Marriage Is Shapeless

We are waiting to find out which set of five Justices on the Supreme Court will have their way on what "marriage" should mean. But words that mean whatever we want them to mean end up not meaning anything after a while.

When I listened to the arguments of the pro-gay-marriage side, I got the impression that one of their main arguments was: A couple should be able to get a marriage license when their level of commitment to each other is high enough. After all, the divorce rate shows that society has already decided that a couple can get a divorce when their level of commitment to each other gets low enough.

That's a subjective definition of marriage because it's based only on what two people say about their feelings.

One of the main arguments of the more traditional side is: The definition of marriage was given to us as being between a man and a woman.

That definition actually leaves something out, though. The definition of marriage the human race started out with was: marriage is between one man and one woman for life.

It hurts me to say that because about half my friends — my good friends, too — are divorced.

For a long time we could work around the "for life" part by understanding it to mean that marriage is between a man and a woman until one of them starts acting like the other one is dead or starts playing dead themselves. (I'm speaking broadly. That's always been a messy problem.)

My point is that defining marriage subjectively doesn't work very well because I don't think it ever was the case that most people who had enough commitment to get married had enough commitment to stay married. It used to be that once a couple got married, many didn't stay married because they felt so wonderfully committed; rather, they stayed together for the kids' sake, or for the sake of economics, or they were afraid of what people would think of them (a.k.a. societal pressure), or just out of habit. Marriage had a sort of predefined "shape," and couples conformed.

But the time came when society no longer exerted that pressure. Society no longer expected two people who vowed "till death do us part" to mean that. Society decided marriage was no longer an institution that started with vows before a god and supported by the community, but marriage was just a contract to be kept as long as reasonably possible. (And I gather that a lot of my now-divorced friends kept trying to save their marriages way past the "reasonably possible" line. Let's all remember that whatever we think about whether and how "being married" is a right, it's not a right we can ever exercise on our own.)

So now, in mainstream American society, I wonder if "marriage" is meaningless because it's only subjective. I do think it's gotten very — "shapeless" might be a good word — on a level that's deeper than what the roles of the husband and the wife are. I mean it's shapeless in a way that resembles how all organisms that have no skeleton to hold them up are just blobs.

I'm single. I really don't want this to end here, with cynicism. I don't want to deny the good that several married couples have brought to my life because they were married, starting with my parents, who celebrate their 44th anniversary this month.

So I will look for some other ending to this story.

What if the Border Patrol Stops You (in 2015)

On April 1, the Texas Standard (the radio show) had a five-minute segment on Customs and Border Patrol stops. (If you want to listen just to that part, it starts about 7 minutes into the show.) The Border Patrol has been setting up checkpoints as far as 100 miles north of the southern border of the United States. Because they have been doing that so far north, a lot of people have been affected.

The Texas Standard wanted to find out what the Border Patrol is authorized to do and what people's rights are. They interviewed a lawyer who works with the Texas branch of the ACLU to find out. She (the lawyer) said:

• The Border Patrol can legally stop someone for no particular reason (they don't need to have a probable cause).
• The Border Patrol can ask questions to find out whether a person is authorized to be in the United States.

A person doesn't have to answer questions that go beyond that and can remain silent. Some people who have remained silent have been delayed or arrested.

The lawyer recommended that people cooperate with the Border Patrol and, if they believe their rights are violated, enter a complaint later.

Since this was only a five-minute segment, I felt that it left a lot of questions unanswered, but at least it explained that much about how the U.S. Government works.

Two Takes on Prosecuting the Drug War

These two blog posts are takes on the same news story:

1. The Rewards of Substantial Assistance: Pedro and Margarito Flores were awarded a sentence reduction from life to 14 years because they became valuable informers against the Mexican drug cartels.

2. Did feds just win the drug war?: kingpin twin drug dealers get kingly sentencing break thanks to cooperation

The first is a post I wrote for my job at a law firm. Naturally enough, then, it presents the story from a defense lawyer's point of view in order to help those who find themselves defendants now.

The second post brings up more systemic questions, however: Is this approach an effective way of prosecuting the drug war? Is there a better way to reduce the flow of drugs from Mexico into the USA?