"The Study of Law is Something New and Unfamiliar to You…"

Somehow, I missed this when it first was posted:



John Jay Osborn, who wrote the novel, had a love-hate relationship with Harvard, if my reading of the novel is accurate. And it seems to have been; as he wrote over a decade ago:

When I graduated from Harvard Law School in 1970, my feelings about the place were clear, sharp. It was an interesting place, an important place and a bad place. It did not have the flexibility to allow individuals to express themselves. It did not allow for reciprocity between faculty and students. In short, it really had no desire to be loved, or even to be respected. The big dark institution, symbolized for me by Langdell Hall, only wanted to be feared. It was very successful in inspiring fear and despair, both in the classroom and in the larger world.

My first novel, "The Paper Chase," portrayed this vision of the institution. Its central character, Professor Kingsfield, on the last day of class, is told by Hart, the student hero, that Kingsfield's contracts class meant something to Hart, that Kingsfield was very important to him. Finally, the corners of the professor's lips turn up in a slight smile. "What was your name?" Kingsfield asks, stepping past Hart. You will never be anything more than a number on a seating chart, Kingsfield is saying; despite all your efforts, you mean nothing to me, or to Harvard Law School.

However, as his creator notes, that didn't remain entirely consistent:

Imperceptibly, over the years, Kingsfield changed. In the six years that "The Paper Chase" was on television--first on CBS, then on PBS, later on Showtime--he grew more complicated. I remember writing the episode "Scavenger Hunt." It begins with Kingsfield going to incredible lengths to track down the most obscure citations available within the entire university. He will then send his students out on a gigantic scavenger hunt to find these citations, a hunt that has no rules, pitting them against each other in a zero-sum game, in which the person who finds the citations gets an A, and everyone else flunks. (Or does he really have something else on his mind, something more "educational"?) We begin with Kingsfield and his loyal secretary, Mrs. Nottingham, down in a subbasement, looking over uncataloged items by candlelight, while a rotting sewer line leaks on their heads.

What law professor is going to go to those lengths? Well, in fact, none. So, if Kingsfield does this, what does it say about him? It says that he cares. It may not be easy to see that, and he would never admit it, but in some fundamental way, he really cares about teaching, and by implication he also cares for his students.

In the above video, he says that the TV series is "a watered down version"--that Kingsfield shows that he cares to us the viewer, if not the students. Interestingly, Osborn claims that there was no one person on whom Kingsfield was based. When I heard John Houseman speak at Fordham,he asserted (as he had elsewhere) that Kingsfield was based on Edward "Bull" Warren, about whom Houseman told several stories, including one in which Warren saw a woman seated in class, wearing trousers, and STARED at her. And STARED at her until, uncomfortable at the glare, she crossed her legs. Warren, so Houseman told us, then intoned, "Now that the gates of Hell are closed--"

Warren, clearly, was not a particularly lovable man, but was not always such a stickler for propriety--Houseman also described him as, late one evening, urinating on Boston Common, "though whether out of necessity or principal remains unknown," he added.

In Memoriam, Kate O'Mara

I am sorry to see that Kate O'Mara has died, age 74. As my friend Nick Kaufman notes, she was best known for her turn in Dynasty, but (like Nick) I remember her best as the recurring villain the Rani on Doctor Who.

Like Nick, I have to admit that the three stories she appeared in where rubbish; that said, as I wrote in 2012:

Doctor No. 7, Sylvester McCoy, opens inauspiciously with Time and the Rani--a hasty, weak regeneration, a Rani-plot that's more like the Ainley Master on a bad day, and more running around in a quarry. Also Bonnie Langford screams. A lot, and quite loudly. We're talking Chekov in Star Trek II, Fay Wray, only miked. Scream, Bonnie, scream.

I quite like McCoy's clowning as he finds his feet, especially his spoon-playing. And Kate O'Mara wins the good sport of the year award, doing an extended impression of a woman a quarter of a century her junior, as the Rani dupes the Doctor into thinking she is his companion Mel.

The sequence goes on longer than it should, but is especially funny as McCoy's clowning frustrates the seething Rani, who needs the Doctor's experience and equipment, and is taking advantage of his being in a daze after regenerating from Colin Baker. Needless to say, the first thing he must do is lose the outfit:



O'Mara's dead-on impression of Bonnie Langford's voice and mannerisms is all the more funny for the fact that the two women look nothing like each other. And, in fact, that the 80's getup which Langford wears comfortably (at last, a companion who can run without twisting an ankle), is clearly making the more formal Rani twitch with discomfort. The best bits are when the Rani can barely keep up the pretense--O'Mara playing the Rani playing Mel is a hoot, as all the Rani-isms insist on creeping through the chirpy take-off of Langford.

The Telegraph notes that she had a tumultuous life, but that she found ways to cope with adversity:

Late in life she talked how she had overcome her own bouts of depression: “particularly during my first marriage break-up 31 years ago. But I’ve since learnt a cure for depression: listening to J.S. Bach and reading P.G. Wodehouse. This got me through the break-up of my second marriage 17 years ago. The great thing about Wodehouse is that his books are full of romantic problems and yet so hilarious that it puts things in perspective.” The quiet country life in occassional retirement in Somerset suited her. “I’m not frightened of dying, but I love the countryside so much and I’m going to miss it. I’d like to be out in the wind and the trees for ever.”

Not a bad formula, that--Bach, Plum (Wodehouse), and nature. I'll bear it mind when the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune come my way, and meanwhile salute a brave lady who faced them down with élan.

"Bitters" Bierce and Fuentes's Mexico

"To be a Gringo in Mexico - ah, that is euthanasia!"--Ambrose Bierce

I'm re-reading Carlos Fuentes's novel, The Old Gringo, a remarkable book of fiction that addresses the question of the disappearance and death of Ambrose Bierce. Fuentes stiches together the few known facts (some known only from Bierce's few letters after he went down to Mexico to view the revolution led by Pancho Villa. Little is known; when Bierce departed he was described and quoted in a contemporary article thus:

Traveling over the same ground that he had covered with General Hazen's brigade during the Civil War, Ambrose Bierce, famed writer and noted critic, has arrived in New Orleans. Not that this city was one of the places figuring in his campaigns, for he was here after and not during the war. He has come to New Orleans in a haphazard, fancy-free way, making a trip toward Mexico. The places that he has visited on the way down have become famous in song and story -- places where the greatest battles were fought, where the moon shone at night on the burial corps, and where in day the sun shone bright on polished bayonets and the smoke drifted upward from the cannon mouths.

For Mr. Bierce was at Chickamauga; he was at Shiloh; at Murfreesboro; Kenesaw Mountain, Franklin and Nashville. And then when wounded during the Atlanta campaign he was invalided home. He "has never amounted to much since then," he said Saturday. But his stories of the great struggle, living as deathless characterizations of the bloody episodes, stand for what he has amounted to since then.

Perhaps it was in mourning for the dead over whose battlefields he has been wending his way toward New Orleans that Mr. Bierce was dressed in black. From head to foot he was attired in this color, except where the white cuffs and collar and shirt front showed through. He even carried a walking cane, black as ebony and unrelieved by gold or silver. But his eyes, blue and piercing as when they strove to see through the smoke at Chickamauga, retained all the fire of the indomitable fighter.

"I'm on my way to Mexico, because I like the game," he said. "I like the fighting; I want to see it. And then I don't think Americans are as oppressed there as they say they are, and I want to get at the true facts of the case. Of course, I'm not going into the country if I find it unsafe for Americans to be there, but I want to take a trip diagonally across from northeast to southwest by horseback, and then take ship for South America, go over the Andes and across that continent, if possible, and come back to America again.

There is no family that I have to take care of; I've retired from writing and I'm going to take a rest. No, my trip isn't for local color. I've retired just the same as a merchant or businessman retires. I'm leaving the field for the younger authors."

An inquisitive question was interjected as to whether Mr. Bierce had acquired a competency only from his writings, but he did not take offense.

"My wants are few, and modest," he said, "and my royalties give me quite enough to live on. There isn't much that I need, and I spend my time in quiet travel. For the last five years I haven't done any writing. Don't you think that after a man has worked as long as I have that he deserves a rest? But perhaps after I have rested I might work some more -- I can't tell, there are so many thingsä" and the straightforward blue eyes took on a faraway look, "there are so many things that might happen between now and when I come back. My trip might take several years, and I'm an old man now."

Except for the thick, snow-white hair no one would think him old. His hands are steady, and he stands up straight and tall -- perhaps six feet."

Fuentes uses much of the contemporary material--his description of Bierce's attire comes right from this article. And, back in the 1990s, it was Bierce who was the draw for me. His writings (including his feud with Mark Twain), his sarcasm, his caustic humor, all appealed to me, and, in regulated doses, still do--one difference between Bierce and Twain is that the latter is much less pessimistic than Bierce. Bierce's humor can become nihilistic, life-denying. A little is a tonic, but too much becomes chilling.

But for Fuentes, Bierce was only one part of the story; the Old Gringo--never named in the book until its very end--has a nemesis, a General in the revolution, Tomas Arroyo, and there is an American woman, Harriet Winslow, who becomes Arroyo's lover, and is a daughter-figure to Bierce, two of whose sons have died by their own hands, and whose marriage ended with a separation, much more rare in those days than now. The Old Gringo's ties to life having all snapped, he is less than thrilled when he feels stirrings of compassion for Harriet and Arroyo, who, like Harriet, revives his paternal instincts, albeit in a different way. Arroyo is as central to the book as Bierce; he is illiterate, self-appointed a General, but with real leadership quality, and is the repository of the brutally oppressed peasants' folk-memory, as well as the papers that show (he has been taught) that the land belongs to the people. The novel is as much the story of Arroyo as of the Old Gringo. On that reading, Harriet, the catalyst, may come in third place, but that seems off. Fuentes creates a believable character, not just a Lawrentian spinster of her era.

And so, the tropes that make me want to retch when employed by D.H. Lawrence work better when deployed by Fuentes, perhaps because Lawrence often seems to me to despise his female characters, where Fuentes loves Harriet Winslow, despite her starchiness, her assumptions of cultural superiority. He sees the warm-heart beneath those traits, and explores Harriet's need for order in a sympathetic way. In a way that Lawrence never does, in my opinion, Fuentes grounds Arroyo and Winslow in their life experiences, and makes their attraction-antagonism credible. And in that telling, Bierce is the catalyst for them, just as Winslow is the catalyst between Bierce and Arroyo. And, in yet another view of the novel, Arroyo (in what Harriet sees as the wanton destruction of the hacienda where she has come to teach the children of the long-fled Miranda family) is the catalyst that sparks the relationship between the Old Gringo and Harriet--drawing him back into life.

In other words, each character is both a primary actor and a catalyst in the relationship between the other two. You can view the story as that of Harriet Winslow (who opens and closes the novel), with either the Old Gringo or Arryo as the primary figure impacting her life. Or, if you choose, you can view the book as the Old Gringo's story of his relationship with either Harriet or Arroyo--after all, he's the eponymous character. But you can, and I think this makes the novel even more interesting, view it as Arroyo's story. Because Arroyo is struggling to find a way for the poor out of poverty, into freedom, and is tempted both by revenge and a narrow vision of justice. The Old Gringo and Harriet offer other possible ways for him to go, but each is flawed as well. Neither Bierce's nihilistic, bleak humor nor Harriet's respect for convention is a life-giving choice for him, yet each has a kernel of something Arroyo could use, as he intuits.

Any one of these three readings is supported by the text, and it's a rich novel for just that reason.

Holy Hobby Lobby? More Than Just a Feeling...

Today's oral argument in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius(full transcript) is being dissected everywhere, of course--from the informed to the, um, less so. (The NYT round up falls somewhere in the middle.)

Briefly, the case involves the double barreled question as to whether corporations formed under state law to engage in commercial transactions may claim exemptions from laws of general applicability that impose affirmative duties upon them that are at variance with their religious beliefs, whether under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, or under the 1993 statute, The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, commonly known as "RFRA". The specific context in which the case arose--whether small, closely-held corporations may claim immunity from the Affordable Care Act's requirement that contraceptive coverage be included among insurance plans provided by employers--is important enough, but (unlike the oral argument, as demonstrated by the linked transcript) I want to focus on what seems to me to be the even more important core question.

So, can corporations formed under state law to engage in commercial transactions may claim exemptions from laws of general applicability that impose affirmative duties upon them that are at variance with their religious beliefs?

Under present First Amendment law, in an opinion written by Justice Scalia, the answer is clearly no:

We have never held that an individual's religious beliefs [p879] excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition. As described succinctly by Justice Frankfurter in Minersville School Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 594-595 (1940):

Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs. The mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities.

***

Our most recent decision involving a neutral, generally applicable regulatory law that compelled activity forbidden by an individual's religion was United States v. Lee, 455 U.S. at 258-261. There, an Amish employer, on behalf of himself and his employees, sought exemption from collection and payment of Social Security taxes on the ground that the Amish faith prohibited participation in governmental support programs. We rejected the claim that an exemption was constitutionally required. There would be no way, we observed, to distinguish the Amish believer's objection to Social Security taxes from the religious objections that others might have to the collection or use of other taxes.

If, for example, a religious adherent believes war is a sin, and if a certain percentage of the federal budget can be identified as devoted to war-related activities, such individuals would have a similarly valid claim to be exempt from paying that percentage of the income tax. The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.

The Court backed its analysis in that case, Employment Division v. Smith, with citations dating to 1879, involving cases in which the statute at issue prohibited conduct (such as polygamy, or the use of peyote in Native American worship at issue in Smith itself) and required action, such as the payment of monies.

So, under Smith, case closed. Individuals don't have the right to these exemptions under Smith, let alone corporations. Of course, Scalia could just scrap his prior opinion, as he did in 2012's Natl. Fedn. of Ind. Businesses v. Sebelius, in which he rejected his own 2005 opinion in Gonzales v. Raich, broadly construing the Commerce Clause. Scalia's deference to Congress tends to be, unfortunately, accordion-like--it expands (as in Gonzales) when he likes the regulation at issue, and then contracts to nil when he doesn't--as witness not only NFIB v. Sebelius, but even more so last year's egregious evisceration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Shelby Co. v. Holder. (In that case, a statute passed pursuant to an express provision of the Constitution, entrusting enforcement of the right to vote to Congress, was held to strict scrutiny because it violated an imaginary doctrine that all states must be treated equally in all legislation. Good luck finding that in the text!) And Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and even Kennedy might go along with him. Of course, if that did happen, we would have the intriguing political spectacle of five Catholic men reversing a precedent that one of them wrote and another (Kennedy) joined, in order to grant secular corporations an exemption that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops have been vehemently arguing for, and one that impacts the health care choices of women (three of the remaining justices). It will, frankly, look like special justice--that the provision of insurance by secular corporations whose owners share the beliefs of the majority warrant exemptions from the law, while the actual means and modalities of worship used by minority religions do not. I just don't know that Chief Justice Roberts likes those optics, though his heart seemed to be with the corporations today.

RFRA doesn't really solve the problem, either. As all the Justices acknowledged, the broad reading of RFRA required to support Hobby Lobby's position would create huge disruptions in the law, the very disruptions, Justice Kagan noted, that animated Smith:

"Your understanding of this law, your interpretation of it, would essentially subject the entire U.S. Code to the highest test in constitutional law, to a compelling interest standard," she told Paul Clement, the lawyer arguing against the mandate for Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood. "So another employer comes in and that employer says, I have a religious objection to sex discrimination laws; and then another employer comes in, I have a religious objection to minimum wage laws; and then another, family leave; and then another, child labor laws. And all of that is subject to the exact same test which you say is this unbelievably high test, the compelling interest standard with the least restrictive alternative."

Kagan's remarks might sound familiar to the legally-trained ear. In a 1990 majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith, Scalia alluded to the same examples of what might happen if religious entities are permitted to claim exemptions from generally applicable laws. He warned that "[a]ny society adopting such a system would be courting anarchy."

"The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind," Scalia wrote in the 6-3 opinion, "ranging from compulsory military service, to the payment of taxes, to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races."

The ultimate question, though, under the First Amendment or RFRA, is whether a corporation, an artificial entity created by the state to shield its owners from liability for debts contracted by the business, to enjoy perpetual life (and thus avert the problems businesses face when a principal dies), and to enjoy special tax privileges, can properly be treated as being the same entity as its owners for the purposes of religious expression rights. In other words, is this legal fiction to be treated as separate from its owners to their benefit in commercial transactions but as being one with them for religious purposes? And what of the well-rooted doctrine that the purpose of business corporations is to maximize return to shareholders, not to allow management to serve its own vision of the good with the shareholders' investment? (I'm not a fan of this rather bleak doctrine, but as Professor Bainbridge at the link notes, cultivating goodwill through socially responsible behavior may fall within the remit of the corporation). The point is, for-profit business corporations are separate from their owners, and not organized for religious purposes. If they are treated as vehicles for their owners' religious expressions, you are giving the owners a double advantage--shielding them from the worst risks of doing business while multiplying their ability to enforce their religious views on employees, clients and others.

I do not think that this is what the Framers or the Congress that enacted RFRA (itself of dubious constitutionality as applied here, as many of the problems that led to its invalidation vis a vis the states apply to prescribing how federal courts will apply claimed religious rights claims comes awfully close to an establishment of religion; the Court's 2006 opinion applying RFRA did not have such an issue before it, but it also had a much more limited, focused application of the statute before it.)

How will this come out? Anybody's guess, and I don't handicap. I suspect that if it tips in favor of the employers, it'll be a narrow opinion on RFRA grounds, possibly limited to closely held corporations, with very strong dissents either way.

Phineas at Bay: The Editor's Report

Simon Raven (who adapted Trollope for television, in addition to his own many novels) once defined himself as a writer: "I arrange words in pleasing patterns in order to make money". A short definition for a tall order, even leaving aside the money part.

Karen Clark, my editor who rejoices in the dread title "Domineditrix" (she is the queen of the double, and even triple, entendre, but credits me with this soubriquet) has now provided me with the third and, we feel pretty sure, final edited manuscript. (I'm not sure where Karen's choice of three drafts and done came from, but I agreed, based on the advice of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote somewhere (can't recall where, at the moment), that three drafts was about right--any more and you risk sucking the spontaneity out of the work, as witness The New York Edition of Henry James).

So, as we near completion, where are we? Well, obviously, I'm terribly biased. So it was very nice to see her blog post about P at Bay, which she described as a "tour de force sequel to Anthony Trollope's "Palliser" novels. It's a hell of a good book, and the reason I know it's a hell of a good book is that I am now reading it for the third time . . . and, if anything, I am enjoying reading the book more than I did the first time around." (I've left out a nice triple entendre, so you can click the link to Karen's place.

Also, this follow-up post is awfully encouraging:

I finished re-reading Sister Carrie in record time, having found an edition with nice big print that didn't strain my eyes - and, after that was gone, I needed something good to read. Well - John's book fit the description like a kid elbow glove on an Edwardian Professional Beauty. It's a good read. In fact, third time around, it's an even better read. (You will, I hope, pardon me for preening a bit if I say, "And that's because I edited the first two drafts.")

Don't get me wrong - it was an excellent novel the first time around, before I ever had anything to do with it. But John is one of those rare writers who can take his ego completely out of the way and think about "What is the best thing we can do in the service of this book?" The book itself - das Buch an sich! - and getting it as good as it can be, is all. By the time I had finished Round One of the editorial process, I was already rejoicing in the half-affectionate, half-sardonic nickname John had bestowed upon me - Domineditrix. I think the fiercest crack of the whip I gave was when I sent John and his main character, Phineas Finn, down into a Welsh coalmine...he hadn't written a description of the horrors endured by nineteenth century colliers, and I implored and argued and harangued, and finally used my ultimate weapon - "Your reader will feel cheated if it's not in the text!" - until he said, "Right, I'll give it a go and see how it turns out," and wrote it just to shut me up. And it's one of the best things in the book, by gum.

Karen's editing has been tremendous--not just reading for grammar, clarity, and typos, but, as she indicates, for character, consistency, and that intangible something Ronald Dworkin called fit. Not to mention the clothes. She did a helluva job researching the Victorian costuming I needed to describe, and gave me the opportunity to make my use of an old legal chestnut into a credible comic bit.

I should add that I have had four other readers who have given me invaluable feedback--one a professional novelist herself, as well as a Trollope-lover (she caught a badly-off character beat), one a scholar whose insights into what he has called "the Phineas Diptych" inspired a scene that I didn't even realize I needed until I'd heard him speak. My Dad came up with a great approach to bring in non-Trollope readers, and which led to my Prologue. Finally, another non-Trollopean served as a reality check. But Karen has toiled over this long novel, with enthusiasm and persistence, bless her. It's a better book for her efforts.

It's a little daunting--and extremely exciting--to realize that I'm nearing the point where I have no more excuses, but must, as Robertson Davies once wrote, enter the public square, tell the tale, and see how it fares.

The Wrong Side of History

I want this post to be irenic, but that may not be possible. The entity led by the former Episcopal bishop of South Carolina, currently calling itself the Diocese of South Carolina (the right to the name is in litigation--I'm not trying to be snide, just noting that the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and that led by Bishop Lawrence, who, whatever he may be, is no longer a bishop in the Episcopal Church) is, according to the Post-Courier, accepting primatial oversight from the GAFCON provinces:

Local Anglicans who separated from the Episcopal Church in 2012 approved a resolution Saturday accepting a new provisional oversight that gives them a formal ecclesiastical connection to the global Anglican Communion.

The Diocese of South Carolina will join the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, a worldwide network of theologically orthodox Anglican churches, and enter a relationship with primates from the Anglican Global South. The Global South comprises growing provinces in Africa, southeast Asia and South America.

"This will give us gracious oversight from one of the largest ecclesiastical body in the (Anglican) Communion," Bishop Mark Lawrence said in his address to the annual diocesan convention.
***

The unanimous vote Saturday became possible after a group of Global South primates formed an oversight council last month in Egypt to "provide pastoral and primatial oversight to dissenting individuals, parishes, and dioceses in order to keep them within the Communion," according to a statement from their steering committee.

They then offered the local diocese oversight under the new council just weeks before its annual convention this weekend at Christ Church in Mount Pleasant. The Most Rev. Dr. Mouneer Anis, primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East and chairman of the Global South steering committee, is a supporter of Lawrence and has traveled to Charleston to speak to local Anglicans.

Diocesan leaders jumped at the opportunity, though it meant notifying clergy and laity shortly before nearly 400 delegates voted.

"This is an unqualified good thing for the diocese, so we really felt the need to respond now," Lewis said. "In many ways, it was serendipitous that we had a diocesan convention already scheduled."

The article quotes Bishop Lawrence as stating that that he hopes Saturday's vote "will not be interpreted, either by those within the Diocese or across the wider Anglican Communion, as a step away from ACNA or any other more permanent provincial affiliation."

OK, I just have to say this, because I believe it is true: You are on the wrong side of history, Bishop Lawrence. Oh, I understand that there are those who hold the view that the biblical proscriptions against same-sex relationship (on the part of men, that is) remain binding and do not hold this position out of homophobia. Peter Ould is one such, who has even rebuked his own side for "not just the cruder forms of language in this discourse that are a sign of no real intent to listen and build relationships," but for refusing to engage with the pastoral realities of same-sex attractions more broadly. (Ould's critique of his own side, to my mind, is as valid now as it was in 2008, when he published it.) But this re-alignment goes beyond that; whether by affiliating with ACNA or the GFCA, South Carolina is embracing the Anglican Churches of Nigeria and their enthusiastic endorsement of statutes criminalizing not just homosexuality but advocacy for equal rights for gays or lesbians--requiring private citizens to function as informers, too. These statutes have led to mob violence in Nigeria and has led to media outing of suspected gays in an invitation to violence in Uganda.

This advocacy of de jure repression and crushing of free speech and association, which have invited and reaped mob and legalized violence--this, in the eyes of the South Carolina secessionists, is acceptable Christian behavior--indeed, exemplary, as it has been done by the religious bodies to whose jurisdiction they will now accede.

There is no kind way to put this; this is to align oneself with the forces of hate and violence. Fred Phelps, who died yesterday, did less actual harm to gays and lesbians, their families and their associates, than have the Archbishops of Nigeria and Uganda; they won in their nations, at least, while he lost, and was increasingly marginalized.

Happy St. Patricks Day

On the occasion of St. Patrick's Day, let me share a slice of Somerville & Ross's Some Experiences of an Irish R.M., as adapted in 1983, starring the marvelous Peter Bowles as the befuddled but fundamentally well-intentioned Major Sinclair Yeates:



(My affection for these books led me to drag Major Yeates into politics in Phineas at Bay; the Major is not entirely sure he's cut out for Westminster, even if he wins his seat; Phillipa has no doubts at all that he will do splendidly.)

Phineas Finn was, of course, too reluctant to be tagged a stage Irishman to celebrate St. Patrick's Day too much; still, his pipes are almost all from Peterson of Dublin, and I can assure you that he extols the virtues of the "System" in comparison with less well designed Sassenach products.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to one and all.