The Bangus Ultimatum

How oral arguments could have turned out in Positive Black Talk Inc. v. Cash Money Records:

Lawyer: If it please the court, we contend that my client is the rightful owner of “Back That Azz Up.”

Judge No. 3: So counselor, if I understand you correctly, your client actually wants to take credit for this “creative endeavor”?

Read the rest of the ‘TSN’.

This comes a bit late. Johnny Carson dies at 79. My personal tribute would have to be ripped off from Volokh Conspiracy: Carson v. Here’s Johnny Portable Toilets. The facts and holding:

…a portable toilet company was selling “Here’s Johnny” toilets (advertising slogan: “The World’s Foremost Commodian.” I guess Carson didn’t think that was funny, though I do). Carson sued (and ultimately prevailed) on grounds that this violated his “right to publicity.”

by Bob Dylan

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

Back in my old college, the journal is publishing a paper on Friendster, and they asked me to write a reaction. It’s not a full-blown paper really. Just an overgrown essay with a post-modern pretense and the pedantic stench of a judicial opinion. If you need something to put you to sleep, here’s the first protoplasmic draft.

No new entries this weekend. Working on a paper for CMC; Midterms looming; and I’ve been pushing pixels for these babies, hopefully just in time for Constitution Day:

(Nayna has promised to post a response to Mon’s answer. The debate ain’t over yet.)

from mon:

No one should consider a sex changed person like Ganzon a woman under our laws for much the same reasons that nobody believes that Micheal jackson is White and that nobody believe that Orlando Bloom is an elf. Spending a small nation’s GDP on one’s looks will not change that.

These are just wonders of plastic surgery and make up that allow people to alter their PHYSICAL APPEARANCE.
These changes are limited in that they only change one’s physique. Our LAW recognizes that it is birth and not an operation that confers legal personality. Wishfull thinking on the part of those who under go plastic surgery will not change that.

The democratic principles of our Constitution mandate that our laws are the will of the people. So far the people have been silent on ways to change one’s legal personality (after operations or otherwise) and the same will of the people has limited marriage to that of a man and a woman. There is no question of the democracy of these principles since of our Constitution was overwhelmingly approved by a majority of the people way back in 1986.

This does not infringe upon the rights of sex changed individuals (SCI) since there is no statute that forbids this. In fact the silence of a statute shows the democratic principles of our Constitution at work since SCIs are in effect asking for special treatment as very few individuals can afford to spend so much on surgery. If granted, should the government then grant those making their ears more pointed special priveleges by allowing them to alter their legal personalities to reflect their ELVISHNESS? What about the Vulcans, the Klingons and God knows what surgery can produce?

Guazon cannot be treated as a woman by law, since his birth confered the legal personality of a man on him. The law does not condemn what he did but neither should it go against the democratic principles of our Constitution by granting him special priveleges such as the right to marry another man. If he wants people to treat him as a woman then that is truly a personal matter for him and his peers to sort out.

I agree that people should be able to marry whoever they want. None of our laws define what a man and a woman are, even if the Family Code defines a marriage as a special contract between the two.

But I wouldn’t say that there isn’t anything in our laws that specifically disallows us to make such definitions. The Constitution recognizes the family as the basic unit of society, and though it doesn’t proscribe any sort of regulation on that institution, I don’t think it isn’t there for a reason. Our Constitution is (and is not) many things, but one thing’s for sure: the framers always had a reason for doing what they did.

And this where the problem comes from. The fact that the Constitution does in fact recognize the family gives both the legislature and the judiciary license to interfere, whether for good or bad. If our Supreme court were to hear the Ganzon case, it would have to decide it along lines that take into consideration these provisions. Why? Simply because its there. It’s in the law, fundamental and statutory. And what does this law reflect? The values of the framers, who were basically church-going, god-fearing men steeped in post-colonial spanish and american thought. these are men who have never thought of changing their sex, or at least would never admit in public to having done so.

I have nothing against church-going, god-fearing men. I have everything though against anyone who thinks that their moral values should apply to everyone else. The problem with our Constitution (as well as many of our laws) is that they are precisely one group’s version of right and wrong imposed on the rest of the country. Which, allow me to qualify, may not be so bad if we had a political system that could prevent the moneyed few from controlling everything. But the reality is: we don’t. And for as long as that’s the case, I believe the premium must be placed on the protection of individual liberties.