No Purpose is Rational

Judge Richard Kramer of San Francisco County's Superior Court said, "It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners." Can a truly pluralistic society tolerate a judgment based on an appeal to "rationality"?

Does judge Kramer mean the law of non-contradiction is undermined by the ban? Does he mean there is no Platonic Ideal of marriage? No practical consequence for excluding gays from the institution? That the ban doesn't approach the middle of two extremes? That it isn't instrumental in the affirmation of life? That there is no empirical evidence to support it? That it is only a partial truth in need of a compensating antithesis? That it lacks conceptual necessity? Or, that there is no divine revelation in favor of it?

Just what does Judge Kramer mean by "rationality"?! and if he has an answer, why should that standard of rationality determine the laws in a land that by no means assents to one standard of rationality? Isn't this just a playground taunt? "My adversaries are not rational; therefore, I may dismiss them altogether."

Please. Can we move on?

Update: With many thanks to jpe, I found the Judge Kramer's opinion here. More later...

Are We There Yet?

Why do we say that great thinkers like Nietsche were "ahead of their time"? Isn't it more accurate to say our interest in them is reactionary? Would we even bother with Fred if it hadn't been for two world wars? Or, even better, would we turn to him if we didn't first think we could still make a go of it without acknowledging how truly corrupt our natural condition is?

In American society—or maybe it's more generally western—we think we can fashion some kind of Eden. We think we can think without distortion. We think at base everything will be alright. Our optimism is founded on this falsehood of "the enduring human spirit". Of course, history constantly frustrates this delusion, so the "intellects" run to the great pessimists as a last ditch effort to steal meaning. We are not postmodern—if postmodern means beyond the modernist's mindset. We are in the last days of a Neo-Romantic revival and nobody knows where to go from here.

Help me out. How should we live now?

Revaluing Secularity

The so-called culture war in America is expressed as a conflict between a secular mindset and traditional religious values. What would this tension look like if secularity was seen as a particular religion, rather than a neutral space that permits all religion without being a religion? If the differences on issues like abortion, gay marriage, and public religious monuments were simply the differences of different particular religions, what would become of the arguments that appeal to the diversity of American society? Wouldn't they just beg the question? It seems that secularity must rely on the notion that it is indeed an all-embracing view of the world and its particularities without any commitment to an unchanging metaphysic or epistemic standard. How long can it sustain this unstable illusion?