“We do not expect virtuosity as the outward form of soul-making, nor do we associate generosity and humanity with such sophistication of means, such polished intelligence. Like all genuinely new work, Spencer Reece’s compels a reevaluation of the possible.” – from the foreword to Spencer Reece’s new book of poetry.
THE NEW JIM CROW: Jonathan Rauch evaluates Virginia’s new law, forbidding same-sex couples from even setting up their own private contracts to protet their relationships:
Before Thomas Jefferson substituted the timeless phrase “pursuit of happiness,” the founding fathers held that mankind’s unalienable entitlements were to life, liberty and property. By “property” they meant not just material possessions but what we call autonomy. “Every man has a property in his own person,” John Locke said.
It is by entering into contracts that we bind ourselves to each other. Without the right of contract, participation in economic and social life is impossible; thus is that right enshrined in Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution. Slaves could not enter into contracts because they were the property of others rather than themselves; nor could children, who were wards of their parents. To be barred from contract, the founders understood, is to lose ownership of oneself.
To abridge the right of contract for same-sex partners, then, is to deny not just gay coupledom, in the law’s eyes, but gay personhood. It disenfranchises gay people as individuals. It makes us nonpersons, subcitizens. By stripping us of our bonds to each other, it strips us even of ownership of ourselves.
Americans have a name for the use of law in this fashion, and that name is Jim Crow.
Yet the social right finds nothing wrong with this. And no anti-gay marriage conservative has condemned it.
THE CHIMERA OF REALISM: A bracing attack on the post-neo-conservative consensus.
The Dish 