Lex Anteinternet: Friday, June 26, 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges

Lex Anteinternet: Friday, June 26, 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges: 

Friday, June 26, 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges

June 26, 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges

Only a decade?  

It seems like a lot longer.

I felt at the time, and I still do, that the Obergefell decision was an absolute disaster.  It was legally deficient in its reasoning, which was pathetic.  Justice Kennedy's text failed to grasp the existential nature of marriage, but perhaps that was understandable as Kennedy, currently 88 years old, was in his 20s and 30s in the 1960s.  Indeed, he turned 30 in 1966, by which time Americans were well on their way to forgetting what the biological purpose of sex is, and what the nature of marriage is.

Kennedy's opinion embraced a sort of Age of Aquarius sense of "love" being the reason for marriage, at its core root.  Love is an aspect of marriage, hopefully, and there's a lot to that, but sex is as well and the type that leads to children, at least frequently.  Indeed, the entire institution and everything about it is oriented in that direction.

That has very little to do with homosexuality in that unions between the same gender don't result in children.  I know the arguments about adoption and the like, but that's fairly far from the point as well.  Indeed, in a way, that gets into the following topic about IVF that we covered recently.

IVF and a Half-Cath | June 11, 2025

Something that the generation that came of age after World War Two really brought into the culture is sort of the opposite of the Rolling Stone's skifflesque You Can't Always Get What You Want.  That generation pretty much got almost all of what they wanted, and still are.  That sense of entitlement resulted in cultural self centeredness in which you are entitled to be what you want to be and everyone else has to darned well accept it and the consequences.

The problem was and is, however, that Obergefell, as it strayed so far from the law, and so far from where  the culture then was (it's a horrible example of the old trying to get ahead of the culture) that it was bound to spark a massive reaction.  And it did.

The populist right rage that developed soon after was already burning, but Obergefell poured gasoline on the fire.  The culture had lost much of the conservative wisdom on the nature of sex and marriage already, and had gone through Chesterton's fence with a bulldozer in this regard.  A culture that had accepted, prior to the early 1950s that sex was properly in marriage, and properly between married men and women, had gone to pretty much accepting that sex was entertainment and marriage was a celebration of love rather than a loving (hopefully) childrearing, economic, natural unit.  People basically forgot what their natures produced and men in particular figures that they were entitled to play around with Fran Geraud, and women figured they had to endure it.  And that's where we remain today.  A culture that basically thinks the Hawk Tuah Girl is amusing rather than a tramp.

But once that moral decay had reached the point where people who could excuse their own conduct could imagine themselves to somehow still be good Christians suddenly were confronted with homosexuals making the same intellectual arguments, and that being adopted by the Supreme Court, it was just too much.

It was also clear, in spite of what Kennedy thought, that Obergefell was going to open the floodgates of radical sexual behavior.  Same sex sexual conduct, no matter what a person thinks of it, had been around for time immemorial, although it frankly even now is not really very well understood.  But transgenderism had not been, or at least not in the same fashion.  The groups backing the concept of transgenderism rushed into the field and gained ground enormously, which large numbers of people were not and are not willing to accept, including some homosexuals and included many feminists.  

That this was going to cause massive civil disintegration was obvious.  Disorganized groups on the right and middle that were already upset by the loss of industrial jobs and immigration now were faced with a massive social advance on the left which did not square with their basic understanding of themselves, and for good reason.  To add to it, it was forced upon them.

None of this was necessary.  Various states were moving towards various civil unions for homosexuals as it was.  The slow march of legislation would have brought about a change, whether it was a good one or not, at a pace that would have been accepted.  That's what happened to the disaster of no fault divorce.  Instead Kennedy's opinion forced it all, and more than he had anticipated, all at once.

It destroyed respect for the Court and gave traditionalists of all types massive pause.  It started the rush towards right wing populism which was already going on.

It lead directly to Donald Trump.

Related threads:

The Supreme Court tries a bit to mop up a dog's breakfast. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Labels: 2010s, 2015, 2018, Commentary, Court, law, Monday at the bar, Natural Law, Politics, The Law, The Old Law, trends

Why Americans, irrespective of position, ought to cringe over Obergefell

Labels: Commentary, law, Marriage, Monday at the bar, Politics, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, The Law, The Practice of Law, trends, You heard it here first

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 89th Edition. Sidewalks and Swastikas

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 89th Edition. Sidewa...: 

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 89th Edition. Sidewalks and flags.

An interesting episode in Evansville:

‘This is awesome’: Casper organizes to cover up swastika display in Evansville

And an episode all played out against the background of the state's GOP going increasingly to the very far right.

I'll note that this is "Pride Month".  As I've noted before, I don't really get pride month for a bunch of reasons, one simple one being I don't see how a person can be "proud" of their sexual drive.  That just seems odd to me.  My views on the topic are found in the related thread links below, and a person can read them if they're interested.

I'm also kind of in the camp of the months just being the months, although I do see why Black History Month and Women's History Month got started to focus attention.

Anyhow, over time, Prime Month, which originally was limited to homosexuality, expanded out to LGBTQ, and that's another topic.  L G & Q are related topics, but T is really a seperate one entirely, a fact that has caused some Ls to be upset by being included with Ts, and understandably so.

Anyhow, that's the topic of the post.

As noted, this is Pride Month and the Mayor of Evansville, on her own volition, put out small rainbow flags at the Evansville Town Hall.  She noted that it represented a municipal spirit of acceptedness, although it was not a municipal act. It was a private one.

This shows something really interesting in general.  For native Wyomingites, the view towards LGBTQ topics long was "I don't care what you do, just leave me alone".  That's the native Wyoming view on a lot of things.

For this reason, for decades, locals in this community would find themselves in the grocery store line with a man wearing a tutu (I'm sincere on this), and think, "um. . .whatever".  Or in my case, "um. . . poor taste in dresses".

The current right wing populist view, however, is very much "I care exactly what you are doing and I'm going to force you to stop doing it".

For locals, therefore, this entire topic has been a bit odd.  There's been the movement towards "you must accept", which is generally met with "What?  I wasn't bothering you" while also being met with "you must stop them", which has been met with "Why?  They weren't bothering me".

Anyhow, the mayor put out flags.

This was, in turn, met with the actions of one Evansville resident who went out and drew swastikas on the sidewalk in protest.  In addition, he threatened to purchase German swastika flags and put them out.

Why swastikas?

Well, nobody can really figure that one out.  Asked about it in a town work session, he replied:

Yeah, there’s a difference. I’m not that stupid, but what I’m doing here is to make a point.

And what is that point?

Hard to figure.

Anyhow, Evansville residents reacted by having a sidewalk chalk fest.  Seems about the best possible reaction, really.

A lesson here is that street level Wyoming isn't nearly as far right as GOP.  At some point, that probably begins to have an effect.

Another lesson may very well be that the center needle on this has moved on, giving us an example of Yeoman's Twenty First Law of Behavior for the second time in two days.  If that's the case, social conservatives will have a pretty hard time actually moving things back to where they want, as that requires a cultural change, and that change may have already taken place in the opposite direction.

Somewhat related, Wyoming's lone Congressman is backing a bill in Congress to change Pride Month (and I don't know how it ended up being called that) to "Family Month".  A Hageman Facebook post stated:

This June, I am proud to cosponsor Rep. Mary Miller's resolution to officially declare June as Family Month.

It is time to reject radical ideologies and honor traditional family values that have shaped our country for generations.

A press release said something similar. 

Some Facebook wag  posted in reply:

Where's your Hageman family picture?

Whoever posted that was probably well aware that Ms. Hageman goes by her maiden name, under which her legal career was established prior to her marriage, and not the last name of her husband.  More significantly, she has no children.

I've always wondered if somebody would start to take notice of this.  As a far right Republican, Hageman ran on family values but, with no children of her own, made reference to her nephews and nieces, which aren't ballpark close to you own children.

Now, women don't have children for a lot of reasons.  Some can't, for various biological reasons.  Sometimes their spouse is sterile, either due to biological reasons or surgical mutilation.  Lots of times, however, children were simply avoided, a species of tragedy, frankly, for those who have had children and grasp how they complete your lives, and make you into a real adult.

In polite society, you don't ask, however.

But American polite society is nearly a t hing of the past anymore, and here maybe there's a point to raising it.  Amongst the things the far right of the GOP has embraced is pronatalism.  

Pronatalism is a philosophy that is based on the concept that (married) couples ought to have a lot of children.  Frankly the general thesis of it is that "our" culture is dying and we need to combat it by having children.  The concept has actually been around for a very long time and is sometimes associated with the phrase "the battle of the cradle" and the concept of "race suicide".  No less of President than Theodore Roosevelt advocated the idea, stating that a man or woman who was childless by choice "merits contempt."

Which is I guess why the question is fair game in regard to the Congresswoman.  I'm not suggesting that she has avoided children by choice (I don't know), and even if she had, I wouldn't suggest that, therefore causes her to "merit contempt"  However, ff you raise the topic, well then. . . questions can logically follow.

The current GOP has become so focused on this that its floated the idea of a baby bonus, something that hasn't been paid in a Western nation for years and which has never been done in the U.S.  The proposal was to pay parents of newborns $1,000, which is just about the cost of one week of Huggies.  It's a stupid idea.

From the perspective of Catholics, however, this is a lot of fish on Fridays' during Lent.  You find people adopting something sort of generally associated with you, in this case children in marriage, but for oddball secular reasons, and as if the concept is brand new.  Catholics don't have children in marriage as a part of a race war.  Indeed, Catholics don't really recognize the validity of the concept of "race" at all, which is pretty plain if you go to a Mass in any metropolitan area of more than 10,000 people.  By the same token, we don't eat fish on Fridays during Lent (or in many cases, the rest of the year) as we've adopted the Mediterranean Diet or something.  

This does bring up this, however.  If you want a lot more children, you could take on the topic of pharmaceutical birth control.

Oh my.

Indeed, nothing would be more likely to rocket the population back to a more traditional set of relationships between men and women than that.

There's been some fears, I might note, that the current set of populists would do just that.  It's quite clear that some in the National Conservative/Christian Nationalist camp, would do that if they could.  

Anyhow, sidewalk chalk over the top of swastikas was a good end to an odd story.

Related threads:

On Pride Month, the nature of Pride, and compelling opinions.

Lex Anteinternet: Pride and Unintended Consequences and the really unknowable views of Donald Trump.

Pride and Unintended Consequences.

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 88th Edition. A predictive issue and other ramblings. Order coming on women in combat roles. Trump's bolt shot.

Labels: Christian Nationalism, Military, National Conservatism, Pete Hegseth, Predictions, The Madness of King Donald, The relationship between men and women, The roles of men and women, transgenderism, You heard it here first, Pete Hegseth,2026 Election, 2028 Election, Christianity, Education, Evolutionary Biology, Kent State Incident, Mormon, Populism, Protestant, religion, Synchronicity, trends, University of Wyoming, Yeoman's twenty-first law of behavior

Lex Anteinternet: Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling...

Lex Anteinternet: Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling...: 

Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling thread.

Occupational identity refers to the conscious awareness of oneself as a worker. The process of occupational identity formation in modern societies can be difficult and stressful. However, establishing a strong, self-chosen, positive, and flexible occupational identity appears to be an important contributor to occupational success, social adaptation, and psychological well-being. Whereas previous research has demonstrated that the strength and clarity of occupational identity are major determinants of career decision-making and psychosocial adjustment, more attention needs to be paid to its structure and contents. We describe the structure of occupational identity using an extended identity status model, which includes the traditional constructs of moratorium and foreclosure, but also differentiates between identity diffusion and identity confusion as well as between static and dynamic identity achievement. Dynamic identity achievement appears to be the most adaptive occupational identity status, whereas confusion may be particularly problematic. We represent the contents of occupational identity via a theoretical taxonomy of general orientations toward work (Job, Social Ladder, Calling, and Career) determined by the prevailing work motivation (extrinsic vs. intrinsic) and preferred career dynamics (stability vs. growth). There is evidence that perception of work as a calling is associated with positive mental health, whereas perception of work as a career can be highly beneficial in terms of occupational success and satisfaction. We conclude that further research is needed on the structure and contents of occupational identity and we note that there is also an urgent need to address the issues of cross-cultural differences and intervention that have not received sufficient attention in previous research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Skorikov, V. B., & Vondracek, F. W. (2011). Occupational identity. In S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. L. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research.

How some lawyers apparently want the public to imagine them.

A number of relatively recent experiences has lead me to post this thread.

Posted around town are some billboards by a lawyer who is apparently specializing in plaintiffs' cases and criminal defense.  I don't know him well, but I do know  him.

When I first met him, he came across, quite frankly, as a metrosexual.  I was quite surprised later on when I learned that he'd grown up on a ranch, and that he had a brother who now ran it.  Now, however, he appears on billboards with a huge mustache in Western attire and saddle and portrays himself as a cowboy.

And I guess, by cowboy, I mean both real cowboys and the movie image of a cowboy.

Cowboys, and that is of course a real occupation, have been a popular cultural image since the late 19th Century.  It's really interesting to me, as somebody who is a stockman and who has, accordingly, done a fair amount of cowboying, how cowboys continue to have a sort of wild image that they acquired in that time period.  I love working stock, but most of it isn't anything like what movies portray.  Maybe none of is, which is why  the popular Yellowstone television show tends to anger me.

Of course, being a lawyer isn't anything like portrayed on television either.

Anyhow, I never tell people that "I'm a cowboy", but I find that I"m referred to that way, in the working sense of the word, from time to time.  Or, people will refer to me as a rancher the same way from time to time.  I'm always a bit flattered when they do, as if I'd had my ruthers in the world, which I haven't, that's what I would have done full time.  I can't say its my occupational identity, however, as I'm well aware that I don't do it full time.

Affecting the image, however, miffs me.  It's fake.  If you simply come across that way, as you are naturally that way, that's one thing.  Using it to promote your legal career, however, is bullshit.

Indeed, on real cowboys, not all of which are men, today:

Come As You Are

I guess this gets back in a way to this thread:

A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .

If you are going to be a lawyer, look like one, it's what you actually are.

And, by the way, there's at least one politician in the state that does the same thing, and I'd have the same criticism about.  He's not a lawyer, but a commercial landlord.  

Anyhow, it also gets to the weird association that the law picked up at some point with cowboys around here.  I don't know when this occurred, but it might have been about the time that Gerry Spence's book Gunning for Justice came out.  Spence didn't try to portray himself as a cowboy, but he did take on a Western influenced style, wearing a fringed jacket and a cowboy hat as a matter of course.  Spence being sui generis has been able to consistently pull that off whereas those copying him tend to look absurd.

Anyhow, "Gunning for Justice" is actually a phrase that's been around for awhile and he didn't introduce it, as t his movie poster from 1948 demonstrates:

Spence's use of it, however, seem to have pushed into another sort of use, at least locally.

On this, it's interesting that the cowboy image can be coopted this way, whereas other "manly" professions genuinely cannot.  Fighters (boxers) have been a little bit, and I suppose that was an obviously one, but nobody, for example, talks about "whaling for justice".

Anyhow, dressing up like a cowboy for affect if you are not punching makes you a Rexall Ranger, not a cowboy.

While I'm at it, a Wyoming lawyer has affected the cowboy appearance for her columns on one of the local electronic journals.  In this case, she's gone for the a way too big hat big pushed way up on the forehead so you can see the face look, which to a working stockman looks absolutely absurd.  The same journal actually as a working rancher who wears his hat correctly as a columnist, and up until recently had another who did the same.

As a total side, if you notice in old cowboy portraits they often have their hats pushed to the back of their head, something moderns have wondered about, and for which they've even assumed that must be how they wore them.

No, the cameras were bad.

Isom Dart at Brown’s Hole Wyoming.

If they hadn't pushed them up some, their faces would have been in shadow

On identifies, I had a couple of odd encounters recently, one of which involves mental decline, and the other which involves gender attraction.

I'll start with the latter one first.  There's an older profession that I don't know well, but who've I've been familiar with for a very long time.  Somebody much more familiar with him than me dropped that he's a homosexual.  I was shocked.  Not because homosexuality in general shocks me, but because it was very well closeted for decades.  Indeed, he's married with children.

I suppose that might be the rule for people north of 70, the closteting, that is.

In retrospect, it pretty quickly made sense for some reason.  It just explained some personality quirks that I'd long noticed.  The point of posting it here, however, is that if it's true, he's lived a lifetime with sort of an interesting strained identity.

He's not the only one I know of who is alleged to be in this category.  Frankly a fairly well known person in the region is claimed by some insiders to fit this as well.  In that case, it's more notable for his public opinions on things, which would be generally contrary to this inclination, assuming its true.

Now, I'll note that I have the typically misunderstood Catholic views on homosexuality.  I'll also note that one of these individuals is a co-religious, and the other was.  My only real point in noting all of this is to note that it must be a strain to live an entire life with a sort of false identity, assuming that its true in either case, which I can't really say for sure.

I'll also note that homosexuals of that vintage who did not present themselves as "gay", which is different, may have had a better understanding of marriage than many.  Catholic Answers Hugh Barbour defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman to produce children for the worship of God, which while it may be more than that, that captures a lot of it.  People like to say that before Obergefell homosexuals couldn't marry, but that's simply false, if we consider that marriage is a unique institution between two people capable of reproducing and bound to care for those they create.

Going on to occupations, I've also run across recently a situation in which I've been dealing with somebody whom, once again, I don't know that well but who is still working fulltime and whose clearly suffering from some compression loss in the psychological cylinders.  I'm not their pal or anything but it's sad to watch.  It's also sad to watch, however, somebody whose psychological identify is so closely identified with the practice of law, they can't leave it.

I've known more than one lawyer who practiced into advanced old age with no mental detriment.  But it's also the case quite frankly that a person's physical clockworks, and often their mental ones, start to slip a bit after the hands hit 60 or so.  I'm frankly not convinced at all that allowing people to practice a profession after some point in their 60s is a good thing, and I don't think people should carry on into their 70s.  For one thing, it's just sad.  Surely there was something else that interested them once.

Back to occupational identities.

One of the really minor features of this blog is the M65 Field Jackets in the wild. page.  Minor.

I like M65 field jackets.  When I was in the Guard I had at least six of them due to having bought two and having been issued four more.  The reason I was issued four is that at Ft. Sill the switch from OG-107 to BDU was going on and we were issued OD field jackets. As soon as I got back, we were issued BDU field jackets, and told to keep the old ones.

I gave one of the OD ones to a girlfriend who had need of a jacket while I was in university, and then eventually I just got to big, i.e,. gained weight, or filled out, whatever, and couldn't wear the size I'd been issued.  But I still had the next larger size, Large Regular.

Well, time, etc.

A surplus store here had a whole bunch of uniform items here before they went out of business and I bought several BDU ones.  I just really like them.  I picked up a OD one for my son, as they're a nice coat, but naively didn't for myself.  The OD ones you can wear for daily wear really.

Well, here recently I found a Greek Lizard pattern one for sale and I bought it for hunting.  Which meant that I had three woodland pattern ones, one desert pattern one (a gift of an old soldier) and a Lizard pattern one.  Then I saw the current multicam pattern one for sale on Ebay, which I ordered.  Finally, I decided I needed an OD one and bought one of those off of ebay.

Some of these have the US Army tape on them.  One, the multicam one, came with paratrooper wings from the former and his name tape.  I took the name tape off and the paratrooper wings.  I'm not a paratrooper.  The OD one came with a name tape, the U.S. Army tape, and two unit patches.  I took everything off but the US Army tape.

For reasons that are silly, and I can't explain, I ended up ordering name tapes.  I can now sew those on.

Why?  I'm not sure.  I don't need name tapes on old uniform items for any rational reason.  Rather, I was required to do it back in the day, and I still feel like am now.  Indeed, it would make a lot more sense to take the US Army patch off the OD one so I can use it for its intended purpose of regular daily wear.

Odd

Well, I found a M1943 replica on sale and ordered it.  It won't have any patches.

I need to stop buying them.

As a further aside, a Carhartt coat is much warmer.  My old one is pretty much blown out now.  It was a gift from my wife and I've been resisting getting a new one, even though I need to.  Guess I'm hoping for another one as a gift so that I don't have to buy it.

Back to occupational identities for a moment.  It occured to me how, when I was young, men had much less of one. They genuinely seemed more well rounded than men do today

People always like to claim things were different, if not outright perfect, when they were young.  But it does seem to me that genuinely men were quite family oriented. That meant that their professions and occupations were focused on providing for their families, but it also meant that their professions tended not to be all that they were, including to themselves.  I can vaguely recall some men who were very career oriented being criticized for it.

Every man that I knew when I was young tended to almost be identified by a collection of interests.  Medical professionals were often hunters and fishermen.  Indeed, I don't know one who wasn't.  Some were dramatically so.  Men who had come into professions from farms and ranches tended to still be identified with their origin and retain some contacts with that life.  I knew a fireman who was a pretty good amature geologist, another who was a car restorer, and another who was the first long distance runner I ever knew.  More recently professionals, or at least lawyers, have almost become cartoons of themselves in some instances, only engaging in the law or perhaps one activity that's sort of socially approved for lawyers.

It isn't good.

Last Sunday I ran this item:

Pack Animals - the 🇩🇪 German Mountain Infantry Brigade

I knew that the Bundesheer has a mountain infantry brigade.

I've sometimes thought that if I had been born in Germany, which I'm very much glad I was not, I'd have opted for a career with this unit.  Outdoors. . . animals, etc.  By the same token, if I had been born French, there's the Chasseurs Alpins.

Hmmm. . . 

Well, I didn't opt for a career with the Wyoming Game & Fish, so I'm probably just fooling myself.

Have a nice day at work.  

Mehr Mensch sein,

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: QC: two controversies and a chat about marriage prep.

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: QC: two controversies and a chat abo...:

Blog Mirror: QC: two controversies and a chat about marriage prep | April 20, 2023

Fr. Joseph Krupp provides a really interesting discussion on courting (dating?), engagement and marriage.

It starts at about 24:30.  The material before that is on a completely different topic.

The comments by Fr. Krupp before that are interesting, albeit, as noted, on a completely different topic. Those aren't the reason that I linked this in here, but I am fairly amazed that he hasn't gotten himself in trouble for saying such things as he says in the first half of this video podcast.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, March 21, 1944. Dear John.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, March 21, 1944. Dear John.: 

Tuesday, March 21, 1944. Dear John.

The first in print use of the term "Dear John Letter" appeared in a UPI article entitled Hollywood Girls Gain Weight on Tour in Africa.¹   It was clear from the use, which was a quote from one of the increasingly corpulent Hollywood Girls that the term was in the common vernacular at the time.

We've touched on the topic of wartime marriages and breakups several times before, but my ability to link them in is restrained, as I can't find them all.  We haven't done one on wartime romantic relationships in general.  As our Fourth Law of History details, War Changes Everything, but like a lot of things surrounding World War Two, this topic is subject to a lot of myth.  According to one scholarly source:

Marriage rates rose in 1940-41 and peaked in 1942, only to slow down during the war and rise to even higher levels in 1946. Divorce rates followed a much smoother pattern, increasing from 1940 to 1946, then quickly declining in 1947.

World War II and Divorce: A Life-Course Perspective by Eliza K. Pavalko and Glen H. Elder, Jr.  

Frankly, looking at it, the Second World War didn't impact divorce nearly as much as commonly believed.  If it is taken into consideration that World War Two came immediately on the heels of the Great Depression, and that the ages of US troops in the war was higher than commonly imagined, it makes sense.  Consider:

While the Great Depression did lower marriage rates, the effect was not long lasting: marriages were delayed, not denied. The primary long-run effect of the downturn on marriage was stability: Marriages formed in tough economic times were more likely to survive compared to matches made in more prosperous time periods.

Love in the Time of the Depression: The Effect of Economic Conditions on Marriage in the Great Depression, Matthew J. Hill.

Indeed, that short snipped is revealing.

There were a lot of marriages contracted before soldiers went overseas, and some people did marry very quickly, which is probably balanced out by a lot of people who were going to get married anyhow getting married before they would be husband deployed.  Also, according to The Great Plains during World War II  by Prof. R. Douglas Hurt, there was an increase of pre deployment pre marital contact, although the book relied solely on interview data for that claim.  Having said that, a Florida academic, Alan Petigny, has noted that "between the beginning of World War II in 1941 and the inaugural issue of Playboy in 1953, the overall rate of single motherhood more than doubled".²

That the war had an impact on behavior in regard to relations outside of marriage is well documented.  Prostitution was rampant in every area where troops were deployed, with it being openly engaged in locations like London.  Examples of illicit behavior aren't very hard to find at all.  The length of the war no doubt contributed to this.  Nonetheless, traditional moral conduct dominated throughout the 1940s and after it, with the real, and disastrous, changes really starting in the early 1950s.

That "Dear John" letters weren't uncommon makes a lot of sense, however. The majority, but not all of them, would have been written by single women to single men, i.e., by girlfriend to boyfriend.  Those relationships were not solemnized and largely unconsummated, if we use those terms.  The war was long and accordingly the separations were as well.  Young women in many instances would have aged a few years, as the men would have also, but in conditions that were dramatically different than the men.  The women were, to a large degree, temporarily forced outside their homes, if they fit into the demographic that would have remained at home, but in conditions that were considerably more stable than the men.  If they went to work, they could have remained at one employer for years, whereas the soldier boyfriend may very well have constantly been on the move. Workplace romances certainly aren't uncommon now, with around 20% of Americans having met their spouses at work (Forbes claims its 43%).  Some large percentage of Americans have dated a coworker.  Given the long separations, a young woman meeting a man at work, or perhaps at church, or in her group of friends, was undoubtedly a common occurrence during the war, as it was never the case that all men were deployed, even though a very large number were.

FWIW, the Vietnam War is associated with the highest rate of "Dear John" letters, even though troops deployed for only one year in the country.  This undoubtedly says something about the change in economic and social conditions from the 1940s to the 1960s.

On a personally anecdotal level, I think I've met three people, now all deceased, who married during the war prior to the husband deploying.  One of those marriages failed, but the other two were lifelong.

The 20th Indian Division completed a withdrawal to the Shenan Hills. The 17th Indian Division was conducting a fighting withdrawal.

The Japanese were accordingly engaging in a very successful offensive in northeast Burma.  The war in that quarter was far from settled.  Be that as it may, as that was going on, the Western Allies were advancing in the Pacific ever close to Japan itself, which Japan was proving unable to arrest.  The Japanese situation, therefore, was oddly complicated in that in order to really reverse the tide of the war, they would have had to taken Indian entirely, and then knocked China out of the war, neither of which was realistic in spite of its recent battlefield successes.

As that was going on:

The Aerodrome: 21–25 April 1944. First Helicopter Combat Rescue: 21–25 April 1944.

We don't think of helicopters in World War Two, but they were starting to show up, and in one of their classic roles.

US and Australian troops linked up on the Huon Peninsula.  

Fighting in New Guinea, while going in the Allied direction, was proving endless.

The Finnish parliament, in a secret session, rejected Soviet peace terms.  Secret or not, the Finnish rejection hit American newspapers that very day.  That the Finns and Soviets were talking was very well known to everyone.

The papers were also noting the German invasion of Hungary, and there were rumors that Hungary was going to declare war on Germany, which proved far from true.  The Hungarian situation must have caused some concern, however, in Finland.

It was the first flight of the Japanese kamikaze rocket plane, the Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (櫻花)

The first flight was an unpowered test.

It might be noted that there's a real logic failure with this design.  If you can build a powered rocket suicide plane, you can build a rocket powered drone.

The ice jammed Yellowstone broke over its banks in Miles City, Montana.

The Trappist Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit was founded near Conyers, Georgia.

Footnotes:

1. The "girls" were Louise Allbritton, an actress who would have been 23 years old at the time, and June Clyde, who would have been 35.

Allbritton married a CBS news correspondent in 1946 and retired from acting.  She remained married until her death in 1979.  Clyde, who was a pre code actress and dancer, was married (1930) and also remained for the rest of her life. She passed away in 1987.

2.  World War One, which was comparatively short, does not seem to have impacted behavior and marriage rates nearly as much, but it did cause a very notable boom in overseas "war bride" marriages anywhere American troops were deployed, including Siberia.

There were, of course, war brides as a result of World War Two, but that's another story.

Related items:

Yeoman's Laws of History

Father Arne and the Greatest Failure of the Greatest Generation

1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, Baby Boom Generation, Great Migration, It was because of World War Two, mehr Mensch sein, trends, World War II (Greatest) Generation, World War Two, Yeoman's Fourth Law of History

Friday, June 19, 1942 . James Dougherty and Norma Jean Baker marry. The Second Washington Conference commenced. The Germans execute Eliáš,

1940s, 1942s, Commandos, Czechoslovakia, Infantry, Marilyn Monroe, Personalities, Rangers, Second Washington Conference, Special Air Service, Special Boat Service, Teenagers, Yeoman's Fourth Law of History

Last prior edition:

Monday, March 20, 1944. Landings, port stops, potential halts.

1940s, 1944, 1944 at the Movies, Eastern Front, India, Italy, Monte Cassino, Movies, Operation Cartwheel, Operation U-Go, Ukraine, World War Two

Lex Anteinternet: If you wonder what is giving rise to the strong populist/Christian Nationalist/Naotional Conservatism reaction in some quarters . . .

Lex Anteinternet: If you wonder what is giving rise to the strong po...:  

If you wonder what is giving rise to the strong populist/Christian Nationalist/Naotional Conservatism reaction in some quarters . . .

 it's complete crap like this:

Theorizing White heteropatriarchal supremacy, marriage fundamentalism, and the mechanisms that maintain family inequality

The abstract:

Abstract

In this article, I draw upon critical feminist and intersectional frameworks to delineate an overarching orientation to structural oppression and unequal power relations that advantages White heteropatriarchal nuclear families (WHNFs) and marginalizes others as a function of family structure and relationship status. Specifically, I theorize that marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy. Marriage fundamentalism can be understood as an ideological and cultural phenomenon, where adherents espouse the superiority of the two-parent married family. But it is also a hidden or unacknowledged structural mechanism of White heteropatriarchal family supremacy that is essential to the reproduction and maintenance of family inequality in the United States. Through several examples, I demonstrate how—since colonization—marriage fundamentalism has been instantiated through laws, policies, and practices to unduly advantage WHNFs while simultaneously marginalizing Black, Indigenous, immigrant, mother-headed, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) families, among others. I conclude with a call for family scientists to further interrogate how marriage fundamentalism reproduces family inequality in American family life and to work toward its dismantling. A deeper understanding of how these complex and often covert mechanisms of structural oppression operate in family life is needed to disrupt these mechanisms and advance family equality and justice.

Marriage is a human universal.  It's not "white", and indeed "white" doesn't really exist either.  When people say "white" they mean Western European culture, maybe, or maybe they mean American European culture. Or maybe they just don't know what they mean and are in fact simply reinforcing the language invented for the more recent form of slavery that existed in North American until 1865.

Anyway you look at it, when you wonder why people go in and vote for Trump, well, stuff like this has an awful lot to do with it.

Lex Anteinternet: The Obituary

Lex Anteinternet: The Obituary: 

The Obituary

Mira qué bonita era by Julio Romero de Torres, 1895.  Depiction of a wake in Spain.

I didn't have him as a teacher in high school, but I certainly knew of him.¹  Somehow or another, I also knew that a student that was in school with us, and who my cousins knew, was not only his daughter, but also one of his students.  Apparently that was awkward. 

I don't do a good job of keeping track of former teachers.  I probably couldn't tell you where a single one of them was, even the ones I really liked, let alone those I only sort of knew by association.  In his case, there was our classmate, whom I also didn't know (she was a couple of years ahead of me), but he was also known to our parents.  Without knowing for sure, in looking at it, I think that must have been because he was from a Catholic family here in town.

My classmate died the year before last.  She was 62.

I read his obituary as he was so well known locally.  And then I recalled there were bits and pieces of his story I'd picked up over the years.

His wife was also a teacher.

Sometime after I left high school, the couple apparently civilly divorced.²   He remarried, and apparently to an apparently significantly younger women whom I take was also a teacher.  According to the obit, they had a child after he retired, who would now be about 31.  He would have been about 56 when she was born.  I can dimly recall my parents and my father's siblings talking about this as well, mostly in a somewhat bemused manner, given the difficulties of raising an infant, in their view, when you are that old.

When my classmate died, her mother was mentioned in the obituary.  Indeed, her obituary characterizes both of her parents as loving, and contains praise of them.

His obituary mentioned both of his daughters by his first marriage, and then goes on about his second.  His wife, the mother of my classmate, isn't mentioned at all.  The obituary is profuse on his latter "marriage", calling that individual, named in the obituary, the "love of his life" amongst other things.

Of course, the dead don't write their obituaries.  If they did, who knows how they'd read?  We might all fear how they'd be penned.  I've read plenty where a "first" and "second" spouse are mentioned.  This one is profuse on his love of one woman that he had children by and which the civil law would regard as his wife, but totally silent as to his wife who was the mother of my classmate. My classmate's obituary mentions her, and kindly, using the Americanism "step" to describe her as her "stepmother", which is polite, but the second "wife" of a divorced person isn't anything, relationship wise, to a child of the "first" marriage at all.³    Children, of a later marriage of any kind are, of course, as they're related by blood, i.e., genetically. Of course, children born out of wedlock to an illicit partner, to which I am in no way comparing this situation other than to note it, are "half" siblings as well.⁴ 

It must be a later child of the second union that wrote the obituary, as it concluded with the funeral details, those being an apparently civil funeral, followed by an "Irish wake", the latter something not really understood by Americans.  A real wake comes before, not after, the ceremony, and the body of the deceased is present. Indeed, the body is key to the wake, and the dead's family and friends do not allow the body to be left alone.  Prayer for the dead is a feature of it, but there is also food and drink and even courting, which in part has to do with the fact that life goes on, but in part because in more natural societies people live much closer to death than they do in our false one.

Everywhere, real wakes have much diminished.⁵

But then, so has our understanding of, and appreciation of the metaphysical and the existential, and as most people do not dwell deeply on those topics, and the culture has drifted many of those who drift with it bear no fault for having done so.

There's no Irish wakes without prayer, the deceased, and a sense of the next world having stepped into this one.  In our age, however, we expect this world and how we define it to step into the next one.

Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Te decet hymnus Deus in Sion,

et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.

Exaudi orationem meam,

ad te omnis caro veniet.

Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. Kyrie, eleison.⁶

Footnotes:

1.  In no small part because he was a well put together athletic man who drew hall monitor duty, but didn't seem to care for it much.  Indeed, if you went by him in the hall, when he had it, he didn't bother to ask you where you were going.

2.  I'll admit that this entry disregards the topic of Catholic annulment. Did they obtain one?  No idea.

To add to that, do I know anything whatsoever about the circumstances of their "divorce" and what brought it about, including who brought it about.  No I don't.

3.  The etymology of the prefix "step" goes back to the 8th Century and denoted an orphan.  It was later extended in Old English to connote a remarriage of a widow.

Some "step" parents, it might be noted, particularly in the case of an early death of an actual parent, or an abandonment by one of them, really step up to the plate and become effectively de facto parents.

The Pogues song Body of an American gives a good description of Irish wakes and how they can be.  The movie Road To Perdition, however, gives a very good depiction of a traditional wake, complete with the body iced.

4.  Again, as the fraud of civil divorce is so widely recognized as real in the Western World, I am in no way comparing the children of illicit affairs to the children of later contracted civil marriages.

5.  I've been to a real wake once, for a deceased second cousin, and it was horrific.  My father, who was 1/2 Irish, and 1/2 Westphalian by descent, but whose family did not retain any Irish customs, detested them.

6.       Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord,

and let light perpetual shine upon them.

Thou art worthy to praised, O God, in Zion,

and to thee shall prayer be offered in Jerusalem.

Hear my prayer,

for to thee shall all flesh come.

Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord,

and let light perpetual shine upon them.

 Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.