Virginia clerk does his best in a bad situation

Virginia clerk does his best in a bad situation January 22, 2013

Paul Ferguson is a public servant, but he is prohibited by law from serving all of the public equally and is required by law to discriminate.

He is not the first public servant in the Commonwealth of Virginia to face this dilemma, but he handled it about as well as he was allowed:

Participants gathered in the square to request marriage licenses from Paul Ferguson, the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Arlington County and the City of Falls Church.

“I commend each of you that is coming forward today for your courage. I think you do realize that by law, the Commonwealth of Virginia does not allow me to issue those marriage licenses to you,” Ferguson said. “I hope that if laws do change in the future, that you will choose to return one day to Arlington County to receive a marriage license.”

More than a dozen couples stepped forward to request marriage licenses from Ferguson. In turn, each was rejected.

“Diverse weights and diverse measures are both alike an abomination to the Lord,” the book of Proverbs says.

Ferguson has been charged to employ diverse weights and diverse measures according to the abominable law of Virginia. At least he was able to do so without adding insult to injustice.

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Ed Brayton informs us that this July has been declared “Heterosexual Awareness Month.”

The event seems to be organized by the same kinds of people who spent college whining about why there was no White Students Union and no Men’s Studies department — the sort of privileged people eager to seem deeply aggrieved at even a symbolic gesture that doesn’t focus on their group and their own desperate need for all of everyone’s attention. You know … assholes.

But this might still do some good.

From the owners of Hobby Lobby to the president of Wheaton College, if there’s one thing heterosexuals have been demonstrating lately it’s a massive lack of awareness of heterosexuality — or at least of how heterosexual sex actually works.

So even if this Heterosexual Awareness Month event was only dreamed up as another chance for privileged chauvinists to punch-down at everyone else, perhaps it will serve a real purpose too. (Probably not.)

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And speaking of basic human biology, here’s (via It’s Okay To Be Smart) a simple truth about human development that I’m not sure our friends in the “personhood begins at conception” crowd have thought much about:

But then I don’t think that crowd has thought much at all about any aspect of basic human biology.

I learned a new-to-me word from that video: rathe. Not quite as fun — or as ordinarily useful — as philtrum or purlicue, but still good to know. (Although it does change how I read “The Jabberwocky” …)


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