The Right to Marry carries the day in Vermont!
Posted by Joel Friedlander | 15 Comments
Today, as the New York Times points out in “Vermont Legislature Makes Same Sex Marriage Legal, (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/us/08vermont.html?_r=1&ref=global-home), the number of States where anyone can enjoy Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness increased by one, when Vermont joined Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa, as states which allow everyone to marry the person that they love. Kudos to the Vermont State Legislature, which overrode their governors veto to become the first State in which the legislature elected by the people voted to allow the freedom to marry to everyone. New Hampshire will vote on this issue as early as next week. Lets hope that this week really gets the ball rolling. Perhaps this will wake up the New York State Legislature, the governing body in a state where the majority of people overwhelmingly support the liberty of all people to marry the person of their choosing.
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15 Responses to “The Right to Marry carries the day in Vermont!”
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April 8th, 2009 @
Great news…really. I think if one loves TWO people equally, and could not possibly decided which they would rather spend their life with bound in marriage, then they should be allowed to marry both people.
Think of those who are bi-sexual. Can we, as a society, expect them to be married to a person of only one sex? How could we, since they are attracted to members of both sexes? They should then be allowed to have at least two spouses.
This would also take care of the health care issue. Multiple marriages means multiple dependants.
I would expect Utah to be the first state to allow for plural marriages. The Mormons in that state were forced to give up the practice as a condition of their 1896 statehood. Utah should simultaneously sue the federal government for more than 100 years of religious oppression.
And really, who are we to say that love is bound by speciation? What if a man loves a sheep more than any other living creature on this Earth? Why would that man not be able to legally wed said sheep? This is afterall, that man’s pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness. How could we deny him that right? Aren’t our rights to the pursuit of happiness absolute?
April 8th, 2009 @
In Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878) the U.S. Supreme Court held that “religious practices that impair the public interest do not fall under the First Amendment…” That decision, still good law today, ended multiple marriages in the United States. Arguing that allowing Gay and Lesbian Marriage would require allowing multiple marriages is a red herring. They haven’t been allowed since 1878 and will not be allowed now. The argument about marrying animals is equally spurious since under no circumstances would the animal have the requisite capacity to consent to the marriage.
April 8th, 2009 @
Yeah, but laws get overturned on the grounds they violate Constitutional rights to privacy. Bowers vs. Hardwick (1986) upheld laws against one man stuffing another man in the pooper. But thanks to the court, in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) we are now free to sodomize whoever we want.
I’m telling ya, the gay marriage thing ain’t all sunshine and roses for everyone. The “free to do as we please crowd” is going to us this to make a whole mess of things in the marriage world. What’s the difference between allowing man-on-man marriage action and man-on-woman-on-woman marriage-e-trios? Only the number of participants involved. So take the religious context out of it (because the Mormons are fucking crackers anyway), and insert “pursuit of happiness” and you run into a slope as slippery as the lube shops in Vermont.
Marriage has been fundamentally altered in this nation and for the worse. We’ve lost the lodestone by which we orient our moral compass.
And yeah, the man-sheep love thing is a straw man. But as you say based only on consent. What are you going to do when they stick some of Obama’s stem cells into Dolly the sheep’s DNA to produce a sheep with really good oratory skills? Think that is science fiction mumbo-jumbo? Hardly, scientist are already growing human organs into animals. What’s to stop someone from giving it a human brain? I’d say only the lack of an executive order finding funding for such a project.
April 8th, 2009 @
The Vermont case is unique because it was passed by a legislature elected by the people.
But what about the Iowa decision, which was an activist court strinking down a law, written by a legislature elected by the people? What recourse do the people of Iowa have against judges with an agenda?
April 9th, 2009 @
The other side has trotted out the typical exclusionary arguments that have been used again and again to discriminate against and deny people the right to marry. He may be under the false impression he’s the first one to think of these arguments.
Can’t homophobes and deniers of individual freedom and discriminators ever come up with new arguments?
No, because in fact they were exactly the same discriminating arguments brought out by racists to argue against inter-racial marriage. “What’s next? Marrying multiple partners? Marrying animals?”
Allowing gay marriage isn’t about allowing people to do whatever they want. It’s about allowing everyone into the same club. Making the arguments you make is basically like equating homosexuals love with animal love. It’s a way of debasing and dehumanizing gays and lesbians and quite frankly it’s disgusting.
Sorry, I won’t be as polite as Joel.
I still haven’t seen anyone make a convincing argument as to how allowing two men to marry each other affects in any way whatsoever the already existing marriages of men and women to each other.
Gay marriage is one person marrying another person. It has nothing to do with multiple partners or animal love or furniture love or whatever other homophobic arguments you try to pull out in the next round.
I suppose next will come the argument about how if you can’t have children you shouldn’t be allowed to marry. That’s always the next most popular. It’s what the National Review tries to argue. By that argument, any infertile couple should also be denied the right to marry.
If you want to deny marriage rights because of religious dogma that’s fine. No religious institution should be required to marry same-sex couples. But this issue is not only about God, it’s about benefits, visitation rights, next of kin, inheritance, taxes, finance. But beyond all that it’s really about humanity. Homosexuals are human beings that same as any heterosexual and you’re simply denying them admittance to a contract that any other person can legally enter into.
Keep your reprehensible opinions in the religious institutions, they’ve got a long and proud history of acting that way. But keep that shit out of my government.
April 9th, 2009 @
Sorry there is no hate of gays here. (Discriminators? Homophobes? You got all of that from the above? Wow, you’re more delusional that I thought.) As much as you want to make this about hate you simply cannot. That is the classic liberal response to any difficult question. “Yeah well that because you are filled with HATE. Bigot! Hypocrite! Religious fucking fanatic! Right wing nut job!”
Following in the proud tradition of Jonathan Swift and Voltaire I use the literary technique of “satire” to make a point. (Look it up, the Wikipedia entry isn’t too long. You can print it out and read it on the bus.) I know it make take a while for you to get through it. Remember to sound out the big words. Take your time.
Clearly, the irony is lost on you. So to the benefit of our dim-witted friend Jason, here’s what a boring back and forth might look like:
There are so many difficult and thorny legal questions the Vermont decision will introduce to American jurisprudence. No other state has any legal requirement to recognize a gay marriage in Vermont. That is because of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton and passage of a large majorities in both houses of Congress).
So while this is great (and the first response to in this thread begin by saying that this is great news….really) it is not as simple as that. As it currently stands 43 states have state constitutional amendments specifically banning gay marriage or defining marriage between ONE man and ONE woman (we’ll get that the significance of that in a bit). So that means a gay couple that traveled to Vermont for the explicit purpose of “marriage” have a very good chance of returning home to be IN THE EXACT SAME LEGAL POSITION THEY WERE IN BEFORE THEY LEFT. If they are from the two most populous states in the nation (California & Texas) they will not be “married.” If they are the next contiguous state to New England (New York) they will not be “married.”
The original objection to this post was Joel’s couching of the Vermont decision is good under the “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” clause. I do not think it is a stretch to say this could very easily be extended to plural marriage. Take all the Brigham Young had 40 wives nonsense out of that argument, and you’ll have a number of test cases for multiple marriage. “Marriage” becomes a very convenient way for a man to provide health care, insurance and various and sundry benefits to multiple partners. “Marriage” might even be used as a way for an employed person to wed their first cousin (or sibling) to provide such coverages. So many state legislatures were concerned about this that they clearly defined marriage between ONE man and ONE woman.
And guess who else thinks marriage should be between one man and one woman? President Barack Obama.
http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid56331.asp
Obama said, “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman,” shortly after being asked if he opposed same-sex marriage, to which he responded, “Yes.” This positioning is not new for Sen. Obama. He has uttered those words plenty – during a debate with Alan Keyes in 2004, on the Senate floor in 2006, even in his 2007 Human Rights Campaign candidate questionnaire.
So Jason, is which is he a homophobe, a denier of individual freedom or a discriminator?
The fact is, we live in a society that has completely lost its moral bearing (and please do not draw an equivalence for “moral” with “religious,” the two are not mutually inclusive), and the ACLU will see such a case of a man being denied multiple marriage as somehow the state denying his partners equal protection or some other crackers explanation for why it is embedded into our Constitution that we should all be free to marry as we want, free of the puritanical restraints of our slave-holding, mistress-loving, war-fighting forefathers.
Suddenly, the whole idea of “marriage” becomes corrupted. And it becomes nothing more than a legal way to game the insurance and inheritance systems. Sorry, I take issue with that. Gay marriage just happens to be the latest scenario in which we test the bounds or marriage in our society.
So what to do about the whole conundrum?
We as a society will have to determine what the hell marriage means, because right now, we haven’t a clue. If it were purely a religious connotation, then gays would have absolutely no problem being “married.” I have been to a number of churches that provide wedding ceremonies for gay couples. I find most modern churches in the U.S. are very accepting of people as people, as children of God. Sexual orientation is not used as a disqualifier for religion in the U.S. anymore. Sorry to break it to you Jason, maybe you should’ve come back when your visa expired; it might’ve prevented you from sounding like a completely uniformed jackass.
The problem with a religious marriage is that it doesn’t carry any legal weight for things like inheritance and insurance and next-of-kin issues. So we need to introduce the civil aspect to it. A lot of states did this through civil unions, which afforded many more rights to gay couples than marriage.
But gay couples wanted to be married in both the religious and civil sense and so here we are.
This is what I’d do. If I were the next Thurgood Marshall looking to make my name in front of the Supreme Court, I’d take a gay couple who was denied recognition of a gay marriage somewhere other than the state they were married in and run it right up the U.S. federal court system until you have it before the mother-flippin’ SCOTUS. Those old farts have got to make a ruling on this one way or another. Either a) states have the right to define marriage however they damn well please (in which case the Iowa supreme court comes off looking like a bunch of overreaching activists) or b) denying a gay couple marriage recognition is unconstitutional. In which case, you’d better be prepared for the plural marriage people to come out of the wood work.
And we have to ask ourselves if we want that.
April 9th, 2009 @
I’ve always been surprised by the non-breeder argument against homosexual marriage. If someone’s against homosexuality, wouldn’t they be in favor of childless marriage? Wouldn’t that tend to eliminate homosexuals? Of course, to admit that would be to admit a genetic component to homosexuality.
Ever since I read Simon LeVay’s argument in the early 1990s, I’ve believed there’s probably either an underlying or developed condition that causes homosexuality. I don’t care if it’s a chosen or predisposed behavior — doesn’t bother me either way. But clearly if it’s not chosen, there’s not much the religious folks can say. It would really complicate the issue for them, because G-d made us perfectly in his image, no? Looks like he made homosexuals, too.
But what if homosexuality is chosen behavior? Wouldn’t that mean homosexuals could influence others to become homosexual? If so, would one want them raising children? Wouldn’t it be better to have them marry each other and not pretend to be heterosexual and raise children?
Either way, if someone is against homosexuality, they would — pretty much by definition — have to be in favor of homosexual marriage. It keeps them from reproducing and it keeps them from subverting their impulses to marry a woman and be in a position of influencing a younger generation. Again, either way an anti-homosexual has to be in favor of homosexual marriage.
Adoption then becomes a thorny issue, of course.
April 10th, 2009 @
You make some interesting arguments, although I don’t think any of them is really the issue.
As far as the ‘choice’ argument of homosexuality goes, I agree that it doesn’t really matter. But when your argument is: if it’s not a choice then God made homosexuals too and therefore they should be treated the same, then you end up with the destructive practice engaged in by many Christian churches of trying to ‘cure’ gayness. It’s been shown over and over again that that crap only destroys lives, whether it’s in the moment of trying to ‘cure’ the person or 30 years down the road when the ‘cured’ person is married with a family and realizes that he/she has been gay all along.
Just a side note on the choice argument: If homosexuals chose to be gay doesn’t that imply that heterosexuals all chose to be straight? And anyway, who the hell would choose to live a lifestyle that is completely marginalized by most societies in the world and doesn’t allow you the same basic freedoms as others?
But the interesting part of your argument is how you’re attempting to find a way for the anti-marriage crowd to be in favor of marriage. But the route you take is still a discriminatory one, or homophobic anyway. Basically you’re saying, “Hey, if you don’t like gays, then you should be in favor of them marrying each other because then they can’t reproduce more little gay people. Then eventually we can wipe gayness from the earth if we just let them marry each other.”
There are two big problems I see with your argument, one scientific and one moral. You’re assuming that if homosexuality is not chosen then it must be a genetic trait passed on like blue eyes or pale skin. It may not be, and in fact probably isn’t, that simple. And marriage for gays should simply be about humanity. If you accept that gay people are human beings then it follows they should be entitled to the same rights as other humans, including marriage. If you deny that then you’re arguing that gay people are less than human and you can move to the back of the line for the next 30 years while society passes you by, because your beliefs have been applied in the past to other groups who were considered less than human and look who’s in the Oval Office now.
Anyway, your points are moot when it comes to the anti-marriage fear-mongers. Because I believe when it comes down to it, these arguments have nothing at all to do with the sanctity of marriage or the protection of children or any of the other very legitimate-sounding arguments they present. It’s about they don’t like gayness. And they especially don’t like, nay they loathe, gay sex. They see marriage equality as legalizing and legitimizing, gay sex. Ewwwwwwww!!!!!! It’s the disgust factor or the ‘ick’ factor as I’ve seen it referred to elsewhere.
The best arguments I find in favor of marriage are that marriage and committed relationships are generally better for society than promiscuity and non-committed relationships, that families are better (particularly for children) than non-families. Two parents who love each other are better for the child than two parents who don’t, or one parent who does, or no parents at all. By the way, those are all very conservative arguments, if you didn’t already notice. Curious how the anti-marriage fear-mongers and haters are mostly on the conservative right.
Just as today, the fact of equal rights for minorities is a fact that the old white racists have to live with and stomach until they die, in 30 years gay marriage will be a fact in the US that old homophobes will have to live with until they die. The train has left the station.
This issue should not be about popular opinion. Human rights should be automatically protected by the government, regardless of what the majority thinks. Such is the case in Spain where gay marriage is legal but the majority of people are not in favor of it. The Spanish government acted responsibly in giving equal rights to all people.
In France they tried civil unions like many states have. But they didn’t include a caveat in the law that limited civil unions to same-sex couples. Now about 90% of civil unions in France are heterosexual couples because a civil union is easier to dissolve than a marriage. So in trying to protect the so-called sanctity of marriage, France’s law has backfired and created loads of half marriages for people who aren’t really committed to the relationship but want the benefits.
Keep fighting the good fight, because the faster gay marriage gets here the better for everyone. But don’t worry, it will get here.
April 12th, 2009 @
I’ve just seen ‘the other side’s’ response to me.
Speaking of needing to look up big words: ‘mutually exclusive’ implies that two things are not related to one another. So you can’t tell me NOT to draw an equivalence between ‘moral’ and ‘religious’ while at the same time telling me they are NOT mutually exclusive.
My mentioning religious institutions objecting to same-sex marriage does not imply that all religious institutions object to it. Nowhere do I make that claim. Before you call someone an ‘uninformed jackass’ try actually reading the argument being made.
While you may think it justified to hurl insults at me because I labeled you (and all marriage deniers) as discriminatory, I take issue with it. The fact is, your position is discriminatory. Whatever your reasons may be, it is a discriminatory position because it seeks to exclude an entire group of people from a legal contract that a whole other group of people are allowed to agree to. And it is a homophobic position. You’re afraid that same-sex marriage will destroy marriage as we know it. That is the very definition of homophobia: fearing that fags are going to ruin society. So I called it as I see it. You’re simply resorting to name calling.
And sorry, but you can’t claim satire on your posts. Satire would be if you were in favor of same-sex marriage and posted a satirical anti-gay comment. You are actually anti-marriage, identify yourself as ‘the other side’ (presumably meaning the other side of the argument and not that you take it in the other side). So you don’t get to list your reasons for being against same-sex marriage while claiming satire. That just makes no sense. Unless you learned your definition of irony from Alanis Morisette.
The fact that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both opposed same-sex marriage doesn’t mean that all self-identifying liberals suddenly oppose it as well. Unless you live in such a black-and-white world wherein all liberals support Democrats and all conservatives support republicans. I suppose anything more complex would call for a level of subtlety beyond your wonderbrain.
Bill Clinton also upheld the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. That’s also a homophobic and discriminatory position. As far as Obama is concerned, he says he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman. He’s a Christian, that’s the position of his church and it’s absolutely his right to believe that. But there’s a difference between holding a personal belief and forcing the rest of the country to adhere to your beliefs. Obama is playing a political game – a cowardly one, in my opinion, because he was actually on record opposing California’s Prop 8 (the No On 8 campaign very stupidly didn’t use it).
If marriage is defined as being between 2 people I really fail to see how multiples spouses becomes an issue. And quite frankly, as far as viewing marriage as a legal contract (which is how I see it when God is not involved) what the hell is the problem with multiple consenting adults entering into a contract with one another. As far as government benefits are concerned there are ways of countering that – such as stipulations that benefits can not be paid out equally to multiple partners.
And as for this marriage to family members bullshit, there are actual genetic reasons why it’s not allowed to marry your siblings.
Other than that, why do you give a fuck who someone else is allowed to marry? How the hell does it affect your marriage in any way whatsoever?
April 12th, 2009 @
Sorry, my mistake. ‘the other side’ didn’t call me an ‘uninformed jackass’ but rather a ‘uniformed jackass.’ I’m not in the military, so I don’t understand what he means by that.
April 13th, 2009 @
Embedded within their specific homosexual-marriage arguments, aren’t Jason and ‘The Other Side’ in agreement that marriage is a decreasingly useful institution? Isn’t that partially why we flail around to define why marriage should or shouldn’t be applied to a particular group…because we don’t know how to apply it…period?
We already have contracts in place that allow people to leave property to each other. With a few tweaks, there’s no reason we can’t have hospital visitation rights, etc., for whomever we want. As for procreation, the law already recognizes children in terms of married and unmarried parents.
So, what is state-sanctioned marriage for again? It’s symbolic, isn’t it? I guess the best we could say is that it’s a package deal: get all your contractual obligations settled up front. If we’re going to make this package available, then we should make it available to all sentient creatures that understand it, no? That includes all humans and possibly super articulate animals (I hope the animals are articulate enough to explain marriage to us).
I don’t know if there’s anyone to blame for this lack of clarity. Secularism? Science? Media? Economics?
April 13th, 2009 @
For Jason:
I am for the right of gays to be married. I am also for the right of gays to enter into a civil union.
I don’t believe any government, be it local, state or federal, should ever write into law discrimination. “Defense of marriage acts,” on the state and federal level do just that, and I strongly disagree with legislation being used as a discriminatory bludgen.
And finally, it is great what has happened in Vermont. Really. Without irony. Without satire. It is great.
But for crying out loud, can we not actually engage in a debate about the ramifications of this decision without some liberal saying “the other side” is inheriently discriminatory? Or, even worse, homophobic?
That is what you are reduced to; name calling when someone doesn’t agree with you?
So again – IT IS NOT ENOUGH FOR VERMONT TO PASS LEGISLATION LEGALIZING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE. We as a nation need to go further. We need this to be brought before the Supreme Court before to determine the the constitutionality of defining marriage between ONE man and ONE woman.
BUT THIS CREATES PROBLEMS WE AS A SOCIETY NEED TO ADDRESS. How do we define marriage? Is it a civil definition or is it a religious one? If it is the former, then we need to remove the word “marriage” from our legal vocabulary for ALL couples (same sex and otherwise). What we have is nothing more than civil unions for all couples.
Why?
Because there are churches in the United States which will provide wedding ceremonies for same sex couples. This is to provide a religious marriage. And this is fantastic. Christians do not preach that marriage is reserved exclusively for one man and one woman. SOME denominations and Christian leaders teach this. But not all.
Is this perfect? No far from it. But it is not as simple as you make it out to be.
The problem as I see it, as that our laws are written as such that marriage takes on more than just a religious connontation. I AM AGAINST THIS. I want marriage to be taken out of our civil laws, and replaced with CIVIL UNIONS FOR ALL.
Because…..
I DON’T WANT MARRIAGE TO BE CHEAPENED ANY MORE THAN IT IS. Keep it in the churches, please. Make it a convenant between two people and God. The end. If you want to pass along property after you die, then enter into a civil union. You want someone to be on your insurane: civil union. You want to visit a dying partner in the hospital: civil union.
It goes back to your example of civil unions in France. Some people don’t want to make a pact, in the eyes of God, to love, honor and cherish their spouse for eternity. Great. Marriage isn’t for them. A civil union is.
What I dread is that the anti-discriminatory crowd will use gay marriage to advance plural marriages on the very preciept that denying plural marriages is denying “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The original position taken at the top.
I’m asking to convene equally rights to ALL couples. Eliminate codified discrimination in state and federal constitutions. And to take marriage back to the religious institutions where it belongs.
Are we clear? Or is this someone discriminatory? Homophobic? You want to accuse me of being a bad satirist. Fine. But homophobic? I take issue with that.
April 13th, 2009 @
Fine, I take you at your word that you’re for gay marriage and civil unions.
But look at this from my point of view, step-by-step as I read the comments:
Your first comment spells out all the classic anti-marriage arguments. You say it’s satire, which I don’t recognize at first. Then Joel responds. Then you again, this time referring to anal sex as “one man stuffing another man in the pooper.” This is not exactly the wording chosen by people who DON’T have a problem with gay sex. Again, it looks to me like you are against gay marriage.
Then I respond, referring to your arguments as both discriminatory and homophobic (and I will still maintain that every argument I’ve heard against same-sex marriage is either discriminatory, homophobic or both). The you respond to me condescendingly with invective and name-calling. Your appropriate response would have and should have been, “Jason, I think you have misread my first comment which was meant as satire. I am actually in support of gay marriage, but I also believe a, b and c (the arguments you outline in your most recent comment).
But your hurtful comment toward me was not the response of someone on the same side of the argument as me. It’s completely incongruous with the position you now take. If you were actually writing satirically then why did you take my accusations to be directed at you? It just doesn’t make sense. You didn’t even make it clear in your comment directed at me what you were arguing. You simply claimed protection under the satire balloon, which continued to make no sense to me because I STILL
I think I made myself pretty clear in who I was labeling discriminatory and homophobic. You, however, were not particularly clear in what you were arguing for and against in the beginning.
April 13th, 2009 @
My apologies because I accidentally submitted my last comment prematurely before completing the second to last paragraph and before re-reading for clarity and errors.
The unfinished sentence should continue “…thought you were against gay marriage.”
In response to Josh, I don’t think marriage has outlasted its usefulness outside the purvey of religious institutions. I do believe state-sanctioned marriage is important both in a legal sense and personally to many people.
On the personal end of things, marriage is, for many people, a way to publicly declare their undying and unending love for another person. They share the union with friends and family, openly declaring their willingness to share a lifetime together.
Legally speaking, a marriage contract simplifies a whole lot of things. I don’t think people should be able to name whoever they want as beneficiaries of health insurance, for example. That should be reserved to immediate family members and legally declared financial dependents. Of course the relative merits and demerits of that can be argued. State-recognized marriage is an important contract that I don’t think anyone should be barred from based on sexual orientation.
And one final response to ‘the other side’ with regard to his insistence that organized religion in the US is so accepting of homosexuals (and just because a church allows open homosexuality in its congregation doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll allow them to marry). I learn from Wikipedia that the three largest Christian denominations that accept gay marriage are Unitarian Universalists, United Church of Christ and United Church of Canada (irrelevant in our discussion of US politics). The two US churches mentioned count fewer than 2 million members combined. That’s a whopping 0.85% of the Christian population in the US. Yes, religious institutions are the very model of acceptance. History tells us that, right?
Finally, my apologies with regard to the mutually exclusive comment. It seems I misread your “mutually inclusive” as “mutually exclusive.” Sorry, I skimmed over it quickly and as I’ve never heard or read of something being mutually inclusive, I simply missed it.
April 19th, 2009 @
Well, Josh mentioned animals and I think that their behavior partly explains the reason for marriage. We have had a few dogs in our time, the most recent of which is now 14 weeks old, but the other two, both males, lived to nice ripe old ages. We had one that was a wanderer. He would just go outside and disappear for most of the day before loping up to the door in the late afternoon, looking for a nice meal. When he was outside he kept is tail in the air, his head up and his alertness at a high level. He was an undefeated fighter with any four legged beast and really didn’t have to worry about other animals, but when he got home he would go and nap on his back with his stomach exposed. He would also allow us to pet him in the most unprotected and personal manner. He was, to wit: perfectly at ease at home and completely unprotected in his behavior. Married people are just like that. When they walk around the house they don’t worry about how they look or what they say or do. They are ……….. Oh nuts, she has my sock!