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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Tuesday, May 28, 2013 :::
I'm going out on a limb here, but I think there's some reasonable chance that high school football in Texas has no special legal status. So imagine Alabama sets up a system in which school superintendents formally designate the high school football games and file them with the state, and perhaps tax breaks are awarded for duly certified touchdown receptions. There is some sense in which one could say that Alabama has made high school football "legal" — given it legal status — in a way in which it was previously not illegal but extralegal. Still, the term "legalize" would be at least misleading; "legally recognized" would be much better.
What would be simply inarguably wrong would be to say that Alabama "allowed" high school football, or — more comically — that Texas "doesn't allow" high school football. The Texas Rangers are not going to go around seeking to crack down on high school football games, and only incidentally because they would be outnumbered and outarmed if they tried.
I have no doubt that some of those African countries truly do not allow (in the true, English language sense) gay marriage, but certainly de jure the entire United States allows any church or other organization to perform and recognize a marriage between any two people it wishes, and I expect that de facto in the vast majority of the country they would suffer no worse consequences, either solely socially or with any accommodating action or negligence of legal officers, than is within the range of consequences of being generally perceived as a misfit (with that taking on its various community meanings).
Update (Jan 6, 2014): It appears that perhaps gay marriage really was illegal in Utah when I wrote this post, though the relevant law has now been found unconstitutional by a judge.
(I suppose I ought to have linked the picture to the BBC article from which it came, but you can see the mood I was in when I wrote this.)
::: posted by dWj at 11:53 AM
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