Prospect Park

6×8″ oil on canvas paper.

I painted it this afternoon.

The Jewish response to Obergefell

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America says:

In response to the decisions announced today by the United States Supreme Court with reference to the issue of legal recognition of same sex marriage, we reiterate the historical position of the Jewish faith, enunciated unequivocally in our Bible, Talmud and Codes, which forbids homosexual relationships and condemns the institutionalization of such relationships as marriages. Our religion is emphatic in defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. Our beliefs in this regard are unalterable.

How quaint.

No noblesse oblige to be found here

The New York Times reports:

From Ukraine to Uruguay, Moldova to the Philippines, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its foreign affiliates have become the hammer for the tobacco industry, engaging in a worldwide effort to fight antismoking laws of all kinds, according to interviews with government ministers, lobbyists, lawmakers and public health groups in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States.

The smart and affluent people who control the U.S. Chamber of Commerce should be trying to help the less fortunate of the world to lead better and healthier lives, and not addict them to an expensive and cancer-causing habit so that a few rich American tobacco companies can become even richer. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Prep attire in Southampton

Southampton blogging

This is even whiter than Sag Harbor. There was one black couple in Sag Harbor. Southampton is 100% white. Mostly white women. Their rich husbands are probably in Manhattan earning the money so that their wives can live the good life.

The gays have won, what’s next?

Now that the gays have won and there doesn’t seem to be anything else to accomplish with gay rights, what’s next? Two articles in today’s NY Times perhaps give some hints.

In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas explains how free speech is being suppressed at college campuses under the theory that they need to protect sensitive students from severe mental and physical trauma of hearing ideas they disagree with. The logical next step for liberals is to move this concept out of campus to the greater world at large.

Regulating Sex explains the future of rape law: affirmative consent will be required and sexual assault will be expanded to include any touching whatsoever. Thus if a man who takes a woman’s hand, and the woman didn’t explicitly say it would be OK to do that, the man could be convicted of sexual assault and sent to prison.

Sag Harbor blogging

I’m on Main Street in Sag Harbor. Everyone is white. This is the whitest Main Street in the Northeast.

Offline until Monday

No wifi and crappy 4G (and I suck at typing on an iPhone).

Oxymoron becomes law

Supreme Court holds constitutional right to gay marriage.

Note that Chief Justice Roberts, who rightly wrote the majority decision in the Obamacare case (where he just said that a statute means what everyone except a few bitter Republicans already assumed it means), dissents from the gay marriage decision. In this case, Roberts correctly states that whether or not gay marriage is a good idea, the Constitution doesn’t require it.

Unlike the Obamacare decision, we are stuck with the gay marriage decision forever because it’s a constitutional right and not a statutory interpretation. Theoretically, the decision could be overturned by a constitutional amendment, but that’s not going to happen.

Supreme Court Decision on Obamacare

I’m commenting on it without reading it, which is a bad thing to do (yet so common).

But it’s my impression that Kennedy and Roberts aren’t going to invalidate what Congress thought they were passing because of a technicality of poor drafting. Which is also what Republicans who voted against it thought they were voting against, so Republicans are being sore losers.

Also, it’s not like Republicans have any interest in fixing the mistakes of Obamacare in order to make it better. They just want to destroy it any way they can.