Another state has fallen to a court decision to legitimate homosexual unions as "marriages". This is not surprising. What is surprising is that the fourth state to officially endorse the terminology of "marriage" being applied to homosexual unions is my home state of Iowa. Iowa hardly has the liberal reputation of California, yet there it is. The decision is based upon a simple analysis by the state supreme court that there is no compelling reason to limit marriage licensing by the state to one man and one woman. They examined several arguments for the importance of heterosexual marriage and found them insufficient.

I find this development fascinating, as once again, a state statute is turned over for what amounts to little more than judicial fiat. As in the case of California, "marriage" is held to be a vacuous term with no intrinsic meaning. The Iowa ruling appears to be based less upon the "fundamental right to marry" that was cited in California and more upon a strictly utilitarian assessment of "gay marriage" that concluded that there's nothing harmful about it and no compelling benefit in restricting marriage to heterosexual couples.

The Iowa Supreme Court considered several arguments for guarding marriage to be only for heterosexual couples.

1. Promotion of Optimal Environment to Raise Children The Court's counter-argument here is that many heterosexual couples do not provide an optimal environment to raise children. The Court also notes that not all homosexual couples would raise children, so it is overly exclusive to bar them from "marrying" on this ground.
2. Promotion of Procreation The Court's counter-argument here is that letting homosexual couples "marry" does not have any detrimental effect on the procreation of homosexual married couples.
3. Promoting Stability in Opposite-Sex Relationships The Court's counter-argument here is, like the previous one, that letting homosexual couples "marry" does not have any negative effect on heterosexual married couples.

There were a few other arguments considered, but I think that these were the three strongest. Where I think the Court first went wrong was in implicitly denying that marriage has any intrinsic definition or value. In my mind the issue isn't really about gay marriage, per se. Yes, homosexual behavior is an abomination to the Lord, unhealthy for society, etc., etc. I believe that, but I'm not going to fight for society to uphold that standard; I think we're past that now. The problem is that even the widely and deeply held belief that marriage means something is being forcibly deinstitutionalized through the courts. When marriage means nothing, then of course gay people can "marry". In fact, there's no reason why I couldn't marry two women—or even marry my canary (to borrow a line from Greg Koukl)!

Maybe gay marriage per se doesn't have a negative effect on the utilitarian benefits of marriage, but deinstitutionalizing marriage sure might. And the way the courts are moving, it looks like we are going to find out.

It seems that our elected officials in Washington are all up in arms about what they consider extravagant bonuses that A.I.G. decided to give to some of their employees after receiving huge sums of bailout money from the government. The furor seems to be coming from both Democrats and Republicans, yet I think that this whole firestorm is, in short, ridiculous.

If I hire a company to provide some service for me, the transaction is quite simple: I pay them the agreed amount, and they perform the service agreed upon. Sometimes a simple verbal agreement may be sufficient, but for complex transactions, a contract may be required to be sure that all parties are clear on exactly what the terms are. At the company I work at, we use specification and contracts for practically all the work that we hire others to do or that we are hired to do. If we are hired to design a substation, our client will provide us a specification of exactly what they want. If something isn't specified, then we are free to do what we want as long as we meet our due diligence to provide a product that is safe and meets the client's needs.

In the massive bailout of A.I.G. and other companies, the government was apparently handing out money without any clear specification of what those companies were to do with it. Was there no clear service that was to be provided? And if the money was being provided with no expectation of anything in return, is the company not free to do with it whatever they think best, including giving bonuses to their employees?

I see three possibilities:

1. A.I.G. has not met the terms of their bailout monies. In this case, the government can pursue corrective action so they receive the services expected.
2. A.I.G. has met the terms of their bailout monies, but the result is not what the government expected. In this case, the fault lies with the government for agreeing to a contract that did not adequately express their intentions and expectations. Everyone knew the bailout was being rushed, and oversights like this are the result of being hurried. There's an engineering adage that says, "Quality, Speed, Cost: Pick any two". (My sense is that in this case all we will actually have gotten is speedy action. It will be exceedingly costly and all screwed up.)
3. A.I.G. has met the terms of their bailout monies, and the government is getting what they wanted and expected. In this case, everyone needs to simmer down and let A.I.G. do what they think is best for their company. If anyone should be punished for this debacle, it is our elected representatives, not the A.I.G. employees who did nothing wrong with respect to this whole situation.

Frankly I think the bailouts will turn out to have been a bad idea, and from what I've seen in the news, more and more companies are realizing that their objectives and those of the government don't match up—to such a degree that they would rather not receive bailout money than submit to all the conditions that the government is putting on the funds.

The following graphic demonstrates how severe the flood of bailout money into the economy has been:

With that much new cash in the system, how can massive inflation not eventually result? (HT: Glenn Beck)

My friends, we certainly live in interesting times!

To record some of our memories from our honeymoon last week and to let some of our friends and family share in the experience, Holly and I wrote up some of what we did and saw. If you missed Part 1 or Part 2, follow the links to go back and catch up. All our photos from the honeymoon that were fit to publish are now posted, and photos from the wedding itself are quickly hitting the gallery.

Paul: On Wednesday, we started the day with a walk over to the west side of Stanley Park along the sea wall. At first the idea was to just find a nice place to sit and watch people, but I wanted to see the big 100' diameter tree that I had heard was in the park somewhere. There was a location called "Hollow Tree" on the map, so we thought maybe that was it and headed up that direction. After a somewhat lengthy walk to arrive there, we found it to be less than we expected.

Holly: BIG Disappointment Number One: Hollow Tree!

Paul: Apparently it was a big tourist attraction seventy years ago, but dead trees just don't last like they used to.

We hoped to catch a free bus back to the park entrance, but we never saw one as we walked all the way back down. Poor Holly's feet were killing her from so much walking the previous days, but as it would turn out, Wednesday would be our biggest walking day yet. Once we got out of the park, we ate some lunch and then caught a bus toward the Space Center and Planetarium.

Holly: BIG Disappointment Number Two: Planetarium!

Paul: The space center started off well with a cool physics demonstration in the Rocket Lab. There was a blowtorch and an explosion and an air gun that launched balls to demonstrate Newton's three laws. Unfortunately, this was the only science involved in any of the space center and plantetarium. The planetarium didn't really show us any stars, just a lame movie about a myth that one of the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest had about some lady being taken up into the sky to be the wife of the Sun God, Gong. The main idea of the movie seemed to be that cities were blocking the view of the night sky and thus making it difficult to recognize Mother Earth and Father Sky. Something like that.

Holly: After the stupid film, we made our way through the museum, which aside from a really cool Apollo-era space suit, consisted of kids games and aliens, mostly on computer displays with joysticks. And then the Mars Mission Simulator.... It was better than the planetarium but still totally unrealistic.

Paul: It was one of those little theaters like they have in malls where it shakes you around as the story goes so you feel like you're really there.

Holly: We flew in a spacecraft to the corona of the sun to charge some ball-looking-thing with gamma rays so we could then fly it to Mars City to start the new-fangled nuclear generator and save the city. All in ten minutes.

Paul: If escape velocity from the earth's gravitational field is 11,200 m/s, I wonder what the escape velocity is from the sun when you are in the corona? I don't think they mentioned that in the Rocket Lab. It must be pretty fast, because we got from the Sun to Mars in about ten or fifteen seconds.

From there, we walked down to Granville Island.

Holly: On the way, we passed by dealerships for Lamborghini, Aston-Martin, Bentley, Jaguar, Lexus, so we know where you should buy your cars.

Paul: Granville Island was very nice for the postmodern consumer. Everything there was free-trade, organic, local suppliers, etc.

Holly: I had the best hot chocolate I have ever had in my life at Pedro's Organic Coffee Bar. No joke! It was seriously the best.

Paul: There was a pretty good-sized market with fresh produce and meat for all types of ethnic foods. We also saw a nice rainbow ferry taking people from one side of the water to the other, from one rainbow dock to another. A number of art shops and live entertainment venues rounded out the scene.

As it was starting to get dark and "under the bridge" didn't seem like the best place to be alone after dark, we made our way toward Pacific Theatre, where we had tickets to see Holy Mo that evening. We walked several blocks up the street, stopping for a wrap and smoothie for a light dinner.

Holly: Walking into the Pacific Theatre, we were offered free coffee to complete a survey. We weren¦t much help in the survey since we hadn't been there before. The venue wasn't quite what we expected; it was in the basement of an Anglican church, and when we went in to take our seats, we saw that it was much, much smaller than we had anticipated. The stage was simply the middle part of the room, an area roughly 15' by 20' set off with props. I was skeptical as the play started, but it turned out to be the funniest play I think I've ever seen. I laughed so hard I cried, which doesn't happen very often for me.

Paul: The play was in two acts. The first act retells the story of Moses and the Exodus of Israel from Egypt. The second act tells some of the story of David. The twist is that the story is told by a trio of clowns. With no real set or costumes or even much dialog, the acting of the three actresses really carries the show. It was very engaging and brought the story to life. All the names were shortened to child-like (or clown-like) form. Moses=Mo, Pharaoh=Rambo, Yahweh=Yam/Yama, David=Davie, Philistines=Queen Phylis and the Stiners.

Holly: Redeeming Point Number One: Holy Mo!

Paul: By the end of the show, we were both quite tired, but we caught our buses back to the hotel and hit the sack. According to our best estimates from routes in Google Maps, we walked about 9 or 10 miles that day. Whew!

To be continued....