So there was this talk on same-sex marriage recently. I wasn't actually there, but dear wife was, so I got a full report. It was odd in several ways. The speaker was nominally pro-same sex marriage, and indeed was in one. She started with the standard disclaimer that, despite vile attempts by the right to so characterize it, same-sex marriage was not in any sense about altering or destroying traditional marriage. And then she went on to discuss the evil patriarchal nature of traditional marriage, and why and how it ought to be utterly destroyed. So much for internal consistency. And wonderful direct evidence of the secret agenda of the same-sex marriage crowd, should anyone on the right require more. It's not the first time I've heard this argument from political gays, actually. I usually associate it with an older generation, and the political right, groups like the Log Cabin Republicans: we don't need marriage, let the breeders keep it, it's everything we're rejecting, trying to get away from. It's an argument that makes sense: against marriage, though, not for it.

And yet. If she was so against marriage, why was she in one? Indeed, why had she gone to great trouble and expense to get one? Marriage, is, after all, voluntary (at least these days). Her words (marriage is bad) are discordant with her actions (I like my marriage). Actions speak louder than words, I guess, but I think the dissonance is real. Breathing bundles of contradiction, all of us.

Are bloggers journalists? Can you distinguish? Is what I'm doing right now just another form of mainstream media? What rights and responsibilities do bloggers have? This has been debated lots in blogs (of course), law courts, legislatures, and perhaps even a dead-trees op-ed or two.

In tracking the recent canning of infamous pro-SCO hack Maureen O'Gara from LinuxToday, one substantial difference was made clear to me. Journalists can get fired. Well, I suppose bloggers can get fired too, and it happens all the time, but fire a blogger and they lose the job, not the blog. Fire a journalist, and their words stop appearing in print in your paper. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. Bloggers are most akin to someone who owns their own newspaper, and uses it to push their own agenda (not that that would ever happen in the offline world). Bloggers are not journalists in the conventional sense, employees of an owner, with the checks and balances of that system in place. Usually that's a good thing. What rights and privileges they (we?) should have is not obvious to me.