Canadian School Bans Words "Mother" and "Father"

It was only a matter of time.

That's the last straw. If this happens in the U.S. I'm moving to Canada another planet!

Obama to Nominate First Openly Gay Leader of Army

Here. The primary motivation of the left is sex, particularly sexual deviancy from the norm.  That would explain why they are more than willing to sacrifice millions of babies on the altar of Dionysus.

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?

Homosex, Slavery, and Self-Ownership: A Dilemma

On the traditional view, Christianity stood out from pagan Rome (in part) because Christians held that sex outside of a one man, one woman marriage was sinful.  In fact sexual sins seem to be of the mortal variety: If persisted in, the unhinged power of sexuality leads to the spiritual death of one's very soul.

But the traditional view has currently fallen on hard times (at least in the West.)  Christians who promote gay marriage typically think that there is nothing morally problematic with homosex.  If pressed, they will admit that on the best historical evidence, the early church believed that homosex was immoral.  Still, those Christians were not in the same (enlightened) position that we are today.  They didn't know that homosexuality was biologically determined (it's not, but let's play along).  They hadn't considered the possibility of two loving homosexuals being in a committed and exclusive relationship (ancient writers before them certainly had, but let's run with it).  And so forth.

And now to the point of this post. Just consider the New Testament view on slavery, they say.  Nothing in the Bible seems to forbid slavery.  Moreover it seems as if, even though the basic trajectory of the Bible is moving towards the abolition of slavery, at the time it was written, it was condoned.  Yet of course we know today that slavery is wrong.  In fact, slavery is intrinsically wrong.  We are privileged today in a way that those in antiquity were not.  (An unsympathetic reader, following a line from C.S. Lewis, might call our new-found vantage point "chronological snobbery;" a more sympathetic reader drawing on its Caucasian cousin might call our viewpoint, "Western Privilege.")

So one thesis of Christians who liken the homosexual sex issue to slavery is that slavery is intrinsically wrong.  Let this be Thesis #1.

But it is not enough to note that slavery is intrinsically wrong to show that there is good reason for thinking that homosex is permissible and all things considered, good.  Why, then, do Christians who promote gay marriage think that homosex is morally permissible (and even morally good and praiseworthy)?  Why not think that slavery is wrong but homosex (adultery, incest, etc.) is as well? 

One of the primary defenses one comes across also involves a plank quite common in a defense of abortion: Just as women have a right to do what they want with their own bodies, so too do all people have a right to do what they want with their bodies.  Now, of course, a sensible person holding such a view will soon note that there are restrictions on what one can do with one's body.  It's not permissible that I grab an axe with my hand and whack you over the head with it, and so on, and so forth.  In fact, since most (if not everything) we do is something we do with our bodies, in order to have some normative bite, we need to supplement the account with a deeper principle which explains the general intuition that one can do what one wants, more or less, with one's body.

How might such an account proceed?  Here is one avenue: The reason one can do what one wants more or less with one's own body is because one owns one's body just as one owns oneself.  The reason I cannot whack you over the head with an axe is because you own your head and your neck.  The reason you cannot slip me drugs in my drink is because I own my body and have not consented to drugs being in my drink and then in my body.

Let this be Thesis #2: The reason why (e.g.) it is wrong for you to harm me is because I own my body and have not consented to harm.  The reason why (e.g.) it is permissible to have homosexual sex is because two (or more) people own their bodies and have consented to homosexual sex.

Now we have the makings for a dilemma.  On the one hand, it is held (by some Christians currently under consideration) that slavery is intrinsically wrong--that is, there are no circumstances in which it is permissible.  On the other hand, homosexual sex and all sexual activities are permissible if they are between two people who own their bodies and who have consented to such activity.

But the problem with this view is that, if the self-ownership thesis were correct, slavery would not be intrinsically wrong.  For as Robert Nozick infamously (or famously) argues, if one owns one's body, then one can voluntarily consent to being a slave.  If I own my body--and there is nothing more to my rights with respect to my body beyond my ownership of it--I can legitimately sell myself into slavery.  I can give you the right to own me.  And if I voluntarily give you the right to own me, then it is not impermissible that I am your slave.  This, of course, is not to deny that slavery is wrong for other reasons, especially in cases where one does not sell oneself into slavery (which obviously would be most if not all cases). 

But if one thinks that the self-ownership thesis undergirds why slavery is wrong, then slavery is not intrinsically wrong. 

So either the self-ownership thesis must go if slavery is thought to be intrinsically wrong, or the defense of sexual acts which relies on the self-ownership thesis must go (or both).  If the self-ownership thesis is rejected, we need another account of why it's permissible for any two consenting individuals (gay, brother-sister, etc.) to engage in sex.

Arguments Don't Have White Testicles

In a recent exchange with Preston Sprinkle about his book on the Bible and homosexuality, Eliel Cruz, comments (I believe in a tweet):

“Oh great. Just what we need. Yet another book about homosexuality by a white, straight, privileged male.”

I can't speak for Preston (who issued an apology in light of Cruz's blog post rebuttal linked to above), but I'd say that if there were anyone who needed to issue an apology, it is Cruz for attempting to silence a dissenting voice (and a sympathetic one at that!) with sentences cloaked in academese, mumbo jumbo.
What we need are some memorable one-liners to quickly combat such nonsense and bring people to their senses (there is a point to proverbs and aphorisms after all). To "Arguments Don't have Testicles" we might add "Arguments aren't white" and "Arguments have no sexual orientation."

Examples of practical application:
"You're a man.  You have no right to discuss abortion!"
Response: "Arguments don't have testicles!"

"What could a white man possibly have to say about racism!?"
Response: "Arguments have no race!  Arguments have no skin!"

"That's very heteronormative of you to say!"
Response: "Heteronormative?  Arguments aren't hetero or homo!  Their normativity is purely epistemic!"

Are arguments privileged?  Cruz certainly does not write as if they are. For him, he seems to privilege the telling of stories.   Remember: the left likes to talk about stories and "narratives"--stories, of course, are useful and pleasing whether they are fact or fiction.

[Note: I doubt Preston would affirm my suggested sentences; he does not see one of his roles as an unpopular and annoying fly.]

Justice Kennedy: Pro-Polygamous "Marriage"

Here are some of the most memorable quotations from Kennedy's recent SCOTUS opinion.  I have taken the liberty of modifying his words to fit with polygamous marriage.  As an exercise for the reader, see what other types of marriage you can come up with.  Once the reader gets a feel for the point of this little exercise, feel free to skip to Scalia's remarks below.

“The ancient origins of marriage confirm its centrality, but it has not stood in isolation from developments in law and society. The history of marriage is one of both continuity and change. That institution — even as confined to opposite-sex relations — has evolved over time.”

“Until the mid-20th century, polygamous intimacy long had been condemned as immoral by the state itself in most Western nations, a belief often embodied in the criminal law. For this reason, among others, many persons did not deem polygamous people to have dignity in their own distinct identity. A truthful declaration by polygamous people of what was in their hearts had to remain unspoken.”

“The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning. When new insight [what insight?] reveal discord between the Constitution’s central protections and a received legal stricture, a claim to liberty must be addressed.”

“The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, at least two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality. This is true for all persons, whatever their sexual orientation…There is dignity in the bond between at least two men or two women who seek to marry and in their autonomy to make such profound choices.”

“Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.”

“[W]hile Lawrence confirmed a dimension of freedom that allows individuals to engage in intimate association without criminal liability, it does not follow that freedom stops there. Outlaw to outcast may be a step forward, but it does not achieve the full promise of liberty.”

“Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser.”

“Polygamous people are consigned to an instability many monogamous couples would deem intolerable in their own lives. As the State itself makes marriage all the more precious by the significance it attaches to it, exclusion from that status has the effect of teaching that polygamous people are unequal in important respects. It demeans those who seek polygamy for the State to lock them out of a central institution of the Nation’s society.”

“Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to polygamous people of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on polygamous people serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry.”

“It is of no moment whether advocates of polygamous marriage now enjoy or lack momentum in the democratic process. The issue before the Court here is the legal question whether the Constitution protects the right of people seeking to be in a polygamous relationship to marry.”

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, at least two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

Now Scalia:

“The world does not expect logic and precision in poetry or inspirational pop-philosophy; it demands them in the law.”

“If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: ‘The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,’ I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”

Against Polygamous "Marriage": A Bad Case of Lovin' Yous

Don't Hate.  Be a Mate.  Don't Discriminate.

In response to a previous post about an argument against polygamous "marriage" but for same-sex "marriage," Dr. M. Douglass (aka "Dr. M.D.", aka "Dr. Doctor.") responds with a different argument against legalizing polygamous "marriage," and he also supplies some supplementary arguments and thoughts (these were in the comments section on Facebook so forgive Douglass's typos; also I don't know if Douglass endorses all of the arguments) :

[A] Here's an argument against polygamy that would not also apply to monogamous gay marriage: 1. If polygamy were legal, Q could game the system by marrying lots of people in order for Q's health insurance (or whatever) to extend to his/her handful (dozens/thousands/millions) of spouses. 2. It should not be legal for Q to be able to game the system in such a way. 3. So, polygamy should not be legal.

[B] As for relationships in which one party cannot give consent (pet-o-philia, objectophilia, etc.), how about this argument: 1. Marriage is a life-long mutually agreed-upon union of individuals. 2. One cannot be form a mutually agreed-upon union with a pug or a toaster. 3. Therefore, one cannot be married to a pug or a toaster.

[C] Child marriage meanwhile, could be rejected on the grounds that it is inherently abusive in nature or on the grounds that children should not be allowed to form life-long civil unions, since they cannot give consent. I would guess that incestuous relationships are often (perhaps usually) abusive in one way or another, and thus should be illegal as well.

[D] As I understand it, arguments that compare gay marriage with polygamy/incest/objectophilia/petophilia amount to this: "There is no plausible principle that would give us good reasons to legalize gay marriage without also allowing the other the other stuff." (Or, contrapositively: Any non-ad-hoc argument against the latter "marriages" would also apply to gay marriage.) The above polygamy argument seems pretty plausible to me.

Let me start with [D].

The Social Meaning of Marriage

A must read from Keith Burgess-Jackson with several useful links:

Ralph Wedgwood on the Social Meaning of Marriage

Marriage is more than just a relationship that is publicly avowed, or a cluster of concrete legal rights and obligations. It is a legal relationship that has a generally-understood social meaning of a certain kind. None of the options currently available to same-sex couples—'commitment ceremonies' with sympathetic clergymen, private contracts, or 'registered domestic partnerships'—has a social meaning of this kind; none of these options is as familiar and widely understood as marriage. As a result, these options will be less effective than marriage for couples who want to affirm their commitment in a way that the community will readily understand. To fulfil this desire effectively, same-sex couples need to enter a relationship that has a social meaning of the appropriate kind. For this, they need the legal status of marriage, since, as I have argued, the social meaning is tied to this legal status. In effect, they need to be able to say that they are married. Suppose that same-sex unions had a different name—as it might be, 'quarriage'. There will presumably be many fewer same-sex quarriages than opposite-sex marriages; so the term 'quarriage' would be much less familiar and widely understood than 'marriage', and for this reason quarriage would be less effective at fulfilling this serious desire than marriage.

There is no reason to doubt that same-sex couples could have access to a relationship that has the social meaning of marriage. True, the current social meaning of marriage involves the assumption that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. But if same-sex couples could legally marry, it would presumably soon become common knowledge that some marriages were same-sex marriages. So introducing same-sex marriage would change the social meaning of marriage. But there is no reason to think that it would change society's core expectations of marriage (that marriage involves sexual intimacy, domestic and economic cooperation and a voluntary mutual commitment). Thus, we may presume that the legalization of same-sex marriage would give same-sex couples access to the social meaning of marriage.

(Ralph Wedgwood, "The Fundamental Argument for Same-Sex Marriage," The Journal of Political Philosophy 7 [September 1999]: 225-42, at 241 [italics in original])

Note from KBJ: Wedgwood and other supporters of homosexual "marriage" are in for a shock. They think that the social meaning of marriage will transfer automatically to anything the law deems a marriage. To see why this is unlikely, suppose the law decreed, today, that human beings are married (or can becomemarried, by taking proper steps) to their companion animals, such as cats and dogs. Are people likely to start thinking of these relationships as marriages? Obviously not. What they'll do, almost certainly, is reserve the word "marriage" for unions of one man and one woman. If people refer to the new relationships as marriage at all, it will be with a modifier, such as "animal-human marriage," or "animal-human 'marriage'." You can't (thank goodness) change the social meaning of a thing through legislation or court decree. I predict that very few people will refer to homosexual "marriages" as "marriage." The language will be either (1) "traditional marriage" (a retronym) and "homosexual marriage" or (2) "marriage" and "homosexual marriage." If you think this is unlikely, consider how often you hear the term "male nurse," many years after men went into nursing.

Note 2 from KBJ: My friend Bill Vallicella (a.k.a. Maverick Philosopher) has some thoughts about terminology.

Note 3 from KBJ: Perhaps "real marriage" and "homosexual marriage" will catch on. By the way, don't you love it that progressive elites can go only so far in ramming homosexual "marriage" down our throats? They can confer a bundle of legal rights on two men or two women (just as they can confer rights on chickens by requiring that egg-laying chickens be given so much cage space), but (1) they can't change people's minds (beliefs, values, attitudes), (2) they can't change the way people speak, (3) they can't change church doctrine (in Roman Catholicism, homosexuality is "a disordered sexual inclination"), and (4) they can't make something that is morally unacceptable (or widely believed to be morally unacceptable) morally acceptable. How long ago was it that homosexuality was a diagnosable mental disorder? Here is the text from page 44 of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 2d ed. (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1968), commonly known as DSM-II:

302 Sexual deviations This category is for individuals whose sexual interests are directed primarily toward objects other than people of the opposite sex, toward sexual acts not usually associated with coitus, or toward coitus performed under bizarre circumstances as in necrophilia, pedophilia, sexual sadism, and fetishism. Even though many find their practices distasteful, they remain unable to substitute normal sexual behavior for them. This diagnosis is not appropriate for individuals who perform deviant sexual acts because normal sexual objects are not available to them.

302.0 Homosexuality

302.1 Fetishism

302.2 Pedophilia

302.3 Transvestitism

302.4 Exhibitionism

302.5* Voyeurism*

302.6* Sadism*

302.7* Masochism*

302.8 Other sexual deviation

[302.9 Unspecified sexual deviation]

How many of these sexual deviations are already normalized? Which will be next to be normalized?

Note 4 from KBJ: Homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1974 as a result of political protests by homosexual activists and their sympathizers. The psychiatric community caved. Think about that.

The Case for Gay "Marriage" & Against Polygamous "Marriage"

That case is rarely argued for.  The left is driven largely by emotion, fluctuating between misguided empathy and outrage, as can be seen over and over by the lack of understanding when someone makes the comparison of homosex with incest and polygamy.  There is a ubiquitous failure to understand that the comparison is made because the reasons being given for the permissibility of homosex and for mandating homosexual "marriage" also entail the permissibility of certain incestuous and polygamous relationships.  Instead of offering an argument for the one which excludes the others, the proponent of gay marriage reacts with offense and indignation ("How DARE you compare them!").  As the saying goes, truth hurts.

But occasionally one does come across an argument for gay "marriage" but against polygamous "marriage."  Here is one such argument.

Some excerpts with commentary interpolated:

Obama Admin. to Order LGBTQIIAAP Hired By Faith-Based Groups

Progress is swift and unrelenting.

It is not enough to obey Big Brother; His will must be the will of all.

On Jeff Cook's Latest Post on Same-Sex Sex

I have numerous thoughts on the Biblical claims made by Cook but I assume Preston will address all of that in short order.  Here are thoughts on some of the other things he says in the latest post:

Theoretically, however, deontology and virtue ethics are mutually exclusive. Deontology judges the morality of an action based on the action’s adherence to a set of rules; virtue ethics judges whether one is acting from and seeking to exhibit certain character traits. One theory for gauging “what is good” aims at rule following, the other aims at becoming a certain kind of person.

The New Testament and Gay Sex: Response #3

This is the final post on Jeff Cook's opening statement on Preston Sprinkle's blog.  The last post ended with wondering about what his core argument is (or arguments are) for the conclusion that homosexual sex is not impermissible and not the target of the New Testament prohibitions concerning sexual relations.  To those arguments I now turn.

The New Testament and Gay Sex: Response #2

This is my second response to Jeff Cook's post.  This started to get a bit lengthy so there will be one more.

In the last two posts, I turn to the heart of his opening statement.  I'll first look at a passage where I agree with him, with one added qualification, and then I will move on to what I take to be some of the more salient, problematic passages.

The virtues picture what it looks like for a human being to reflect God. The virtues describe our proper function and are the attributes we exhibit when we are fully sanctified.

This is for the most part accurate.  The sanctified, holy person of the Bible is the wise person who is maximally inclined towards justice and love, who has hope and faith, and so on.  Of course, there is a bit more to the story than that.  There is justification for one.  Standing in a certain relation to God via Christ's atoning sacrifice is also necessary for sanctification--how the details are spelled out will depend on whether one takes a more Catholic or Reformed line or something in between--though all agree that grace is necessary.  But I doubt Cook disagrees about this.

Conversely, Paul said actions that are wondrous yet not inspired by virtue—are “clanging cymbals”, and the person who commits them “gains nothing” and “is nothing” (1 Cor 13:1-3). Apparently our actions do not matter if they do not emerge from virtue. 

Many actions might not matter if they do not emerge from virtue, but at least one important action does, namely accepting (or refraining from refusing) God's grace.  That is, there is at least one action pre-virtue that matters.  Now, if one takes a certain Reformed line, this might be the only action that matters ("matters" here is vague but I'll run with it) which does not emerge from virtue.  But then on some Reformed views, it's the only action that matters and virtue does not really matter.  Yes, virtue will follow from any genuine one-time acceptance of grace through faith, but virtue adds neither moral worth to one's actions nor any additional merit; virtue is a necessary condition that, so to speak, comes along for the irresistible ride.  On different theological views, though, other actions will matter which do not emerge completely from virtue, at least if we think of virtues as coming in degrees, sanctification as a synergistic process, and free will as operative in accepting additional grace, responding to grace such that one does not lose the faith one has, increasing towards perfection in love, and so forth.

 In short, the New Testament writers, unpacking and recording the ethic of the Lord Jesus, reject the moral foundation of the deontologists. True moral goodness and the life that is pleasing to God are a matter of virtue, and virtue alone.

It has not been shown that the New Testament writers reject the moral foundation of the deontologist as I described deontology in the previous post.  It has not been shown that the New Testament writers did not think that some actions are intrinsically wrong and are inconsistent with what a virtuous person would do.  What has been shown is that the New Testament picture of the sanctified Christian is such that she is one who maintains and cultivates virtue; but that is consistent with a non-consequentialist ethic which holds that there are some actions which one should not do in spite of whatever good consequences it produces.

[A] Nothing about monogamous same-sex relationships by necessity contradicts a life of virtue. [B] Physical relationships between same sex individuals may be enjoyed by faithful, courageous, wise, hopeful, loving, grace-filled, self-controlled people. 

[Ad B] There is no doubt that physical relationships between same sex individuals can be meaningful and have good elements; the same, though, can be true of polygamous relationships, non-monogamous relationships more generally, and the like.  The question, though, is whether any of these sexual relationships are per se good or bad, right or wrong or whether they violate God's will.  If homosex is instrinsically wrong, it would contradict a life of virtue in spite of whatever meaningful and good elements are a part of the relationships (e.g. friendship, having someone who fulfills certain desires, being in a relationship with someone who cares for you, etc.)

[Ad A] Nothing about monogamous same-sex relationships by necessity contradicts a life of virtue only if same-sex sexual relationships are not morally impermissible.  Does Cook provide an argument that same-sex sexual relations are permissible?  It's hard to see that he does.  But I shall consider the most pronounced arguments in the final installment.

The New Testament and Gay Sex: Response #1

This is a critique of philosopher Jeff Cook's opening statement  over at Preston Sprinkle's blog wherein he argues that Christian belief is compatible with the belief that gay sex is not morally wrong.  I have decided to break this down into at least two posts.  This first post will focus on the more philosophical parts of Cook's opening statement.

I will start by looking at some of his remarks which set up the basic framework for his assessment.

Jesus: If Someone Asks You to Bake One Cake, Bake for Them Two?

Jessica Kantrowitz answers the question in the affirmative:

“If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” ~Matthew 5:41

If you believe gay marriage is immoral (I don’t, myself) and a gay couple comes into your shop and asks you to bake a cake for their wedding, what should you do? If God causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on the wedding days of straight and gay couples, then what is our responsibility? If it is against the law to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, but you believe strongly that their lifestyle is immoral, what should you do?

Christians, our Jesus said, “Go with them two.”

If someone forces you to bake a cake for a gay wedding, bake for them two.

The author is confused on more than one count.  Exegetically, we should start with the fact that Jesus says that he has not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.  Whatever Jesus says, it is in accordance with the Old Testament law ("anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.")  Marcion was a heretic.  Second, Jesus ups the ante on sexual morality including divorce.  His sexual ethics are stricter than anything on offer; it is less permissive not more. For example, one can commit adultery in one's heart even before committing the external act. Third, on the traditional, orthodox view in Christianity, adultery, incest, homosex (yes, it's a word), bestiality, etc. are intrinsically wrong.  This entails that there are no circumstances in which they are morally permissible.  Some think that participating in a gay wedding is participating in something that condones homosex which is intrinsically wrong.  Whereas, it is not intrinsically wrong to slap someone, to give one your cloak, to go an extra mile when forced to go one, or to give to someone who asks.  Finally, her view seems to entail the following absurdities when her argument is taken to its logical conclusion: If someone asks for aid in having an affair with one person, you should aid and abet in two affairs; if someone asks you to bake a cake for a Westboro Baptist demonstration, you should bake two.

Her argument is supposedly based on a Christian ethic of love; but love takes on many forms and some ways of loving are appropriate and others inappropriate.

If we “snatch one person from the fire” by refusing to condone behavior we believe is immoral, but send hundreds and thousands of others fleeing churches and Christianity entirely, what have we really accomplished? Someone else will make that cake and fewer and fewer people will look to Christianity for love and hope. We will have won a battle that we were never called to fight in the first place, but lost the war.

The tacit empirical claim here, that by not participating in some actions which appear to condone certain sexual practices many will flee Christianity, is dubious.  Christianity flourished from the very beginning in a culture and against a background that was sexually promiscuous and in many ways like our own.  In fact, one of the things that stood out about Christians was their strict, sexual ethics (such that the slur against Christianity was that it was "a religion for women.")

"Two Faces of Tolerance"

Ed Feser:

What is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression.

Herbert Marcuse

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken

Given current events in Indiana, I suppose it is time once again to recall a post first run on the old Right Reason blog in March of 2007, and reprinted on this blog in December of 2009.  Here are the relevant passages, followed by some commentary:

To the charge that liberals are (or, given their principles, should be) in favor of X [where X = legalizing abortion, liberalizing obscenity laws, banning smoking on private property, legalizing “same-sex marriage,” outlawing the public advocacy of traditional sexual morality, etc. etc.], the standard liberal response goes through about five stages (with, it seems, roughly 5-10 years passing between each stage, though sometimes the transition is much quicker than that).  Here they are:

Stage 1: “Oh please. Only a far-right-wing nutjob would make such a paranoid and ridiculous accusation - I suppose next you’ll accuse us of wanting to poison your precious bodily fluids!”

Stage 2: “Well, I wouldn’t go as far as X. All the same, it’s good to be open-minded about these things. I mean, people used to think ending slavery was a crazy idea too…”

Stage 3: “Hey, the Europeans have had X for years and the sky hasn’t fallen. But no, I admit that this backward country probably isn’t ready for X yet.”

Stage 4: “Of course I’m in favor of X - it’s in the Constitution! Only a far-right-wing nutjob could possibly oppose it.”

Stage 5: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law…”

…

Fortunately, though, we can rely on conservatives to hold the line, and indeed to turn back liberal advances. Right?

Well, no, of course not. (You can stop rolling your eyes, I was being facetious.) For conservatives - or maybe I should say “conservatives” (since there’s very little that they ever actually manage to conserve, unless money is somehow involved) - seem to go through five stages of their own. Here they are:

Stage 1: “Mark my words: if the extreme left had its way, they’d foist X upon us! These nutjobs must be opposed at all costs.”

Stage 2: “Omigosh, now even thoughtful, mainstream liberals favor X! Fortunately, it’s political suicide.”

Stage 3: “X now exists in 45 out of 50 states. Fellow conservatives, we need to learn how to adjust to this grim new reality.”

Stage 4: “X isn’t so bad, really, when you think about it. And you know, sometimes change is good. Consider slavery…”

Stage 5: “Hey, I was always in favor of X! You must have me confused with a [paleocon, theocon, Bible thumper, etc.]. But everyone knows that mainstream conservatism has nothing to do with those nutjobs…”

End quote.  Now, where X = curtailing the free exercise of religion, at the time I first wrote those words I estimated that liberals were at about stage 2.  At this point it seems that many of them are at about stage 4, and a disturbing number of hotheads among them seem willing to push for stage 5 vigilantism.  Conservatives, meanwhile, seem mostly to be at about stage 3 of their own progression, and I suspect that not a few are at least flirting with Stage 4.

And so here is where we find ourselves in the land of the free and the home of the brave in April of 2015:

Prominent conservative politicians and churchmen have all essentially caved in on the substance of the dispute over “same-sex marriage.”  None of them will publicly express the slightest moral disapproval of homosexual behavior, and few even bother anymore with social scientific arguments supporting the benefits of children being raised by both a mother and a father.  Indeed, all of them are eager to express their deep respect for their fellow citizens who happen to be homosexual, vigorously to condemn “homophobia” and discrimination, etc.  Some of them are even happy to affirm “same-sex marriage.”  All they ask is that religious believers who on moral grounds disapprove of “same-sex marriage” not be forced to cooperate formally or materially with it.  The circumstances where this might occur are, of course, very rare.  No one is proposing that business owners might refuse to serve a customer simply because he or she happens to be homosexual.  What is in view are merely cases where a business owner who objects to “same-sex marriage” would be forced to participate in it, say by providing a wedding cake or wedding invitations.  Nor would his refusal to participate inconvenience anyone, since there are plenty of business owners who have no qualms about “same-sex marriage.”

In short, what conservatives are proposing is not only extremely modest, but is being defended in the name of their opponents’ own principles, the most liberal of principles, viz. the Jeffersonian principle that it is tyrannical to force someone to act against his conscience, and the Rawlsian principle that a pluralistic society should strive as far as possible to respect and keep a just peace between citizens committed to radically different moral, philosophical and religious views. 

And for taking this paradigmatically liberal position, they are widely and shrilly denounced by liberals as… “bigots,” “haters,” “intolerant,” comparable to the Ku Klux Klan and the upholders of Jim Crow.

Meanwhile, some liberal business owners fire employees who take this conservative position, while others refuse to do business in a state that adopts it.  Other liberals routinely refuse even to discuss the merits of the conservative position but merely hurl insults and try to shout down and intimidate anyone who dares to disagree with them.  And when a particular business owner affirms that customers who happen to be homosexual are welcome in her restaurant, but also says that she would not agree to cater a hypothetical “same-sex wedding,” she finds herself suddenly subjected to a nationwide Two Minutes Hate, with an online mob actively seeking to destroy her livelihood and reputation -- some of them even proposing to burn down the restaurant or kill its owners.  Even some mainstream liberals, while not condoning such violence, suggest that the restaurant owner had invited this abuse.

And liberals have winked at or even embraced the ethos and tactics of the lynch mob in the name of… tolerance, freedom, and pluralism, of love and compassion and opposition to bigotry.

How have we descended into such Orwellian insanity? 

It’s all about sexual equality

Read the rest.

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.

Religious Freedom Restoration Act: A Time for Testing

First Things editor R.R. Reno:

We’re in a moment of mass hysteria, one that vindicates Indiana Governor Mike Pence’s decision to sign his state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). This law establishes a strong standard for religious liberty: A person’s free exercise of religious can be “substantially burdened” by a law only if that law advances a “compelling government interest” in a way that involves “the least restrictive means.”

It was immediately denounced as an unprecedented assault on gay rights. Apple CEO Tim Cook described the law as part of “something very dangerous” that “would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors.” Many others have joined the frenzy. Gays aren’t going to be served at restaurants! They won’t be allowed into hotels!

What world is Tim Cook living in? At present, Indiana has no legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. As a result, no matter what one thinks of the recently passed RFRA, when it comes to gay rights this legislation does absolutely nothing to allow people to do things they’re not already allowed to do.

And what were people doing? At this point nobody has identified any pattern of discrimination in Indiana that, somehow, this legislation will empower. No gay person has complained of being denied a hotel room. None have reported being denied service at a restaurant. Gays and lesbians are not prohibited from voting or holding public office. Nobody is lobbying to prevent Elton John from performing in Indiana. There are no reports of discrimination in hiring.

But today is beside the point. Let me repeat that: Today is beside the point. The controversy in Indiana is about the future.

Christian conservatives in Indiana pressed for a RFRA because they anticipate the establishment of a thoroughgoing gay rights regime in America. The Supreme Court is very likely to find a right to gay marriage in the Constitution. Moreover, the reasoning used to justify the discovery of this right is only too likely move along lines that equate any objection to same-sex marriage with bigotry.

This is what I call the Selma Analogy. 

READ THE REST.

The 14th Amendment

Here is the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, wherein one will find a right to an abortion, a right to gay marriage, and in general, a right to whatever is deemed good and fitting by progressive jurists under the invention of substantive due process:

Amendment XIV

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Section 3.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5.

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

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.