I was going to take some time off from dKos... but I had to jump back because I wanted to share something that is very time-sensitive.
What clicked recently with me, and nobody seems to be picking up on in all this Schiavo case bullshit, is that the GOP and the bulk of Congress are directly assaulting the real "sanctity of marriage", unlike the snake-oil fabricated version the rabid-right freaks are constantly, and fraudulently, demonizing gays with attempting to do by the simple the of wanting to get married. Now that may seems a tenuous stretch at first blush but stick with me here...
More below the fold
The central issue in the Schiavo case is that civil marriage laws allow emergency medical decisions and confer legal standing to a married person to act as surrogate for their spouse if they are incapacitated, and to be an advocate about what your spouses wishes would be (albeit legal power of attorney, living wills, third party testimony, etc. are vital to back up and support your actions when seeking to act on your spouses behalf, and best interest, etc.).
Such right to and protection of advocacy for a spouse really is one of the more crucial components to what legal marriage is, conferring such legal status to someone else. So this end-run of the law is not just an unconstitutional usurpation of the judicial branch, it is for the explicit purposes of attacking the legal authority conferred to spouses for emergency medical decision making, and advocacy for one's spouse on their behalf when they are incapacitated.
This is a direct assault on one of the more important aspects of legal marriage, and (walking it back to my outlined observation above) one of the reasons why denying a whole group of people the protections and rights conferred through the legal instrument of marriage because of gender discrimination is so wrong.
So the real irony here is that we have the sanctimonious frauds and moralizing freaks of the radical-right being the ones actually assaulting the "sanctity", and more directly, the important aspects of legal marriage, all in order to advance their fraudulent "culture of life" horse-shit.
I was reading a good post from Juan Cole, who is a very, very well informed on middle eastern issues, who actually picked up on this point form the other direction as well:
The Schiavo Case and the Islamization of the Republican Party
The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of Muslim fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and Pakistan. These tactics involve a disturbing tendency to make private, intimate decisions matters of public interest and then to bring the courts and the legislature to bear on them. President George W. Bush and Republican congressional leaders like Tom Delay have taken us one step closer to theocracy on the Muslim Brotherhood model.
The Muslim fundamentalists use a provision of Islamic law called "bringing to account" (hisba). As Al-Ahram weekly notes, "Hisba signifies a case filed by an individual on behalf of society when the plaintiff feels that great harm has been done to religion." Hisba is a medieval idea that had all be lapsed when the fundamentalists brought it back in the 1970s and 1980s.
In this practice, any individual can use the courts to intervene in the private lives of others. Among the more famous cases of such interference is that of Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid in Egypt. A respected modern scholar of Koranic studies, Abu Zaid argued that, contrary to medieval interpretations of Islamic law, women and men should receive equal inheritance shares. (Medieval Islamic law granted women only half the inheritance shares of their brothers). Abu Zaid was accused of sacrilege. Then the allegation of sacrilege was used as a basis on which the fundamentalists sought to have the courts forcibly divorce him from his wife.
Abu Zaid's wife loved her husband. She did not want to be divorced. But the fundamentalists went before the court and said, she is a Muslim, and he is an infidel, and no Muslim woman may be married to an infidel. They represented their efforts as being on behalf of the Islamic religion, which had an interest in seeing to it that heretics like Abu Zaid could not remain married to a Muslim woman. In 1995 the hisba court actually found against them. They fled to Europe, and ultimately settled in Holland.
Likewise, a similar tactic was deployed against the Egyptian feminist author, Nawal Saadawi, but it failed and she was able to remain in the country.
One of the most objectionable features of this fundamentalist tactic is that persons without standing can interfere in private affairs. Perfect strangers can file a case about your marriage, because they represent themselves as defending a public interest (the upholding of religion and morality).
Terri Schiavo's husband is her legal guardian. Her parents have not succeeded in challenging this status of his. As long as he is the guardian, the decision on removing the feeding tubes is between him and their physicians. Her parents have not succeeded in having this responsibility moved from him to them. Even under legislation George W. Bush signed in 1999 while governor of Texas, the spouse and the physician can make this decision. (The bill Bush signed in Texas actually made ability to pay a consideration in the decision!)
In passing a special law to allow the case to be kicked to a Federal judge after the state courts had all ruled in favor of the husband, Congress probably shot itself in the foot once again. The law is not a respecter of persons, so the Federal judge will likely rule as the state ones did.
But the most frightening thing about the entire affair is that public figures like congressmen inserted themselves into the case in order to uphold religious strictures. The lawyer arguing against the husband let the cat out of the bag, as reported by the NYT: ' The lawyer, David Gibbs, also said Ms. Schiavo's religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and water. "We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to disobey her church and even jeopardize her eternal soul," Mr. Gibbs said. '
In other words, the United States Congress acted in part on behalf of the Roman Catholic church. Both of these public bodies interfered in the private affairs of the Schiavos, just as the fundamentalist Egyptian, Nabih El-Wahsh, tried to interfere in the marriage of Nawal El Saadawi.
Like many of his fundamentalist counterparts in the Middle East, Tom Delay is rather cynically using this issue to divert attention from his own corruption. Like the Muslim fundamentalist manipulators of Hisba, Delay represents himself as acting on behalf of a higher cause. He said of the case over the weekend, ' "This is not a political issue. This is life and death," '
Republican Hisba will have the same effect in the United States that it does in the Middle East. It will reduce the rights of the individual in favor of the rights of religious and political elites to control individuals. Ayatollah Delay isn't different from his counterparts in Iran.
The Schaivo case, throws into sharp relief the real "sanctity of marriage" that the rabid-right freaks are constantly, and fraudulently, demonizing gays as attempting to do simply by the act of wanting to get married.
This case exposes exactly who is attacking it. It isn't the soft-fruity left, or gays, or liberal America-haters, or activist judges, nor any other of the never-ending litany of boogeymen the the "conservatives" rail against. It is the rabid "sanctity of life" Religious-RightTM.. er.. Religious-WrongTM who don't have a clue as to what civil marriage, and real respect for marriage is about. A major part of marriage is being there for your partner when they need you most. To make the hard decisions on your behalf if you are incapacitated, just like Michael Schaivo has fought tooth and nail, to legally obtain for his wife.