On the news this evening, reporters were saying that Massachusetts had “legalized gay marriage.” I know I’m splitting hairs here, but I think there is a subtle distinction to be made between recognizing gay marriages before the law and legalizing them. To “legalize” something usually implies that it was illegal before. But it was not against the law for gay people to make solemn vows to each other, to exchange rings, to have binding ceremonies, even to have religious weddings if they could find churches willing to perform them. What distinguished straight marriages from gay ones (and what still distinguishes them outside of Massachusetts) was that the former were legally recognized and granted certain privileges by the state, while the latter were largely ignored by the state. Gay marriages were analogous to private agreements that the courts declined to enforce. But declining to enforce an agreement is not the same as outlawing it.
Why belabor this point? Because if my reasoning is correct, then use of the word “legalize” in this context helps perpetuate the myth that the institution of marriage is and must be a creature of the state. Intimate relationships do not require the approval of the state to exist. Gay marriages exist right now, in every state in the union, and the only question is whether the people in them will receive equal treatment before the law.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Did Massachusetts "Legalize" Gay Marriage?
Monday, May 17, 2004
Permissive Parents Beware...
...they eat brats in Ohio! (Only they pronounce it so that it rhymes with "rot," not "rat.")
Other food-related dialectological observations from my 12 years in Ohio:
What I have always known as a Reese's peanut butter cup is by and large known here as a Reesey cup. I think it's a little strange, but this guy seems to have some serious issues with it:
There once was a guy named Reese. He created a Peanut Butter Cup. He put his name on it. It became what we now know as Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.In response to his unsupported sociolinguistic observation: None of the people I've heard say it have been uncultured or rednecks, much less both at once.
Later they made an M&M -type candy and called it Reese's Pieces. This made sense because Reese's rhymes with pieces.
Let me repeat that: Reese's rhymes with pieces.
Reese's is not pronounced reecey. It does not rhyme with fleecy.
Please stop referring to your Reese's cup as a Reecey cup. It makes you sound like an uncultured redneck.
If you're in the produce section of a grocery store here, and see a sign for "mango fruit," they're not being redundant. For some of the population here, unless otherwise specified, mango means green pepper. And green pepper, BTW, means what I grew up calling a bell pepper. Nevermind that bell peppers come in yellow, red, and orange, or that jalapeno peppers are green--if you want bell peppers on your pizza here, you'd better ask for green peppers. Otherwise, the server might just hear the initial [b] and mark you down for banana peppers. That's what happened to me when I ordered my first pizza in Ohio, and it was quite an unpleasant surprise. (That and the fact that they had parmesan cheese all over the top of the pizza, and sliced it into rectangles!)
A popular breakfast item is sausage gravy and biscuits. The first time I saw this written down, it was on the dorm breakfast menu, written just like I wrote it here. I thought, "Great! I love sausage and biscuits! I'll ask them to hold the gravy." Another unpleasant surprise: The comma I'd mentally inserted between sausage and gravy had been left out on purpose! The dish is biscuits with gravy that's been made with sausage. Actually, I know that this term exists outside Ohio, because a regional restaurant chain named Bob Evans serves the dish.
In fact, all of the above terms may well be in usage outside Ohio. All I know is that I sure never heard them when I lived in Texas, and since I became aware of them in Ohio, I'm listing them here.
Apportioning Blame
In re: Abu Ghraib, Mark Kleiman notes that moral and legal responsibilities need not sum to one across parties; thus, holding one person (say, a prison guard) responsible for the abuse of prisoners does not imply letting another person (say, Donald Rumsfeld) off the hook. A valid point, I think. But then Mark applies his principle to a substantially different issue, concluding that food corporations and their consumers are jointly responsible for the ill effects of obesity.
Mark and I have scuffled on this point before. As I said then, the argument for holding consumers responsible for their own actions while holding corporations blameless (assuming they have not withheld relevant information) does not rely on the notion of moral/legal responsibilities summing to one. Rather, it relies on the notion that the consumer is the only person in a position to decide whether the activity in question is harmful on net, since the benefits and costs are ultimately subjective.
Mark’s position rests on the implicit notion that moral/legal responsibility and physical causality are the same. They are not. Using a physical “but for” test, my grandparents are responsible for every sin that I commit. But for my grandparents’ decision to procreate, I would not have existed and thus would have committed no sins. So they are certainly “responsible” for my sins in a physical sense. Similarly, if I stop a woman on the street to ask for directions, and as she walks away she gets crushed by a falling piano, I am physically “responsible” for her death. But for my having asked directions, she would have continued walking and been safely beyond the piano’s future point of impact. Yet few people would hold my grandparents responsible for my sins, and no one (I hope) would hold me responsible for the death-by-piano. Clearly, moral/legal responsibility and physical causality are not the same thing.
From a legal or moral perspective, the issue not determining physical causality, but giving appropriate incentives. To conclude that it makes sense to hold someone legally or morally responsible for an act, and to punish him for it, you have to believe the act is in fact a bad one. I am comfortable making that judgment about the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Holding more than one person morally responsible for the torture will make it that much less likely that it will happen again.
But with respect to the eating of jelly doughnuts, I’m not comfortable concluding that the act is in fact bad. Jelly doughnuts have good and bad effects whose relative value can only be compared by the subjective preferences of an individual consumer. Holding Dunkin Donuts responsible for the ill effects would probably lead to fewer jelly doughnuts being eaten, but that’s not necessarily a good outcome.