So Even George Wallace Had an Epiphany

Georgie Bar the Door, c. 1963

I've been pondering the late George Wallace in regards to the current Kim Davis Affair -- an affair that will likely be gone once we're past Labor Day. These late summer news stories are often transitory as morning mist.

At any rate, George Wallace may have been a tiny man (5'6" maybe, if that) but he was a huge character in the civil rights era, the man who stood in the schoolhouse door preventing those Negroes from entering the lily-white schools of Alabama c. 1963.

Oh, he was a huge character and demon indeed, George Wallace was.

He was always railing about those Negroes and all the crime and misery they caused for good upstanding white folks, and how their needs and demands were at the top of Washington's list of things to do, whereas the good white folks of Alabam and the rest of the South and the Nation were being left out to fend for themselves, and why don't those hippies get a haircut and a job, huh, huh, and so it went, on and on, the little banty-weight piss-ant once and future Alabama governor (how many times George?) railing constantly, at full shriek, against anything and everything that represented racial progress.

Ol' George was a good man to hate in those days. Well, if you were on the side of civil rights as I was.

On the other hand, a lot of Americans were on Ol' George's side, they stood with Wallace. Bless their hearts.

He represented their shattered dreams... or something. I never understood how someone else's civil rights ruined -- absolutely ruined  -- the future of Good White Folks in the South or anywhere else. It never made any sense to me at all, but those opposed to civil rights and integration (and there were many of them) were sure that giving those people the same rights they had and letting them live next door and use the same facilities and so forth would lead inevitably to the ruin of white people.

They were sure of it.


How was that supposed to work, anyway?

Ol' George went around the country railing against anything that might provide a modicum of justice and dignity for those people. It just wasn't right, he railed, that they should have the same rights and privileges their Betters had.

Does it sound familiar? It should sound familiar, for there are all kinds of politicians who rail these days against rights and privileges for those people -- whoever the designated Other of the moment may be.

Comes now this Kim Davis in Kentucky (is that where she is?) refusing to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples she is, despite the plain text ruling of the Supreme Court, deeming it contrary to her God and so on and so forth. She sits in jail in contempt of court therefore, a martyr like MLK and Rosa Parks her lawyer claims for following her conscience and religious faith rather than the Law.

Oh my, oh my. Poor sweet Kim Davis. What a martyr indeed.

Yes well, she's a martyr like George Wallace was a martyr, only not nearly so appealing.

Ol' George never went to jail that I know of, but he was shot by a would-be assassin in 1972 while running his umpteenth campaign for president (at least it seemed that way), and he was paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his natural life. I would say that might be considered a form of punishment if not outright martyrdom...

Ol' George kept it up just the same, railing and railing as was his wont.

And then he stopped. He became a "Christian". He had been a Methodist, but everyone knows they're not saved are they? He became a "Christian" -- forgiven and saved he was -- and he came to an epiphany.

He wasn't a martyr, he was just a nasty little shit with a mean streak a mile wide who'd caused untold pain and harm to millions of people for no good reason at all.

He didn't mean to, but that's what he did.

So. He changed. He apologized to those he had harmed. He could not get down on his knees because of his injuries, but he let all kinds of people know that he knew now that he had been wrong to insult and denigrate them all those years, he'd been wrong to stand in the schoolhouse door, he'd been wrong to be such a nasty little shit for all those years when he could have been using his power to do good, and he vowed to do good with what remained of his power and life....

And according to those who knew him that's exactly what he did during his final term as Alabama's governor. There hasn't been anything like it since.

As for this Kim Davis creature, she came to her realization that she had to become a martyr for her God when she became a "Christian" like George Wallace did -- rather late in her life after several marriages, affairs, divorces, and children of different fathers.

She's been forgiven and saved like he was, but whereas late in his life  George Wallace used his salvation on behalf of the downtrodden and dis-included -- many of whom he had personally down-trod and dis-included -- she has convinced herself that she was ordered by her God to use her salvation to further dis-include and down-trod the Enemy, ie: same-sex couples wishing to be married in her county.

Bless her heart.

I've never been much of a fan of same sex marriage because of the religious/sacramental nature of the term marriage. Leave it to the churches, I've long said, some of which have been performing same sex marriages for decades, and leave the law out of that issue altogether. Let the law address only civil unions without regard to the genders of the couples uniting.

Well, I was out-shouted and the Supreme Court (which has not exactly covered itself with glory since the lawless rendering in Bush v Gore) has ruled that same sex marriage cannot be prevented by law.

Therefore the little missy in Kentucky (or wherever she is) isn't like Rosa Parks or MLK, she's like that nasty little shit who stood in the schoolhouse door in 1963 preventing those Negroes from entering.

Will she come to her own epiphany one day?

Funny how God works in such mysterious ways....

And Then There's The Voting Rights Thing, The DOMA Thing, and The Prop 8 Thing

Why the Supreme Court is considered to have any legitimacy at all is one of those Mysteries we may never be able to settle. The Court has been acting quite lawlessly since... well, some would say, since forever (given Marbury v Madison, after all), but jeeze, they really set the standard for lawless "justice" with Bush v Gore, so I'll just date their detachment from any concept of law and justice on December 12, 2000. Others may disagree.

At least for a while, they were being led around by the nose by a forthright anti-constitutionalist, one Nino Scalia -- who was the motor behind Bush v Gore. Since his descent into full on dementia, however, his theocratic-monarchism has been overshadowed by the technocratic-corporate objectivism of one John Roberts, Esq, which explains why practically every significant decision out of the Marble Halls since his Elevation has turned on some of the most arcane legal reasoning in the Court's long history.

The Voting Rights Act was made inoperative the other day, much to the chagrin of voting rights advocates, I suppose, but the Court had been telegraphing its intentions with regard to the VRA for some time, so the decision was No Surprise. There is no right to vote in the Constitution, something which for some reason has never been remedied or even addressed in any comprehensive way. Instead there have been piecemeal efforts to extend the franchise from white property owning males to various other groups over the centuries, without interfering (much) with the States' Rights principle that the States, not the Central Government, are to decide voter-criteria. It's created some icky, cobbled together monstrosities and made elections far more difficult than they need to be.

This is supposed to represent the Genius of Our Founders, but it's nothing of the kind. It's a gawd-awful mess, and it's been getting worse for many a long year.

But that's really a separate issue than the Voting Rights Act which was a measure passed and renewed by Congresses for decades to ensure that the most egregious state-sanctioned racially discrimintory voting restrictions were done away with. Itg was a way of ensuring black voters -- in particular, but certainly not exclusively -- were brought into the system rather than excluded, despite the outrage of the Good Ol' Boys, especially in the South.

In making the VRA inoperative, the Court has said to the Good Ol' Boys, "Here's your playground back. Don't do anything naughty! Haw, haw!"

These people are sickening.

There has been an ongoing long-standing effort by certain interests to tighten and restrict voting rights nationwide. Now those who would undertake to do so have free rein. But then, what's there to "vote" for anyway?  If they can't control elections from one direction, they're bound and determined to do it from another. So here we go again. It's one reason people flirt with alternatives to Our Model, which is both anachronistic and unjust.

We'll see where this leads, but outwardly it's right back to where things were before the Civil Rights Movement.

Oh, but, they struck down DOMA and let stand gay marriage! Civil Rights Live! Yes, well, this is the kind of trade off you get from this Court. Massive civil injustice (such as the disabling of the VRA) on the one hand, together with a modest and generally cynical extension of "rights" on the other. Take away voting rights, but let people gay-marry to their heart's content. Sounds fair, doesn't it?

As far as I'm concerned, DOMA was a shitty measure, and Prop 8 was just nasty, but the underlying issue was never really dealt with, and it still hasn't been. I've long advocated that government not be in the marriage business at all, that marriage qua marriage be left to the religious institutions to do with as they please. And in that context, gay marriage has been going on for decades in churches and synagogues throughout this troubled land. Some religious institutions forbid it, but some do not. To my way of looking at it, that's how religious liberty works -- and should work.

The government should have nothing (much) to say about it. "Marriage" as such should not be a matter for civil law at all. Instead, all legal unions between couples should be civil unions. And they should be gender neutral. If you want to get gay-married, find a religious institution that will sanction it. There are many. On the other hand, if you want to set up a legal-couple household, regardless of gender, go down to the civil union registry and do so.

Well, of course, this idea is too radical. It would mean changing oodles of other laws, particularly regarding benefits and inheritance and so on and so forth, all of which refer to spousal and marriage and such and we can't do that, let's just legalize gay-marriage and be done with it. Ta-da.

That would be fine if marriage were not a religious sacrament to hundreds of millions. By legally enforcing a change who can obtain that sacrament (albeit from civil authority) and under what conditions, the foundations of rule and social cohesion tremble. Simply by taking marriage out of the gambit of civil authority and leaving it to the tender mercies (or...) of the religious divines, it seems to me the issue and the problem would have been solved neatly and correctly.

But no.

So now we have this strange situation in which in essence the Court has said states can go ahead and restrict the franchise however they want at least until Congress comes up with something new to foster voting rights, and by the way your vote doesn't matter anyway, because the Court will rule any way they want to get the outcome they desire, so ha ha, suckers!

The shameful spectacle of this Court goes on and on and on...

Ian Welsh on Cuomo and the NY Gay Marriage Thing

This is so true and it cannot be made any clearer:

• 1) The left sells each other out for either small tactical gains, or nothing at all (hello national NARAL) all the time, so why shouldn’t the gays promise to help Cuomo in his next election for giving them gay marriage, even if it screws unions and helps an austerity governor?
  
  
• 2) The reason gays get anything is that unlike the rest of the left, they did two things: they cut off the donations, and they got ugly in people’s faces. They stopped playing nice. They stopped playing by the rules. They stopped worrying about whether people in power “liked” them (hello National NARAL) and started playing rough.
  
  
• 3) Given that the left doesn’t hang together, which means that the choice is “gay marriage + austerity”, or “no gay marriage + austerity”, well, why not gay marriage plus a shitty economy?

Of course it is impolite to say so. It is always impolite to point out that on the "left" there is no solidarity, only a competing series of discreet interests, vying for the Royal Nod, and in the case of gay marriage, it's been obvious for years.

(I've never been a fan of gay marriage as an issue at law. Marriage, in my humble opinion, is fundamentally a religious sacrament -- banging that Old Tyme Catholic gong, don't you know -- that has no place in Law. If religious/faith practitioners want to sanction same sex marriage, I say hurrah. Some have been doing just that for decades. No, these marriages have no legal standing in most jurisdictions, and that's a problem. But the way to deal with that, in my opinion, is to get the Law and the State out of the marriage business altogether. To the extent the Law and the State need to recognize and/or sanction marriage unions, it is solely as a civil matter, without regard to religious interests or issues. Therefore, the only legal and state interest should be in gender neutral "civil unions". That's it, period, nothing else at law. That way, religious freedom and custom is preserved and protected, and so is the interest of the people, community and the state. The whole push for gay marriage has in my view been off base -- and intentionally offensive to traditionalists. But that's not actually what Ian is pointing out...)

No, what's he's getting at, which I essentially agree with, is that the New York Gay Marriage measure is effectively a trade for votes, votes for policies that will cause great harm to millions of New Yorkers by advancing 'Austerity' and Bankster Protection. But, hey! Gay folk can get married now! Yay!

Ian's view about it may be too sour by half, but at the same time he's right.