Because the completely serious post went over like a lead balloon...

So I got to a part in the Mabinogion where Sir Peredur/Perceval is fighting the 9 Witches who've been a scourge in the countryside, and who've taken most of this poor countess's lands. When Peredur confronts the most powerful of the 9 Witches, she's wearing full armour and carrying a sword.

This surprised me for two reasons.

The academic in me thought,

"This is interesting. I've never come across medieval British literature with a woman in arms and armour. Between the disappearance of Celtic and Germanic warrior-women, and the lady knight Britomart in the Renaissance epic The Faerie Queene, there don't seem to be any female soldiers. I wonder if, like 'The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale,' it captures that moment when things were starting to get worse for women in Britain. Here, we have a woman who isn't weak and feeble, but her use of male weaponry restricts her to the role of 'evil witch.'"

Meanwhile, the Dungeons and Dragons geek in me was thinking,

"Wait a minute -- a magic-user can't wear chainmail. That's a 30% chance of spell failure right there, going up to 45% if she has any kind of decent shield."

As you were.

Some or all of this post may be inspired by my slight fever.

Gah. Sorry for spamming lately, but these calllers on CBC have me furious.

Of course, it's CBC's fault for hosting the "25 years later, was the Charter of Rights a good thing?" show. Out of the wordwork creep the angry and the bitter people whose steady diet of Twinkies have impaired their judgement.

I am sick and tired of having to defend my basic legal equality. We should be past this now, and working on the larger social issues.

I am sick and tired of having to explain to people that "No, going through the courts is not anti-democratic." Constitutions are put in place by elected officials, judges selected by them.

I'm sick and tired of explaining that minority protections in the constitution is not a new thing -- does anyone believe that "freedom of religion" and "freedom of speech" are in most Western constitutional traditions because people believed majority opinions and religions would be persecuted?

Most of all, I'm sick of defending my right to basic legal equality. I spent the first 29 years of my life as a second-class citizen -- first without any basic legal protection in employment and housing, and later without the right to marry. I was born in this country, but only became a full citizen in 2005.

Same-sex marriage (which really has some of these assholes' panties in a knot) is not an issue on which reasonable people can disagree. If you disagree, you are not reasonable. Your opinion, so far as I'm concerned, does not count.

That applies, too, to people who want to water it down to "civil unions" -- a potential legal disaster, since the law is nine-tenths semantics and the changing of a word can change everything.

Besides, it misses the point. The problem with separate drinking fountains for African-Americans in the American South was never the taste of the water.