Herman Cain on Homosexuality

Kathleen at Hillbuzz notes that the media is obsessing over Herman Cain's supremely unshocking (indeed perfectly predictable given the fact that he is a known Social Conservative and Christian) position on homosexuality:

"I believe homosexuality is a sin because I’m a Bible-believing Christian, I believe it’s a sin,” he said. "But I know that some people make that choice. That’s their choice."

Cain was asked: "So you believe it’s a choice?"

"I believe it is a choice," he responded.

Watch the full interview here.

Now, as a Calvinist, I am not too committed to the choice language here -- I am willing, for the sake of argument to suppose that some homosexual temptations are inborn and, like congential blindness, may be a greater burden to some folks than to others. But his basic point remains a standard element of biblical thought (though it gets a lot less air time in the Bible than in modern evangelical politics).

Kathleen has a long and well-thought analysis of the politics of division that CBS is trying to practice here. I don't want to focus on that, but here is a brief taste to give an idea of where she is heading:

Herman Cain’s religious beliefs are shared by millions of Americans on the “religious Right.” (They aren’t shared by me, as it happens, but more on that in a moment.) I believe this news story was designed to drive a wedge between this segment of the Anti-Obama Coalition and libertarian-leaning GOP voters like myself.

[...]

If Herman Cain’s religious beliefs bother you, I’d like you to take a deep breath, and give the issue more thought than the LSM wants you to. I expect my take on this will be extremely controversial. But I’m going to go out on a limb and treat Hillbuzz readers like thoughtful, intelligent adults, unlike the LSM. (I realize this is a risky thing to attempt on the Internet. But I think the Buzzverse can handle it.)

[...]

So my question is, given the fact that the US is careening toward the edge of an economic cliff that could destroy the country as we know it, why I should care what Herman Cain (and millions of Christians) think about homosexuality?

This is all quite correct, but there is one point I would like to add to the discussion. From my comment on that site:

While I agree that Mr. Cain's statement that "homosexuality is a sin" is true, he isn't speaking the whole truth. The danger of stopping where he did is that it gives the impression "you are a sinner and I am not." As Christians we must also confess "I, too, am a sinner". This does two things: it shows that the speaker loves truth more than being popular and it disarms the charge of hypocrisy, which is about the only thing (other than smoking) which is still considered a sin in our culture. Now, I am sure, if asked, Mr. Cain would not hesitate to admit that he is a sinner. But I would like to hear him say so everytime this topic comes up. And that goes for all my other fellow Christians and social conservatives.

(In fact, Cain may well have made a similar point in this interview, since that is exactly the sort of thing that the LSM would be likely to edit out, for the reasons that Kathleen mentions in her post.)

A Chivalrous Enconium for George Bush

From HillBuzz a blog of gay Hillary supporters:

Thank you former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush

If you have been reading us for any length of time, you know that we used to make fun of “Dubya” nearly every day…parroting the same comedic bits we heard in our Democrat circles, where Bush is still, to this day, lampooned as a chimp, a bumbling idiot, and a poor, clumsy public speaker.

[...]

Well, we told you before how much the current president, Dr. Utopia, made us realize just how wrong we were about Bush. We shudder to think what Dr. Utopia would have done post-9/11. He would have not gone there with a bullhorn and struck that right tone. More likely than not, he would have been his usual fey, apologetic self and waxed professorially about how evil America is and how justified Muslims are for attacking us, with a sidebar on how good the attacks were because they would humble us.

Honestly, we don’t think President Gore would have been much better that day. The world needed George W. Bush, his bullhorn, and his indominable spirit that day…and we will forever be grateful to this man for that.

As we will always be grateful for what George and Laura Bush did this week, with no media attention, when they very quietly went to Ft. Hood and met personally with the families of the victims of this terrorist attack.

FOR HOURS.

The Bushes went and met privately with these families for HOURS, hugging them, holding them, comforting them.

If there are any of you out there with any connection at all to the Bushes, we implore you to give them our thanks…you tell them that a bunch of gay Hillary guys in Boystown, Chicago were wrong about the Bushes…and are deeply, deeply sorry for any jokes we told about them in the past, any bad thoughts we had about these good, good people.

You may be as surprised by this as we are ourselves, but from this day forward George W. and Laura Bush are now on the same list for us as the Clintons, Geraldine Ferraro, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and the other political figures we keep in our hearts and never allow anyone to badmouth.

Criticize their policies academically and intelligently and discuss the Bush presidency in historical and political terms…but you mess with the Bushes personally and, from this day forward, you’ll answer to us.

Read the whole thing, then, when you are done, read this earlier post, written on teh ocasion of Obama's inauguration, which they referenced above (warning: it's long). There are a lot of qoutable bits in that piece, but this is probably the best summary:

After we watched the 747 formerly known as Air Force One wing into the air and bank right towards Midland, Texas this afternoon, we were struck by just how bizarre it is that a bunch of Democrats who positively hated this man eight years ago were proudly a little teared up to see him off to retirement. That’s a fairly good measure of a man right there, if he can, without knowing or trying, change strong opinions of him in the most unlikely of places.

These expressions of praise are truly mature and civilized -- not to mention well-written and gramatically correct. Even in the passages where they criticize Bush's policies and lost opportunities (which criticisims are spot-on, by the way) they present a balanced and reasonable analysis that puts most media writing to shame.

I have seen HillBuzz quoted here and there by the conservative sites I frequent, but I never really paid much attention to them. On the whole, I cannot endorse their preference for Clinton over Obama because I see both as distortions of the Democratic party and wish they would go away. (In my dreams, John McCain/Rudy Giulliani would be on the D Ticket and Fred Thompson/Tom McClintock would be on the R, but I digress....) In trying to educate myself a little about their site I found out that they supported Clinton in the primaries then switched to ... McCain/Palin for the general. It takes some guts to walk away from the Gay Left (as Andrew Sullivan has noted on multiple occasions) and their account of the process is thoughtful and well worth reading. Obviously, I don't agree with many of their political stances, (though their article on Gay Marriage emphasizes some points that I have also tried to make), but I find this attitude of civility and even-handedness refreshing. To close, here is a quote from the comments on the January article, along with a response by HillBuzz:

Tammy Says:
You see, hillbuzz guys?
A lot of conservatives feel the same way that you do, and they’re not full of hate.
Can’t say the same thing about the Left after hearing that President Bush was Boo’d when he was introduced.
Can you possibly teach your side manners?
I will show you the utmost respect if you do.
I’ll show you respect even if you don’t, but could you pass the word on?
Hmmmm?

hillbuzz Says:
Tammy,

We try every day. It’s a promise we made when the Left treated Hillary Clinton so badly during the primaries, then did the same to Sarah Palin.

You can criticize a politician’s policies, achievements, and other choices — but name calling won’t be tolerated. Irrational hate won’t be tolerated. And no party deserves blind loyalty.

And if you want to attack a woman and call her sexist names and think you are going to get away with it — you’ve got another thing coming. That’s our mission from here on out.

Amen.

(Via: Alphecca)

Paglia Mail Bag

Camille Paglia answers her mail. It is almost an affront to quote her since duplication belies the very originality of her prose, but I can't resist highlighting.

On Sarah Palin:

As I have repeatedly said in this column, I have never had the slightest problem in understanding Sarah Palin's meaning at any time. On the contrary, I have positively enjoyed her fresh, natural, rapid delivery with its syncopated stops and slides -- a fabulous example of which was the way (in her recent interview with John Ziegler) that she used a soft, swooping satiric undertone to zing Katie Couric's dippy narcissism and to assert her own outrage as a "mama grizzly" at libels against her family.

On the Fairness Doctrine:

If there's anything that demonstrates the straying of the Democratic Party leadership from basic liberal principles, it's this blasted Fairness Doctrine -- which should be fiercely opposed by all defenders of free speech. Except when national security is at risk, government should never be involved in the surveillance of speech or in measuring the ideological content of books, movies or radio and TV programs.

Speaking of fairness, here is her response to an emailer that likens the Global Warming demagoguery to Bush's evidence of WMD in Iraq. Ouch!

In both cases, there are "experts" who tell us that evidence justifying action is undeniable. They say, "The risk of doing nothing is too great for us to do nothing." And as a fallback position they say, "Even if we're wrong, we'll still be doing some good in the world." Kind of makes me think man-made CO2 emissions will turn out to be the biggest case of nonexistent WMD since Saddam Hussein's nukes. Jim Carroll
Wonderful letter! I became a vocal opponent of the onrushing Iraq incursion when I was shocked by the flimsiness of evidence presented by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations in 2003. Similarly, I have been highly skeptical about the claims for global warming because of their overreliance on speculative computer modeling and because of the woeful patchiness of records for world temperatures before the 20th century.
In the 1980s, I was similarly skeptical about media-trumpeted predictions about a world epidemic of heterosexual AIDS. And I remain skeptical about the media's carelessly undifferentiated use of the term "AIDS" for what is often a complex of wasting diseases in Africa. We should all be concerned about environmental despoliation and pollution, but the global warming crusade has become a hallucinatory cult. Until I see stronger evidence, I will continue to believe that climate change is primarily driven by solar phenomena and that it is normal for the earth to pass through major cooling and warming phases.

Don't miss her insightful comments about gay genes, post-structuralism, and the tongue-lashing she gets for her praise of Titanic. God! I love this woman. Amid the huge quantities of regurgitated bird-seed we are forced to swallow in what passes for our literary culture, Camille never fails to deliver pulsating, live worms. Delicious!

When is a Lesbian not a lesbian?

When she's from the Greek island, of course:

A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world's gay women.

Three islanders from Lesbos — home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women — have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.

One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

"My sister can't say she is a Lesbian," said Dimitris Lambrou. "Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos," he said.

They later try to claim that this isn't disparaging to gay women, but that is hard to reconcile with the notion that non-lesbian Lesbians are "insulted", isn't it? More interesting to me, is this throw-away line describing one of the plaintiffs:

Lambrou said the word lesbian has only been linked with gay women in the past few decades. "But we have been Lesbians for thousands of years," said Lambrou, who publishes a small magazine on ancient Greek religion and technology that frequently criticizes the Christian Church.

Actually, the term "lesbian" dates back at least 200 years, but that isn't what interests me. Note that last little blurb about Lambrou's magazine? This attack isn't coming from a fundamentalist-type, but from a full-fledged multi-culturalist. But the funny thing is that much of the support for gay rights comes from a rejection of the Judeo-Christian worldview. She who lives by the pagan revival, dies by the pagan revival.

Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. Dt 28:64

Petition for Poland

I saw this at Touchstone Magazine's Mere Comments blog. The petition is set to be delivered Thursday, May 10, so it is somewhat time-sensitive:

The power of the radical homosexual movement in Europe has just been shown. The European Parliament just voted to condemn Poland on what they term “homophobia.” What was Poland’s crime? The Polish Prime Minister said that Polish school children should not be subject to “homosexual propaganda.”

Polish authorities have also resisted demands from radical homosexuals that they be allowed to march in the streets. If you live in any major city you know these marches where leather boys and pedophiles march freely and disruptively through the streets.

The response of the European Parliament was to pass a resolution calling these sensible actions “hate speech” and asks competent legal authorities to take action against these officials and the government of Poland.

The petition can be found here:
http://www.c-fam.org/index.php?option=com_performs&formid=5%20&Itemid=141

Are Gay People Sinners?

Pastorius has a typically thoughtful post on recent comments by someone named Tim Hardaway. Not being a sports geek, I really don't know who that is but his comments are pretty ugly:

I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States.

Read Pastorius' post for further details (including discussion of a rather interesting possible change of heart on the issue by Louis Farrakhan).

Pastorius and I have been friends for many years, and one of the things I like about him is that we can argue, often heatedly, and never get pissed off at each other. (Well, some times we do get pissed off, because we have that testosterone thing going. But we never hate each other, which is what I'm trying to say.) Here is my reaction to something Pastorius says about a quarter of the way down:
They are gay. And, they go to church. My church is not pro-gay. But, these men go anyway, because they believe that Christ was the Messiah, and that he died for their sins, and they are thankful for that fact.

And, so they go to church and contribute to our worship services, and their contributions are beautiful and appreciated.

Just as a thought experiment, substitute the word "sinners" for "gay" and see what you get:
They are sinners. And, they go to church. My church is not pro-sinners. But, these men go anyway, because they believe that Christ was the Messiah, and that he died for their sins, and they are thankful for that fact.

And, so they go to church and contribute to our worship services, and their contributions are beautiful and appreciated.
Still agree with that? Me too. And it applies to you and me both (except that my contributions are probably a lot less beautiful than yours, but whatever...)

But here is where I have a problem: when people say "my temptations are not really sins, or at least are not as sinful as yours." This is pharisaism, pure and simple, and Jesus had a much bigger beef with such people than he did with garden variety sinners who confessed their faults.

From Hardaway's quote, he seems to fall into that camp and a lot of people on the anti-gay-marriage band wagon do also. More's the pity. But my point is that gay Christians often do as well, and seem especially sensitive to have the term sinner applied to that particular part of their lives. Maybe the folks in your church don't think that way, which would be a great blessing, but there are enough out there who do that being clear on the issue is important.

I think gay people deserve to go to hell because I think I deserve to go to hell, as do all human beings, and I can't quite believe that gay people are not human. Christ's atonement is big enough for all of us, but the price of admission is confessing the sin.

NOTE: I left this comment on CUANAS but I have changed the last paragraph here for emphasis.

Defining Persecution

I received the following email from Vision America:

In less than 3 weeks (on March 27-28) Vision America's The War On Christians Conference will convene at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C.

[...]

Let me tell you about just one of our panels - Christian Persecution: Reports From The Front Lines.

This is a topic that is usually near to my heart, but continuing on, I found what they were really talking about:

The panelists all have experienced anti-Christian discrimination firsthand. They are:

Lloyd Marcus, an African-American artist, who initially had his paintings censored from a public showing for Black History Month, because they contained church scenes.

Pastor Tom Crouse, from Massachusetts, who was charged over $6,200 for police protection for a public meeting on coming out of the homosexual lifestyle, in an attempt to stifle his First Amendment rights.

Michael Marcavage was one of the Philadelphia Four - Christian activists who were arrested and prosecuted for quietly witnessing at a gay festival. If convicted, each could have been sentenced to up to 47 years in prison.

Lt. Gordon Klingenschmitt is a Navy Chaplain who was almost discharged from the service for publicly praying in Jesus name.

OK, I don't deny that these are important issues, and the folks involved are right to make the issue public. But is this persecution? Compare these problems with the sort of thing going on in other parts of the world.

INDIA:

After preaching God’s Word at a New Years service at Beradakia Church in his native town of Baliguda, Kandhamala district in India, 35-year-old Pastor Jimendra Nayak (Mantu) never made it home to the village of Barakhema. At 8:00 p.m. on January 1, 2006, Nayak took an auto rickshaw after service to return to his home in Puri district, where he has lived for two years and served as pastor of Indian Church Assembly. He didn’t leave the vehicle alive.

[...]

It is reported that when Nayak’s widow, Sashrekh Pradhan, and relatives initially attempted to file a complaint looking into the suspected murder, but the police officer to which it was submitted rejected it. The person assisting the widow as she prepared a petition for an investigation into the death of her husband was harshly rebuked by the presiding officer. No inquiry about the cause of Nayak’s death was made before the complaint, and no action was taken once it was filed. For six weeks following the pastor’s death, relatives have unsuccessfully tried numerous times to attain a postmortem report.

[...]

Furthermore, Pastor Nayak’s widow and relatives divulged that radical Hindus targeted him for some time, approaching him on numerous occasions because of his witness to Hindus. He was threatened and restrained from carrying out his missionary work in the community.

North Korea:

It is believed that tens of thousands of Christians are currently suffering in North Korean prison camps where they face cruel abuses, according to the 2006 World Watch List report. Some think the hermit regime has detained more political and religious prisoners than any other country in the world. On occasion, North Koreans become Christians after crossing the border with China and entering into contact with local Christians. But many are exposed as believers when they return to North Korea and are targeted to be caught. Many face torture and death. Though no exact figures can be given, Open Doors’ staff estimates that hundreds of Christians were killed by the regime in 2005.

This is not to mention Saudi Arabia (number 2 on the above mentioned World Watch List), Yemen, Indonesia, Burma and many other countries where there are actual death penalties for converting to Christianity.

Democrats are pro-Union...

... but are Unions pro-Democrat? Mickey Kaus discusses the question in response to Criticism from Yglesias. Here are a few of Kaus' better points:

[...]It's no accident that unions have shrunk. The clumsy, legalistic mechanism of the Wagner Act--where seniority rules and firing incompetents requires elaborate negotiation--turns out to be a good way to fail to keep up in modern, technology-driven capitalism.

[...]they make the private sector more efficient than government at virtually anything both of them do. The result is a pervasive public cynicism about government efficacy that has done more to undermine the case for government action than union lobbying can ever do to support it.

[...]

"Historically," as Yglesias notes, unions have selflessly helped Democrats solve a number of national problems (Social Security, medical care for the elderly, civil rights, worker safety, unemployment insurance). Unfortunately, what's left are the national problems where this New Deal pairing didn't work because unions actively stand in the way of solutions. Two of these problems, in particular, are among our biggest: a) Unionized teachers stand in the way of the educational changes that might ameliorate our twin education crises (inner city disaster and suburban mediocrity). And b) unions stand in the way of the best solution to the welfare problem (and hence the NewOrleans-style underclass problem, and hence the persistent-poverty problem), namely public jobs programs. Unions have always disliked public jobs programs because public jobs workers threaten to perform work that municipal unions and construction unions now perform for far more money (thanks, in part, to the Davis-Bacon Act). In my ideal of liberal activism, we make sure everyone who wants a job has a job. Then we worry about making those jobs pay $40 an hour rather than $8 an hour.

Kaus' suggestions are geared toward strenghtening the Democratic party, which I am not particularly interested in doing. However, depriving the Unions of their political influence would seem to be a good thing for the country in general.

I would particularly like to see the teachers' unions disabled. Kaus does not suggest this, but I have argued before that it would make sense to outlaw all government unions. This would be fair since, unlike private sector employment where regulation actually interferes with commerce and the right to private ownership, government employees work at the behest of the public and the public should be able to control their compensation. No one, in other words, has a right to a job at taxpayer expense. And if it is ruled unconstitutional, why not push for an ammendment? Doesn't reducing the influence of liberalism in public schools make more sense for a social conservative than pushing for a ban on gay marriage? Wouldn't the improved efficiency be more appealing to a fiscal conservative?

This strategy is far too bold for the current Republican leadership, who seem determined to squander their control of two branches of government, but I keep mentioning it in the hope that the proposal will be picked up by someone with the vision to see its advantages.

(Cross-posted at Love America First)


UPDATE: I just noticed Rosemary's post from Tuesday about California Propostion 75 and the CTA's diverting of funds to advertise against it. The measure seeks to give union members the opportunity to keep their dues from being used in political campaigns they don't approve of. This is a much less visionary proposition than mine, but it seems like a step in the right direction.

Blaming Heterosexuals

Russell Moore of Touchstone's Mere Comments blog links to an op-ed by Stephanie Coontz who points out that at least part of the blame for the current movement to redefine marriage to include gays belongs to ... religious conservatives:

Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, argues that homosexuals didn't start the revolution. Heterosexuals did, a long time ago. Writes Coontz:

Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution. Heterosexuals were the ones who made procreation voluntary, so that some couples could choose childlessness, and who adopted assisted reproduction so that even couples who could not conceive could become parents. And heterosexuals subverted the long-standing rule that every marriage had to have a husband who played one role in the family and a wife who played a completely different one. Gays and lesbians simply looked and the revolution heterosexuals had wrought and noticed that with its new norms, marriage could work for them, too.

[...] Coontz is precisely right that the redefinition of marriage didn't begin with social revolutionaries in Massachusetts and San Francisco. This is why it will never work for Christian churches to stand against same-sex "marriage," while remaining silent about working mothers, daycare, the contraceptive culture, and egalitarian marriage roles.

[...]

Coontz diagnosis is on target, while her antidote, surrender to a malleable definition of marriage, is deadly. The answer is for counter-cultural churches and families to model something alien to both Ozzie and Harriet and Will and Grace: marriage that points to the mystery of Christ and his church.

Forgive me for feeling somewhat vindicated by this acknowledgement of a point I have made previously (see here and here) from such a bastion of orthodoxy and conservatism as Touchstone. It has been rather lonely trying to point out that the "defense of marriage" theme is a two-edged sword that really points out the shame of our own sorry performance. In fact, in one off-line debate I remember an oponent specifically citing Touchstone as an authority that I ought to respect in considering a change in my position. I am glad to see Touchstone and I are now making the same point.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I must admit that the debate was about the Federal Marriage Ammendment and as far as I know Touchstone has not rescinded its support of that proposal (moribund though it may be). Also, I would not like to be understood as supporting either gay marriage or civil unions. But if we are to defeat either of those ideas, we must have a more robust rallying cry than "defending traditional marriage" when we really have no intention of doing anything of the sort.

Have the Neocons Saved Us from Ourselves?

Andrew Sullivan is relieved that Bush will not use the White House to push for a Marriage amendment:

The Post: Do you plan to expend any political capital to aggressively lobby senators for a gay marriage amendment?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, I think that the situation in the last session -- well, first of all, I do believe it's necessary; many in the Senate didn't, because they believe DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] will -- is in place, but -- they know DOMA is in place, and they're waiting to see whether or not DOMA will withstand a constitutional challenge.

The Post: Do you plan on trying to -- using the White House, using the bully pulpit, and trying to --

THE PRESIDENT: The point is, is that senators have made it clear that so long as DOMA is deemed constitutional, nothing will happen. I'd take their admonition seriously.
[...]
I'm extremely relieved. The FMA has gone unmentioned by Bush since the election - and it appears more and more like a pre-election ploy rather than a principled stand. (Of course, that's a relief but it's also an indication of how bald-faced a political maneuver this was in the first place). But this piece of sanity from the President deserves praise and reciprocation from those of us who support equality in marriage. [...]

I never really thought that Bush was all that keen on supporting the amendment. I don't think the FMA was a political maneuver as such -- it was more an ill-considered response to judicial activism in Massachusetts -- but I do think the president's support for it sprang more from an attempt to placate the social conservatives than from any deep conviction. In the quote above he is still trying to cover that base ("well, first of all, I do believe it's necessary") but he is clearly positioning himself for a passive role on this issue.

I don't particularly like that sort of political calculation, which looks weak and unprincipled from any point of view. The proper thing for Bush to have done last February was explain to Mr. Dobson and anyone else who tried to pressure him for an endorsement that the office of the president does not have a direct role in constitutional amendments and that the argument would have to be made on its own merits, not as a test of party loyalty. But if we have to put up with triangulation, I am at least glad that it seems to have produced a viable result. I haven't quite given up on hoping for heroes and geniuses in politics, but I can live with muddling through.

An interesting question is whether the left will allow Bush to let the matter be. Matthew Yglesias is already sneering at "Bush's sudden betrayal of the gay-bashing movement":

This is what social conservatives deserve to get sneered at for. They're the great suckers of American politics, whipped into a frenzy every two or four years and ordered to vote Republican in order to hold back the tide of libertinism, and then the Republicans don't lift a finger to do so. For one thing, their financers don't support the social conservative agenda. For another thing, if social conservatives ever had anything done for them, they might not be so mad all the time. But last and by no means least, social conservatives get screwed every time because their willingness to get screwed and then come crawling back begging for more next time there's an election on is well-established.

I am chagrined to admit that Yglesias has a point, but fortunately -- and typically -- he misses the true significance of the data he is processing. It is true that social conservatives are often subject to manipulation, but not by their Republican masters. It is our reactive stance toward the left that gets us into trouble. A case in point would be fellow Reformed blogger Upward Paradigm, who takes Yglesias at face value:

While I would not go so far as to say that social conservatives are the “great suckers” of American politics, I have believed that Christians in general, were used by the administration and the campaign in order to gather the votes needed to win a tight election. The folks that Bush surrounds himself with are not exactly social conservatives; ala Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

I think the fact that Bush's early 2nd term agenda seems to be devoid of any concern for the issues that social conservatives voted on is a testament to the point made by Yglesias. Politics is no savior -- and as Christians, we need to learn to engage the world at all levels with better ideas, abundant hope, and stronger conviction. Christians need to be able to see through the obfuscating murk put forth as reality. To date, we seem unable to do so, blinded by what sadly seems as a more tangible and immediate victory than that promised by Scripture: legislation which governs and enforces "Christian" morals. Perhaps in thinking that we have heeded Christ's call to be "salt and light" we have actually become of the world and not just in the world.

In fairness, I think that the theological point is a valid one and consistent with Upward Paradigm's general philosophy. I particularly like his (her?) point about "better ideas, abundant hope, and stronger conviction". But in conceding that we have been betrayed by Bush (or at least "used" by him) I think the author is falling into the trap of allowing the left to set the terms of the debate. No, politics is not salvific, but we Christians have a responsibility to use our gifts to benefit our fellow men and this applies to political spheres as well as any other.

But the excellence of politics consists in establishing justice and peace by exercising wisdom. This is not achieved by merely reacting to issues and applying the first solution that presents itself, but by a careful, thoughtful and prayerful attempt to get at the root of the problem. I promised in August that I would present some alternatives to the FMA that would better promote the cause of conservatism. I dropped the issue because the FMA didn't seem to be playing as big a role in the campaign as I had feared it would, but I think it is time to dust off that argument. Now that the FMA looks, God willing, to be permanently moribund, we should start considering things we should do to improve the moral and political health of our nation.

Pink Storm Rising

Reading Andrew Sullivan's review, Log Cabin Republican of C. A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln one is almost convinced that the case has been definitively made that Lincoln was gay. The crux of Sullivan's defense is the following two paragraphs:

That Tripp has an "ax to grind" is to my mind unfair. Yes, he sought to understand the homosexual experience better. But he was a Kinseyite social scientist, not a New Left propagandist. His database of Lincoln material is regarded as superb and invaluable to Lincoln scholars everywhere. He had a PhD in clinical psychology; and a mastery of the facts of Darwin's life as well. Yes, he [Tripp] was gay. But being gay can also be an advantage in this respect. The contours of a closeted gay life - the subtle effects of concealed homosexuality on behavior, public and private - are most easily recognized by other gay men, for the simple reason that many have experienced the same things. And the very nature of a closeted life is that it is hard to discern from the surface. I don't doubt that my own view that Lincoln was obviously homosexual is affected by my personal recognition of some aspects of the story, especially in his early years. The danger, of course, is over-identification and projection. But the danger of under-identification is also there - and it may well have impeded real research into what made Lincoln tick. Certainly if you're looking for clear evidence of sexual relationships between men in Lincoln's time in the official historical record, you'll come to the conclusion that no one was gay in the nineteenth century. But of course, many were.

But was Lincoln? Here's what I'd say are the most persuasive facts. Lincoln never developed deep emotional relations with any women, including his wife. Even the few snippets we have of early romances, or his deeply strained courtship of Mary Todd, suggest a painful attempt to live up to social norms, not a regular heterosexual life. His marriage was a disaster, by all accounts. Why? Well, ask Brookhiser in the NYT, who tries to exonerate Todd from charges of being cruel and psychopathic as well as corrupt: "Explosive, imperious, profligate, she may well have been mad. But in fairness to her, Lincoln was maddening -- remote and unavailable, when he was not physically absent." Hmmm. Remote, emotionally unavailable, running away to hang with men whenever he could. Ring a bell? Not in Brookhiser's mind.

I am always very leary of arguments that turn on insight rather than evidence, but I am willing to concede that I am not really in a position to judge, not having read the original book and not being particularly interested in the subject in general. It does strike me that, given the circumstantial nature of the case, which both Sullivan and Tripp concede, it is unfair to conclude, as Sullivan does that the primary motivation for dismissing it is prejudice:

But today's right-wingers are right about one thing. The truth about Lincoln - his unusual sexuality, his comfort with male-male love and sex - is not a truth today's Republican leaders want to hear. They are well-advised to attack and suppress it. They are more closely related to the forces Lincoln defeated than those he championed; and his candor, honesty and brave forging of a homosocial and homoerotic life in plain sight would appall them. The real Lincoln is their greatest rebuke; which is why they will do all they can to obscure the complicated, fascinating truth about the man whose legacy they are intent on betraying.

However, this is the sort of diatribe one has come to expect from Sullivan on this issue and I really have begun to despair that anyone in the public light is still capable of judging a case on the merits rather than looking for ideological use. Spin is in, truth is out, even among conservatives whom I otherwise respect.

But this piece by David Greenberg suggests that I may have been too quick to concede the factual side of this case:

The most surprising thing about The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, the new book that claims the Great Emancipator was bisexual, is how charitable the reviews have been. Even skeptical reviewers have allowed that the author—the late psychologist C.A. Tripp—may have a point and have retreated to the safer position that Lincoln's sexual orientation doesn't really matter anyway—that Tripp's project is a trivial one.
[...]
Alas, both notions—that Lincoln's sexual orientation is unimportant; and that Tripp's book raises powerful circumstantial evidence to support his claims—are wrong. On the one hand, if it could indeed be shown that Lincoln was "predominantly homosexual," as Tripp puts it (after all, Lincoln was married and had four children), this would be significant. No, it wouldn't directly alter our understanding of his political opinions or actions as president. But it would give us a fuller sense of the private man and thus in indirect ways might revise our understanding of his psychology. Tripp, however, doesn't even begin to make a persuasive case in this tendentious, sloppy, and wholly unpersuasive farrago. In more than 300 pages, he gives us no convincing reason to believe his central claim.
[...]
To bolster the case for his preferred interpretation, Tripp willfully reads fact after fact to support his conclusions and to ignore or explain away other possibilities. So, for instance, Tripp insists that the anxiety that Lincoln and Speed expressed to each other about their wedding nights proves they had a sexual relationship, when such worries were hardly unusual in the days before widespread premarital intercourse. Likewise, Tripp finds what he calls a "smoking gun" in the way Lincoln signed one letter to Speed: "Yours Forever." But in an honest afterword to the book, historian Michael Burlingame reminds readers that David Donald found cases of Lincoln using the same closing in letters to at least a half-dozen other friends. One could go on. Tripp produces not circumstantial evidence but facts that resemble evidence only if one starts with a closed mind.

I am, for the record, equally troubled by the assertition that "one could go on". My usual response to this is, "Well, why don't you?" Such assertions usually indicate that the author wants to suggest a large body of supporting evidence, but lacks the confidence to actually produce it for scrutiny. I obviously don't know the details of Slate's editorial policy nor of Greenberg's obligations as a columnist, but it seems that a bit more detail would have been much more persuasive.

Nevertheless, this is the sort of argument I like to see. Facts are extremely important in historical assessments, especially when the subject matter is expected to be controversial. If Tripp lacks the facts to support his thesis conclusively, he should not have foisted this issue onto the public forum. Greenberg makes telling contrasts with other controversial issues such as the bisexuality of Eleanor Roosevelt and the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. In both arguments the case is based on concrete evidence, not interpretations based on priveleged insight. Again, I haven't read Tripp's book and don't really feel inclined to, but it sure would be nice if the scolarly world would return to a more rigorous standard of evidence. I don't care if Lincoln was gay or not. But integrity is vastly important.

Big Media Unfair to Churches

This story seems like it should be getting more attention by the religious right than it apparently has:

The CBS and NBC television networks are refusing to run a 30-second television ad from the United Church of Christ because its all-inclusive welcome has been deemed "too controversial."

The ad, part of the denomination's new, broad identity campaign set to begin airing nationwide on Dec. 1, states that -- like Jesus -- the United Church of Christ seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation.

According to a written explanation from CBS, the United Church of Christ is being denied network access because its ad implies acceptance of gay and lesbian couples -- among other minority constituencies -- and is, therefore, too "controversial."

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

Josh Marshall has been following the story (here, here, here and here for instance) and Andrew Sullivan has mentioned it but I haven't been able to find this story on any of the conservative blogs that I read regularly.

It seems to me that if we are going to criticize the media for being unfair to Christians, that should include liberal Christians as well. I don't agree with the United Church of Christ on the issue of homosexuality, and the equation of moral disapproval with racial bigotry is dishonest, but they ought to be able to advertise on public airwaves just like the condom companies and Frederick's of Hollywood. People who don't want to watch the ads can change the channel. (Or, better yet, sell the fricking TV!) And the ad itself does not seem particularly offensive. Surely this is another example of the media's arrogance and blindness, which we have not been shy at pointing out when it affects us personally. Of course, this isn't a First Amendment issue: Viacom has every right, as a private company, to refuse to run anything it wants. But so do we, as consumers, have a right to protest such decisions.

And, if the argument from principle is not sufficient, consider this: it may well be in our best interest to protest. Is it possible that the ad was refused in order to make the religious right appear the villain? Josh Marshall points out the following rationale:

The CBS memo to the UCC includes three basic points.

1. The alleged policy of not running ads which address issue of public debate or controversy.

2. An alleged rule against ads from religious organizations which can be said in any way to proselytize.

3. And the fact that President Bush has recently called for a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Reason #2 seems like the best argument (though it's pretty weak in itself). But the CBS memo specifically says that this isn't the reason they're rejecting it. Reason one, they say, was an entirely sufficient reason for rejecting the ad.

But having enunciated this bar against ads which discuss or take a position on any "current controversial issue of public importance" they then gratuitously add this line about President Bush's call for a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

[...]

I would think that the general rule, if evenly enforced, would be sufficient. I cannot think of any good reason why President Bush's (who's now apparently been renamed 'Executive Branch') stated position should have any bearing at all on whether the ad should run.

Can you?

Actually, yes, I can. By including that sentence, CBS is suggesting that it is afraid that it may suffer at the hands of the Bush administration if they air an ad the administration finds offensive. They are invoking, without actually mentioning, the spectre of Right-wing Thought Police. This has the benefit of being perfectly deniable, since no actual charges against Bush have been made, but people will still gain the impression that Things Are Getting Scary.

This is actually a rather common tactic in political rhetoric and is frequently used to sow resentment. Throughout history it has been a cause of anti-semitism when the discontent was aimed at a successful Jewish class, and Evangelicals are becoming as safe a whipping boy as the Jews in certain circles.

I would much rather that we were on record as objecting on principle to the sort of soft censorship that CBS is perpetrating against our fellow Christians. But, for whatever reason, we ought to speak up.

Targeting Procreation

In an attempt to "think outside the box" in combating Gay Marriage, Allan Carlson of the Family Research Council is proposing the possibility of restricting marriage benefits to couples who actually have children:

Are there other political acts that would reconnect procreation and marriage? Perhaps, if we are prepared to think "outside the box." For example, we could turn one of our opponents' key arguments back on them. Perhaps we should restrict some of the legal and welfare benefits of civil marriage solely to those married during their time of natural, procreative potential: for women, below the age of 45 or so (for men, in the Age of Viagra, the line would admittedly be harder to draw). The idea is not without recent political precedence. Back in 1969, Representative Wilbur Mills--the then-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee--wanted to respond to complaints by unmarried adults that existing tax law unfairly favored the married. It was true that the existing practice of "income splitting" by married couples on their joint tax returns, in the context of high marginal tax rates, did give a strong tax benefit to marriage. Importantly, though, Mills stated that he wanted to preserve this "marriage bonus" for the young and fertile, while still helping those whom he labeled (in now-archaic language) as "spinsters." Accordingly, he proposed maintaining the benefits of income splitting only for married persons under the age of 35. (This approach, I note in passing, went nowhere. The Nixon administration and Congress chose instead to reduce the benefits of income splitting for all married persons; and they so unwittingly created the "marriage penalty" with which we still grapple today.)

Another, and perhaps more realistic way to rebind marriage and procreation would be, counter-intuitively, to take some of the benefits currently attached to marriage and reroute them instead through children. Allow me one practical example here. Whatever the future, it is likely that most households with two or more children will continue to be married-couple, natural-parent homes. These are still, and always will be, the places most open to what we once called "a full quiver." We could encourage them by tying retirement benefits to family size: that is, the more children that a couple brought into the world, the higher their later monthly Social Security benefit. Or, we could create a new tax credit against payroll taxes:rebating, say, 20 percent of the current 15.3 percent tax facing parents for each child born. Again, these ideas would indirectly favor child-rich homes; and most of these, in the American context, would predictably contain a married couple.

Andrew Sullivan, somewhat mystifyingly but perhaps ironically, applauds this as an honest admission that procreation and marriage have been inescapably severed:

Can we still defend the purpose of marriage as procreation? No, not in the current constitutional climate. It is now clear that the "right of privacy," conceived by the Supreme Court nearly four decades ago, is the enemy of both marriage and procreation separately, and is especially hostile when they are united. It is also clear that we lost the key battles in defense of this union decades ago, long before anyone even imagined same-sex marriage. And we lost these battles over questions that--to be honest--relatively few of us are really prepared to reopen. How many are ready to argue for the recriminalization of contraception? How many want to argue for a strict legal and cultural imposition of the word illegitimate on certain little children?

I acknowledge that this admission is somewhat more astute than I had expected of the FRC, but it seems to highlight exactly why conservatives ought to drop the whole issue. As I argued in July 2003 on the Ranter's Guild:

Having said all that, I think conservatives have already lost the argument over homosexual marriage. When we supported no-fault divorce in the 70s, we lost all credibility for political arguments based on protecting the sanctity of marriage. The only ground left would be to argue that the fortunes of a nation depend on obedience to God, which currently will not get a consensus even among religious conservatives.

Carlson's autocratic thinking outside the box has even less chance of actually occurring, but amply demonstrates the tortured lengths some will go to impose their vision on society. If there is to be any progress on this issue, it must come from within society, by means of changed hearts and minds, not be forced upon it in such heavy-handed proposals. Remember that, however we may seem to be in control at the moment, there may yet come a Pharaoh who knows not Joseph. And he who lives by the State can just as easily perish by it.

Sanity about the FMA

John Tabin writes in the American Standard:

Federalism lights the way out of this conundrum. The recognition of gay unions should be entirely a matter for the states, and state parties should be free to differ as to the proper political approach; if a constitutional amendment is necessary, it is to restrain the courts rather than to define marriage for the nation. (Senator Orrin Hatch was toying earlier this year with introducing an amendment that would be ideal.) Likewise, the overturning of Roe vs. Wade ought to be the end-point of the pro-life movement on the federal level; abortion after Roe should become -- as it was before Roe -- a state matter.

I'd better admit that I'll be on the opposite side of many conservatives in these state-level battles: I favor gay marriage, and though I'd love to see a judiciary that would overturn Roe, a proxy for so much judicial mischief, I'd prefer to see early-term abortion stay legal. But we'll remain bound on foreign policy and economic issues in a strong Republican coalition despite our differences. And that's the point, isn't it?

(Emphasis mine)

Even if you think that abortion should be illegal at the Federal level (as I rather do) making it a state issue seems like a good first step. But my real point in citing this passage is that this is one of the few times I have heard a proposal in support of a constitutional ammendment to restrain the judiciary. To be sure, it is in the subjunctive mood and I suspect that Tabin might not agree that it is necessary. But at least the notion is on the table, hmm?
(Via Randy Barnett at the Conspiracy.)

Also note this interesting study on why the FMA has not produced the groundswell of support that some religious conservative leaders have predicted:

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press completed a poll of 1,703 American adults concerning the FMA and other topics. Margin of error is about 2.4%.

In question 37, they found that:

32% favored allowing same-sex couples to marry
59% opposed allowing SSM
9% had no opinion or refused to answer.

They then asked only the 59% who opposed same-sex marriage for their opinion on the FMA:

36% favor the FMA to ban SSM
21% oppose the FMA
2% had no opinion or refused to answer.

So, over a third of people who oppose same-sex marriage also oppose the FMA. I would like to see that number climb, of course, to the point where we can safely ignore the matter and focus on conservative approaches to establishing a just society. Time will tell.

Sullivan Finally Gets It

In a post early Wednesday morning, Andrew Sullivan had this to say about the relation between judicial activism and gay marriage:

I don't believe that we should give up or change the fight for marriage equality. But I do think it behooves people like me to listen to what the other side is saying. I'm struck by how many of you have told me that your real objection is not with the issue of marriage equality itself, but by the means of achieving it. Court-imposed mandates rub people the wrong way, even those who support including gay couples within the family structure. Extra-legal tactics like Gavin Newsom's particularly rankle. I wasn't sanguine about this at the time but minimized it because I was so swept up in the emotion of seeing gay couples finally getting the respect they deserve. I should have been stricter in opposing Newsom's grandstanding. I'll have more to say in a forthcoming TNR piece. But it's important to hear what others who disagree with me are saying. I'm trying harder.

Exactly. The rule of law should not be abrogated no matter how worthy the cause. Some of us tried to explain this to Sullivan at the time, but he brushed it aside. I am glad to see that he now admits the error. Time will tell if he sticks with this committment, but we all get overcome by our passions from time to time, so I am willing to cut him a little slack.

Of course, there are some people who do not think that judicial activism is the main problem here and would be perfectly willing to use it to further their conservative agenda if they could get away with it. But I don't consider such people to be truly conservative, just radical in a different direction.

And finally, the question of whether public acknowledgment of homosexuality is actually good for society (or for homosexuals themselves) is completely different. Sullivan's position is based on the assumption that homosexuals are in some sense born that way, so his comparison to black civil rights movements follows naturally. However, if you reject that premise (as I do) then the notion that gay marriage is a civil right collapses. But I think that is a case that should be made by persuasion, not force.

The Anti-Gay Vote?

There has been a fair amount of buzz to the effect that Bush won because he (or his evil mastermind/architect Karl Rove) managed to get several state constitutional initiative baning gay marriage on the ballot. The theory seems to be that Republicans would have stayed home if not for the fact that they were up in arms over this issue. Case in point this talking point from Josh Marshall:

As many other have already noted, Rove and Co. cleverly managed to get anti-gay marriage initiatives and referenda on the ballot in a number of key swing states. And that seems to have played an key role in mobilizing 'peripheral' evangelical and culturally conservative voters.

In the article that Marshall links to the exit-poll survey number 22 crops up -- as in "22 percent of voters named "moral values" as the most important issue to them", a clear indicator to many people that gay bashing was the number one reason that Bush won.

OK, forget for a moment that these are exit polls and that they predicted a win for Kerry that was wildly off the mark. Forget also the obvious fact that in addition to sexual behavior, "moral values" include such matters as integrity and trustworthiness which have been key distinctives in the campaign against Kerry. Is it possible that these ballot initiatives really did push Bush over the top?

Early on, Andrew Sullivan seemed to think so, and has been struggling with the issue ever since. But a recent article in Slate seems to definitively debunk the notion that the Gay Marriage issue helped Bush at all. As with most statistical arguments, the reasoning may be a little hard to follow, but here is the crucial text:

The evidence that having a gay-marriage ban on the ballot increased voter turnout is spotty. Marriage-ban states did see higher turnout than states without such measures. They also saw higher increases in turnout compared with four years ago. But these differences are relatively small. Based on preliminary turnout estimates, 59.5 percent of the eligible voting population turned out in marriage-ban states, whereas 59.1 percent turned out elsewhere. This is a microscopic gap when compared to other factors. For example, turnout in battleground states was more than 7.5 points higher than it was in less-competitive states, and it increased much more over 2000 as well.

It's true that states with bans on the ballot voted for Bush at higher rates than other states. His vote share averaged 7 points higher in gay-marriage-banning states than in other states (57.9 vs. 50.9). But four years ago, when same-sex marriage was but a twinkle in the eye of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Bush's vote share was 7.3 points higher in these same states than in other states. In other words, by a statistically insignificant margin, putting gay marriage on the ballot actually reduced the degree to which Bush's vote share in the affected states exceeded his vote share elsewhere.

[...]

Much has been made of the fact that "moral values" topped the list of voters' concerns, mentioned by more than a fifth (22 percent) of all exit-poll respondents as the "most important issue" of the election. It's true that by four percentage points, people in states where gay marriage was on the ballot were more likely than people elsewhere to mention moral issues as a top priority (25.0 vs. 20.9 percent). But again, the causality is unclear. Did people in these states mention moral issues because gay marriage was on the ballot? Or was it on the ballot in places where people were already more likely to be concerned about morality?

The article goes on to point out that a far bigger reason for the Bush victory was his trustworthiness regarding the war on terror. So, once again, the evil Republican jihad seems to be a conjuration of fevered left-wing paranoia. What a relief.

Gay Marriage and Hetero Divorce

I have made this link in verbal arguments with my fellow conservatives but haven't actually written anything about it. Don't have time to analyze, but this article makes most of the points I would have. And since it is published by a subsidiary of Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministry, it has more credibility than I do for people that think in such terms:

Divorce is in the background of the gay marriage debate in at least three ways. First, gay marriage is the end of the trend that no-fault divorce began. The legal innovation of unilateral divorce began to reduce marriage to nothing but a temporary association of individuals. If marriage is merely a free association of individuals, there is no principled reason to exclude gay couples, or even larger groupings of sexual partners. The permanence of marriage was one of the key features that distinguished it from an ordinary contract.

Second, the high divorce rate and the resulting non-permanence of marriage made the institution of marriage more attractive to same-sex couples than it otherwise would be. If marriage still meant one to a customer for life, I seriously doubt that we’d be hearing about same-sex marriage today. Gay couples evidently have a more relaxed concept of both permanence and fidelity than do heterosexual couples. Gay activists would be much less likely to invest time and energy working for the right to marry, if divorce were available only for adultery or cruelty.

Most importantly, the high divorce rate has made it difficult to articulate opposition to gay marriage. People who have been divorced may feel hypocritical if they voice opposition to a system they felt they had to use. People who secretly fear they may need a divorce someday are reluctant to bad-mouth the easy availability of divorce. People who are not confident in their own ability to keep their marriage together for a lifetime, won’t speak out against the culture of divorce. A significant subset of such people will be reluctant to voice their opposition to gay marriage. People who have lost confidence in marriage as an institution of exclusivity and permanence are simply not going to have the heart for a fight over gay marriage.

Just to emphasize my point: note that in the rest of the article Ms. Morse does not advocate a Constitutional ammendment forbidding unilateral divorce, but has some helpful cultural suggestions on how to confront it. Legal issues, of course, are important in this as in the gay marriage debate, but a mature and effective Christian response need not resort to demagoguery or panicked extremism.

House Defeats Gay Marriage Ban

I don't have time to comment, but this should come as no surprise:

The House followed the Senate in decisively rejecting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, ending for this year debate on what has become the dominant issue for the Republican Party's conservative base.
The 227-186 vote in the House Thursday was well short of the two-thirds majority needed to advance a constitutional amendment, but fulfilled a promise by backers to get lawmakers on the record on the highly sensitive issue in the run-up to Election Day.

Liberty as a Form of Oppression

I have always known that Andrew Sullivan and I had substantive disagreements on the parameters of liberty, but I had thought we shared the same basic view of its nature. This post, however, gives me pause:

NOW, THE PILL: The increasing popularity of laws that allow doctors and pharmacists to opt out of certain practices or even certain kinds of patient is a worrying trend. It was designed in part by the religious right to prevent gay people from having access to good medical care, and also to protect doctors from being forced to perform abortions. Now, its effects are being extended to the birth control pill, which some believe can be a form of abortion. The slow and fitful attempt of the far right to control others' sex lives continues. If you approve, vote Republican.

So, like much of the left whom he generally repudiates, Mr. Sullivan is now asserting that laws giving people options are actually inhibiting the liberty of those that want to enforce conformity. This is not a new theory, of course. All anti-discrimination laws operate on similar presuppositions. The notion is that if a proprietor of, say, a bar has the liberty to refuse service to anyone, that entails his ability to refuse service to Blacks, Jews, Women, Gays, Non-Smokers, or whatever peculiar prejudice he happens to hold and therefore his liberty must be curtailed.

Now reasonable people can disagree as to whether such curtailment of the liberty to discriminate is a proper function of government. It is perfectly within the conservative tradition to argue that, in certain cases as noted above, the limitation on liberty serves a greater social good. I happen to disagree -- preferring to let the market punish such idiocy -- but I can appreciate the argument. If I came upon a bar that did not allow Blacks I would quite happily take my business elsewhere and encourage others to do likewise, but I can sympathize with the impatience of those who want a quicker, more definitive solution. But it is surely a little rich to characterize the libertarian position as an "attempt ... to control others' ... lives." Especially when the discrimination in question is based on demonstrably ancient and presumably sincerely held moral precepts.

To illustrate why this latter point makes a difference, suppose the bartender in my example was discriminating not against Blacks or Gays but against ... Alcoholics. The Civil Rights crowd might (although it tends not to) argue that such discrimination is unfair and that even drunks have a right to be served by a place of public accommodation. But would the bartender necessarily be trying to control the drinking habits of his clientele? Might he not simply wish to refrain from participating in self-destructive behavior? It seems that in such a case, the benefit of the doubt belongs with the bartender.

Now my analogy will not be as compelling if, as Mr. Sullivan asserts, such opt-out laws were "designed in part by the religious right to prevent gay people from having access to good medical care". I am not aware of such motivations and he offers no support for this assertion. But even if this is a factor, surely the predominant impetus has been in the abortion arena where doctors, nurses and pharmacists have been under pressure by the extreme left to provide abortions against their moral and religious convictions.

I do not hold the Roman Catholic position on birth control (nor the modified version of it presented in the BBC article), but it doesn't take much imagination to see how someone who did would want the same ability to opt-out. Charity, if nothing else, should dictate that such a person not be forced to choose between losing his job and violating his religion. But even a failure of such charity would not warrant that his scruples be mischaracterized as malice.

In a culture war, as in any other, the best way to avoid unintended casualties is to use the most precise weaponry available. It is regrettable that a warrior with the obvious marksmanship of Mr. Sullivan should choose to explode such indiscriminate ordnance in the midst of the marketplace of ideas.

UPDATE (In reference to Sullivan's post immediately prior to this one): If he has Blogger Block, what the hell do I have?

Lessons from the Punic Wars

Pastor Dave at JollyBlogger has posted an excellent article on how the culture wars should be fought. The actual article was written by a friend of George Grant, but neither the friend's article nor Grant's is directly linkable. JollyBlogger quotes the article in its entirety and it is certainly worth the read, but here is an excerpt of the main point:

Christ promised us that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His church. We tend to read it as though it says that we shall not be totally defeated by the enemy who is camped at our gates. Jesus issued a victory-oriented image, not a defeatist or underdog or loser image.

Christians need to learn from Fabius (and even from the Fabian Socialists). We need to fight long-term battles, avoiding foolish defeats, destroying enemy resources, and using time and patience to our advantage. Why battle for prayer in public schools? The Fabian approach would be to build a Christian school and concentrate on changing the next generation or the one after that.

Wear down the opposition. Preach, pray, evangelize, build churches, and support Christian education, read Christian books, live Christian lives. Abortionists and homosexual unions and hedonists and atheists cannot produce either families or culture. Don’t despair if unbelieving modern-day Hannibal’s are camped outside the gate. Hannibal never got inside Rome’s city limits and Christ’s church will never succumb to His enemies.

Aim toward producing Godly grandchildren. Have a long-term vision of victory. Be Fabian, be Augustinian, be Medieval, be anything, but impatient. Focus on Cathedral building and be multi-generational in expectations.

Along with this, Christians need to learn from Scipio. Study about and from our enemies. If unbelievers develop better universities, write better novels, create taller skyscrapers, and make more money, learn from them. Anything they do right, they accomplish because they have stolen from God. Take back the technology and artistry.

Find the sources of the enemies ‘metals and money’ and win it back. Again, Christian schools are battlefields for confronting the enemy—both short-term and long-term. Mel Gibson’s movie has done more to draw the enemy out of Italy and back to North Africa than anything else Christians have done in decades.

Whether it’s Hannibal’s elephants or Mordor’s oliphants, the bloated enemy forces are vulnerable. It may take a few more arrows than usual, but big ugly things die when punctured enough times. Fascism and Marxism did not last out the last century. Darwinian Evolution, Freudianism, Nietzsche’s notions, unbelieving Existentialism, Humanism, Feminism, Abortionism, Homosexual fanaticism, and whatever other deviations are lined up for battle, are all easily outflanked or directly defeated by a vigorous Christian confrontation with faithful doctrine, life, and culture.

Victory is often simply a matter of not having a culture of defeat.

I am kind of stealing my own thunder by posting this, because this is essentially the conclusion I am building toward in my series on gay marriage. But this article is so well written that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to link to it. Once again, JollyBlogger has justified his position on my blogroll by relaying this. (Not bad for a non-theonomist, eh?) If you haven't been reading him every day, you should start.