Maybe it's because it's a Friday before a long weekend and my more morbid side is rearing its ugly head, but I went to the link to the article and was immediately sidetracked by the headline "Man falls into volcanic crack". Whoa . . . that just can't be a good way to go. I just pray he died instantly.
Kath | 08.29.03 - 10:51 am | #

But not very many decades older than that.

The idea that a family is one man, one woman of approximately the same age, their children, and only their children, and nobody else is an extremely modern conception, dating from approximately the industrial revolution.

The family, as known for centuries and millenia, is much less atomistic. Of course, there's the couple, and their children. But also the parents of each of the spouses, the spouses' brothers and sisters and _their_ spouses and _their_ children, and the children from previous unions of any of the above, and maybe a maiden great-aunt or two and a few of the neighborhood stray children turned fosterlings......sometimes all living in a single household, or at least within holler-across-the-back yards distance. Family as basic and major social and economic unit, rather than legal convenience.

karen marie
karen marie knapp | Homepage | 08.29.03 - 12:59 pm | #

Karen:

It's a tough sell to get from there to gay marriage, gay adoption, polyamory, and the various polymorphous perversities which current redefinitions of marriage seek to impose.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 08.29.03 - 1:16 pm | #

And it's the atomistic, legal-convenience idea of family that's been taking us right there fast. I mean, if all that family is is an arrangement about pensions, real estate ownership rights, and the right to get legal help about child custody and support if things fall apart, then why shouldn't everyone be allowed to have those advantages for their life-partners and their children?

But at least recalcitrant traditionalists like me believe that family is meant to be so much more, even more than I wrote in the previous window. Not even just basic social and economic unit, but also the primary Icon of the Church.

There's an extra nag and suit of rusty armor over in the corner if you want to be my Sancho Panza....Maria Mater Ecclesiae can be our Dulcinea.....

karen marie
karen marie knapp | Homepage | 08.29.03 - 1:37 pm | #

After all, this is Tasmania, and even mainland Aussies tend to look with disdain on what happens at the BOTTOM end of their country, and in view of their not too distant history of a rather brutal convict colony, maybe its surprising they got through the fifties yet.
What concerns me is the encouragement that this legislation will give the screaming lefty gay libbers in my country just across the Tasman.
A final thought - the last three syllables - MANIA.
Don (Kiwi) | 08.29.03 - 3:15 pm | #

Karen Marie's point is well-taken: moreover, it could be the isolation of the nuclear family from the "tribe" that has led to many of the problems of the contemporary family, which has, in turn, opened up criticism of said nuclear family, which leads us straight to the "solutions" embraced by the Tasmanians.

Of course, I grew up in a tribe of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Any adult might swat my wicked little butt, or at the very least take me to Mother or Dad for a session with the fly-swatter. And, of course, lots of hugs, kisses, and all that.
Ken | 08.29.03 - 6:15 pm | #