6/25: What I Accomplished Today

1. Today would have been my father's 63rd birthday had he ever gotten older than 35, which he didn't.

2. Should have graded and prepped today. Didn't.

3. Co-Vivant didn't feel good tonight, so didn't watch much. While she was napping, I watched two shows HBO put together on polygamy as side pieces for Big Love. Here's where I end up (which I realize is nowhere at all):

a. I'm not sure why there are laws telling consenting adults whom they may live with (some of the laws specified cohabitation). As long as people pay their taxes and keep their grubby paws off children, I don't care how many spouses they have. (I do have considerable problems with polygamy when it involves welfare fraud or pedophilia. I have considerable problems with monogamy when it involves welfare fraud or pedophilia as well.)

b. Having said that, I'm not sure anyone who enters into polygamy, even people who grew up with polygamy and are familiar with it, can ever be a fully informed, consenting adult. On Big Love, I'm not sure anyone involved knew what he or she was getting into. Certainly Margie didn't; she was young and in love. (On the last episode, she made the comment that Joey and Wanda wouldn't survive ten minutes off the compound, which is probably true. However, I'm none too certain how long she'd survive without Bill, Barb, and Nicki.) Barb didn't understand what she was in for; she's Wife #1, Public Wife, but those positions have their own stresses, and I think she largely expected that those factoids would mean that her life wouldn't change much. It did. I'm not sure Bill understood what it would actually mean to take care of such a family (his own father really was a lousy example here). Nicki should be the most informed here--but she entered into a marriage with two people who had previously been monogamous, one of whom really isn't sold on polygamy. I don't think there's a lot in her upbringing that would have prepared her for this situation (or much at all, really).

c. I know the show is being interpreted as being a metaphor for homosexuality, but I'm not convinced that works; frankly, most lesbians, at least (I can't speak for a group to which I've never belonged, so gay guys are on their own here), don't share that well and aren't interested in learning. I'm curious how many people would rank homosexuality as opposed to polygamy on the "Ew" scale.

d. For me, what makes the polygamy issue most interesting is that it can't be denied that polygamy is Biblical. Jacob was polygamous. Both Jacob and Abraham had children by servant girls, which boiled down to another form of polygamy (granted, one with essentially no status for those servant mothers). David was polygamous. Many people whom God obviously favored and entered into covenants with were polygamous. Now the polygamy got Solomon into trouble, but none of the prophets indicate God having any trouble with polygamy per se.

What this has to mean is that God changed; most people would now argue that polygamy is most definitely against their religion, so God had to change. God cannot not the same today, yesterday, and forever based on the changing view of His religion toward polygamy, among other things. That's a scary prospect.

e. This wasn't particularly evident in the actual polygamists whom we saw in the shows, and I understand that Big Love itself is fiction, but most of the people on the compound come across as (forgive me) cattle. Question nothing, do as your told, and you can remain in this stinking hellhole. Such a deal. Even Joey and Wanda--dim bulbs. If that's what people choose to accept for themselves, that's fine, but is that really what people have in mind for their children? Don't question, don't push, don't overreach. Do as your told and shut up. At some point, most of us want our children to develop spines, perhaps to have skills or abilities or options we don't. Compound life just strikes me as depressing and fatalistic (and again, yes, I know this is only one type, and it's in a fictitious television show).

4. Read a fair amount for Arthur.

5. Got the Human Paladin to Level 28.