BlackLivesMatter makes Donald Trump sound positively sane

Again, Rod Dreher cuts to the quick in "#BlackLivesMatter's Cry For Help" (American Conservative, June 22, 2016):

The truth comes out at last, courtesy of Black Lives Matter:

It is with pain and heartache that the Black Lives Matter Network extends love, light, protection, and abundance to our family in Orlando, Florida. We love you. Black people are a diverse community, and though the hate-filled rhetoric of the conservative right is currently trying to pit us against our kin — we will always stand with all the parts of ourselves. Today, Queer, Latinx, and Muslim family, we lift you up.

Despite the media’s framing of this as a terrorist attack, we are very clear that this terror is completely homegrown, born from the anti-Black white supremacy, patriarchy and homophobia of the conservative right and of those who would use religious extremism as a weapon to gain power for the few and take power from the rest. Those who seek to profit from our deaths hope we will forget who our real enemy is, and blame Muslim communities instead.

But we will never forget.

In case you didn’t notice, Omar Mateen, an Afghani-American radical gay Muslim registered as a Democrat, was really a right-wing, gay-hating, white conservative. No, Black Lives Matter isn’t crazy at all. Why would you say so? More:

Until these systems are defeated, until anti-Blackness no longer fuels anti-Muslim and anti-queer and trans bigotry, exploitation, and exclusion — we can never be truly free.

Nope, perfectly sane. By no means is this a foaming expectoration from a bunch of racist far-left crackpots.

Seriously, though. Seriously. How is it that people so given over to ideological derangement command such admiration from the media and others on the cultural heights? Who decided that to prove you really cared about black lives, you had to embrace this movement? I’m not asking rhetorically; I would love to know. You can’t just overlook these malicious Jacobin lies. To my knowledge, this is crazier than anything Donald Trump has ever said — and that takes some doing, for sure.

[Hat tip to JM]

I am glad the Hobby Lobby got a pass, but ...

R. R. Reno, "Legal wins matter—but culture matters more" (First Things, June 30, 2014).

This Court doesn’t take seriously worries that Social Security numbers harm spirits or that the Bible endorses racism. By contrast, it (or at least the majority) does take seriously the notion that a religious person—or for that matter any morally serious person—might be pro-life, the essential moral issue at stake in the Hobby Lobby case.

So, when I look into my crystal ball to see the future of our legal culture, at least when it comes to the clash between gay rights and religious liberty, I see the finer points of the law turning on similar assumptions about legitimate grievance.

Will the Justices allow that censure of homosexual acts and opposition to gay marriage are reasonable? Will they see that allowing photographers and wedding cake makers to opt out of a compulsory regime of gay affirmation is neither disruptive nor burdensome to those who think otherwise?

Put simply, will the Justices regard opposition to gay marriage and other aspects of gay rights as nothing more than bigotry dressed up in religious disguise?

Reading this, our underground correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, comments:

Why are these even 'questions' now? In no case has a judge yet so decided. Meanwhile, the Church lacks either courage or the conviction, or both, to speak to these issues with any volume or force, but is likewise apologizing as it stutters its truth, stepping backward to avoid a jab like the faltering playground coward. Tis not going to be much fun!

And, as he declared at the beginning of his telegram: "AS GLAD AS I AM THE HOBBY LOBBY GOT A PASS, THAT T-H-I-S IS CONSIDERED A VICTORY SHOWS HOW FAR BACK BEHIND OUR OWN LINES WE HAVE BEEN FORCED TO RETREAT."

Gun Control in the Third Reich

A review of Stephen P. Halbrook's "Gun Control in the Third Reich" (Independent Institute):

Based on newly-discovered, secret documents from German archives, diaries and newspapers of the time, Gun Control in the Third Reich presents the definitive, yet hidden history of how the Nazi regime made use of gun control to disarm and repress its enemies and consolidate power. The countless books on the Third Reich and the Holocaust fail even to mention the laws restricting firearms ownership, which rendered political opponents and Jews defenseless. A skeptic could surmise that a better-armed populace might have made no difference, but the National Socialist regime certainly did not think so—it ruthlessly suppressed firearm ownership by disfavored groups.

Gun Control in the Third Reich spans the two decades from the birth of the Weimar Republic in 1918 through Kristallnacht in 1938. The book then presents a panorama of pertinent events during World War II regarding the effects of the disarming policies. And even though in the occupied countries the Nazis decreed the death penalty for possession of a firearm, there developed instances of heroic armed resistance by Jews, particularly the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

"What's wrong with this?"

"The White House Visitors Office requires that an unborn child—still residing in utero—must be counted as a full human being when its parents register for a White House tour, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.... The White House of the most aggressively pro-abortion President evv-errr." (Emphasis in the original). [Source]


"One of the greatest victories of feminists and left – including their catholic dupes and water-carriers – was to divorce the issue abortion from civil rights (and in the context of the Church, social justice) and twist it instead into a 'woman’s issue'. The right to be born is a social justice issue, not a woman’s issue. Do not be deceived by the lies of the left or of Catholics." -- Fr. Z. (Source)

Investiture controversy redivivus

Well, not quite the "Investiture Controversy," maybe, but something close. In the latest issue of the Knights of Columbus periodical, Columbia (May 2009), Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson has an article entitled, "A Direct Attack on the First Amendment" (p. 3), addressing a Bill no. 1098 in the State of Connecticut, which, if passed, would have exclusively targeted the Catholic Church and "wrested authority over parish affairs from our bishops and priests and instead turned over control to a series of elected boards (trustees), explicitly excluding bishops and pastors."

As Anderson mentions, the First Amendment of the US Constitution, however, declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercize thereof...." He continues:

Although one in four Americans is Catholic, the country still has a very Protestant outlook on certain issues.

... While the stated purpose for the Connecticut bill was to prevent financial mismanagement of parishes, its proponents seemed unaware that such mismanagement is rare and is addressed effectively by regulations already in place. In the end, the bill was both unconstitutional and unnecessary.

This attack was surprising, but not unprecedented. In Connecticut, Catholics were legally forbidden from holding public office or owning land, even in the 19th century.

After ratification of the First Amendment in 1791, Catholics in the Constitution state hat to wait nearly three decades for religious freedom....

,,, Bill 1098 would have turned the clock back more than 150 years, proving that Catholics must guard against a return to bigotry. The lesson from the 19th century is that the power to impose structures that grant or take away authority from Church leadrs is the power to intimidate and ultimately to destroy.

If a state can ignore the First Amendment and tell the Catholic Church how it must be organized and operated today, it can easily do the same tomorrow to any religion.

As you probably know, the Bill 1098 awoke a "sleeping giant" in the response of the state's Catholic population. Knights and their families formed a crowd of more than 5,000 with other Catholics and concerned citizens who gathered at the State Capitol on March 11. The bill was ultimately tabled.

Yet Bill 1098 was the second attempt in recent years to directly attack the Catholic Church in the State of Connecticut. The fist attempt was a bill some years back that would have eliminated the seal of confession. As Anderson observes: "We can only expect that here, and elsewhere, such attacks -- and more subtle ones -- are likely."

In closing, Anderson writes: "I want to thank all my brother Knights in Connecticut who worked so hard to defeat this attack on our Church and our religious liberties. Vivat Jesus!"

Tighening the noose

"JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Six Things You Should Know About the Homeland Security Report on ‘Rightwing Extremism’" (Fox News, April 15, 2009).

[Hat tip to T.K.]

"May I take your little girl for a ride?"

Rod Dreher, "On gay marriage, no tenable compromise" (Beliefnet, November 16, 2008):

Here's my column from today's Dallas Morning News, in which I write that conservatives may have won the Prop 8 battle, but we're losing, and are going to lose, the war over same-sex marriage rights. Why? Two reasons, basically: demographics, and the loss long ago of a settled view of marriage as anything beyond a contractual arrangement. In other words, conservatives are going to lose this war because we've lost the young, and we've lost the young because we've lost the culture. I might have added, gays had nothing to do with that; this battle was lost to traditionalists long before gays began to campaign for marriage rights. [N.B., if you're at all interested in this topic, I encourage you to read past the jump; I've appended a long passage from a 2005 Policy Review essay by Lee Harris, a partnered gay man who criticizes gay marriage on the grounds of tradition; it bears thoughtful reflection.]

I advocate in the column conservatives concentrating their (our) energies on a strategic retreat to more defensible ground, to protect religious freedom:

Should conservatives surrender? No, but it's important to deal with the world as it is. Marc D. Stern, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress, warns of a substantial impact on traditionalist churches, synagogues and mosques if gay marriage is constitutionalized under current conditions.

"If there is to be space for opponents of same-sex marriage, it will have to be created at the same time as same-sex marriage is recognized, and, probably, as part of a legislative package," he counsels.

Well, California gays had marriage in all but name, but still successfully petitioned the state Supreme Court over the word "marriage." Still, if religious liberty can be protected while statutorily granting same-sex marriage, that's a deal prudent conservatives and fair-minded gay activists should take.

Otherwise, get ready for a culture-war cataclysm.

I have no faith that this will happen. As a reader put it recently in one of the threads below, there really doesn't seem to be any tenable middle ground -- if by "tenable" you mean a middle ground that gays are willing to concede. I think a sufficient number of social conservatives could be convinced to yield on gay marriage if we could be assured that our religious institutions would be left alone. This could be accomplished, I think -- lawyers, correct me if I'm wrong -- if gay marriage were granted statutorily, instead of ordered by a court as part of civil rights jurisprudence. But as I indicate in the column, I don't think gay activists want any part of that -- they want full equality in every sense of the word. And I believe, along with Marc D. Stern and Eugene Volokh that having secured marriage rights in civil rights jurisprudence, gay activists will not be content to leave churches, synagogues and mosques alone, but will press hard to punish them for adhering to traditional religious teaching about homosexuality. This is why I have a lot of respect for Prof. Chai Feldblum's position: I don't agree with her pro-SSM views, but coming from an Orthodox Jewish background, she understands what religious groups would be required to give up under a full gay civil rights regime.Read the whole thing.

Ultimately, there is no tenable middle ground because a) we live in postmodernity, under an Enlightenment constitutional framework that makes the fulfillment of individual desire the summum bonum of political life, and, more basically, b) what's at issue is what homosexuality is. Let's assume, as I believe most people do, that homosexuality is not a choice. Given that premise, is it an immutable, morally neutral condition (like race)? Or is it an immutable, morally deficient condition (like alcoholism) that can be accomodated to some degree by law and custom, but which has no civil rights claims?

The view of gay rights activists and their supporters is the first option; the view of traditional religious believers is the second. The polls are clear that the first option is going to be the majority view before long in this country. Those who hold the second view have lost the philosophical grounds on which to make a plausible case, I fear; all we have to rely on is prejudice, both in the bad sense (i.e., bigotry) and in the good, Burkean sense (i.e., you shouldn't hastily tear down an institution that has lasted so long and served society so well). And gays, understandably, find their personal dignity insulted by people who believe that their sexuality is in any way deficient -- particularly because for many gays, their sense of moral, cultural and psychological personhood is so bound up in their sexuality. Besides, our culture has taught everyone to think only in terms of one's individual rights. "Rights" are not something granted; they are only recognized, as they inhere in a person by virtue of his personhood. This is why both gays and religious people are not predisposed to compromise on something they think infringes upon their full personhood.

This is why we're going to have a very nasty culture war. Just wait until more people understand -- no thanks to the news media -- what the full implications of gay civil rights are for their churches and schools.

Lee Harris, a gay conservative who lives with his longtime partner, opposes gay marriage because he sees in its institutionalization a sign and a means of the decline of our civilization. This long passage from a 2005 Policy Review essay of his on the meaning of tradition today bears thoughtful reflection. This is what traditionalists see as the ultimate stakes in this war -- and why we will not, we must not, go quietly. This civilization will do what it wants to do, and I see nothing to stop its rapid deconstruction. Protecting religious freedom in this matter at least gives breathing room for the Benedict Option -- for the formation of religious communities that can keep traditional wisdom and practice alive amid a hostile world:

In the culture war of today, the representatives of one side have systematically set out to destroy the shining examples of middle America. They seem to be doing so with an unconscious fanaticism that most closely parallels the conscious fanaticism of the various iconoclastic movements in the history of Christianity. They are doing this in a variety of ways -- through the media, of course, and through the educational system. They are very thorough in their work and no less bold in the astonishingly specious pretexts upon which they demand the sacrifice of yet another shining example. In the current debate on gay marriage, its advocates are cast in the role of long-oppressed suppliants demanding their just due. Indeed, the whole question is put in terms of their legal and moral rights, against which the opponents of gay marriage have nothing to offer but "residual personal prejudice," to recall again the memorable words of the chief justice of the Canadian Supreme Court.

But it is a mistake to conflate the automatic with the irrational, since, as we have seen, an automatic and mindless response is precisely the mechanism by which the visceral code speaks to us. It triggers a rush of emotions because it is designed to do precisely this. Like certain automatic reflexes, such as jerking your hand off a burning stovetop, the sheer immediacy of our visceral response, far from being proof of its irrationality, demonstrates the critical importance, in times of peril and crisis, of not thinking before we act. If a man had to think before jumping out of the way of an onrushing car, or to meditate on his options before removing his hand from that hot stovetop, then reason, rather than being our help, would become our enemy. Some decisions are better left to reflexes -- be these of our neurological system or of our visceral system.

This is why for most people, including many gay men and women, the immediate response to the idea of gay marriage came at the gut level -- it somehow felt funny and wrong, and it felt this way long before they were able to spare a moment's reflection on the question of whether they were for it or against it. There is a reason for that: They were overwhelmed at having been asked the question at all. How do you explain what you have against what had never crossed your mind as something anyone on Earth would ever think of doing? This invitation to reason calmly about the hitherto unthinkable is the source of the uneasy visceral response. To ask someone to reason calmly about something that he regards as simply beyond the pale is to ask him to concede precisely what he must not concede -- the mere admissibility of the question.

Imagine a stranger coming up to you and asking if he can drive your eight-year-old daughter around town in his new car. Presumably, no matter how nicely the stranger asked this question, you would say no. But suppose he started to ask why you won't let him take your little girl for a ride. What if he said, "Listen, tell you what. I'll give her my cell phone and you can call her anytime you want"? What kind of obligation are you under to give a reason to a complete stranger for why he shouldn't be allowed to drive off with your daughter?

None. A question that is out of order does not require or deserve an answer. The moment you begin to answer the question as if it were in order, it is too late to point out your original objection to the question in the first place, which really was: Over my dead body.

Marriage was something that, until only quite recently, seemed to be securely in the hands of married people. It was what married people had engaged in, and certainly not a special privilege that had been extended to them to the exclusion of other human beings. Who, after all, could not get married? You didn't have to be straight; you could be gay. So what? Marriage was the most liberal institution known to man. It opened its arms to the ugly and the homely as well as to the beautiful and the stunning. Was it defined as between a man and a woman? Well, yes, but only in the sense that a cheese omelet is defined as an egg and some cheese -- without the least intention of insulting either orange juice or toast by their omission from this definition. Orange juice and toast are fine things in themselves -- you just can't make an omelet out of them.

Those who are married now, and those thinking about getting married or teaching their children that they should grow up and get married, may all be perfect idiots, mindlessly parroting a message wired into them before they were old enough to know better. But they are passing on, through the uniquely reliable visceral code, the great postulate of transgenerational duty: not to beseech people to make the world a better place, but to make children whose children will leave it a better world and not merely a world with better abstract ideals.

We have all personally known shining examples of such human beings, just as we have all known mediocre parents as well as some absolutely dreadful ones. Now suppose we are told, as we often are told in the gay-marriage debate, that the institution of marriage is not what it used to be. What does this mean? Does it mean that the shining example of a good marriage, of a good father and a good mother, and of a happy family has ceased to be one that we want to realize in our own lives? Not at all. We may in fact be farther than ever from living up to the shining example -- but that is hardly proof that we should abandon it as an ideal to which to aspire. If the crew of a ship is developing scurvy because limes have gone out of fashion, is this a reason to throw the limes overboard or a reason to change the fashion?

The shining example of a happy marriage and its inherent ideality was something that we once could all agree on; but now it is a shining example that has been subjected to the worst fate that can befall one: It has been become a subject of controversy and has thereby lost its most essential protective quality: its ethical obviousness in the eyes of the community. Once the phrase "gay marriage" was in the air, marriage was suddenly what it had never thought to be before: a kind of marriage, a type -- traditional marriage, or that even worse monstrosity, heterosexual marriage.

The high solemnity of marriage has been transgenerationally wired into our visceral system. We must take it seriously and treat it solemnly, and this "must" must appear to us at the level of second nature; it must possess the quality of being ethically obvious. Marriage must not be mocked or ridiculed. But can marriage keep its solemnity now? Who will tell the rising generation that there are standards they must not fail to meet if they wish to live in a way that their grandfathers could respect?

This is how those fond of abstract reasoning can destroy the ethical foundations of a society without anyone's noticing it. They throw up for debate that which no one before ever thought about debating. They take the collective visceral code that has bound parents to grandchildren from time immemorial, in every culture known to man, and make of it a topic for fashionable intellectual chatter.

Ask yourself what is so secure about the ethical baseline of our current level of civilization that it might not be opened up for question, or what deeply cherished way of doing things will suddenly be cast in the role of a "residual personal prejudice."

We are witnessing the triumph of a Newspeak in which those who simply wish to preserve their own way of life, to pass their core values down to their grandchildren more or less intact, no longer even have a language in which they can address their grievances. In this essay I have tried to produce the roughest sketch of what such language might look like and how it could be used to defend those values that represent what Hegel called the substantive class of community -- the class that represents the ethical baseline of the society and whose ethical solidity and unimaginativeness permit the high-spirited experimentation of the reflective class to go forward without the risk of complete societal collapse.

If the reflective class, represented by intellectuals in the media and the academic world, continues to undermine the ideological superstructure of the visceral code operative among the "culturally backward," it may eventually succeed in subverting and even destroying the visceral code that has established the common high ethical baseline of the average American -- and it will have done all of this out of the insane belief that abstract maxims concerning justice and tolerance can take the place of a visceral code that is the outcome of the accumulated cultural revolution of our long human past.

The intelligentsia have no idea of the consequences that would ensue if middle America lost its simple faith in God and its equally simple trust in its fellow men. Their plain virtues and homespun beliefs are the bedrock of decency and integrity in our nation and in the world. These are the people who give their sons and daughters to defend the good and to defeat the evil. If in their eyes this clear and simple distinction is blurred through the dissemination of moral relativism and an aesthetic of ethical frivolity, where else will human decency find such willing and able defenders?

Even the most sophisticated of us have something to learn from the fundamentalism of middle America. For stripped of its quaint and antiquated ideological superstructure, there is a hard and solid kernel of wisdom embodied in the visceral code by which fundamentalists raise their children, and many of us, including many gay men like myself, are thankful to have been raised by parents who were so unshakably committed to the values of decency, and honesty, and integrity, and all those other homespun and corny principles. Reject the theology if you wish, but respect the ethical fundamentalism by which these people live: It is not a weakness of intellect, but a strength of character.

Middle Americans have increasingly tolerated the experiments in living of people like myself not out of stupidity, but out of the trustful magnanimity that is one of the great gifts of the Protestant ethos to our country and to the world. It is time for us all to begin tolerating back. The first step would be a rapid retreat from even the slightest whisper that marriage ever was or ever could be anything other than the shining example that most Americans still hold so sacred within their hearts, as they have every right to do. They have let us imagine the world as we wish; it is time we begin to let them imagine it as they wish.

If gay men and women want to create their own shining examples, they must do this themselves, by their own actions and by their own imagination. They must construct for themselves, out of their own unique perspective on the world, an ethos that can be admired both by future gay men and women and perhaps, eventually, by the rest of society. But there can be no advantage to them if they insist on trying to co-opt the shining example of an ethical tradition that they themselves have abandoned in order to find their own way in the world. It will end only in self-delusion and bitter disappointment

One of the preconditions of a civilization is that there is a fundamental ethical baseline below which it cannot be allowed to fall. Unless there is a deep and massive and unthinking commitment on the part of most people to the well-being not merely of their children, but of their children's children, then the essential transgenerational duty of preserving the ethical baseline of our civilization will become a matter of hit-and-miss. It may be performed, but there is no longer any guarantee that it will be. The guarantee comes from shining examples.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Christianity and Freedom (for Independence Day)

Our 4th of July message comes this year from the Acton Institute and Kevin E. Schmiesing, Ph.D., "Christianity and the History of Freedom" (Acton Commentary, July 2, 2008):

For Americans the Fourth of July marks national independence, but the holiday has become symbolic of a more universal cause: human liberty. The development of human freedom, in theory and in practice, is in large measure the story of Christianity.

How we understand the past influences how we live in the present, which is why debates about history can be so rancorous. Whether Christianity is a vehicle of oppression or a force for liberation is a question whose answer has remained contentious for two millennia.

For many, Christianity is oppressive. For them, the Christian religion is associated with the Crusades, the Inquisition, and Puritanical moralism. It conjures images of witch hunts, the scarlet letter, and "Hitler's pope."

Contemporary Christians cannot ignore these associations. What truth they contain must be acknowledged. But the critics of Christianity cannot have it both ways. If evil done in the name of Christ is to be highlighted, then so must the good. Antislavery crusades, orphanages and hospitals, protection of the weak and innocent—these too have marked the historical record of Christianity.

Christianity's impact on civilization has occupied some of history's greatest minds, who have both reflected and influenced their respective zeitgeists. Augustine defended the followers of Christ against the accusation that they were to blame for the decline of the Roman Empire; fourteen centuries later British historian Edward Gibbon revived the charge, giving voice to his age's skepticism toward revealed religion.

Another and better informed English historian, Lord Acton, addressed the problem in the late nineteenth century. The result, The History of Freedom in Christianity, was a masterpiece of historical summary, distilling almost two thousand years into a single story of the gradual unfolding of human liberty. Acton reversed the Enlightenment narrative that he had inherited. The rise of Christianity did not smother the flame of liberty burning brightly in Greece and Rome only to be rekindled as medieval superstition gave way to the benevolent reason of Voltaire, Hume, and Kant. Instead, Christianity took the embers of freedom, flickering dimly in an ancient world characterized by the domination of the weak by the strong, and—slowly and haltingly—fanned it into a blaze that emancipated humanity from its bonds, internal and external.

Christianity's confrontation with culture was not a matter of the truth about God and man transported whole into civilization via religion. Beginning in sources prior to Christianity—Judaism and classical Greece—and continuing in secular political, economic, and social movements, Christianity interacted with the world and honed its own understanding of human nature and God's will for mankind on this earth.

Christianity's signal achievement, as Acton recognized, was the creation of space for human freedom vis-à-vis the institution that has, in fact, been the gravest threat to liberty throughout history: the state. The story is admittedly complicated by Church officials' sometime collaboration with state oppression. Yet a fair reading of history must credit the ideas as well as the institutions of the Christian faith with the leading role in curtailing the totalitarian tendency—government's inclination to usurp ever greater power over an ever larger swath of human existence.

In our own day, we find the Church again serving in this capacity. It is the foremost voice defending those whose rights are threatened by neglect or direct attack: religious minorities, vulnerable women and children trapped in slavery, the infirm and the unborn. In education, health care, and family life, religious individuals and organizations resist the tyranny of state aggrandizement.

The twenty-first century's version of Enlightenment distortion has manifested itself in the tendentious arguments of the New Atheist movement, whose avatars Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins have declared Christianity to be, among other things, the enemy of human liberty. As is too often the case, these purported champions of freedom are the opposite of what they claim. Harris, for one, says religious beliefs of certain kinds should be capital crimes: "Some propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them" (The End of Faith). Harris's focus is on belief that promotes violence, but his concept of justice is itself dangerous, neglecting the conventional distinction between thought and act (the latter being punishable). It is not altogether clear, moreover, that in Harris's reading of history and theology, orthodox Christianity does not qualify as "dangerous."

New challenges to an accurate understanding of faith and freedom require new rejoinders. The Acton Institute's striking film, The Birth of Freedom, is such a response. Like Lord Acton, it sweeps through history, revealing the contours of humanity's struggle for freedom. "Christian Europe got rid of slavery," says one of the documentary's featured commentators, sociologist Rodney Stark. "That's a story that's seldom told, and it's a shame."

Christ came to set captives free, the scriptures say. The work is not yet complete, but the record of accomplishment is impressive.

Of related interest:

• "LAUS DEO -- the Washington Monument" (PhillyTalk.com, January 21, 2008)
• Andy Rooney, "Did You Know?" (RecoveryTimes)

[Hat tip to E.E. for the Schmiesing article; to G.N. for "Laus Deo," and Carolyn Binder-Scapone for the Rooney article]

Religious civil rights case comes to Hickory, NC

I suppose one historical claim to fame of Hickory, NC, like that of Grand Rapids, MI, is the furniture industry. Only, that's been decimated by the Chinese furniture imports over the last decade. Another claim to fame may be Lenoir-Rhyne College (soon to be "University"), of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Hickory represents the top end of a crescent of German Lutherans that cuts down through Salisbury, NC, to Columbia, SC, where the ELCA has a seminary. These German Lutherans, living as they do near the buckle of the Bible Belt, rub shoulders with fundamentalists and evangelicals of mostly Scottish and English descent -- as well as, today, an increasing number of Irish, German, Mexican, Hmong and Lahu Catholics, as well as various typical contemporary stripe of postmodern New Agers and professed areligious agnostics.

Recently a couple of Bible Fundamentalists were arrested while passing out literature at a town festival (Hickory Daily Record, July 2, 2008). I know how annoying it can sometimes be to encounter anyone passing out pamphlets of any kind. It's about as annoying as the pan-handling bums can sometimes be here in Detroit. Still ... arrested?

The words of Voltaire suddenly come to mind: "I disagree entirely with everything you say, but I will defend unto death your right to say it." Whatever one may think of Fundamentalists -- and we Catholics have had our share of unpleasant encounters with Jack Chick tracts and their bilious bigotry -- and whatever one may think of Voltaire, I think most of the readers of this blog would echo the sentiments of Voltaire against Big Brother on this one.

[Hat tip to Amy Stickler]

The ascendant hatred of traditional morals

I've received a seeming spate of articles and posts lately on the erosion of common civil rights of those whose beliefs in traditional family values is taken for homophobic prejudices animated by sheer hatred. Some time ago we commented on the erosion of these sorts of rights in Canada ("Censuring 'homophobic hate speech,'" Musings, June 13, 2008).

In this same vein, here are a few recent cases:

Yeshiva University was ordered to allow same-sex couples in its married dormitory. A Christian school has been sued for expelling two allegedly lesbian students. Catholic Charities abandoned its adoption service in Massachusetts after it was told to place children with same-sex couples. The same happened with a private company operating in California.

“A psychologist in Mississippi who refused to counsel a lesbian couple lost her case, and legal experts believe that a doctor who refused to provide IVF services to a lesbian woman is about to lose his pending case before the California Supreme Court.” (Barbara B. Hagerty, "Gay Rights, Religious Liberties: A Three-Act Story", NPR, June 16, 2008)

Two articles of recent note include the following: (1) Patrick McIlheran, "Your beliefs are going to be called 'hatred'" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 18, 2008), and (2) Terry Mattingly, "Is sex outside of marriage a sin?" (Scripps Howard News Service, June 25, 2008).

A few excerpts. From the first article:

NPR tells the story of the wedding photographers in New Mexico, a couple, who just happen to think that marriage is what everyone has always thought it was until pretty much yesterday.

So when a woman was planning to “marry” her girlfriend, she emailed Elane Photography in Albuquerque to inquire about a shoot. The photographers replied simply that the company doesn’t shoot same-sex weddings but thanks for asking. They later explained they just don't want to use their abilities in the service of something they saw as wrong.

They got sued.

And they lost: The New Mexico Human Rights Commission told them to pay the plaintiff’s $6,600 lawyer bill....

From the second article above:

It's becoming more and more dangerous for preachers to use the words "sex" and "sin" in the same sentence.

Consider this question: Is sex outside of marriage a sin?

Say "yes" and millions of believers who are sitting in pews will say "amen." But that same affirmation of centuries of doctrine will offend just as many believers and nonbelievers, giving them an easy excuse to avoid congregations they believe are old-fashioned and intolerant.

"We have to recognize that our historic positions on sexual issues are becoming incredibly distasteful to more people in this culture and especially to our media and popular culture," said Ed Stetzer, director of the Southern Baptist Convention's LifeWay Research team.

... The numbers were radically different in different pews, with only 39 percent of Roman Catholics believing that homosexual acts are sinful, as opposed to 61 percent of Protestants and 79 percent of those who identified as evangelical, "born again" or fundamentalist Christians.

... The issue of homosexuality does not, of course, stand alone, said Stetzer. It's getting harder for religious leaders to maintain consistent teachings about other acts and conditions that traditional forms of religion have, for centuries, considered a sin. This affects preaching on premarital sex, divorce, cohabitation and adultery.

"Ultimately, the modern church has failed to proclaim and explain a biblical ethic of sexuality," he said. "We also need to admit that the church has failed to live out the ethic that it's claiming to be advocating. If we are going to say that we stand for the sanctity of marriage, then we -- in our churches and in our homes -- are going to have to live out the sanctity of marriage."

[Hat tip to C.G.-Z., E.E.]

Censuring "homophobic hate speech"

A friend recently wrote to me, saying:

In his book, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), Pope Benedict XVI wrote, "Very soon, it will no longer be possible to affirm that homosexuality (as the Catholic Church teaches) constitutes an objective disorder in the structure of human existence" (p. 35). Interesting article on precisely that issue below.

Indeed. The article is by David Warren, entitled "Deafening Silence" (Ottawa Citizen, June 12, 2008). Warren begins by professing that the pen is ultimately mightier than the sword, that "political power passes away, that truths about God and man resurface, that human freedom is never fully extinguished." He continues:

This is a point worth recalling, as we head into a period in Canada when, owing to malice from an ideological camp, to cowardice on the part of our elected representatives, and to indifference on the part of the people, free speech and freedom of the press will disappear in Canada. Those who deviate from the officially-sanctioned lies of "political correctness" will emigrate, perhaps mostly to USA, or experience that peculiar form of internal exile -- of enforced silence -- that good men have shared in many times and places.

... As free speech disappears in Canada, one looks for instance not at the more celebrated cases of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant, but at the much less publicized fate of e.g. Rev. Stephen Boisson, convicted by an Alberta kangaroo court ("human rights tribunal") last November for publicly expressing the Christian and Biblical view of homosexuality, on the say-so of an anti-Christian activist from his home town.

Rev. Boisson has now been ordered to desist from communicating his views on this subject "in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet" so long as he should live. He has been ordered to pay compensation to Darren Lund, the anti-Christian activist in question, and further to make a public recantation of beliefs he still holds.

... Among the spookiest aspects of these cases is the silence over, and indifference to them, on the part of journalists whose predecessors imagined themselves vigilant in the cause of freedom. As I've learned first-hand through email, many Canadian journalists today take the view that, "I don't like these people, therefore I don't care what happens to them." It is a view that, at best, is extremely short-sighted.

I've long asserted that one of the most formidable practical challenge the Church faces in our time is not women's ordination, a shortage of priests, or church closings. Rather, it is the lack of stalwart response to this problem, which almost nobody seems to want to confront.[Hat tip to Prof. E.E.]

The interrogation & defense of Ezra Levant

Ezra Levant is the editor of the magazine that published eight of the Danish cartoons to illustrate a story (you can read it here after a quick and free registration) about the cartoon riots and the Western media's fear of printing them.

In "What Was Your Intent" he writes about his encounter with the banality of evil in the form of a "limp clerk," a regulation-citing bureaucrat for what Mark Shea (in "Ezra Levant: Hero") calls the "Kafkaesque tyrrany of Soviet Canuckistan."



Shea posts the following quotation from C.S. Lewis:

The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint ... but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.

[Hat tip to M.S.]