Supreme Court Report: Gay Marriage

On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments (read the transcription and hear the recording of them here) in what is the culmination of a decades-long struggle for equality for gay people. The Supreme Court took this case on after the bans on gay marriage that were upheld in the lower courts of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee were struck down in other states' appellate courts.

These states are going up against 12 couples and two widowers, according to this story that aired on National Public Radio (NPR). Given how nuanced of an institution marriage can be, especially for gays, it comes as no shock that there is more than one question. In fact, there are two. The first is about whether or not states have the right to ban gay marriage at all, and the second is concerned with whether states that ban gay marriage must recognize marriage must recognize same-sex marriages that occurred in a state that permits it. The debate is messy, to repeat myself, nuanced, exceedingly tenuous and highly emotional for many parties involved.

I think it would be fairly obvious where I come out with regards to my opinion. I support gay marriage. I support gay marriage along with significantly more than half of the nation's populous. At that point, you might ask yourself why, if the approval ratings for gay marriage are that high – more than doubled since 1996, the year the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was passed – we are still debating this? Why is this even a question? Don't we live in a democracy, where the opinion of the majority rules? Well, think again.

One might detect a tinge of bitterness in my tone. My apologies. What I am more than bitter is saddened. I'm saddened by the seeming inability of those who oppose gay marriage and/or those who wish to discriminate against gays in other ways to learn from history. The reality is that progress marches on. It is the people that enter the courts with personal fear, hatred, or a vendetta against the gays that try and attach rational arguments to discriminating against a certain segment of the population that I actually feel most sorry for. Have you not understood that the last thing we need in this nation right now is discrimination? Can you not fathom that two people can love each other regardless of sex, and that they deserve the same protections that every other couple does that lives in this great nation's many states? Right now, this case brings to the surface far more questions than it does hypothesized answers in my mind.

At this point, I pause to ask myself just how this has to do with secrets. I'll say this. It doesn't really. As a matter of fact, this is a very publicly divisive issue. For example, while we currently permit gay marriage to occur in 36 of our 50 states, for example, many of the states that are holding out legalize discrimination in other forms against gay people. We are at wildly different ends of the spectrum as a union of 50 smaller entities. With regards to secrets, though, what is to be said for the thousands upon thousands of men and women who have kept secret a part of themselves for the last, I don't know, forever? Personally, I am not very confident in a decision by the supreme court that will prohibit states' gay marriage bans. In my opinion, the unwanted decision would be an invalidation of countless men and women, especially those fighting for this right as part of larger movement, who have chosen to both keep and share their secrets with a world that doesn't understand them and often doesn't accept them. So, in my mind, the decision this court makes has a great deal to do with secrets. Honoring secrets. Secrets shared and secrets hidden.

I would like to end this with the prophetic words of Virginia Senator Chuck Robb, who argued against DOMA before the senate. As a representative of a conservative state, this raised some eyebrows. He knew this speech would cost him re-election, but he knew he could not sit on his hands and let DOMA go uncriticized in the ways he imagined it needed to be critiqued. I believe it is time for our Supreme Court justices to do a similar thing with the casting of their votes that Robb did with the opportunity he had to speak out. Here is what I think is the most salient excerpt of his speech:

"What we do know is that time has been the enemy of discrimination. It has allowed our views on race, gender, and religion to evolve dramatically and inevitably in the American tradition of progress and inclusion. We're not there yet, Madam President [of the Senate]. In matters of race, gender, and religion, we've passed the laws, implemented the court decisions, signed the executive orders. And everyday, we work to battle the underlying prejudice that no law or judicial remedy or executive action could completely erase. But we've made the greatest strides forward when individuals faced with their moment in history were not afraid to act, and time has allowed us to see more clearly that the humanity that minds us rather than the religious, gender, racial differences that distinguish us. But I fear, Madam President, that if we don't stand here against this bill, we will stand on the wrong side of history, not unlike the Supreme Court justices who upheld the separate-but-equal doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson...Most of us are uncomfortable discussing, in public, the intimacies of life. And most of us are equally uncomfortable with those who flaunt their interests, whether they be gay or straight. But in the end, we cannot allow our discomfort to be used to justify discrimination. We are not entitled to that indulgence. We cannot afford it."

On Oil, the Media, and Consciousness

It wasn’t more than a couple of weeks ago that millions of student and their families flocked to some pretty incredible destinations. For some, that consisted of spending time skiing. For others, that was a beach vacation that took place near some of the bluest waters in the world. I’ll say that I was in the latter camp. 

I was extremely fortunate to have gone to Cancun, Mexico with my mother. And when we began our descent through the wispy layer of clouds, I realized what people truly came to this place and others like it for. This is what I saw!

I was totally taken by that bird’s eye view (right). Not only were the colors amazing, but what struck me most was my ability to see the reflections of the few clouds in the sky on the ocean floor. Oh, how clear it was! I was dumbfounded once again when I walked into our hotel room to find the view you see (below on the left). Tiny waves of crystal clear blue Gulf water fighting with white sand for the hearts of beachgoers brought a twinkle to my eye and a smile to my face. 

Thinking about brief experiences like the ones I mentioned and photographed in the context of Earth Day today, I begin to wonder about the things that are really endangering beautiful moments, places, creatures, and the places where people live. After experiencing what the beautiful Gulf of Mexico has to offer, why not focus for a quick bit on one of the most destructive events that happened within it – the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

According to this list of the biggest oil spills in history (by volume), the Deepwater Horizon disaster comes in at number two (however, it is the biggest accidental spill in history) with over 210 million gallons of oil spilt. How could this ever have happened, and what was BP thinking by putting the environment at such great risk by engaging in dangerous offshore drilling practices? I remember asking myself the exact same questions almost 4 years ago to the day. I sought out some answers, but here I am with an even deeper curiosity because the media at the time never really answered them. It never told me how things really happened or answered my question about what we could do to not let something similar happen going forward. The lack of clear information I had four years ago made me honestly feel like BP and the media were keeping secrets from all of us.

 Shortly after my return from Mexico, we watched a documentary-esque TV show called VICE in my journalism class. In this episode, the correspondents were tracking oil theft and illegal oil production that was occurring in the Niger River Delta. The illegal production plants were right on the water. One local resident said that the plant was so dangerous that it could practically explode at any second. At that point, the camera man pointed his camera down into the murky muck the investigating party had been wading through. If the plant were to explode, the entire swampy ecosystem would have been ablaze as well given the volumes of oil in it. All I can say is that there was limited to no possibility of any life being able to survive in such a poisoned environment. I know the same was true for many hundreds of miles of coastline following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. 

Having read many items now about how we talk about nature in our everyday lives, I think it is interesting to examine how the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and other catastrophic spills play into the debates that occur about man’s relationship with nature. Thinking eco-critically, there is no doubt that many people blamed BP for the incident. Rightly so. However, this only further pitted big business and economic productivity (that’s why we consume oil, right?) against environmental health. What could have been done was, instead of leaping straight to the catastrophe, news sources could have done a far better job of actually explaining what happened and then reporting on the measures that BP and other off-shore drilling companies were taking to ensure that this never happened again. The suspicion I had four years ago that somebody was guarding information couldn't have been that far off. But that seems moot in comparison to the notion that that also means information about how to prevent future incidents was being and may still be withheld. Some may say too little too late, but the reality is we have never experienced “too late” in a dramatic way when it comes to the environment. “Too late” won’t occur for a long time, truth be told. But the media is “too late” almost always in covering events in a way that can actually make a positive contribution to society instead of merely assigning blame and creating fear. 

Good Will Hunting–movie review

In a day and age when films often fail to please – often lacking originality and the ability to actually make viewers feel something substantive – I was pleasantly surprised to take a trip back to 1997. It's notable for two reasons. First, it's my birth year. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly depending on your perspective, it was the release year for director Gus Van Sant's iconic film, Good Will Hunting, featuring a budding Matt Damon and a still-rising Robin Williams. 

While I don't intend to spoil the film for any of this blog's viewers, I will give a brief (mostly) exposition to help you all contextualize some of the analysis I do of this transformative movie. Will Hunt, a 20 year old youth who has spent his entire life in and out of foster care on the poor south side of Boston, commutes to M.I.T. every morning to wash floors until long after students and professors exit the lecture halls. One such professor is Gerry Lambaugh, a Fields Medal winner, who is considered a mathematical genius. He challenges his Advanced Theories class to proving one of the most complex theorems in the field, which Lambaugh and his colleagues took years to devise. While washing floors at night, careful that nobody has eyes on him, Will takes chalk to the board outside the lecture hall on which the proof is to be done. He completes it within minutes on a break from serpentines with his mop. And correctly. When a student of Lambaugh's notifies him the next day that the theorem has been proved, Lambaugh is stunned and eager to find the mysterious mathematician, who he believes is in his class.

A short while later in the movie, Lambaugh puts up another, far more challenging theorem to be procved. Him and his assistant see Will writing on the board and think he is vandalizing the Institute's property, but soon discover that Will is an enormously talented individual. It was good that they did because this winds up being Will's ticket out of jail after he gets into a bloody brawl with a rival posse of him and his buddies. He is only let out of jail on a conditional basis, however. In addition to doing math with Professor Lambaugh, who, it becomes apparent, is more interested in Will's gifts than actually helping him out of his current and rather dire living situation, Will also has to do therapy. As a hard-headed, hard-bodied, self-proclaimed womanizing badass, Will is very reluctant to the idea of this, as one might imagine. After getting underneath the skin and into the minds of multiple shrinks, Lambaugh reaches out to his college roommate, Sean (played by Robin Williams) – a professor at a community college slightly more than slightly less prestigious than M.I.T. – in a last-ditch effort to keep will from going back to prison and thus help himself make a great deal of money. In their first meeting, it seems as if Will is going to break Sean like every other therapist he'd seen prior, insulting Sean, his dead wife, and all of his life's accomplishments. By some miracle, Sean agrees to see Will for another session, and the rest of the movie follows the importance of the presence of their two opposite personalities in each other's lives. 

Judging by the fact that it's unlikely my brief summary did any of the movie justice, you might get the sense that this is the cookie-cutter wise-presence-in-a-troubled-young-boy's-life kind of film. It is that...minus the cookie-cutter portion. It is too often that the oh-so-influential wise man in these kinds of movies is actually too wise, and his ability to learn from his student, for lack of a better term, detracts from the use of the archetypal character. 

To help Will understand that the finest thing in life is love and that the hate and uncertainties about the world Will harbors are actually detrimental, Sean opens up about his own past professional and personal life. As the two grow closer and Will asks questions about Sean's personal life in particular, the therapy becomes mutual, helping Sean process years of agonizing baggage. I was genuinely surprised by this kind of depiction of therapy in mainstream culture being such a positive one (especially for this representation approaching 20 years of age). Usually therapeutic experiences are belittled, but what this got right was the give-and-take of secrets between patient and doctor that makes for most effective therapy.

It was fascinating to look at secrets as offensive and defensive mechanisms. It was certainly never going to be a deeply wounded Will that was going to be the first to volunteer a part of himself the world doesn't already see. Therefore, it had to be Sean that put a part of himself on the table. That being said, he uses his own secrets to bridge the disconnect that exists with Will at the beginning of their meetings. On the other hand, Will's strongest defense mechanism is his lack of willingness to open up. This goes to a show that we all use secrets, which fall under the larger umbrella of story, to our advantage and to get what we want, whether we realize it or not. 

Among the most telling scenes of the movie is in one of their last sessions when Sean cautiously steps closer to Will, repeatedly whispering the phrase: "it is not your fault". This winds up in an embrace between the two men that I as a viewer felt, and the shoulder-shaking sobs that come from Will as his tough-guy facade finally dissipates and we understand Will on a level we never would have imagined we would, even in moments just prior to this scene. Here it is on your left.

Even though we use secrets to get what we want, Will never intended to become this close to anybody, nevertheless some shrink whose life he tears to shreds in their first meeting. But the difference between somebody like Sean and another like Gerry is that the genuine concern Sean has for Will's well-being instead of the shallow interest in his intellectual gifts that Gerry maintains throughout the movie create the unintended consequence of Will finding himself attached to Sean. This testifies not only to the unintended results that often come from keeping/sharing secrets, but it also goes to show that the ways in which one person handles another's secrets can either make or break a relationship. In Sean and Will's case, it certainly made it.