It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of
a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into
privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing
algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the
planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times. Coincidences are funny. Why, just yesterday morning I was remembering Mr. Bush's great edict from his July press conference: "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and I believe we ought to codify that one way or the other and we have lawyers looking at the best way to do that." And then a few minutes later I found this story about an Iowa judge's divorce decree for two women. Goodness, if he's giving them a divorce, he must be saying they were married.The article goes on: "We believe the judge exceeded his authority," said Chuck Hurley, president of the Iowa Family Policy Center, a family advocacy group. Hurley and other conservatives fear the judge's decree, which refers to the union as a marriage, could be a step toward legitimizing same-sex unions, which are not permitted under an Iowa law passed in 1997. Those Iowans just have to be first for everything, don't they? Return to the Irregular Times Main Page
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