Penetrating legal issues

I never thought I would stoop so low as to blog about this latest outbreak of popular hysteria (the neogladiatorial nature of the Michael Jackson case), but the way the television was acting last night, I feel a need to comment — as briefly as I can.
An accused criminal defendant was (gasp!) a full twenty one minutes late for a court appearance!
The way the commentators are talking, you’d think that the country was on the verge of collapse.
And now, I run the risk of violating the unstated rule of blogging that it just isn’t cool to blog about Jackson.
So let’s just forget that Michael Jackson is the defendant. Let’s try to remember the rule of law. (And perhaps simple logic.)
Years ago, I practiced a modest amount of criminal law, and for a brief period I worked with the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, as a legal intern with my law school’s Criminal Law Clinic. Criminal defendants would often arrive late for hearings. We would try to shuffle things around as best we could, hoping that the judge would call the case later. Sometimes it worked, and with luck no one noticed. With stricter judges, maybe not.
Normally, if a defendant is not present when his case is called, one of three things could happen. An automatic bench warrant for his arrest could be issued. If he shows after that, the judge might (or might not) be persuaded to revoke the warrant. The judge could also hold the defendant in contempt.
Or (as the judge did today), he could give the defendant a warning and a lecture. There is nothing new about any of this.
Michael Jackson’s judge, if he wanted to maintain order in his court, could also have gone the bench warrant or contempt citation route.
This is hardly the end of Western Civilization; it’s called maintaining control of the court.
That the judge didn’t do that is really the judge’s problem. Maybe, like Judge Ito in the OJ Simpson case, he is thinking about retirement, book deals, and a career on television himself. That might make him a weak-willed judge in the eyes of many, but to blame Michael Jackson is to give the man power he really does not have.
How is it the end of Western Civilization when an individual judge acts like a wimp?
Likewise, some of the religious fundamentalists are giving Michael Jackson power he does not have by transforming him into a poster boy for NAMBLA against his will. Bear in mind that Jackson is a Muslim (although the sincerity of his conversion has been questioned), he has condemned homosexuality, and he claims to be against sex with minors.
Hardly NAMBLA material, and hardly “gay” — in my view. Yet many (including some bloggers) try hard to make him into a demonic part of the vast “gay conspiracy.”
(To be fair, some of them claim that members of this conspiracy include Bill Clinton, the Masons, the Catholics, Winthrop Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey, Paul Tsongas, Martin Luther King….)
These people are trying to have their cake and eat it too. It reminds me of the sodomy nonsense.
Rape is not the same as consensual sex. Yet the term “sodomy” — as it is used by people claiming to believe in biblical literalism — is used to mean consensual homosexual sex. This truly perverted view of “sodomy” as consensual sex is simply not supported by a literal reading of the Biblical account of Sodom (which involved threats to break down the door to a home in order to rape the occupants thereof). A simple reading belies the claim that they take the Bible at its word. If it is sex at all, “sodomy” is rape — and if angels are male, then it means homosexual rape. Just because legislators over the years have used the word to describe any sexual acts they didn’t like (including things done between husbands and wives) does not change what the Bible says.
By using the term “sodomy” to describe things other than rape, the fundamentalists themselves show that they practice what they claim to hate: Biblical interpretation!
Very forced interpretation at that. Gratuitous insertion of unwanted things into “holy” places.
Why, I think they may have been “sodomizing” their own Bibles!
Yecchhh!
(I won’t let ’em come near mine!)