Schrodinger's Mo's: Now More Than Ever

No, you get in the fucking box.

File under: "Because, as long as your actions are safe, sane and consensual, the Almighty does not care what you do with your trouser Funyuns."

In light of the direction that the Screwing-Same-Sex-Couples-Out-Of-Their-Civil-Rights-In-Order-To-Pander-To-Bigots debate is now taking (From SFGate):

Prop. 8 defense only needs 2 witnesses

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

If the Proposition 8 trial were about something more mundane than the rights of gays and lesbians to marry - say, a suit over an auto accident or insurance coverage - it would probably be no contest.

In 12 days of testimony in federal court, lawyers for two same-sex couples and the city of San Francisco called a parade of academic heavyweights and people affected by the ban on same-sex marriage to buttress their claim of unconstitutional discrimination. Defenders of the November 2008 ballot measure called only two witnesses, who did not address many of the plaintiffs' issues.

But while Prop. 8's challengers presented the weightier case, they also faced the heavier burden: overturning a voter-approved law on a politically sensitive subject, with arguments that no federal court has yet addressed, much less accepted.

The centerpiece of their case was testimony by professors from elite universities that marriage is an evolving institution, that parental fitness has nothing to do with sexual orientation, that gays and lesbians are subject to continuing discrimination and that the Prop. 8 campaign was based on appeals to prejudice.

The case for Prop. 8 rested largely on one witness, David Blankenhorn, founder of the Institute for American Values, who said marriage was universally defined as a male-female union, and expanding its definition posed unacceptable risks. Blankenhorn lacked scholarly credentials and struggled to explain past writings that seemed to endorse same-sex marriage. The second witness was political scientist Kenneth Miller, a professor at Claremont McKenna College.

Prop. 8's sponsors may submit further evidence before closing arguments, probably in March. But for now, Blankenhorn's testimony is the sole justification offered for the ballot measure by any courtroom witness.

It "couldn't possibly be enough," said Joan Hollinger, a UC Berkeley family law lecturer who attended the trial in San Francisco and plans to submit arguments in support of the plaintiffs. "There was nothing there except his own opinions."
...

-- it seemed like an opportune time to re-direct some newer readers to a short snip from a much longer piece from four years ago which riffed on Erwin Schrödinger's famous dead-cat-based thought experiment:

Schrodinger's Mo's
...
So let us imagine there’s a box in, oh, say, Massachusetts or Oregon or Iowa.

A big box, and in that box are the following items:

1. A Bible.
2. A preacher.
3. A gay couple.
4. A straight friend.
5. Enough consumables and comforts to last a lifetime.

Sort of a Biosphere II, but with vastly better feng shui.

And you’re living la vida no-neck in some high-toned, melanin-poor gated exurb, or in some scruffier digs where the “gate” is a gaunt, three-legged pit-bull named Bobby Lee tied the rusted hulk of an El Camino up on ancient blocks.

Now at some point over the course of years, the gay couple may ask the preacher to pick up the bible and, with their straight friend standing witness, get hitched.

Or they may not.

In fact, they exist only in a cloud of quantum connubial possibilities until you bust the box open and demand to know just what in the fuck they’re doing in there. And how can they have amassed such a formidable stockpile of really spiffy antiques without ever having left the box!

It is only when you kick the door down and intrude on their private business that the haze of potential outcomes collapses into a single, nuptial certainty.

So the question is, when exactly -- over the course of, say, forty years of leaving the box intact and letting them be -- did their status inside the box destroy your marriage outside the box?

When was it -- precisely -- during those four decades that this single detail of the lives of strangers who live so immensely far away from you in every meaningful way managed to intrude into your life so violently that it ruined your relationship with your spouse and debased the value of the love and mutual commitment you share?

So much so that the only possible solution is to amend the foundational documents of our democracy?

Because if you cannot identify the specific, quantifiable harm that such a union would have on you and yours, then shut your fucking hole.
...

Oh quantum physics, is there no dark corner you can't illuminate?