XPost: soc.retirement, alt.politics.homosexuality, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: nancy-pelosi-treason@barackobama.com   
      
   If you’re looking for free entertainment with a scholarly bent,   
   it’s hard to beat the same-sex marriage trial in Detroit federal   
   court.   
      
   One side is challenging assumptions about man-woman marriage as   
   the only kind deserving a state seal of approval. The other is   
   striving to preserve traditional marriage as a lofty, time-   
   honored ideal, enshrined by law, even if ever-fewer marriages   
   conform to those outlines.   
      
   Enter the brilliant Sherif Girgis — co-author and essayist on   
   love, sex and marriage, Rhodes scholar, winner of college prizes   
   for best essay on Dante. Girgis, a doctoral candidate at   
   Princeton and law student at Yale, arrived in court Monday as a   
   prospective expert witness, set to bolster the Michigan attorney   
   general’s case against same-sex marriage.   
      
   Instead, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman rebuffed the star   
   student, declining to qualify Girgis as an expert witness.   
      
   Thus spectators lost the chance to hear Girgis explain theories   
   about “the comprehensive cooperation of bodily union,” a state   
   “which only a man and woman can form,” as he explained in a 2013   
   essay.   
      
   Oakland County Clerk Lisa Brown — a defendant in the case who is   
   ready to marry same sex-couples — testified that the marriage   
   license law doesn’t require couples to demonstrate any kind of   
   sublime commitment to each other. It doesn’t require an ability   
   to procreate or an intention to raise children. It doesn’t bar   
   convicted felons or pedophiles from marrying. It allows 16-year-   
   olds to marry with parental consent.   
      
   Her testimony suggested that the ideal view of marriage between   
   men and women isn’t, in fact, how the law is written.   
      
   In the courthouse hallway, Cindy Clardy, wearing a red “Marriage   
   Equality” sweatshirt, described herself as a lay expert on   
   marriage. Her view of wedlock is informed by personal   
   experience, and so far as she can tell, heterosexual marriage   
   isn’t distinctive.   
      
   “I was married to a man for 18 years and I’ve been with my   
   partner for 15 years and neither (experience) is very   
   different,” she said.   
      
   “Here’s what I’ve noticed: My partner doesn’t watch football.   
   She does her own laundry. She doesn’t spend money that we don’t   
   have, the way my husband did. She doesn’t think she needs a new   
   car every two years no matter what.”   
      
   Clardy, who moved from Nebraska in 1994 after her divorce,   
   worked as an industrial engineer and then as a cost estimator   
   for Ford. She loves her partner, Jocelyn Walters, a technical   
   writer.   
      
   But unlike the state’s almost-expert-witness Sherif Girgis, who   
   sought to explain the purpose of marriage using the arguments of   
   long-dead Greek philosophers, Clardy has learned from   
   experience. At 63, she has decided that marriage is a day-in,   
   day-out proposition, not a philosophical ideal.   
      
   “I loved my husband for 18 years. My partner doesn’t run around   
   with girlfriends. She does her own laundry.”   
      
   Clardy isn’t a prospective expert witness, but her views on   
   laundry and love resonate.   
      
   lberman@detroitnews.com   
   (313) 222-2032   
      
   Comments:   
      
   James Tanner ·  Top Commenter   
   If Gays are born with that orientation that must be natures   
   feature of birth control .   
   Reply · 1 ·  · about an hour ago   
      
   http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140303/OPINION0304/30303010   
   1/Berman-Inside-court-out-same-sex-marriage-trial-getting-   
   interesting   
      
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