Washington, Sen. Portman would have encountered queerfolk on Capitol Hill, suggests not only that the Senator may well have been psychologically habituated to the possibility that one of his children might be gay, but also that Portman would have sought out counsel from persons within his own party, including former VP Dick Cheney, who were out as the parents of LGBT children. Will Portman’s coming out to his dad may not have been as much a surprise as otherwise thought.
But, neither Rob nor Will Portman will ever again have the luxury of not participating in the national conversation about civil rights and marriage equality for queerfolk. To a certain extent, I can empathize to a greater degree with Will Portman then with his father. Will Portman now finds himself injected into the vortex of the highly public debate at a time when politics has become a full contact, no holds barred, Breitbart-nasty, enterprise in which little, if any, attention ever gets paid to personal destruction or collateral damage. At best, Will Portman can hope to be spared anything but an Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame. At worst, he will be pursued, belabored, and even stalked by right-wing religious fanatics.
Still, faulting Rob Portman for being “insufficiently empathetic” strikes one as holding the Senator to an unreasonably high standard. Would it have been better if Sen. Portman did not know a single queer person, if he had acted solely out of some kind of abstract attachment to an impersonal principle? Such a view strikes one as naïve. That is not how opinions are formed. In an America in which a majority of voters want to get rid of all those scoundrels on Capitol Hill, but who remain convinced that their own Representative or senator is a fine fellow who deserves reelection, we would be foolish to think that personal considerations don’t or shouldn’t matter in politics.
Ronald Reagan was right when he noted that great political change often begins around the dining table, and Rosa Parks was right in her understanding that significant change also can happen when a single person dares to take a seat at the front of the bus.
Of course, Rob Portman is no Rosa Parks and he’s no Ronald Reagan. He is simply one of millions of Americans having to adjust a priori opinions in the face of an unquestionable reality that such opinions, if persisted in, will do harm to the very family values he professes to uphold. Blood is thicker than water, so let’s give Rob Portman --- and Will, too--- a break and leave off demanding a purity of motive from him that many of us would find impossible to muster in ourselves.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. Having served eight years in public office, he can understand why Rob Portman might want to be careful in his utterance, particularly when reversing himself on so live an issue as marriage equality. Mr. Marchand litigated one of the first marriage equality cases in California, twenty years ago. The views herein are his own, and are not intended to constitute legal advice.
By: Paul S. Marchand
It seems that Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman has had a “Road to Damascus” experience with respect to the issue of marriage equality, altering his position from “oppose” to “support,” declaring his position forthrightly in an opinion piece in the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch. Such experiences, representing as they do decisive, nay, irrevocable reversals of view, have long been a part of the cultural heritage of the Roman-Christian West.
Since the time of Saul of Tarsus’s dramatic conversion to Christianity which began with his God-confronting experience on his way to persecute followers of Jesus Movement in Damascus, the concept of a dramatic volte-face, of a 180° shift in opinion, has usually been referred to as a “Road to Damascus” experience.
Yet, the road to Damascus differs for every soul that travels it.
Both Ronald Reagan and Harvey Milk understood, perhaps even more than the late, great Tip O’Neill, that politics isn’t just local, it often begins around the dining table. Harvey Milk, in particular, understood that when advocating for equal rights for queerfolk, nothing helped get the point across quite as much as actually knowing an LGBT person.
On marriage equality, Rob Portman’s road to Damascus seems to have run right through his dining room for the most Milkian of reasons; the Senator’s son, Will, 21, a junior at Yale, is gay. Moreover, Will Portman has apparently been out to his family for the last two years.
Yet, as a unique as every human being’s road to Damascus may be, it must suck to be Rob Portman right about now. The Senator has taken considerable flak from both sides of the marriage issue. From one side, the Senator has been excoriated for lacking empathy. The gravamen of such criticism is that marriage equality was not an issue the Senator could support until the issue surfaced right in the middle of his own family; under such a construct, it is apparently more important to be supportive in the abstract than to come round to a position of support because one may have been moved by the compunctions of family.
Social conservatives have excoriated both Portman père and Portman fils, the father for supporting marriage equality, and the son for simply being gay. The Senator has been attacked for allegedly lacking principle and not standing up for “godly ways,” while he has been urged, often in the nastiest terms imaginable, to subject his son to so-called reparative therapy, and to reject his son and cast him out if his son refuses to “change.” The sheer nastiness of the commentors on the discussion thread attached to Sen. Portman’s op-ed piece in the Dispatch, calling down the wrath and ill will of an angry Old Testament deity upon him beggared description, and was some of the most sickeningly hateful speech I have ever beheld on an Internet comment thread.
Assailed as he is from both the purist left and the angry, hair-on-fire “Christian” right over his heartfelt candor, it must suck to be Rob Portman right about now.
Yet, those of us who have been on the side of the angels in the marriage equality struggle should consider cutting Rob Portman of little bit of slack on this issue. At the risk of reifying as canonical Harvey Milk’s observation, or worse, over-linking it with Ronald Reagan’s homely political acumen, we should acknowledge that Pauline conversions like Sen. Portman’s don’t occur in abstract vacuum. Advances in civil rights for queerfolk usually occur when those of our straight neighbors who happily consign our queer butts to the back of the bus suddenly discover, mirabile dictu, that they actually know one or more gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered people.
In 2013, the reality of having a queer friend, a queer coworker, a queer neighbor, or a queer child has become so matter-of-fact that a majority of Americans have experienced it. Notwithstanding such antediluvian fools as Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, who claims that there has never been a homosexual in the recorded history of his family, most Americans are within --- at most --- two degrees of separation from a GLBT person.
Such a reality of nearness, together with the substantial statistical likelihood that while working in Washington, Sen. Portman would have encountered queerfolk on Capitol Hill, suggests not only that the Senator may well have been psychologically habituated to the possibility that one of his children might be gay, but also that Portman would have sought out counsel from persons within his own party, including former VP Dick Cheney, who were out as the parents of LGBT children. Will Portman’s coming out to his dad may not have been as much a surprise as otherwise thought.
But, neither Rob nor Will Portman will ever again have the luxury of not participating in the national conversation about civil rights and marriage equality for queerfolk. To a certain extent, I can empathize to a greater degree with Will Portman then with his father. Will Portman now finds himself injected into the vortex of the highly public debate at a time when politics has become a full contact, no holds barred, Breitbart-nasty, enterprise in which little, if any, attention ever gets paid to personal destruction or collateral damage. At best, Will Portman can hope to be spared anything but an Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame. At worst, he will be pursued, belabored, and even stalked by right-wing religious fanatics.
Still, faulting Rob Portman for being “insufficiently empathetic” strikes one as holding the Senator to an unreasonably high standard. Would it have been better if Sen. Portman did not know a single queer person, if he had acted solely out of some kind of abstract attachment to an impersonal principle? Such a view strikes one as naïve. That is not how opinions are formed. In an America in which a majority of voters want to get rid of all those scoundrels on Capitol Hill, but who remain convinced that their own Representative or senator is a fine fellow who deserves reelection, we would be foolish to think that personal considerations don’t or shouldn’t matter in politics.
Ronald Reagan was right when he noted that great political change often begins around the dining table, and Rosa Parks was right in her understanding that significant change also can happen when a single person dares to take a seat at the front of the bus.
Of course, Rob Portman is no Rosa Parks and he’s no Ronald Reagan. He is simply one of millions of Americans having to adjust a priori opinions in the face of an unquestionable reality that such opinions, if persisted in, will do harm to the very family values he professes to uphold. Blood is thicker than water, so let’s give Rob Portman --- and Will, too--- a break and leave off demanding a purity of motive from him that many of us would find impossible to muster in ourselves.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. Having served eight years in public office, he can understand why Rob Portman might want to be careful in his utterance, particularly when reversing himself on so live an issue as marriage equality. Mr. Marchand litigated one of the first marriage equality cases in California, twenty years ago. The views herein are his own, and are not intended to constitute legal advice.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
GOBSMACKED!
Summary: the Vatican has gobsmacked us again. New Pope Francis I is an Argentine Jesuit. First of that name, first from the Western Hemisphere, first Jesuit. We don’t know at this point whether Francis intends to honor Francis of Assisi, the apostle of poverty, or Francis Xavier, the great early Jesuit. If the new pontiff cleaves to the conservative line of his two last predecessors, he will do real damage to the church in the global North, while not necessarily contributing to the church in the global South which is now the home of most of the faithful. As other commentators have noted, we should perhaps hope and pray for a pontiff who will be more like a John XXIV than a John Paul III or a Benedict XVII. The Roman church needs a new aggiornamento, while we who are not Roman continue to watch cautiously inasmuch as the Roman Catholic Church tends to set the tone for the Christian community’s dialogue with the larger world.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Once again the Vatican demonstrates its capacity to gobsmack the world at will. The conclave has concluded its work and given the Roman church a new Bishop of Rome.
Francis I is the first pontiff to carry that name.
Francis I is also the first Pope from the Western Hemisphere, specifically, from Argentina.
Francis I is also the first Pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus.
Let’s run that by one more time: first Francis, first Western Hemisphere Pontiff, first Jesuit Pope.
Life seems to be imitating art of late at the Vatican. When Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI resigned, life seemed to be imitating the plot line of a Morris West novel, whether it be The Shoes of the Fisherman or The Clowns of God. Now, life seems to be imitating Walter F. Murphy’s novel The Vicar Of Christ.
Murphy’s 1981 novel now seems eerily prescient, postulating as it does a fictional Pope Francis I from the Western Hemisphere. Though Murphy’s Francis is an American, we should perhaps not be so gobsmacked at the idea of an Argentine Pope. The majority of the world’s Roman Catholics now reside, like the majority of the world’s Anglicans, in what is often referred to as the global South. Still, the new pontiff’s choice of the name Francis seems a departure that no one had expected.
Already, a bit of controversy has begun to arise over whether the quondam cardinal-Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis to honor St. Francis of Assisi, or whether he chose it to honor Ignatius Loyola’s able and dedicated assistant St. Francis Xavier. The Assisi reference makes sense if the new pontiff intends to pursue an agenda of the Roman church not only being poor, but of being seen to be poor. After all, St. Francis of Assisi has gone down in the history of the church as a staunch advocate of holy poverty.
On the other hand, invoking St. Francis Xavier makes some sense for a pontiff who, for the first time in history, comes out of the Society of Jesus. Xavier, after all, is one of the great and notable Jesuit saints.
No matter which Francis Papa Francesco had in mind, the task awaiting him would be enough to try the resolve of either Francis of Assisi or Francis Xavier.
To certain extent, we who are not of the Roman obedience have a luxury of being able to view the challenges confronting our Roman brethren and sistren from a somewhat broader perspective than that of those Roman Catholic brethren and sistren. Not being in the metaphorical forest, we can see both the forest and the trees.
Francis I will need reserves of patience and openness of mind which seem to have evaded John Paul II in his later years and for which Benedict XVI (having been in charge of the Holy Office) is not viewed as having possessed. The new Pope is widely regarded as being from the so-called conservative wing of the church. If he opts to continue the kind of conservative agenda set under John Paul II and carried forward under Benedict, he will spend his pontificate desperately attempting to stem the tide of crisis by papering over the cracks in the edifice of the institutional church.
On the other hand, if Francis I opts to attempt to reclaim the momentum of Vatican II that Paul VI frittered improvidently away, he may find himself facing an angry backlash from ultramontane curialists and conservative bishops in the global North who have come to see themselves as water carriers for conservative political movements in their own countries. At all events, the new pontiff will have to address sympathetically the significant social changes in the global North that have cost the Roman Catholic Church dearly in terms of declining numbers of faithful laity and committed clergy.
The last thing our Roman brethren and sistren need is a pontiff to thunder against the principled decisions they make with respect to the most profound and intimate issues of their own lives. A Pope who seeks to reinforce and militantly reaffirm every jot and tittle of Paul VI’s breathtakingly ill considered encyclical Humanae Vitae, or to impose hyper-conservative doctrinal and/or dogmatic litmus tests on his faithful may well find himself stuck administering a church of the global South from a beleaguered outpost in a global North that has left him behind.
While the coming of any new pontiff (and this is my fifth) causes me to entertain a certain degree of skepticism, I am prepared for the very short time being to give Pope Francis I the benefit of some small fraction of doubt. It may be that the perspective of a pontiff from both the Western Hemisphere and the global South, who comes out of the Jesuit experience (and who is thus emphatically not Opus Dei) may awaken him to the critical need for a new aggiornamento. It is half a century since good Pope John XXIII dared to fling open the windows and bring both light and air into a church that had stultified under his predecessor Pius XII.
As an Anglican, I would like to be cautiously optimistic about such a development. Those of us outside the Roman observance owe ourselves and our fellow non-Roman Catholics a duty to the truth to acknowledge that the Roman Catholic Church is very much the elephant in the Christian room, and that what Rome does still has an outsized impact on the way the rest of the world views the Christian community. Thus, we should neither deny nor pooh-pooh what has happened in the Vatican today. Instead, we should hope --- even pray --- that Francis I will have the grace to lead his church out of the doctrinaire traps into which his predecessors allowed it to fall.
If Jorge Mario Bergoglio truly wishes to embody the visions of Francis of Assisi and Francis Xavier, he should, as more than one commentator has noted, be more John XXIV than John Paul III or Benedict XVII. Vatican III, anybody?
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California. As an Anglican, he understands, pace Donald Rumsfeld, that you don’t deal with the ecclesial bodies you want, but with the ecclesial bodies you’ve got. Though he is Anglican, he has a pragmatic understanding of the influence any Roman Pontiff can bring to bear. The views contained herein are not intended as legal advice, and should not be so taken. By the same token, those views are also not intended, and should not be taken as, catechesis or instruction in the Faith. At all events, the views contained herein are his own.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Once again the Vatican demonstrates its capacity to gobsmack the world at will. The conclave has concluded its work and given the Roman church a new Bishop of Rome.
Francis I is the first pontiff to carry that name.
Francis I is also the first Pope from the Western Hemisphere, specifically, from Argentina.
Francis I is also the first Pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus.
Let’s run that by one more time: first Francis, first Western Hemisphere Pontiff, first Jesuit Pope.
Life seems to be imitating art of late at the Vatican. When Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI resigned, life seemed to be imitating the plot line of a Morris West novel, whether it be The Shoes of the Fisherman or The Clowns of God. Now, life seems to be imitating Walter F. Murphy’s novel The Vicar Of Christ.
Murphy’s 1981 novel now seems eerily prescient, postulating as it does a fictional Pope Francis I from the Western Hemisphere. Though Murphy’s Francis is an American, we should perhaps not be so gobsmacked at the idea of an Argentine Pope. The majority of the world’s Roman Catholics now reside, like the majority of the world’s Anglicans, in what is often referred to as the global South. Still, the new pontiff’s choice of the name Francis seems a departure that no one had expected.
Already, a bit of controversy has begun to arise over whether the quondam cardinal-Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis to honor St. Francis of Assisi, or whether he chose it to honor Ignatius Loyola’s able and dedicated assistant St. Francis Xavier. The Assisi reference makes sense if the new pontiff intends to pursue an agenda of the Roman church not only being poor, but of being seen to be poor. After all, St. Francis of Assisi has gone down in the history of the church as a staunch advocate of holy poverty.
On the other hand, invoking St. Francis Xavier makes some sense for a pontiff who, for the first time in history, comes out of the Society of Jesus. Xavier, after all, is one of the great and notable Jesuit saints.
No matter which Francis Papa Francesco had in mind, the task awaiting him would be enough to try the resolve of either Francis of Assisi or Francis Xavier.
To certain extent, we who are not of the Roman obedience have a luxury of being able to view the challenges confronting our Roman brethren and sistren from a somewhat broader perspective than that of those Roman Catholic brethren and sistren. Not being in the metaphorical forest, we can see both the forest and the trees.
Francis I will need reserves of patience and openness of mind which seem to have evaded John Paul II in his later years and for which Benedict XVI (having been in charge of the Holy Office) is not viewed as having possessed. The new Pope is widely regarded as being from the so-called conservative wing of the church. If he opts to continue the kind of conservative agenda set under John Paul II and carried forward under Benedict, he will spend his pontificate desperately attempting to stem the tide of crisis by papering over the cracks in the edifice of the institutional church.
On the other hand, if Francis I opts to attempt to reclaim the momentum of Vatican II that Paul VI frittered improvidently away, he may find himself facing an angry backlash from ultramontane curialists and conservative bishops in the global North who have come to see themselves as water carriers for conservative political movements in their own countries. At all events, the new pontiff will have to address sympathetically the significant social changes in the global North that have cost the Roman Catholic Church dearly in terms of declining numbers of faithful laity and committed clergy.
The last thing our Roman brethren and sistren need is a pontiff to thunder against the principled decisions they make with respect to the most profound and intimate issues of their own lives. A Pope who seeks to reinforce and militantly reaffirm every jot and tittle of Paul VI’s breathtakingly ill considered encyclical Humanae Vitae, or to impose hyper-conservative doctrinal and/or dogmatic litmus tests on his faithful may well find himself stuck administering a church of the global South from a beleaguered outpost in a global North that has left him behind.
While the coming of any new pontiff (and this is my fifth) causes me to entertain a certain degree of skepticism, I am prepared for the very short time being to give Pope Francis I the benefit of some small fraction of doubt. It may be that the perspective of a pontiff from both the Western Hemisphere and the global South, who comes out of the Jesuit experience (and who is thus emphatically not Opus Dei) may awaken him to the critical need for a new aggiornamento. It is half a century since good Pope John XXIII dared to fling open the windows and bring both light and air into a church that had stultified under his predecessor Pius XII.
As an Anglican, I would like to be cautiously optimistic about such a development. Those of us outside the Roman observance owe ourselves and our fellow non-Roman Catholics a duty to the truth to acknowledge that the Roman Catholic Church is very much the elephant in the Christian room, and that what Rome does still has an outsized impact on the way the rest of the world views the Christian community. Thus, we should neither deny nor pooh-pooh what has happened in the Vatican today. Instead, we should hope --- even pray --- that Francis I will have the grace to lead his church out of the doctrinaire traps into which his predecessors allowed it to fall.
If Jorge Mario Bergoglio truly wishes to embody the visions of Francis of Assisi and Francis Xavier, he should, as more than one commentator has noted, be more John XXIV than John Paul III or Benedict XVII. Vatican III, anybody?
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California. As an Anglican, he understands, pace Donald Rumsfeld, that you don’t deal with the ecclesial bodies you want, but with the ecclesial bodies you’ve got. Though he is Anglican, he has a pragmatic understanding of the influence any Roman Pontiff can bring to bear. The views contained herein are not intended as legal advice, and should not be so taken. By the same token, those views are also not intended, and should not be taken as, catechesis or instruction in the Faith. At all events, the views contained herein are his own.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
A MEDITATION FOR LÆTARE SUNDAY
Summary: today is Lætare Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Lent. The Latin verb lætifico, from which the title Lætare is taken, implies rejoicing. Yet it is not the hectic rejoicing we would normally associate with the concept of joy, but rather the consciousness of incipient joy we feel in the coming of spring, and the sense of things approaching fruition. Though I am aware that there may be some who will take exception to a meditation on Lætare Sunday occurring in a concededly secular and somewhat political blog, I must crave indulgence. There is more to life than politics, and more to life then quotidian temporal pursuits. Those who wish to take umbrage are free to do so, but Lætare Sunday is hardly a time for people to harsh each other’s mellows. As the days grow longer with the coming of daylight saving time, we feel within ourselves that sense of things being made new; we should be grateful therefor.
By: Paul S. Marchand
There are two Sundays in the kalendar of the Church year set aside by name for "rejoicing." The first is Gaudete Sunday (III Advent), and the second is Lætare Sunday (IV Lent). Though both gaudeo and lætifico are now routinely translated out of classical Latin as meaning "rejoice," they, like most word doublets, are not strictly synonymous. In several Latin-English dictionaries, for example, lætifico is translated as "to fertilize, to cheer, to gladden," and "to delight." The related word lætus is variously translated as "fat," "rich," "fertile," "glad," "joyful," and "happy." Gaudeo, on the other hand, is translated simply as "to rejoice."
In many ways, there is a distinct difference between rejoicing and happiness. The first implies almost an isolated occurrence; the second suggests a state of being. The spouses rejoice at the wedding feast; by God's good grace they may find lifelong happiness together, even if that life offers few occasions for anything akin to the revels of their nuptial day.
Thus, the sense of gaudete is one of a celebration, of cutting loose to mark a memorable occasion —a great victory, a wedding, a baptism, a graduation, an anniversary— that does not happen every day, and which stands out apart from the quotidian rhythms of our existence. Perhaps the single most perfect illustration of gaudete is the immortal photograph of the sailor and his girl kissing in Times Square on V-J Day, 1945. There is a frenetic, hectic quality to gaudete, (as there is in fact a frenetic, hectic sense of Gaudete Sunday, coming as it does during the flurry of the holiday season), that tends not to lend itself to deep thought or meditation, but rather to ecstacies and spectacle.
Lætare, by contrast, is slower, neither hectic nor frenetic; its sense is one of things growing to fruition, a sense of the intrinsic goodness of God's creation, fat, fertile, and rich with the potential that only a passionately loving God can call into being. Who, watching the earth's natural springtime increase, cannot be imbued with a sense of gladness in beholding it? When the hills don their coats of green, and the verbena mantles the desert with its Lenten purple, and the freshly sown fields begin to give forth their produce, one would have to possess a heart of stone not to apprehend the wonder of God's creation, as God renews the face of the earth.
Here is no hectic flurry of activity; here is no sudden need to make merry. Here instead is the coming together of God's creative, redemptive, and sanctifying power, carried out almost imperceptibly, yet more irresistible than the power of the mightiest glacier or of the deepest ocean swell. Apprehending the sense of things coming together to renew the face of the earth and to further God's divine economy, we begin to apprehend the sense of gladness Lætare Sunday is intended to awaken in us. Subtly, as Fr. Andrew Green of St. Paul in the Desert in Palm Springs once noted, the Lenten emphasis is shifting.
We have heretofore been three Sundays in the wilderness, taking time to reconsider ourselves and our lives, for that is the precise purpose of a penitential season. Indeed, in Latin, the word Pœnitentiæ implies reconsideration. Any first year student of the law of contracts can tell you that the Locus Pœnitentiæ is that "Place of Reconsideration" in which one party to a contract may back out: before the hammer falls at auction, or during the statutory three-day period prescribed in many States to permit a consumer to withdraw from a credit contract. A Penitentiary is that place in which our incarcerated convicts will (we hope) reconsider their actions and find repentance before returning to society. Even the returning prodigal necessarily passed through a period of reconsideration, leading to a repentance experience that turned him once again toward home and family, as we are all called to turn again toward our spiritual home in God's Kingdom.
Yet at some point, God calls us to leave off a heavy regimen of repentance in favor of opening our eyes to the fruits of repentance, to see with clear eyes, with tested eyes, with enlightened eyes, the beauty of holiness that suffuses creation, and to be glad therein. And thus our emphasis shifts, we find ourselves confronting not so much the necessity of periodic re-examination of our own lives —for, as Fr. Green notes, an excessive emphasis on re-examination can easily turn into prideful egoism— so much as we open our hearts to the realization that Lent is also a preparation for Easter, a time for allowing the seeds of our faith to sprout anew in the richness of the Spirit.
As our emphasis shifts, of course, it becomes incumbent upon us also to be aware that our apprehension of things coming to fruition, our sense of gladness at the earth's increase, necessarily presupposes a trust in God and in God's good providence that ofttimes seems incomprehensible to the temporal world. We live in a society that tends to organize itself without reference to first things, or to eternal things, preferring to concentrate on the immediately verifiable here and now. Over against stubborn empiricists who refuse to believe what they cannot see, we, like Thomas the Apostle, profess and confess a Lord and a God whose ways are emphatically not the ways of the temporal world. Ours is a faith based on patience, on solidarity, and on a quiet confidence that the transitory things which attract the passing adoration of that temporal world are powerless to distract us from the Way of the Cross.
A world that has grown old, a world that seeks to beguile itself with sensation and momentary pleasures, looks at this Lenten time with frank incomprehension. Yet, with God's help, this time is readily understandable; a patient people, a solid people, a faithful people, finds in these days of Lent a time of gladness, a time of thanksgiving at the earth's increase, a time of cheer even in repentance, and most of all, a time of expectancy of Resurrection.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any organization, diocese, or parish. This post is an adaptation of a post originally written almost 20 years ago, and updated since. It is not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice or as catechesis/instruction in the Faith.
By: Paul S. Marchand
There are two Sundays in the kalendar of the Church year set aside by name for "rejoicing." The first is Gaudete Sunday (III Advent), and the second is Lætare Sunday (IV Lent). Though both gaudeo and lætifico are now routinely translated out of classical Latin as meaning "rejoice," they, like most word doublets, are not strictly synonymous. In several Latin-English dictionaries, for example, lætifico is translated as "to fertilize, to cheer, to gladden," and "to delight." The related word lætus is variously translated as "fat," "rich," "fertile," "glad," "joyful," and "happy." Gaudeo, on the other hand, is translated simply as "to rejoice."
In many ways, there is a distinct difference between rejoicing and happiness. The first implies almost an isolated occurrence; the second suggests a state of being. The spouses rejoice at the wedding feast; by God's good grace they may find lifelong happiness together, even if that life offers few occasions for anything akin to the revels of their nuptial day.
Thus, the sense of gaudete is one of a celebration, of cutting loose to mark a memorable occasion —a great victory, a wedding, a baptism, a graduation, an anniversary— that does not happen every day, and which stands out apart from the quotidian rhythms of our existence. Perhaps the single most perfect illustration of gaudete is the immortal photograph of the sailor and his girl kissing in Times Square on V-J Day, 1945. There is a frenetic, hectic quality to gaudete, (as there is in fact a frenetic, hectic sense of Gaudete Sunday, coming as it does during the flurry of the holiday season), that tends not to lend itself to deep thought or meditation, but rather to ecstacies and spectacle.
Lætare, by contrast, is slower, neither hectic nor frenetic; its sense is one of things growing to fruition, a sense of the intrinsic goodness of God's creation, fat, fertile, and rich with the potential that only a passionately loving God can call into being. Who, watching the earth's natural springtime increase, cannot be imbued with a sense of gladness in beholding it? When the hills don their coats of green, and the verbena mantles the desert with its Lenten purple, and the freshly sown fields begin to give forth their produce, one would have to possess a heart of stone not to apprehend the wonder of God's creation, as God renews the face of the earth.
Here is no hectic flurry of activity; here is no sudden need to make merry. Here instead is the coming together of God's creative, redemptive, and sanctifying power, carried out almost imperceptibly, yet more irresistible than the power of the mightiest glacier or of the deepest ocean swell. Apprehending the sense of things coming together to renew the face of the earth and to further God's divine economy, we begin to apprehend the sense of gladness Lætare Sunday is intended to awaken in us. Subtly, as Fr. Andrew Green of St. Paul in the Desert in Palm Springs once noted, the Lenten emphasis is shifting.
We have heretofore been three Sundays in the wilderness, taking time to reconsider ourselves and our lives, for that is the precise purpose of a penitential season. Indeed, in Latin, the word Pœnitentiæ implies reconsideration. Any first year student of the law of contracts can tell you that the Locus Pœnitentiæ is that "Place of Reconsideration" in which one party to a contract may back out: before the hammer falls at auction, or during the statutory three-day period prescribed in many States to permit a consumer to withdraw from a credit contract. A Penitentiary is that place in which our incarcerated convicts will (we hope) reconsider their actions and find repentance before returning to society. Even the returning prodigal necessarily passed through a period of reconsideration, leading to a repentance experience that turned him once again toward home and family, as we are all called to turn again toward our spiritual home in God's Kingdom.
Yet at some point, God calls us to leave off a heavy regimen of repentance in favor of opening our eyes to the fruits of repentance, to see with clear eyes, with tested eyes, with enlightened eyes, the beauty of holiness that suffuses creation, and to be glad therein. And thus our emphasis shifts, we find ourselves confronting not so much the necessity of periodic re-examination of our own lives —for, as Fr. Green notes, an excessive emphasis on re-examination can easily turn into prideful egoism— so much as we open our hearts to the realization that Lent is also a preparation for Easter, a time for allowing the seeds of our faith to sprout anew in the richness of the Spirit.
As our emphasis shifts, of course, it becomes incumbent upon us also to be aware that our apprehension of things coming to fruition, our sense of gladness at the earth's increase, necessarily presupposes a trust in God and in God's good providence that ofttimes seems incomprehensible to the temporal world. We live in a society that tends to organize itself without reference to first things, or to eternal things, preferring to concentrate on the immediately verifiable here and now. Over against stubborn empiricists who refuse to believe what they cannot see, we, like Thomas the Apostle, profess and confess a Lord and a God whose ways are emphatically not the ways of the temporal world. Ours is a faith based on patience, on solidarity, and on a quiet confidence that the transitory things which attract the passing adoration of that temporal world are powerless to distract us from the Way of the Cross.
A world that has grown old, a world that seeks to beguile itself with sensation and momentary pleasures, looks at this Lenten time with frank incomprehension. Yet, with God's help, this time is readily understandable; a patient people, a solid people, a faithful people, finds in these days of Lent a time of gladness, a time of thanksgiving at the earth's increase, a time of cheer even in repentance, and most of all, a time of expectancy of Resurrection.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any organization, diocese, or parish. This post is an adaptation of a post originally written almost 20 years ago, and updated since. It is not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice or as catechesis/instruction in the Faith.
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