Twilight Zone

Your ship has finally returned to planet Earth.
The year is 2017.
The President of the United States is.....Donald Trump.
Marrying your first cousin is now illegal in 1/2 of the states.
Yet it is a federal crime for all states not to support gay "marriage" or to forbid killing all babies. Professors at Berkeley are still insane.
The Browns still have not won a Super Bowl.

Mike Huckabee, Kim Davis, and "The Law of the Land"

Mike Huckabee is making news regarding Kim Davis saying that Dred Scott is still the "law of the land":

Michael Huckabee has permanently lost his mind.  On Michael Medved’s radio program yesterday, Huckabee said the United States Supreme Court’s 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford — which held that all blacks, free or enslaved, could not be American citizens — is still the law of the land.

[Huckabee] Michael, the Dred Scott decision of 1857 still remains to this day the law of the land which says that black people aren’t fully human, said Huckabee. Does anybody still follow the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision?

Huckabee states that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott is still the law of the land, yet no one follows it. Thus, Huckabee argues that no one should follow the U.S.  Supreme Court decision saying same-sex marriage is constitutionally mandated.

There is a major problem with your argument Mr. Huckabee. The Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution in 1865 and 1868. Thus, the Dred Scott decision is no longer the law of the land. It was superseded by specific amendments to the Constitution.
If you no longer want same-sex marriage to be constitutional, then you and your bigot friends need to get the votes for a constitutional amendment. 

I think Huckabee's major point is correct, though what he says is slightly misleading.

Gay Rights and the Race Analogy

Here is a very good piece by John Corvino (who, for what it's worth, is gay and a leading intellectual regarding things homosexual). Excerpt:

Consider a very different case: Suppose I’m a photographer who can’t stand children. You want me to take pictures at your child’s birthday party — there will be games and clowns and other things I find annoying — and I decline.
No serious person would suggest that the law ought to penalize me for age discrimination — but why? Before answering, consider two more cases:

Case 2: I’m a photographer who disapproves of homosexuality; the mere thought makes me uncomfortable. You try to hire me for your lesbian wedding; I decline.

Case 3: I’m a photographer who disapproves of miscegenation; the mere thought makes me uncomfortable. You try to hire me for your interracial wedding; I decline.

Now, is the lesbian wedding case more like the birthday party case or the interracial wedding case?

No Fundamental Right to Marry...PERIOD?

Public Discourse typically has some pretty good articles.  This is not one of them.  The author argues, in short, that homosexuals have no fundamental right to marry, since no one has a fundamental right to marry.  There just are no rights when it comes to marriage.  Like playing the violin, marriage is good, but there's no right to it.
The author is wrong.

Could Dennis Rodman Marry Himself?

Remember Rodman claiming that he was bisexual and was going to marry himself, way back in the simple days of 1996 when Democrats were neither trying to force every state to accept gay marriage nor claiming that it is a constitutional right buried in the 14th Amendment?  Remember those backward times?

Well, could Rodman have married himself?  One can love oneself (I plan to blog about self-love in the coming week.)  One can have sexual relations with oneself.  One can promise to be committed to oneself.  So why can't one marry oneself?  If marriage is not a natural kind of relationship (like the friendship relation, which can hold without government or societal sanction, recognition, or approval) but is merely a social construct, then surely one can marry oneself.  In fact, potential marriage relations on this way of thinking seem limitless.  It's almost as if we humans are godlike in our creative capacities.

How I Evolved on Gay Marriage

A young Christian, I arrived at college in the fall of 2004 with some of the usual intellectual difficulties: evolution, creation, the authority of Scripture, and so on. But I could think through them undisturbed, working them out in my reading rather than in debates. No one was asking, “Where do you stand?”

With gay marriage on the horizon, that soon changed. It was a time when everyone was supposed to evolve—and I did, just not in the way I was supposed to. Unlike for many other young Christians, coming around to approving gay unions as marriages never became a possibility for me.

[...]

One source I turned to for intellectual friendship was Nicolás Gómez Dávila, a Colombian aphorist who’s helped me see through the clichés of our time. The merits of the argument for gay marriage, such as they are, are obscured by the movement’s extreme rhetorical shallowness. Advocates seem to think that progress is inevitable, that history only turns one way. Against such a conceit, Gómez Dávila whispers a warning: “The fool is disturbed not when they tell him that his ideas are false, but when they suggest that they have gone out of style.” Accusing someone of being on the wrong side of history says nothing about whether he is on the right side of the argument. It is a mere threat, and a somewhat hollow one. History is an arbitrary enforcer.

Read the whole thing.

Ted Cruz Rebuffs Reporter on Gay "Marriage" Entrapment Questions

Buff Rebuffer

Ted Cruz tellin' it like it is.

I shared this on Facebook but it's too good not to throw up on the blog.

Initial Thoughts on the Supreme Court's Oral Arguments Today

Today I listened to the oral arguments over whether there is a Constitutional right to gay marriage which has gone undiscovered until this year.  I know that it is difficult to predict the way justices will vote, but simply on the basis of the questions the justices were asking and the softballs they were throwing, it would seem that the vote will come down to Kennedy and my hunch is that he will "discover" a right to gay-marriage in the 14th Amendment.  Of course, anyone who is even a mild originalist would laugh out of the building the claim that there is a right to gay-marriage in the Constitution.  Perhaps Kennedy will come to his senses, but from other decisions, he seems to be a populist with a love of the limelight who wants to be on the "right side of history" with the cool kids.

I plan to say more about the oral argument in the next couple days if I can get around to it. 

Cake and Cosmology: Why Orthodox Christians Take the Stand They Do on Sex

Rod Dreher:  (if you want a deeper argument, read this)

My friend Chris Roberts, a Catholic theologian in Philadelphia, and someone who
is fairly liberal in his politics  describes himself in an e-mail to me thus: “I wouldn’t call myself a conservative, but neither would I own to liberal. I’ll take just plain old “Catholic,” thanks” – writes with the following thought experiment:

Imagine a gay male couple who have been together for 20 years. They live nearby. You know them well, having a friendly non-political neighborly relationship. You borrow the odd egg, watch each other’s pets when somebody is on vacation, maybe chat at the annual 4th of July party. You are an orthodox Christian who runs a bakery business. Now apply the following scenarios:

A) One of the gay guys has a birthday. His partner asks you to bake the cake. Would you?

B) One of the gay guys dies. His partner asks you to bake the cake for the reception after the funeral. Would you?

C) Marriage is suddenly legalized in your state. They marry and ask you to bake the cake. Would you?

Seems to me that if the answer is no, no, and no, then you ought to examine yourself for homophobia.

But if the answer is yes, yes and no – that’s my answer – then you are arguably simply being principled. I can say “yes” to A and B because I can honor their friendship and loyalty to each other, their faithful service to each other over years. However, I say “no” to C because marriage is not an institution that can be defined entirely in terms of affection, loyalty and service. Or even eros or heartfelt private romantic feelings. Marriage includes all those things, but it exists as a social institution because the fertility of male and female potentially creates uniquely public consequences (children).

The left disputes my premise for saying no to C. Fine, let’s have that debate. People of goodwill can disagree.

But we are not even allowed to have that debate. My side’s case is dismissed by the liberal elite because they think people like me are haters.

Given that I want to say yes to situations A and B, I think it’s demonstrable that I’m not a hater or homophobe. I am not frightened of gay people and I do not hate them. I just do not think that what they are doing is marriage, and I think calling what they’re doing “marriage” will obscure what marriage is. If we say that marriage exists to give public blessing to the romantic feelings of consenting adults, then, over the long term, I and my Church believe that there will be more divorce (feelings are fickle) and children will be harmed (as their primary role in marriage is pushed aside). My Church and I may be mistaken about that, but, given the damage heterosexuals have already caused marriage through our divorce rate and ubiquitous contraception, I think we are at least within the realm of the arguable and plausible.

But today’s mob will not listen to my argument, will not listen to my attempt to make my case plausible, because they are convinced I’m a homophobe. My openness to situations A and B are not allowed to count. That is part of the problem with all the hate directed towards Indiana this last week. The inability to see the “yes” to A and B does not necessarily entail “yes” to C. The inability to imagine that my “yes” to A and B is real and heartfelt, but my “no” to C is principled and not prejudice.

I appreciate Chris’s e-mail. His “yes-yes-no” describes my position too. Ross Douthat, in his Sunday column, also discusses nuances in this debate. The format he chooses is a self-interview. Excerpt:

Gay Marriage Isn't About Justice, It's About Selma

Lutheran pastor, Hans Fiene:

Why do so many young adults paint absurd caricatures of Christians who request government protection of their religious freedoms, arguing their true goal is to ban gay men from sitting at the local lunch counter? Why do they spread falsehoods about legislation, insisting that bills like the one recently signed by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will unleash a Republican-led Jim Crow revival aimed at the LGBT community? Why do so many people, Gen Xers and younger, invent a monster of anti-gay bigotry and keep screaming the monster is real despite a mountain of contrary facts standing before them?

The answer is “social studies.” My generation engages in straw men, misinformation, and lies because, in every year of social studies class, we studied the civil-rights movement not as history, but as hagiography. We didn’t just learn what events happened on American soil, we were encouraged to mimic the segregation-defeating holy ones and merit for ourselves a place alongside them in glory. Combining that admonition with our general aversion to hard work, we concluded that the only thing necessary to be as righteous as the saints who fought racial injustice was to decry an injustice that no one else was. And we became so desperate to find that injustice, we lost our minds in the process.

[...]

Don’t Let Facts Sully Our Self-Righteousness

But after all those years of waiting for that diamond to arrive, we weren’t going to let anyone to tell us what we held in our hands was really a cubic zirconia. This cause made us righteous. We were certain of it, so no opposition was allowed. No debate on the issue could be tolerated. No damn, dirty facts would take our saintly status away.

Of course we know that politely telling a customer you’ve served for nine years that you can’t, in good conscience, provide flowers for his wedding isn’t in the same moral universe as murdering a black teenager for talking to a white woman.

So when you argued that disapproving of gay marriage didn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as oppression of black Americans, we knew you were right. Of course we know that politely telling a customer you’ve served for nine years that you can’t, in good conscience,provide flowers for his wedding isn’t in the same moral universe as murdering a black teenager for talking to a white woman. Of course saying “you don’t get to vote because your skin has a different amount of melanin than mine” is logically indefensible, while saying “I don’t think a union that’s biologically incapable of procreation fits the definition of marriage” is an argument that needs to be fairly considered, even if we don’t agree with it. But we wouldn’t consider it, wouldn’t even let your words embed in our ears because we would not risk having to surrender our halos in the offhand chance that you maybe, sort of, kind of had a little bit of a point.

Here is the rest.

"Stop the Hate!! Don't Discriminate."

Does refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding constitute or imply hating homosexuals or hatred more generally?

This is a follow-up post to the previous one.

A commenter on Facebook writes:

You mention the example of the cake for a wedding, but might it be the case that individuals are afraid they might be refused service in a variety of ordinary situations? For example, an individual walks into a family-run sandwich shop and is refused service because they are gay? While I do believe that it is completely wrong to make a religious cake designer make a wedding cake for a gay couple, might it be the case that gays are more worried about the everyday interactions as opposed to the few special exceptions?

Yes, it might be the case that some individuals are afraid they might be refused services such as the ones mentioned.  It could also be that others are motivated by wanting to see business owners who, for example, discriminate against practicing homosexuals (or homosexual weddings), punished by the government or forced into acts they object to for other reasons (such as changing their beliefs.  Acts breed habits and habits sometimes change beliefs.  Belief formation is a grab-bag mysterious thing).  LGBTQETC... activists know full well that court decisions have the effect of shaping people's beliefs--since for better or worse people's moral beliefs are (in part) codified by state laws and court decisions.

Of course, those in favor of the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts not only have similar fears, but also fear the government fining and ultimately imprisoning them.  It seems to me that this is not an unreasonable fear (especially given the fact that religious objectors already, rarely win in court versus the government which can usually manufacture a "compelling interest" for what it does...except when it takes a moral interest as in Lawrence vs. Texas.).

Here is a good primer on Religious Freedom Restoration Acts.

Let me ask the readers this: would you have similar concerns if, for example, a baker is asked to bake a cake by a religious person with an anti-homosexual-sex message as was the woman pictured above?
If so, why in this case but not in the other?

In an email to WORLD, [the man asking for the cake] wrote that he requested two cakes in the shape of an open Bible. He asked that the first cake show on one page, “God hates sin—Psalm 45:7,” and on the facing page, “Homosexuality is a detestable sin—Leviticus 18:22.” He requested that the second cake have on one page, “God loves sinners,” and on the facing page, “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us—Romans 5:8.”

As for me, I think we are long past the time when many positive Civil Rights laws (i.e. laws which make it illegal for businesses or other groups to deal with whomever they see fit) have served their usefulness.  There is a such a plurality of races, religions, ideologies, etc. in the U.S. that one can find the necessary services for one's needs.  And as far as racism goes, we've come a long way.  I see many laws today as further polarizing people, while at the same time keeping lawyers gainfully employed as well as race and gender baiting politicians.  Instead of seeking the government to coerce people by fines and imprisonment to deal justly and fairly with others, I favor education and free association, compelling people with arguments rather than brute force.  (Still, I see reason for ordinances which would, say, ban the KKK from parading in black neighborhoods.  One should feel safe in one's homes, and banning organizations from using public places for demonstrations which have a history of violence and suppression makes sense.  This is the conservative in me, not the libertarian).

Moreover, there is a serious business interest to deal with as many people as possible.  In addition, "everyday transactions" (as the commenter above mentions) should not be as much of a worry to homosexuals as (e.g.) blacks, since one need not advertise what one does in one's bedroom with people who one does business with in most instances.  The slippery slope argument here is baseless.

Nonetheless, if one cares to sign a petition asking the Arkansas governor to veto HB 1228 (as I was recently asked to do by a colleague) one can do so here.  After all, it is a free country.  But I won't be signing that petition.  I neither hate nor discriminate.

"Anti-LGBT[QQIAAP] Religious Freedom Bill Passes Senate"

I'd be willing to bet that whoever made this sign is a moron.

That's the title of the latest Arkansas Times propaganda report.

So, let's get this straight:  a bill which would more or less make clear what the Constitution already protects--the free exercise of religion-- and which isn't about the glorious '60s or sex--is ANTI-LGBTQQIAAP?  A law which would protect people from going against whatever they conscientiously believe is good or right based on their religion and WITH THEIR OWN PROPERTY [!!!] is evil?  I would love to hear the argument for that.

Apparently, the left is coming out of the woodwork over this bill, characterizing it as anti-LGBT...and discriminatory.  For instance, here is a typical post from Facebook:

Anyone who supports this bill or has had a hand in its creation and potential passage should be ashamed. I am disgusted by what I have seen recently regarding Arkansas on both a state and national level, but this takes the cake. [No pun intended.]  I thought we were moving past state sponsored discrimination, but I guess I was wrong. This is another reason I cannot wait to leave this backward excuse for a state ASAP.  [Your backward state has the highest taxes of any of the seven states in which I've lived. I can see why yer itchin' to leave.  I'll see you in Saskatchewan.]

I hate to break it to the guy, but almost every single time the state makes a law, it discriminates.  For example, the social security age is discriminatory by choosing 65 years of age against every other age. Gas taxes discriminate between people who drive trucks and people who drive lawnmowers across country versus people who just ride bikes or walk.  The author of the post apparently does not understand what discrimination is or how laws typically work.

Note: for the left, "discrimination" seems just to mean "unjust discrimination" or perhaps more likely "unfair discrimination," even though this disambiguation rarely occurs (i.e., between discrimination, and either unjust/unfair discrimination, or between unjust and unfair discrimination).  Still, watch out for it and don't be bamboozled.  Most cases of discrimination are not unjust; we make discriminations ALL the time (you've made several while reading this post).

Regarding the Anti-LGBT spin on this particular bill--the left, with religious indignation, apparently holds that "whoever is not for us is against us."  Jesus's meaning aside, it seems that there is a failure, here, to distinguish between an agent being free simply to refrain from doing business with someone for religious reasons and an agent doing something overtly harmful and against another party.

At any rate, none of this behavior from the left is surprising.  The left is by nature totalitarian. In the name of liberty it moves away from individual liberty and aims to control individuals by the coercive means of the state so that no realm of life is left untouched by politics.

If I bake cakes (heaven forbid) and don't feel like I want to bake them for a gay wedding, that is unacceptable to the left.  You must obey Big Brother.

The only property rights you have are the ones that the left allows you to have.  Your ingredients to your cake are not really your own.  Your labor is not really your own.  Whoever wants that cake (within the politically correct sphere) has a right to it, and has a right to your working for them.  They have part ownership over your goods, your labor, and thereby you.  You are free in the sense that you are free to serve them; if you don't, you will be fined.  If you don't pay your fine you will go to jail.  That is how government coercion works, Kemosabes.

I've written about this before.  But let's look back at the AR Times piece once more just for fun:

Sen. Joyce Elliott read from a letter from a gay constituent, who wrote, in part, that the bill was extremely unconstitutional, and "mutes those who like myself are a religious or denominational minority." 

I guess like blueness and pain--and unlike uniqueness--unconstitutionality comes in degrees.  Not only that, but if the bill is passed into law, Sen. Elliott's constituent will become mute.  Now that's some bill!  And apparently I "should be ashamed."

Instead, I find myself proud to support it--against the cultural elite and even though I am on the wrong side of history.

Progress! The World's First Three-Way Gay "Marriage"

Excerpt:
Three homosexual men have “married” each other in Thailand in what is being billed as the world’s first three-way same-sex “marriage.” This was, of course, inevitable. It’s inevitable in every country that redefines marriage as anything but one man and one woman. When the culture’s only standard for “marriage” is that the parties love each other, then all sorts of novel configurations are possible. Look for this to come soon to a country near you.

Under the banner of the gay-rights rainbow, the new cultural revolutionaries are not only redefining marriage but also, to borrow from the popular term of 1960s radicals, “smashing monogamy.” What’s to stop these three non-monogamous married men from taking on added spouses? If three is fine, why not four? Or five?

This is, of course, a blatant I-told-you-so moment. This is what we gay-marriage opponents have been warning about. But it’s especially revealing of something else I’ve warned about for a while.
Those of us opposing same-sex “marriage” for reasons like this were told by gay-marriage advocates that we were nuts. Our claims that the redefining of marriage would lead to polygamous marriage and other arrangements were ridiculed. We were denounced as homophobes and bigots who simply hate. We were not just cold-hearted but hysterical. They shouted at us that they would never advocate arrangements like these. We were crazy to even suggest they would support anything but two gay people marrying one another.

But we know better. Those of us who have studied the ideological train-wreck called “progressivism” know better. We’ve watched how progressives “progress.” The only thing you really know about progressives, and that they know about themselves, is that they’re always changing, evolving. Where they stand now, on any given issue, is, by progressivism’s own definition, subject to change.
I often give the example of Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood. It was launched in the 1920s as the American Birth Control League, with Sanger’s interests being birth control and eugenics. Sanger insisted that she and her organization were against abortion. “It is an alternative that I cannot too strongly condemn,” she wrote in January 1932. “Some ill-informed persons have the notion that when we speak of birth control we include abortion as a method. We certainly do not.”
Yet, for progressives, what began as birth control needed only a few decades to snuff out life after conception. They “progressed” to where Sanger’s organization rapidly became America’s largest abortion provider. And where do “pro-choicers” stand today on abortion? Now they tell you that you must not only support its legalization but pay for it. If you disagree with them, they smear you as favoring a “war on women.”

Read the rest.

State Marriage Laws are Constitutional

Of course they are; only one who can't read or a progressive with disdain for the ideals enshrined in the Constitution (by those antiquated old white males) could think otherwise.

Excerpt:

There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires all 50 states to redefine marriage. The only way one can establish the unconstitutionality of man–woman marriage laws is to adopt a view of marriage that sees it as an essentially genderless, adult-centric institution and then declare that the Constitution requires that the states (re)define marriage in such a way. In other words, one needs to establish that the vision of marriage our law has long applied is wrong and that the Constitution requires a different vision. There is, however, no basis in the Constitution for reaching that conclusion. Marriage is based on the anthropological truth that men and women are distinct and complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the social reality that children deserve a mother and a father, and states have constitutional authority to make marriage policy based on these truths.

Roe vs. Wade All Over Again?

In light of the recent Supreme Court decision not to take up federal appeals court decisions overturning state laws defining marriage as between a man and a woman, it is suggested here that the proper response is twofold:

1. States should start passing robust religious protection laws. We have already seen religious protections being chipped away.  See for instance my discussion here and here.
2. State governors and other individuals should begin exercising civil disobedience.

I would add a third and fourth:
3. People should read the Constitution for themselves.  It was written for the people, not for lawyers.  And there is clearly no right of gay "marriage" therein.
4. Make the case for federalism again and again.  In an increasingly polarized nation, federalism may be the only way of maintaining a semblance of unity among diversity.

It could well, be, however, that if and when an appeals court rules in the other direction, the Supreme Court will have to take up the issue.  And instead of yanking the CHOICE away from the states, they'll do the right thing and INTERPRET the Constitution.

If You Love Each Other You Should Be Able to Marry

Let's try out a few contemporary attempts at providing some conditions for marriage in order to see what insights can be gleaned therefrom.  Perhaps a lesson or moral will follow if we try...

1. If you love each other, you should be able to marry.
Really?  I should be able to marry my sons or daughters?

2. If you are adults and love each other, you should be able to marry.
Can I marry my uncle or mother?  What about an estranged brother and sister who meet and are sterile? Will you exclude them from holy matrimony (or at least matrimony)?

3. If you are adults and non-family members and love each other, you should be able to marry.
So then, are polygamy, polygyny, and polyandrous relationships more generally acceptable?  Aside from acceptability let's talk metaphysics: Could everyone in the U.S. be united as one big happy family if Obama declared it so and if Americans all loved one another as Christ loved the Church? Is it possible, even if not practical?

And what is this business about love anyway?  Surely two people being in love (in the dating sense) isn't necessary for them to be married.  People in arranged marriages may not be in love in the dating sense, but if the marriage is a good one they will be in love or at least they will grow to love one another in certain ways.

Some lessons from the short exercise:

Cake Baker vs. Politically Correct Fascists Redux

Suppose you are an owner of a store that makes signs.  Professional signs unlike these:

And suppose a member of the local KKK comes to your sign shop dressed like a ghost asking you to make a sign directing fellow KKK members down the street to the next cross burning.  Do you have a right to refuse to make the sign?  Yes you do.  It is your business, and any sign you make is your property until an exchange is made.  It is not the property of the KKK nor is it the property of the government nor is it the property of all U.S. citizens.

Suppose you own a barbershop and are sick of potheads coming in stoned to get haircuts.  Or suppose you just think smoking pot is wrong or unhealthy and want to send a message.  Do you have a right to refuse service if someone smells of pot like this barber here?  Yes you do.  It is YOUR business.

If there is anything parallel to the Jim Crow laws of days past, it is not the current Arizona bill (that lefties refer to as the "anti-gay bill") which simply would restore legal property rights or rights of conscience to their proper state.  The parallel is with current laws on the books which strip property rights by mandating discrimination--discrimination against anyone with a business who is not politically correct.  Adam MacLeod nails it.