No Dancing At Weddings In DC

The other day, Washington, DC Mayor Bowser imposed a new control as part of her "reopening" protocols: no dancing at weddings. Two things immediately struck me. First, her poorest constituents, those who keep her in office, tend not to have weddings at all. Second, those who most notably do dance at weddings are the Jews. Thus do decrees cut across the social order.

We actually know next to nothing about how COVID is transmitted, and banning dancing may have no effect. There must now be plenty of Jewish weddings in Texas and Florida, and I read of no new outbreaks there. But this actually illustrates another of the points Edward Feser makes in the essay I linked Wednesday:

Gnostic moral practice veers between the extremes of puritanism and libertinism. Initially this might seem puzzling, but it makes perfect sense given the Gnostic’s other commitments. On the one hand, given the Gnostic hatred of the created order and of conventional moral and social life, what the normal person takes to be permissible or even necessary to ordinary life is prissily condemned. Hence, Gnostic heretical movements over the centuries famously emphasized vegetarianism, pacifism, the purported evil of capital punishment, and similarly utopian attitudes, pitting the “mercy” of a Gnosticized interpretation of Jesus against what they regarded as the sinister Old Testament God of justice. On the other hand, since the material world is taken by the Gnostic to have no value, nothing that happens within it ultimately matters, and the most licentious behavior can be excused. Hence, sexual immorality was often tolerated in practice – as long as it was not associated with marriage and procreation, which would tie us to the ordinary material and social order.

Forced by court decisions to allow church and synagogue services, Mayor Bowser nevertheless now makes a special effort to inhibit wedding celebrations -- indeed, Jewish weddings in particular. But I've noted here several times that the curfews still imposed in some countries are implicit bans on fornication, and the detailed codes of conduct imposed on bars in even some US jurisdictions seem to have a similar intent. For instance, in California

If you're like, wait my neighborhood bar has been open this whole time that's because breweries and wineries that serve food are technically restaurants (it's confusing). And restaurants have are [sic] allowed to be open outdoors in the purple tier, which we are currently in.

As far as indoor service at breweries and wineries – that won't be allowed until counties reach the "orange" tier.

Ok, now that we've got that cleared up, let's talk about bars.

Bars will still be closed until a county makes it to the "orange" tier. But when they do, they'll be allowed to reopen outdoors.

Bars won't be allowed to reopen indoors until a county reaches the least restrictive "yellow" tier.

This explanation, which places LA in the most restrictive "purple" tier, dates from March and has been overtaken by events. LA, now in the least restrictive "yellow" tier, nevertheless still restricts bars to 25% indoor capacity and I believe no counter seating, whereas breweries and wineries can operate at 50%. The assumption seems to be that higher-class customers will behave with greater discretion, or something like that.

But in places like Texas and Florida, nobody cares. The gnostics are out of office there.