Speaking of being called to a higher law and speaking of speaking....

In the previous post, we're talking about what Jesus wrote in the sand and what he said out loud, in the New Testament story where the scribes and Pharisees present Jesus with the question of what to do with a woman who was caught in the act of adultery. In the Gospel text, we're told Jesus that wrote on the ground, but not what he wrote, and we're told that he subsequently spoke and said "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."

I'm putting up a separate post because I found the scene that sydney said he loved in the movie "The King of Kings." Made in 1927, it's a silent movie, so no one is saying anything out loud. We see what Jesus says written out on the intertitles, and we also see what he writes in the sand.



Beautiful filmmaking, particularly as the sand-words, not written in Roman letters, transform into our English words, naming the sins that the men in the crowd realize they've committed, and that's why they all turn and walk away.

That's not an accurate depiction of what happens in the biblical text though. The movie shows a mob on the verge of stoning the woman and Jesus intervenes and announces his rule about casting the first stone. Only thereafter, does he write the names of the sins in the sand. But in the Bible story, there is no angry mob with stones in hand. There are scribes and Pharisees demanding that Jesus deliver a legal opinion. Jesus bends down and writes on the ground instead of answering the question.  Only after they persist does he stand up and pronounce his new rule, which causes the scribes and Pharisees to walk away — "beginning with the older ones." The movie would have you see the members of the mob acknowledging their sins and their consequent lack of qualification to cast the first stone. But the text has intellectuals trying to box Jesus in on a question of law, and Jesus getting the better of a conversation he didn't want to have in the first place.

It's not surprising that a movie plays up the visible drama, and it's also not surprising that when I — a law professor — read the text, I see something akin to a law school class. The professors try to stump the student and the student transcends their tricky game. To me, the part where Jesus bends over and writes in the sand is like what happens in a law school class when the lawprof poses a difficult hypothetical and the students bend their heads down and go through motions of writing. They don't want to answer. It's not that they're writing something magically revelatory and startling. But if the lawprof keeps pushing and calls on someone, an answer will be spoken out loud.

I guess the law-professorly interpretation of the text isn't terribly cinematic. It's no wonder the movies present an angry mob with stones in hand and Jesus miraculously knowing and changing the hearts of the sinners. (And the adulteress is an actress evincing exactly the form of sexiness that was fashionable in the year the movie was made. I love the eyeliner!)

But to me the lawprof interpretation is thrilling and dramatic. The professors think they've got the upper hand. They know the legal text and it's tough. And then the brilliant student who will soon be the greatest professor of all gets on top of the dialogue and says something they must accept as correct: If you're going to have strict rules and severe mechanisms of enforcement, you must apply them equally to everyone. This is the structural safeguard of equal protection of the laws that is the necessary component of a democratic system. If there can't be exceptions and special treatment for preferred people, legislatures will resist imposing harsh rules and painful punishments.

In this context, let me give you my favorite Justice Scalia quote, which happens to include one of the key words of Christianity: "Our salvation is the Equal Protection Clause, which requires the democratic majority to accept for themselves and their loved ones what they impose on you and me."

"See Cartoon Instructions For How To Stone Adulterers."

"An Islamist Facebook page uploaded a cartoon explaining how to stone adulterers on Wednesday that is getting a decent reaction on the Web so far, garnering over 120 'likes' and 500 Facebook shares as well as 500 comments."

Buzzfeed.

***

"The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, 'Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?' This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, 'Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.'"

"The world’s most experienced penis reattachment surgeons can be found in Thailand..."

"... where, during the 1970s, an estimated one hundred vengeful Thai wives, spurred by media coverage of a prominent 1973 case, sliced off the penises of their adulterous husbands as they slept. When a suitably equipped microsurgeon was on hand to reattach the errant appendage, the men were able to resume philandering within a matter of months. Though probably with reduced success: The penises, though operative, were shorter, numb, and often only partway erectable. The most serious complication, in the Thai attacks, was infection. Two of the wives flushed the penises down the toilet, forcing their husbands to grope for their lost manhood inside the septic tank. (Incredibly, both were found, cleaned, cleaned some more, and reattached.) More commonly, the women would hurl the penis out the window. In the cases described in 'Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam,' all the recovered penises were 'grossly contaminated.' Better that than eaten by livestock. Many rural Thai homes are elevated on pilings, with the family’s pigs, chickens, and ducks tending to mill about seeking shade in the space underneath. It is not, oddly, the pigs, but rather the ducks, that the castrated Thai must worry about. The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.'"

I'm reading "Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex," by Mary Roach.

"I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife."

I wonder if "the latest thing" was a new expression back in 1922 when F. Scott Fitzgerald started writing "The Great Gatsby." Was "the latest thing" the latest thing, that is, new slang? If so, it's even funnier to see it used sarcastically like this. What a crazy trend it would be — a fashionable sex kink?

But then maybe there actually is such a trend these days. The "cuckold fetish" is a routine subject in Dan Savage's sex advice column, e.g., "Fuck My Wife, Please!"

Anyway, the sarcasm in today's "Gatsby" sentence is sublime. There's "the latest thing" and "sit back and let" and the marvelous "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" — all of which only become funny — painfully funny — when you get to the tragically pedestrian phrase "make love to your wife."

It's also amusing that the problem is less that somebody is fucking his wife than that a nobody is fucking his wife. Mr. Nobody from Nowhere, who — if you violated the rules of the Gatsby project and go beyond the sentence — is the (supposedly) great Mr. Gatsby.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bill Harshaw uses The Great Google to show that "the latest thing" was, in fact, a well-established expression. The casual use of the word "thing" seems like modern slang. There are a lot of common phrases like "the thing to do," "a [fill in the blank] thing," "it's my thing," and "the real thing" that seem like things people would have said 100 years ago.

ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: Much discussion about how far Mr. Nobody really got: What did "make love" mean in the 1920s?

Polyamory on the march.

"It's all based on a really high degree of love and trust," says the wife.



I love the look on the face of the moderator at 1:57.

"And then, after a while, it didn't really bother me," says the goat-bearded husband.

Something about the music track — so cheesily happy! — makes me especially dubious about the actual happiness achieved by this exemplary couple.

The wife looks way happier than the husband. Check the look on her face at 2:11 as she pops some food in his mouth (enacting the supposed charms of domesticity).

Oh, wait... there are 2 different women here, but they look kind of alike. I notice this halfway through, at which point, I don't really care who's getting sexual satisfaction where, because I simply don't believe their protestations of pleasure. You can't believe what regular, closed-marriage couples say about themselves either. It's all perfectly smarmy until a marriage breaks up, not that you can believe what the broken-up halves of erstwhile marriages have to say about what happened.

By about 4:42, my impression of what I might be looking at here is gay people who want to live in nuclear family units, with their own biological children. This would be something entirely different from the "polyamory" model that is being pitched in the media. That is, 2 homosexual couples could reorganize into 2 married opposite sex couples for the production of children, whom they would live with in one household. The married couples wouldn't have a sexual relationship (beyond producing the children), and they would have an enduring, happy sexual relationship with their homosexual partner. The 2 couples could live nearby and serve in an uncle/aunt role toward each other's children.

"Petraeus And Lover Used An Email Trick Used By Terrorists To Keep Affair Secret."

"The CIA director and his biographer had a shared Gmail account and wrote some of their personal missives as draft emails, which were left in a draft folder or an electronic, 'dropbox.'"

The email was never sent, which had some secrecy advantages, but it meant that Petraeus had a shared gmail account with that woman, Ms. Broadwell.

FBI investigators were able to use the data trail left when Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old Florida socialite who was family friends with Gen Petraeus, received emails allegedly warning her to stay away from the former CIA director. The data trail revealed that the emails were being sent by Mrs Broadwell from an anonymous email account, information which eventually brought the affair to light.

Did Broadwell send the "harassing" emails from the account she shared with Petraeus?

If Petraeus had ended the affair, shouldn't he have deleted the shared account? Or could Broadwell have gotten in there first and excluded him? Maybe it was her gmail account, and she'd added him as an authorized user, giving her the power to cut off his access, with all his old letters in the draft folder, and with her ability to send email for whatever crazy purpose crossed her mind. But what did Broadwell think she was doing? Was she just an out-of-control, I-will-not-be-ignored ex-lover, or is there something more nefarious and political going on?

Feel free to brainstorm.

Paula Broadwell to Jill Kelley: “back off,” “stay away from my guy,” and “I know what you did."

The soap opera plot thickens.

About David Petraeus: "The man falls in love with... himself!"

That's what I wrote, when I first saw that the man's love interest was the woman who wrote a fawning biography about him. It reminded me of John Edwards, falling for the woman who was trotting around after him videographing what her trotting around videographing made seem like the amazing wonder of his very being.

A reader emails:

"The man falls in love with... himself!"

And that is at the center of what an affair is about.

Here's Shirley Glass, who before her death a few years ago was considered one of the top experts on infidelity:

There is an attraction in the affair, and I try to understand what it is. Part of it is the romantic projection: I like the way I look when I see myself in the other person’s eyes. There is positive mirroring. An affair holds up a vanity mirror, the kind with all the little bulbs around it; it gives a nice rosy glow to the way you see yourself. By contrast, the marriage offers a make-up mirror; it magnifies all your wrinkles and pores, every little flaw. When someone loves you despite the fact that they can see all your flaws, that is a reality-based love.

In the stories of what happened during the affair, people seem to take on a different persona, and one of the things they liked best about being in that relationship was the person they had become. The man who wasn’t sensitive or expressive is now in a relationship where he is expressing his feelings and is supportive.

"Your wife is having an affair with a person you happen to respect. Why would that last detail change the way you respond to her cheating?"

"Do you admire this man so much that you haven’t asked your wife why she keeps having sex with him? I halfway suspect you’re writing this letter because you want specific people to read this column and deduce who is involved and what’s really going on behind closed doors (without actually addressing the conflict in person). That’s not ethical, either."

Said the NYT Ethicist, last July, responding to "NAME WITHHELD," who some people are now speculating is the husband cuckolded by Petraeus.

ADDED: I'm surprised to see the NYT Ethicist is Chuck Klosterman. I know him as the author of the book "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto." Excerpt:

I’m having a crisis of confidence, and I blame Jesus.

Actually, my crisis is not so much about Jesus as it is about the impending rapture, which I don’t necessarily believe will happen. But I don’t believe the rapture won’t happen, either; I really don’t see any evidence for (or against) either scenario. It all seems unlikely, but still plausible. Interestingly enough, I don’t think there is a word for my particular worldview: “Nihilism” means you don’t believe in anything, but I can’t find a word that describes partial belief in everything. “Paganism” is probably the closest candidate, but that seems too Druidesque for the style of philosophy I’m referring to. Some would claim that this is kind of like “agnosticism,” but true agnostics always seem too willing to side with the negative; they claim there are no answers, so they live as if those answers don’t exist. They’re really just nihilists without panache. Not me, though. I’m prone to believe that just about any religious ideology is potentially accurate, regardless of how ridiculous it might seem (or be). Which is really making it hard for me to comment on Left Behind.

That's the beginning of an essay on the Left Behind series.

Petraeus's woman: his biographer!

What does it say about a man that he falls for the woman who cranks out the PR about what a swell guy he is?

It's so... John Edwards and Rielle Hunter.

The man falls in love with... himself!

Petraeus resigns over an affair.

"After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours."

Imagine if this set an example for everyone, and every adulterer resigned from his/her job. Civilization would collapse, no? It would be worse than "going Galt" if everyone goes Petraeus.

It calls to mind the old "General betray us" ad, but he didn't betray us.

ADDED: Is the resignation really about the affair... or is it connected to Benghazi?

Fazil Say, the pianist on trial in Turkey for tweeting things like...

"Why such haste? Have you got a mistress waiting or a raki on the table?" (joking about the brevity of a call to prayer).

"The former Mr. Universe traces his detachment to his bodybuilding days, where he says emotions make athletes lose."

Arnold Schwarzenegger explains how and why he "became an expert in living in denial."

"As an authority figure, you have to impose the rule of law..."

"... but don’t ignore the possibility that the rule you’re imposing is flawed."

ADDED: From the comments at the link (which goes to a NYT "ethicist" column):

Why are people are so moved by a man weeping, and assume that, because a guy is crying, he must be truly remorseful? Or even that he’s being deliberately manipulative? He's most likely weeping out of fear for his job.

By the way, the second letter over there is also interesting. What if your dear friend — who suffered so over the breakup of her own marriage — is expressing her delight about how she's about to break up some other lady's marriage? The answer given is:

Tell A. that you disagree with what she’s doing and that her behavior will alter the way you view her character.... But don’t blow up your friendship because someone pursued a romance you find abhorrent.

Seems like the ethicist is fond of calling these perplexing case right down the middle.

"The prairie vole is a notable animal model for its monogamous sexual fidelity, since the male is usually faithful to the female, and shares in the raising of pups."

"Another species from the same genus, the meadow vole, has promiscuously mating males, and scientists have changed adult male meadow voles' behavior to resemble that of prairie voles in experiments in which a single gene was introduced into the brain via a virus."

Okay, mad scientists and sensible-policy imaginationists, spin out your proposals and fantasies. Give me some long views of the landscape.

"[A] plain wedding band made of titanium, engraved with big block letters on the inside..."

"It appears to be that will imprint 'I'M MARRIED' around your finger."

Because what you want your wedding ring to express is mistrust.

"Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage..."

"with straight people who want to do the same,"  says David Blankenhorn (formerly a conspicuous opponent of gay marriage).

For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that marrying before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation? Can we discuss whether both gays and straight people should think twice before denying children born through artificial reproductive technology the right to know and be known by their biological parents?

I don't know what that last question has to do with the rest of it. Putting that aside, he's talking about generic conservative values relating to marriage. I suppose it's easy to "agree" that these things are better than the alternative. It's harder to give up all that sex outside of marriage.

And let's not forget that one of the leading gay-rights voices, Dan Savage, has used his position to push adultery acceptance. 

[Savage] does not believe in promiscuity; indeed, his attacks on the anonymous-sex, gay-bathhouse culture were once taken as proof of a secret conservative agenda. And he does not believe that monogamy is wrong for all couples or even for most couples. Rather, he says that a more realistic sexual ethic would prize honesty, a little flexibility and, when necessary, forgiveness over absolute monogamy. And he believes nostalgically, like any good conservative, that we might look to the past for some clues.

“The mistake that straight people made,” Savage told me, “was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitar­ian and fairsey.” In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,” we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.”

See? Straight people make the "mistake" of not structuring sexual norms around the male. That's the message from one man who's only interested in sex with men. What about women? Well, let them "enjoy" the sexuality that man take to naturally. Liberation, baby. The man who has no desire whatsoever to have sex with bodies like yours says so.

I can't imagine that people like Savage will tone it down because Blankenhorn is now offering to form a coalition. Wouldn't he — as I do — write off Blankenhorn as a guy who's trying to re-leverage his importance? Who needs him?

"On one tape she saw Johnny walking into a room and his reaction to seeing me."

"She apparently told him that he never once looked at her the way he looked at me. So she took that bit and put it on her computer as a screen saver in order to watch it over and over again."

Johnny = John Edwards. She = Elizabeth Edwards. Me = Rielle Hunter, who once met Elizabeth Edwards, who "did not look me in the eye. In fact, she appeared to be frightened."

"The best punishment for a man who would take your wife is to let him have her."

A tl;dr summary to something that was actually not too long responding to a call for "instant karma" stories.

"How Changes in Straight Marriage Paved the Way for Legal Gay Marriage."

An article by Jesse Walker at Reason (linked to this morning by Instapundit). Walker links to an article by historian Stephanie Coontz that describes the changes in marriage over time: Hetereosexual couples married based love and autonomous personal choice (instead of submitting to arranged marriages); heterosexual couples moved away from traditional gender roles; laws governing the obligations of heterosexual couples were rewritten with gender neutrality (to acknowledge the mutability of gender roles). These changes have made it harder to justify denying gay couples the choice to adopt the marriage format for their relationships.

Fine. I support same-sex marriage, and I like this argument in favor of it, as I like so many other arguments in favor of something I favor. But I want to layer in another topic. If opposite-sex marriage couples influence our understanding of same-sex couples, what about the reverse? Once same-sex couples are included in the norm, they will affect the norm.
In this context, let's take a closer look about what Dan Savage — the very influential advice columnist and media figure — has been saying for years. Savage, you need to understand, is himself gay, but he's always aimed his advice primarily at heterosexuals. That's the idea: a gay male has a useful perspective.

Savage has for 20 years been saying monogamy is harder than we admit and articulating a sexual ethic that he thinks honors the reality, rather than the romantic ideal, of marriage. In Savage Love, his weekly column, he inveighs against the American obsession with strict fidelity. In its place he proposes a sensibility that we might call American Gay Male, after that community’s tolerance for pornography, fetishes and a variety of partnered arrangements, from strict monogamy to wide openness.

Savage believes monogamy is right for many couples. But he believes that our discourse about it, and about sexuality more generally, is dishonest. Some people need more than one partner, he writes, just as some people need flirting, others need to be whipped, others need lovers of both sexes. We can’t help our urges, and we should not lie to our partners about them. In some marriages, talking honestly about our needs will forestall or obviate affairs; in other marriages, the conversation may lead to an affair, but with permission. In both cases, honesty is the best policy.

“I acknowledge the advantages of monogamy,” Savage told me, “when it comes to sexual safety, infections, emotional safety, paternity assurances. But people in monogamous relationships have to be willing to meet me a quarter of the way and acknowledge the drawbacks of monogamy around boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted.”

The view that we need a little less fidelity in marriages is dangerous for a gay-marriage advocate to hold. It feeds into the stereotype of gay men as compulsively promiscuous, and it gives ammunition to all the forces, religious and otherwise, who say that gay families will never be real families and that we had better stop them before they ruin what is left of marriage. But Savage says a more flexible attitude within marriage may be just what the straight community needs. Treating monogamy, rather than honesty or joy or humor, as the main indicator of a successful marriage gives people unrealistic expectations of themselves and their partners. And that, Savage says, destroys more families than it saves.

Much more at the link (which goes to a long NYT Magazine article from last year).