The Ewgrossorcist

One of the fascinating things about the same-sex marriage cases before the SCOTUS this week is that the anti-gay marriage crew isn't using the old-school arguments of "Ewww, gross" and "As it is written in The Book of Hezekiah, Chapter Seven, Verses Eighteen to Twenty..."  I guess those arguments don't have as much currency as they once did.

"Ew, gross" has, at various times, struck me as a robust argument regarding such topics as homosexuality, girls, and vegetables, so it's time to declare disgust and revulsion to be unreliable moral guides.

I don't want to wade into religious arguments, but I would note that the story of Sodom and Gommorah, often cited as an anti-gay narrative, is a deeply weird and difficult story that doesn't leave anyone except maybe Abram looking good.  It's kind of like a Golan-Globus movie, an overwrought caricature of the big bad city, with abject, comically demonized villains   Homosexuality sure doesn't get a clean bill of health in it, but the residents of the Twin Cities are also rapists and murderers who have ceased worshiping God.  It's disingenuous, or just stoopid, to say (as so many do) that it's the homosexuality that forced God's hand.

 So what kind of arguments are they making, there at SCOTUS?  Arguments that may seem to have that New Talking Point Smell, but if you look up any article by Maggie Gallagher from 2005 or so, you'll see the current anti-gay marriage case has been copied and pasted wholesale from there, or from wherever she got it.  Still, the fixation on procreation as the be-all and end-all of marriage makes me think the Maggie Gallagher argument on this subject may be like The Exorcist or stuff about nuns... If you're not Catholic, and I'm not, it's hard to see the point.  I think this is gonna be a win for same-sex marriage, and I'm pleased, both for the right reasons (people I care about will be able to formalize their relationships) and the wrong ones (apoplexy looks delightful on my ideological opponents).

Speaking of The Exorcist, I finally saw it, but (as I've suggested) I couldn't give myself over to it.  I can accept pretty much any narrative premise, no matter how goony, as long as the storyteller doesn't go bananas trying to persuade me that it isn't goony.  The filmmakers practically grabbed me by the lapels, screaming "No, the demon possession isn't a narrative device gesturing towards parental anxiety about their children's' pubertal misbehavior... it's about REAL DEMON POSSESSION, which is a real thing that happens!"  C'mon.  I saw a recently redone cut of the film; I understand the original release was more ambiguous.