Kim Davis and Issuing Marriage Licenses

A few thoughts about Kim Davis:

1. She's being called a martyr by some, but I'm not so sure she is.  Why?  Well, she's obviously enjoying herself here, proud of her self-righteousness and her popularity.  I guarantee you that the second nobody cares about her situation anymore, she'll say okay and get out of there.

And, oh yeah--Martyrs don't typically enjoy their punishment as much as she clearly is.  Getting crucified, stoned to death, or hanged upside-down on a cross are not enjoyable experiences.

2. This is not about her religious beliefs.  It's about her.  In a narcissistic way.

3. And it's about her power.  Her mother issued marriage licenses for 37 years, and she was her deputy clerk for 27 of those years.  She's been issuing licenses herself for who knows how long, and her son has been her deputy clerk for years.  I'll bet she's thinking, Nobody...Nobody, not even a federal judge, can tell me who I have to marry.  In this way, it's not at all about religion.  It's about power.

4. Speaking of power, it's also about the power of judges--in the Supreme Court, and in other courts who have ruled on this--who don't like it when someone stands in front of them and tells them she is not going to follow their law.  No Supreme Court, or Superior Court, or any other type of judge will appreciate this.

5. Anyone notice that she looks like Carrie White's mother, minus the blonde hair?  Look at her eyes.

6. Someone find me the New Testament passage where Jesus says that marriage is only between a man and a woman.  What was Jesus's stance on this?  I don't know.  I guarantee you, Kim Davis doesn't, either.  Apparently, she's blipped on the passage where He says to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  After all, she has been married four times.  And what about those who are without sin casting the first stone?

7. Speaking of that, I like how her husband has been taking her side on this from the comfort of his own home.  He's behind her, all right--way behind her.

8. It's very disconcerting to see almost every Republican candidate for President publicly siding with her on this.  I didn't expect them to suddenly be for the gay community, but I'm surprised they are all so openly and blissfully unaware of the democratic dictum of Separation of Church and State.

9. I would not vote for anyone who so clearly did not understand the importance of separating Church and State.  Our Founding Fathers--who were very, very religious men--still put democracy over their religion.  They did this for a reason: Because when Religion rules the State, history has shown us that we'd have something really, really bad.  Look at many news stories today in some parts of the world.

10. Her lawyer is clearly not giving her quality legal advice, and may be purposely throwing fuel on the fire, which lawyers are not supposed to do.  His law firm is a Christian firm, and only has Christian clients with Christian issues.  He's clearly espousing his own agenda here, and not giving his client good legal advice.  This is the man who compared this woman's jail stay to that of Martin Luther King's.

11. Some politicians, judges and lawyers are saying that she should be excluded from issuing these licenses because of her religious beliefs.  They are trying to pass legislation that would exempt someone from doing any part of their job that they say violates their religious beliefs.

This is, of course, impossible, and ridiculous, for many reasons.

a) You can't decide what part of a job you will do and won't do.  In this case, her public is her employer, and she therefore has to follow the law that governs her public.  As one of the men seeking a license said, he was a taxpayer who was paying her to oppress him.  That is obviously a violation of his    civil rights, and is obviously unconstitutional.

b) Can I say that every single aspect of my job violates my religious beliefs, and therefore I will not do them?  Can I say that the parts I mostly don't like violates my religious beliefs? Cuz if so, I'm doin' it.  And still getting my paycheck.

c) Where is the line for the term religious beliefs?  Can Creationists flat-out refuse to teach evolution at all, not even mentioning it as a theory?  What would atheists say?  How about people who don't want to work with--or serve--divorced people?

12. Does the phrase, "...the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" mean anything to anyone?  I mean, really, can anyone tell people that they can't get married?

13. Marriage comes with some good tax breaks, insurance benefits, and ability to inherit money and land from a loved one.  It is not constitutional to prohibit marriage to someone for this reason alone.

14. Beware of someone whose life revolves around one person or thing.  Her religion is not that one thing.  Her beliefs are.  It's important to understand this distinction.  Because of this, her happiness predominates, to the point that she does not consider the happiness of others relevant.

Like I said, Narcissism.

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft was one weird dude.  After having read a lot about him (and after having bought a collection of his works), it seems that "weird" doesn't seem to be quite enough.  And that's me saying this.  He seems to have been a victim of a sort of social anxiety disorder, except from among his letters it seems that he also had a "nervous disposition" while alone, or while living with his mother and aunts.  His mother's mental and emotional spiral wouldn't have helped, and she ended up in Butler, the same asylum his father died in--though his father undoubtedly had syphilis, while he and his mother were simply...nervous.  (Mary Karr's mother was apparently the same, and the word "nervous" was used to mean someone who was barely functionally insane.)

Lovecraft married and moved to NYC, but the marriage didn't last long, and his wife complained that he was more comfortable communicating with her through letters.  He moved back to RI; she moved to Cleveland and later to CA after she re-married.  He then proceeded to write maybe more letters than anyone else, ever.  One scholar places the number of letters at over 200,000; one wonders how much more fiction he could have written.  Yet, he was more comfortable writing letters, and getting comfortable seemed to be his life's work.  His letters, perhaps more than his writing, may prove to be his most lasting legacy.

His fame doesn't rest upon that much fiction, and much of that fiction is just plain bad.  Yet the good is very good, of its type.  Storyline and plot were not important.  More than Poe, Lovecraft was interested in atmosphere and feeling, and he got those across very well, as well as, or better than, even Poe.  Reading Lovecraft is to feel dread, even if you don't know what you're feeling dread about, exactly.  Reading his best is like having a nightmare you don't understand, but that which makes you fear and dread.

His fiction and letters had a major similarity: fear of others, or, more exactly, Others.  His most ardent fans are forced to admit his rampant racism; his racism is flat-out fear.  Scholars point to his NYC days, in which he was jobless.  He felt immigrants took job opportunities from him.  Probably it was his demeanor and nervousness.  Would you hire this guy?  Upon returning to RI, he quickly decided that he would work from home, writing, ghostwriting, editing and corresponding.  He did not ever become otherwise employed.  Due to his mother and aunts' spoiling of him, he perhaps never had to.  (To be a fly on that wall...)

When he knew that death was close by (colon cancer), he appointed a teenage fan from Florida to be his literary executor, which one scholar said was like hiring you or I to lead an army platoon into battle.  This kid promptly gave over most of the works to August Derleth, Lovecraft's aunts, and a university, thereby causing one of the most confusing copyright wrangles in the history of literature.  Who owns the rights?  The writing from the 20s, nobody, as they are now in the public domain.  Perhaps everything now is.  Or the aunts, or Derleth, got cheated.  It is further now established that the Cthulu Mythos is more Derleth than Lovecraft, which makes sense to me, as Lovecraft often stated that he was after atmosphere and feeling, plot be damned, and the Mythos stories clearly show a consistent and connected sort of plotline, in a Good vs. Evil sort of way.  Lovecraft, an avowed atheist and overall nihilist (and elitist), probably did not believe in a good vs. evil distinction.

His stories, like his life, defy simple explanation, besides to say that they are an exercise in supreme oddity.