| Jul. 9th, 2009 @ 05:40 pm Politics, The Law, and Habits of Thought |
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So I finished a book by D.L. Birchfield that is about Indian political policy and law (specifically, the Choctaw, but not just the Choctaw). In it he talks about law not being the product of Supreme Court decrees and other nebulous, esoteric stuff but about being a product of culture, and habit of thinking. And that as habit of thinking changes, so does the law. I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the book in front of me. He said it better, but you get the idea.
And while he doesn't mention this, it also explains why laws that are before their time (Brown v. Board of Education, or more germane to this discussion, Loving v. Virginia) often fail in practice unil the surrounding culture changes to meet up the law.
We are having the opposite problem right now, and I think it goes a long way to explain our current civil unrest. Currently 67% of the population in the U.S. supports either marriage or civil unions for GLBTQ couples (Source) but the law is so far, far, far from catching up to our own, middle-American, habit of thought.
At best, the law should be there to push us to our better selves (see Brown and Loving, above). At average, it should represent the will of the people and the appropriate dominant culture. And right now it is neither.
Go Massachusettes for upping the ante this week.
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