This past week, I spent
some time reading Milton’s A Masque at Ludlow, often referred to as Milton’s
Comus. The Masque, or short play, was written for John Egerton, and largely
focuses on the virtues of chastity. Some background–Comus is about the Lady
and her two brothers who lose their way in the woods. The Lady becomes quite
tired and her brothers seek food, leaving her alone. While the Lady is alone,
she meets a being disguised as a villager who promises to reunite her with her
brothers, and she willfully follows him. But this being, Comus, captures her
and uses methods of persuasion to entice her to drink from his magical
cup–urging her to cease being coy and to embrace sexual pleasure. The Lady
consistently rebukes Comus’ advances, and argues for the virtues of temperance
and chastity. The Masque continues when her brothers return with the Attendant
Spirit, an almost angelic figure, who saves the Lady from Comus.

What are we to take away
from Comus? First, I want to make a concession: thinking about the role of
chastity in Milton’s Comus seems to be an issue of much debate amongst scholars
far more learned than I. But, Milton does seem to hit on something that’s true
to my experience. When people talk about chastity, they often see it as
limiting one’s ability to make choices (which people often conceive of as
freedom). Aside from reasons to doubt that this is a useful definition of
freedom, Milton shows us just the opposite: the Lady’s temperance and chastity
are liberating, as we’re reminded with the final lines of the piece:

Love Virtue, she alone is
free

She can teach ye how to
climb

Higher than the sphery
chime;

Or, if Virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her. 

David Brooks, in an art-reflects-life take on sitcoms,
suggests that recent trends favor comedies about groups of friends rather than
about families. He suggests, 

“the change also reflects something deeper
about the patterns of friendship in society. With people delaying marriage
and childbearing into their 30s, young people now spend long periods of their
lives outside of traditional families, living among diverse friendship
tribes.”

 He even worries that these sorts of living situations suggest
people are trading “flexibility and convenience for true commitment.” There was a recent response in the Atlantic suggesting that we
could make a similar point by looking at work-related sitcoms, that
overwhelmingly out-number the friendship sitcoms Brooks mentions. Though it’s important to note that lots of these work sitcoms show at least “intermittent unease” with
characters who substitute work lives for family lives (think Michael from The Office).

 Federal Judge Vaughn Walker ruled on Wednesday that
Proposition 8, the rejection of same-sex marriage, a proposition voted for by
California voters earlier in the year, unreasonably discriminates against gay
men and women.  Let’s look at some
of Walker’s claims and discuss what the future may bring.

 Given that the trial is based on the Equal Protection
Clause, it’s interesting to note that Judge Walker used the lowest standard of
scrutiny he could: rational basis scrutiny. Choosing this lower level of scrutiny
is considered a safe move, given that higher courts may be unlikely to apply
intermediate or strict scrutiny to the legislation in question.

 The rational basis test, in practice, is seldom lethal to a
piece of legislation. When applying the rational basis test, the burden is on
the plaintiffs to show that the law in question (in this case, Proposition 8)
is not rationally related to a legitimate state interest. Now, that’s a pretty
large burden–if the defendants could show some legitimate state interest that
Proposition 8 intended to preserve, and could further show that Proposition 8
was in some way rationally related to this interest, Proposition 8 would be
upheld. Knowing this, the fact that Judge Walker found that Proposition 8
failed the rational basis test is pretty surprising.

Judge Walker wrote in his opinion, “Proposition 8 cannot
withstand any level of scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. Excluding
same-sex couples from marriage is simply not rationally related to a legitimate
state interest.” But Judge Walker went wrong in failing to acknowledge what
proponents of Prop 8 argue is the legitimate state interest at stake: the
rearing of the next generation of citizens. 

As to what this means for the legality and constitutionality
of same-sex marriage, most agree that this decision won’t be the final word.