I've written a number of posts (see here, here, here, and here) on the zero-sum game that homosexual activists have set up for moral traditionalists. In brief, my idea of the zero-sum game (admittedly rather unoriginal) is that the actual goals of homosexual activists are incompatible with the freedom of sexually normal, traditional people. The bulk of ordinary Americans might have been willing to come up with some kind of compromise, though what that compromise amounts to would have varied from person to person. Even non-discrimination laws that include "sexual orientation" are already a grave intrusion into the rights of moral traditionalists. I find it difficult to come up with a single aspect of the homosexual political agenda, which has always been about governmental requirements of non-discrimination in some area or other, which is not inherently coercive. Nonetheless, there are probably some who have thought that, if we just give them this (say, non-discrimination laws, civil unions), we will be allowed to get back to our lives and be left alone. The problem with this is two-fold. First, the "this" is always something that doesn't allow at least some people--businessmen, landlords, adoption agencies, wedding planners--simply to get on with their lives as before if they are moral traditionalists. The whole point of the agenda is to change the behavior of those people in their ordinary lives. So the "give them this and they'll leave us alone" presumption really involves saying, "I don't belong to any of those groups. I wouldn't actually have to change my daily life. And I don't care about what happens to people in those groups. I'll sacrifice their freedom in the hopes that the homosexual lobby will be satisfied and leave me alone." But the second problem is that the demands never were going to end there. Once non-discrimination in this or that area has been mandated, the further demand is that all dissent be punished, especially among employees, students, young people with their way to make in a profession, and so forth. The homosexual lobby was never willing to have issues like the morality of homosexuality, the wisdom of homosexual adoption, and the like be treated as things on which people could take varying views and have those varying views and discussion of them tolerated. The idea was always that eventually, as more and more acceptance was mandated, traditional views would be regarded as utterly intolerable and heinous and would be hounded out by officialdom. Such "bigotry" might be allowed to survive in people's most private, secret thoughts, at most. This meta-level position--that traditional morality itself is horrific, shocking, and beyond the pale--of course creates a zero-sum game that should be obvious to everyone, even if the zero-sum nature of the homosexual agenda wasn't obvious to everyone before. The faux "tolerance" of the homosexual lobby is a mandate for complete intolerance of the views of the majority of mankind.
As I put it in this earlier post:
Those golden-hearted souls who wish to take on the exhausting task of helping others--like Mr. and Mrs. Johns and Julea Ward--are the ones hit first by this requirement [to affirm homosexuality]. In those areas, the homosexual agenda now has such power that if you wish to help, they will define you instead as "harmful" if you do not promote their ideology. It is that stark. If you disagree with them, you are out. You may not help. You may not have the job. You may not do the work. It's the serious Christians or the homosexual activists. Both cannot win. Given the demands, no compromise is possible. We should not fool ourselves.
One of the more recent manifestations of the homosexual agenda is so-called "anti-bullying" legislation which seeks to enshrine homosexuality as defining a specially protected class throughout public schools and to make it a violation of all schools' policy, if not a crime, to criticize it. This is, in fact, the latest manifestation of the speech codes that some of us remember fighting on college campuses back in the 90's, but this time at the K-12 level.
The American Family Association of Michigan, in particular, has been pointing this out and has been fighting to make any "anti-bullying" legislation passed in Michigan include no special categories, no specially protected classes, in its language. The idea there is that in that case the legislation would not, at least on its face, give sanction to administrators and teachers to bully traditional students for their views.
In this story we have both a manifestation of the zero-sum game and a smoking gun for the actual agenda of "anti-bullying" policies. A student wrote (apparently at the student paper's invitation) an opinion piece, as part of a point-counterpoint series, arguing against homosexual adoption. He even had the temerity to use some Scripture passages in his article. The administration, when it became aware that the student newspaper was treating this as a subject open for discussion, a subject on which the traditional view would actually be aired and published, went into frantic spin mode. They hysterically apologized that anyone should have allowed such a piece to be published. The apology itself called the article a "form of bullying and disrespect." And, worst of all, the superintendent called in the offending young author, suggested that he had violated the school's "anti-bullying" policy, and proceeded to subject him to some actual bullying. The super attempted some direct Soviet-style arm-twisting, giving the student an opportunity to say he "regretted" his column. When that failed, the super threatened him directly: "We have the power to suspend you."
The student has retained legal counsel and a suit may follow. Good. I hope the school gets its hinder end well kicked. There needs to be at least a little push-back against such blatant, intimidating totalitarianism.
The supposed social contract in which we tolerate and air different points of view on politically controversial issues has turned out to be an utter sham once the liberals were in charge. It might, might have been possible for homosexual behavior to become more accepted in society than it previously was without our having these kinds of stories, had the metalevel view described above--that traditional opinions about sex are evilly bigoted and utterly beyond the pale--not become an item of the state secular religion and the gold standard of acceptable liberal discourse. Was that development itself inevitable? Sociologically, it probably was inevitable, especially given the homosexual activists' insistence that homosexuality be regarded as similar to race for purposes of public policy. (Frankly, the superintendent's bullying tactics were utterly unprofessional and would have been unacceptable even if the student had written a badly misguided column on a subject like race. But I make that comment only in passing.) For several decades social liberals have specialized in getting their preferred opinions declared not simply right but out of bounds for questioning. See my comments above about speech codes. It was only to be expected that this so-called "civil rights issue" would go the same way.
So it is mostly futile to look, like Diogenes with his lamp, for one honest liberal who will say, "I don't think homosexual acts are a sin, but I can respect people who do think that. I understand why they think that, and I have no intention of demonizing them. I think it's fine for their views to be represented, for them to continue to have influence in society. Their jobs or school positions shouldn't be in danger. That's ridiculous and Communistic, and I utterly deplore it."
I've known maybe one or two such. Back in the days when I was a member of the National Association of Scholars, I used to meet a few dinosaurs of that kind--political and social liberals, but sincere, not to say passionate, civil libertarians. People who still naively believed that the ACLU would defend social conservatives like the student in the story, against the homosexual lobby. Their breed is dying out now. Did it have to die out? I don't know for sure, though I suspect so. What I do know is that now, the zero-sum game is afoot, and social conservatives had best not be caught napping.
Comments (58)
""I don't think homosexual acts are a sin, but I can respect people who do think that. I understand why they think that, and I have no intention of demonizing them. I think it's fine for their views to be represented, for them to continue to have influence in society."
Sure, believing that something is counter to ones religious precepts while, at the same time understanding that there are severe limits on what one should seek to impose (as opposed to persuade) on the society as a whole is something that is worthy of great respect. What one can't respect or tolerate are those folks who seek to impose those precepts that have no rational basis outside their belief systems on others.
"That's ridiculous" - yes,
"and Communistic" - actually no, gay folk traditionally haven't fared so well in Communist regimes; "authoritarian" or "totalitarian" would be a better fit as traditionalists and Communists actually are similar here.
"and I utterly deplore it."
Indeed.
As with school administrators and kids who pray together or read the Bible, this appears to be an overreaction on the school's part so shame on them.
Posted by al | February 3, 2012 6:14 PM
Christianity will continue to lose ground so long as the consequences of hedonism are deftly pushed on into the future. Sadly, consequence comes with compound interest.
Posted by Patrick | February 3, 2012 7:26 PM
Yeah, the ACLU. That defender of people holding non-conformist views...or not. I once asked them to defend someone whose civil liberties were being attacked for voicing an unpopular opinion, and they wouldn't even deign to return my phone call. They just weren't interested in THOSE unpopular opinions. What a surprise!
Yeah, that's right, al, you tell 'em. Like imposing laws against murder for example. Those dirty, no-good Christians, and Jews, and Hindus, Shintoists, etc., they insist on assuming that they can tell everyone else not to murder just because in THEIR religions murder is a bad thing. Whereas in other belief systems murder is just fine at the right times and places. How DARE they impose their beliefs.
Posted by Tony | February 3, 2012 7:59 PM
Precisely Tony, Christians of all flavors, Jews of all persuasions, most Hindus (there is the Dark Mother Kali after all), all umpteen varieties of Buddhism, as well as your Shintoists, and your "etc" (which presumably includes agnostics, atheists, and Unitarians), see murder as problematic and deserving of proscription. That is why I wrote "those precepts that have no rational basis outside their belief systems". That you have to fall back on murder is interesting.
It seems that most folks have changed their minds about how gay folk fit in, believe contraception is OK, and want abortion safe, legal, and rare (as well as just there - just in case).
You all should be free to disagree without penalty but the rest of us are free to disagree with you and in those situations in which binary decisions must be made, you are free to disagree but not to impose your prejudices against the will of the majority or to place your religious doctrines over constitutional rights and our notions of fair play..
Posted by al | February 3, 2012 10:38 PM
Um-hmmm. Al, I used long ago to think you might have some civil libertarian bones left in your body of the older and more noble variety, but many-a comment on many another thread has long since disabused me of that notion and shown me _exactly_ what you mean by "imposing our prejudices."
Posted by Lydia | February 4, 2012 1:27 AM
Ultimately, we must either make homosexuality illegal or it will become illegal to criticize it in any way, shape, or fashion. Those are the only two choices given the disposition of the American people.
Posted by Jehu | February 4, 2012 2:05 AM
That is why I wrote "those precepts that have no rational basis outside their belief systems"
You wrote it, but the phrase is meaningless: you cannot supply the grounds for what constitutes "rational basis" without reference to belief systems; unless, of course, you are prepared to permit concurrence among belief systems to stand in for rational basis, in which case, allow me to introduce you to an obscure book called The Abolition of Man.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 4, 2012 7:07 AM
Glad to see Al now supports the South's right to have slavery. Let's see how it meets his criteria.
1. Constitutional - yes it was in the Constitution.
2. Will of the Majority - don't see anywhere that there was a majority opinion to end slavery. Limit it's spread, yes, end it I doubt it.
3. Fair Play - That's rather expansive. Fair play is usually a majority concept. For example, in the NFL, you can make the playoffs without a winning record and teams with better records won't make it. Is that fair play? It's in the rules. There is a reason for the rule. You could change the rule but that would take the majority to make the change. So this seems to fall under #2.
Posted by Chris | February 4, 2012 8:19 AM
Thank you Paul. Quite right.
al, without predecessor belief systems you have (a) no argument that murder is wrong on any rational basis, only that it harms this or that purpose that suits many people in society; and (b) no rational basis to suppose that a rational basis provide a ground to impose your will on me. Are you seriously trying to say that whatever the larger force in society wants, that's what it should get and to hell with the smaller force?
Posted by Tony | February 4, 2012 8:45 AM
That is Central Planning 101. There is a third choice. Why not get the government out of the sexual policing business and out of the speech policing business altogether?
Lydia illustrates the basic flaw of central planning in the OP: There are too many unknown variables and unintended consequences involved in an issue for any central planner (i.e. bureaucrat, lawmaker) to adequately come up with a "fair" compromise. The central planner must first place individuals in groups based on single issues (while ignoring the fact that no two individuals think exactly alike on all issues), then weigh the "rights" of one group vs those of another (still ignoring the above) and then make decisions based on their own view of "fairness". It will always be an unworkable solution because it is based on a flawed concept.
The answer? Treat every individual as an individual - with all the same basic rights as any other individual - and every case separately on its own merits.
Posted by Chucky Darwin | February 4, 2012 1:08 PM
Lydia, you should be free to express your opinions, how can I be clearer? The principal was wrong. Surely you aren't asserting that not getting your way is the sole measure of your freedom?
Paul, Paul, Paul! I suggest a couple of short articles that were on point and you heap scorn on me and now you suggest a book? Well, as I'm always open to correction, so I'll take a look - free here,
(http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm#1).
(Today is a perfect spraying day. As I wish apples in the fall, I'll look at it later today - I hope Jeff C was able to spray his apricots this year.)
Meanwhile, this may profit you all,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
Posted by al | February 4, 2012 1:44 PM
This comes to mind: Perhaps it is best to not view things in a vacuum. A quick scan brought two other works from the same period to mind, Animal Farm and Road to Serfdom. History has been unkind to RTS but not AF.
Posted by al | February 4, 2012 2:19 PM
Al, yes, I understand. You are at the the point, or claim to be at the point, of claiming that we can have a "compromise" thus:
Businessmen, adoption agencies, and the like will and should be forced to "treat people fairly," i.e., ignore homosexuality in all their dealings, giving benefits, etc. And if this means imposing "hostile work environment" rules on employee speech, well, hey, the employees are still (maybe) free to speak their minds somewhere else. Just not on Facebook. That's just the majority telling the conservative minority what it thinks is fair. But this has nothing, no, no, to do with not letting people be free to speak their minds. Let freedom ring, outside of all those non-discrimination laws, of course.
I'm familiar with this sales line. It has turned out to be untenable, for a number of reasons. I've already mentioned the hostile work environment aspect of non-discrimination laws. People spend a lot of time at work, and not being free to speak your mind even on coffee break is no small matter. But of course it doesn't end there. There are plenty of professions from which you are dropped or in which you are sued if, in the exercise of your profession, you will not _affirm_ the homosexual lifestyle. (See the Julea Ward case and other similar cases detailed in my posts. See the Vedala case in Massachusetts. Consider the Hugonin photography case in New Mexico.) Teachers have been disciplined for what they say on Facebook. Contractors have had their contracts dropped for the books they have written entirely separately from their contracting work, which someone googled.
The young man in the story, surprisingly, is probably freer to speak his mind now than he will be at any other time in his life, and with fewer dire consequences. When he is thirty-five and the stern lecture comes from the (probably female) head of HR, when he is threatened with loss of a job, with which he supports his wife and family, for violating company "non-discrimination" policy on not creating a "hostile work environment" for LGTBZQRX people, when it is obvious that this is *part and parcel* of non-discrimination laws which Al supports, what will Al say then? Where is the line drawn between "being fair" but "being free to speak your mind" then?
The thirty-five-year-old man threatened with job loss will probably get less sympathy generally, just because that's human nature. We sympathize more with a bullied fifteen-year-old. He may not find free legal counsel either. And he will probably, in the end, be happy to tell the HR Chair-ette that he "regrets" whatever he wrote and whatever he said that has offended anybody.
Posted by Lydia | February 4, 2012 3:05 PM
Al, you'll notice that while I heaped scorn on your bad faith as a commenter (specifically, the non sequitur of answering a post about the Eurozone by quoting the US Treasury TIPS rate), I nevertheless took the time to address what objections I could make out in your comment.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 4, 2012 3:39 PM
Al, The Abolition of Man is about 100 pages long, if that. It can be read in one sitting. It's not like Paul's asking you to read Proust or Tolstoy.
And since you're a farmer you may also want to look at a little book by another farmer called Life is a Miracle, which is a nice companion piece to Lewis.
Posted by Nice Marmot | February 4, 2012 3:54 PM
I've read Das Kapital, and it was full of crock. Now you want me to read a political screed based on economic crockery? What for? To make me puke?
Posted by Tony | February 4, 2012 4:59 PM
At one time, not that long ago, homosexuals asked for tolerance of what's euphemistically described as their 'sexual orientation'. Now mere tolerance is no longer enough; they demand approval of 'the gay way of life'. The practice of sodomy has been transformed from a vice to a virtue - increasing "the perplexity of men who are unwilling to approve what they are compelled to tolerate". (Gibbon)
Posted by Alex | February 5, 2012 9:49 AM
Alex, I think that all along there was a _huge_ amount of baggage packed into the word "tolerance" when they asked for it. To take a simple example, suppose that I own a house which I rent. It's my property, and I want to glorify God in all things that I do. I don't want people using my property for blatant sin and to promote a sinful lifestyle. So I don't want to rent to a guy living with his girlfriend and, it should go without saying, also don't want to rent to a guy living with his boyfriend! This is presumably "intolerant." After all, if everybody acted like that, then homosexuals would have to stay in the closet or would have a lot of trouble finding anywhere to live. Poor things. So part of what it meant to ask for tolerance for their lifestyle was that there should be ordinances, laws in place that you couldn't deny people rentals on the basis of their sexual activities. Immediately, I have a problem with that, and I see that as a form of demanding approval.
That's why I think in a sense this has been a zero-sum game from the beginning, but people are only now starting to realize it. The tolerance demanded was never just, hey, don't physically harm homosexual people, or even, don't arrest them for acts they engage in in deepest secrecy. It was always non-discrimination in the broader sense: You must hire people who put it in your face (and will put it in your customers' faces) that they engage in these activities. You must rent to couples of this sort. You must serve these customers even in businesses that are expressive in nature, such as photography, print shops, cake makers who put messages for customers on their baked goods, and so forth. You must not create a hostile work environment for homosexual employees. You must give them children to adopt. Essentially, homosexuals must be made to feel entirely welcome in society.
I don't know of any time within my lifetime (I am in my mid-forties) when the homosexual agenda was simply for *extremely minimal* tolerance in the sense of "don't lynch us, don't arrest us." They may have used those things as sympathy-getters, but they were always pretty open that they were looking for non-discrimination, which is a whole different ballgame.
Posted by Lydia | February 5, 2012 12:26 PM
Methinks the Church has it all wrong. The answer is NOT to pass laws outlawing homosexuality (or permitting it.) In fact the answer is not about passing laws at all. The answer is to get the government out of the sexual and speech policing business.
The Church arguably had its highest level of political influence in this country on January 16, 1919 when it succeeded in gathering enough votes in Congress and the States to have a constitutional amendment ratified outlawing alcohol. Prohibition proved to be a disaster however and the Church never had that kind of political clout again.
I believe some would like to get us back to that point. Some would like for religious conservatives to have enough political clout to get the government to codify Christian teachings against homosexuality into law. I think that is a big mistake. If Christians want religious freedom, they should advocate for everyone's freedom - including those who hold opposing views - because the force of government is an awful, tyrannical thing once unleashed.
Our argument ought to be that the role of government is not about conferring advantages to any one group at the expense of another. Our argument ought to be that the role of government is about making sure that all individual liberties, as spelled out in the Constitution, are honored. No group (homosexuals, Christians) should be able to harness the force of government against another group. Freedom is eroded the minute the government gets involved.
Posted by Chucky Darwin | February 5, 2012 12:33 PM
Lydia,
Your example would be solved via property rights: You should have the right to do with your own property whatever you wish without government restrictions (so long as you do not encroach on someone else's property rights.) The government could not force you to rent to anyone. Of course your favorite politician (whose name cannot be mentioned) came under severe fire when he said that the civil rights bill was, in essence, a violation of the principle of property rights because it restricted property owners from doing as they wished with their own property so...
Posted by Chucky Darwin | February 5, 2012 12:46 PM
Is a legal requirement of racial non-discrimination totalitarian? ...perhaps because a legal requirement that one not discriminate by race is a requirement that one not hold racist attitudes? [Or is there a difference between outlawing racial discrimination in the marketplace and outlawing racist attitudes? And so the previous inference fails.]
Was the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, therefore, a zero sum contest -- in which black people could join white society, only at the cost of making white people unfree? [I mean: there is a trivial sense in which any legal requirement decreases one's freedom. ...but nobody complains that traffic law is somehow tyrannical. So I do not mean to query the trivial sense of the word. Since the answer to my question would then be: yes... but that is no reason to object.]
Posted by Alex H | February 5, 2012 1:47 PM
Good questions Alex! As you said, any law inhibits freedom to some degree (and how many of us obey all traffic laws all the time?) But traffic laws are non-discriminatory - there are not laws that apply only to white cars and their relationship to black cars for example. Traffic law applies equally to everyone.
I guess for me the question is whether racial discrimination would have waned anyway - without government intervention? Society was growing more tolerant at the time and racism was beginning to fall out of favor as well (which is what allowed the bill to make it through Congress in the first place because we know Congress won't usually pass legislation that will hurt their re-election chances!) Would society have self-regulated most racism away? And what were the unintended consequences of government intervention? For instance; how much racism is inspired by affirmative action and the like?
Posted by Chucky Darwin | February 5, 2012 4:25 PM
Alex H., I do definitely think that the non-discrimination laws in the racial area have been a zero-sum game between those who advocate attitudes of racial equality and those who disagree. As witness the fact that racist attitudes and ideas (as well as attitudes and ideas perceived as racist, whether they actually deserve that appellation or not) _are_ largely regarded as beyond the pale, that you can be fired at will for expressing them, and the like. And this was in part the goal of the non-discrimination laws. Especially when, as I've discussed above, you factor in the idea of a "hostile work environment," non-discrimination laws are _very_ powerful tools for altering societal attitudes. The employer is (or can consider himself) *required by law* to fire or reeducate employees who express views that make employees who belong to specially protected classes uncomfortable. Hence the proliferation of sensitivity training seminars in the corporate world--it's a cover-your-rear move by the employer.
So, yes, I do regard the civil rights movement as a zero-sum game between two groups in an important sense. Does that mean it was wrong? Well, that depends partly on constitutional/procedural questions and partly on the question of whether you think it was a good idea to stamp out racist attitudes, ideas, and behaviors, including in private contracts and interactions, in America, partly by force of law. For example, if someone wanted to be free not to rent his apartment to an interracial couple, non-discrimination law was a zero-sum game *for him*. Both he and the interracial couple could not "win" on that particular issue. Someone had to lose.
(I would point out that the speech codes of the 90's which I mentioned in the main post were at the time almost more directed toward those who said politically incorrect things about race than about sexual orientation. The latter cause was in a somewhat earlier stage of its development.)
So part of the question is, do people who believe that homosexual acts are wrong actually realize that the homosexual lobby's goal is to demonize and ostracize them and their ideas and desired control over their associations and speech *just as* the speech, ideas, and control over association of would-be racists, or secret racists, have been ostracized and even outlawed in this country? Are Christians and other moral traditionalists prepared to acquiesce in being treated *just like* racists are treated in America, both in law, in jobs, etc.? And are they prepared to be required, just as all Americans are required to do in the racial area, to give at least lip-service on numerous occasions to the equality of homosexual and heterosexual relationships?
In a sense, the history of the racial civil-rights movement and the current situation in that area tells us much about the future planned for us traditionalists in the sexual area.
Posted by Lydia | February 5, 2012 7:16 PM
Yes, but it was a zero sum game that isn't intrinsically unjust because there are manifest differences between blacks and homosexuals viz a viz civil rights. Straight whites already had full civil liberties until they chose to behave in ways that offend private citizens or violated the anti-sodomy laws. Homosexual blacks' main civil rights problems were identical to those of straight blacks. If you can find a constitutional right to be a Queen with a capital Q and force people to not discriminate against you, you are one step away from making a case for forcing people to accept Jim Bob's love affair with his sheep. That isn't even remotely true of black civil rights.
Posted by Mike T | February 6, 2012 6:53 AM
al,
Don't you understand that you have a responsibility to your children and grandchildren? Don't you know what kind of world you are proposing to give them?
If our Christian culture is supplanted, the post-Christian culture that replaces will either be a neo-pagan culture as dark, superstition-ridden, harsh and violent as the worst pagan cultures that Christianity replaced; or, preferably, a fundamentalist Moslem culture.
That the fundamentalist Moslem culture is the preferable outcome if our culture becomes post-Christian is just how serious this is. I know it's fun for you to promote and talk about your idealistic conceptions of how you think things ought to be, but you need to grow up. These are momentous times.
Posted by Steve P. | February 6, 2012 11:07 AM
The "tolerance" rhetoric is both absurd and a lie. What the "tolerance" people really demand is not for us to tolerate sodomy but to approve of it.
Tolerance is a species of the more general virtue of prudence. It would be even more ridiculously imprudent to be absolutely tolerant of all evils as it would be to be absolutely intolerant of all evils.
Posted by Steve P. | February 6, 2012 11:30 AM
If our Christian culture is supplanted, the post-Christian culture that replaces will either be a neo-pagan culture as dark, superstition-ridden, harsh and violent as the worst pagan cultures that Christianity replaced; or, preferably, a fundamentalist Moslem culture.
Yeah, a fundamentalist Muslim culture is obviously a wise choice. Look how great Pakistan is doing. Since liberals always get accused of being Euro-socialists, I find it odd that you can't seem to imagine any of those non-violent, non-superstitious, secular societies as an alternative.
From the great liberal mothership comes a timely story about tolerance:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/spinozas-vision-of-freedom-and-ours/
Posted by Step2 | February 6, 2012 3:50 PM
Well, for one thing, Step2, I don't relish the idea of being actually arrested for expressing "homophobic" opinions, as has happened in post-Christian, Euro-socialist England. That's not my idea of a jolly alternative.
But don't get me wrong: I don't believe that a Muslim society is preferable either. I've written before on leftism and Islam as incommensurable evils.
Posted by Lydia | February 6, 2012 4:19 PM
Lydia,
The gentle conscientious well-meaning leftism that we know can only live in the dying embers of Christendom. If Christian culture dies, leftism will mutate into a dark, superstitious, cruel neopaganism. It's really already here, the reason we don't recognize it immediately is that we are living through the change. If you want to know what the most likely post-Christian alternative to Islam is, think about the howling rage that the Komen Foundation brought upon itself when it wouldn't support P.P. Those howls were coming from the devotes of Molech, and their bloodthisty rage arose from the superstitious terror of demonists whose god was losing a few victims. Think about what a culture based on Satanism must be like. It won't have any of the redeeming virtues that the more innocent pre-Christian paganisms had.
In a few years or a couple of decades it will become clear to you that as terrifying as the prospect of Islamic cultural conquest is, the most likely post-Christian alternative will be even more terrifying. But we don't want to have to make that choice. That's why the defense of Christendom is so important.
Posted by Steve P. | February 6, 2012 6:27 PM
...and prayer of course. That has to be behind everything else we do.
Posted by Steve P. | February 6, 2012 6:31 PM
Well, without getting into too much of a debate on it, it's my considered opinion, which I've thought of quite a number of times, that it's a mistake to declare either better than or preferable to the other. Each would be better and worse than the other in different ways. In Pakistan, if you hate your Christian neighbor, you just allege that he has committed blasphemy at Friday evening prayers, and you can easily get together a howling mob to run to his house, drag him forth, and beat him until he is nearly dead (or maybe until he is dead). If he's "lucky" enough to be rescued by the police, they will beat him for being a troublemaker. Islamic society is incredibly dark. Don't get me started on the treatment of little girls.
_If_ something this violent arises in the non-religious post-Christian left, it will simply become equivalent in that respect to Muslim culture. And it will have taken the non-religious post-Christian society a lot longer to get there. So far, there isn't anything equivalent to that.
Again, each has its own evils. I don't recommend trying to say "this is better." It's the wrong question to ask. I refuse to make my peace with either.
Posted by Lydia | February 6, 2012 7:44 PM
Lydia,
That's not my idea of a jolly alternative either. Although I'll admit if it happened to the Westboro Church people I wouldn't feel bad about it. They have a hard-to-replicate combination of slander, spite, and incitement that crosses the threshold for me.
Steve P.,
I like how pre-Christian paganism went from being a dark, superstition-ridden, harsh and violent culture to having a few innocent redeeming virtues that liberals will, of course in a bloodthirsty rage, stamp out. You might want to add that inconsistent note to your copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Posted by Step2 | February 6, 2012 7:48 PM
The outright ban on the most basic tenets of Christianity IS comming---we all see it on the horizon---it's just a matter of how to fight it. Some say "beat them to the punch - get the government on OUR side". Others say "get the government out of all of it".
It comes down to two fundamental, incompatible strategies and social conservatives better decide which one to pursue!
You all know what I think.
Posted by Chucky Darwin | February 6, 2012 7:50 PM
Step2, in my opinion the Westboro people ought to be open to suit on tort grounds. I discussed this in a lengthy comment somewhere on here, to a post by Bill Luse, if I recall correctly. And the people bringing the tort suit should be (as, in fact, they were in a case in which, I believe with Alito, the court decided wrongly) the parents of the innocent, normal slain soldiers about whom nasty, false, personal things were said. Not random homosexuals who were offended by Westboro's most famous line. And not a prosecutor charging them with "homophobia." They should also be able to be stopped from displaying pornographic signs.
Nobody should be arrested for committing "homophobia." That's a problem in itself. I don't care who it is. Saying that homosexual behavior is immoral, an abomination, wrong, unnatural, etc., none of that should ever be illegal.
Posted by Lydia | February 6, 2012 8:15 PM
Step2
It cannot be otherwise. Pre-Christian paganism was not a rejection of Christ, in fact through paganism the gentile world was providentially prepared for Christ. Neo-paganism is necessarily something else entirely.
I don't know what you mean by the "Protocols" remark. The neopagans of the antisemitic racist variety were just the beginning, I'm afraid, and quite tame compared to what's coming, what's already here but we are too close to see in perspective.
Posted by Steve P. | February 6, 2012 8:44 PM
Nobody should be arrested for committing "homophobia."
That was kind of what I was getting at, the specifics matter. As far as particular words go, the only one I find problematic is abomination. For one, there were all sorts of things that were classified as abominations, yet few of them are remembered anymore. Second, my preferred frame if using that word would be much more contingent. It would look something like: "If you accept the deity of the ancient Israelites as a true authority for revealing human design and purpose, then homosexual acts are an abomination."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abomination_%28Bible%29
I don't know what you mean by the "Protocols" remark.
Simply that if you wish to tar liberals with actual blood libel, ironically in the comments of a post where Lydia has strongly suggested good liberals should always assume the best motives about conservatives, you might be a little paranoid and prone to reading certain conspiracy theories.
Posted by Step2 | February 6, 2012 9:38 PM
Step2, are you suggesting that it's okay to _arrest_ people for using the word "abomination"? Surely not.
And why would a person who actually _does_ believe that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is real, etc., put in such a distancing qualifier? Surely such a person wouldn't, and shouldn't be required to.
Posted by Lydia | February 6, 2012 11:13 PM
"I like how pre-Christian paganism went from being a dark, superstition-ridden, harsh and violent culture to having a few innocent redeeming virtues that liberals will, of course in a bloodthirsty rage, stamp out."
The thing to read here is David Bentley Hart's watershed essay "Christ and Nothing."
Posted by Nice Marmot | February 7, 2012 6:48 AM
But of course it doesn't end there. There are plenty of professions from which you are dropped or in which you are sued if, in the exercise of your profession, you will not _affirm_ the homosexual lifestyle.
Yes, and as you suggest, it's easy to turn our heads and say, "Whew, I'm so glad *I'm* not a wedding photographer!"
It seems very likely that soon, there will be professions that are not open to faithful Christians, just as European Jews were barred from certain professions centuries ago. Well? Persecution is our lot, and we'll survive.
Posted by Samson J. | February 7, 2012 11:03 AM
Step2, are you suggesting that it's okay to _arrest_ people for using the word "abomination"? Surely not.
Since I gave an example of how it could be properly used, obviously not. If it is used improperly, without any qualification, then I view it as deserving immediate counterattack. Let's be perfectly clear, in the original context it was used in the Bible and for many, many centuries afterward the label of abomination applied to sexual sin was by itself justification for violence against the person or group labeled. I don't think you intend to make that point, but the fraught history of that word supersedes your personal meaning.
And why would a person who actually _does_ believe that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is real, etc., put in such a distancing qualifier?
Because if they want to make an objective, rational argument they should be willing to disclose the foundation for making their conclusion.
Posted by Step2 | February 7, 2012 3:39 PM
Step2, let me get this straight. Are you saying (a simple yes or no would be fine) that if someone says, without the sort of qualification you suggested, "Homosexual acts are an abomination" such a person should be subject to arrest? Do I understand correctly that your rationale for this position is that in the Old Testament, where that term was used, the fact that this was an abomination was given as a reason for doing harm to the person in question, so therefore in modern America or Britain using that word without the qualification you suggested should be regarded as a form of threat or direct incitement to violence? Wow.
Well, and here I had some vague notion that you were a moderate of sorts.
Posted by Lydia | February 7, 2012 4:22 PM
Are you saying (a simple yes or no would be fine) that if someone says, without the sort of qualification you suggested, "Homosexual acts are an abomination" such a person should be subject to arrest?
No they should not be arrested. That person should be argued with as soon as they express it, in public, in private, wherever. As long as it is clear that the claim is disputed, both from their personal perspective and from anyone in the public watching.
Posted by Step2 | February 7, 2012 4:30 PM
I'm gathering you'd have to rethink if so many people in society had no problem with the unqualified statement, or didn't feel as strongly against it as you do, and therefore it wasn't being challenged whenever said. In that case it wouldn't be made clear to any bystanders there might be that "the claim is disputed." Would you then push for direct legal sanctions against it?
Posted by Lydia | February 7, 2012 5:39 PM
How many times do I have to repeat that it shouldn't be illegal? Infinity +1
Posted by Step2 | February 7, 2012 6:11 PM
"Nobody should be arrested for committing "homophobia." That's a problem in itself. I don't care who it is. Saying that homosexual behavior is immoral, an abomination, wrong, unnatural, etc., none of that should ever be illegal."
"The American Family Association of Michigan, in particular, has been pointing this out and has been fighting to make any "anti-bullying" legislation passed in Michigan include no special categories, no specially protected classes, in its language. The idea there is that in that case the legislation would not, at least on its face, give sanction to administrators and teachers to bully traditional students for their views."
"The whole point of the agenda is to change the behavior of those people in their ordinary lives."
As usual we have speech confused with behavior. Writing an editorial is clearly one thing while bullying is another. No one I know of is suggesting arresting folks for expression opinions in public. Employers have broad rights as to conditions of employment. The Vedala case in Massachusetts doesn't seem so clear on closer view and the facts are unclear (did she repeatedly confront him or did he merely overhear her talking with others/was the term "deviant" used, etc.?). Consider the Hugonin case - OK, and on balance public accommodations laws still seem less harmful than the alternative.
There is a broader issue here - the adoption of the 70s emphasis on the centrality of individual "feelings" and their free expression by social conservatives. We also have a certain confusion with how one properly expresses an emotionally based aversion to this or that with freedom of association and belief. The notion that all one has to do is invoke claims of "conscience" and one becomes free to engage in all sorts of otherwise anti-social behavior is a curious one, to say the least.
The Hugonin case is on point here. As I recall the woman wishing the services of a photographer contacted Hugonin by email. All Hugonin had to do was to reply that she wasn't available and that would have been that. But no, she had to express her "feelings". Why? To what end? Being rude when one is on the wrong side of the law is not a good choice. If she was engaging in civil disobedience then one accepts the risks.
We should never lose sight of life's food chain. Emotion and passion can easily blind one to the realities. A little history might be useful here. When conservatives like Bill Buckley and James Kilpatrick wrote this,
"The central question that emerges--and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal--is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes--the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced ace. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage,"
they were constructively defending this,
http://www.philosophyblog.com.au/images/elizabeth-eckford-will-counts-19571.jpg
and when one supports organizations whose response to things like this,
"Seeking relief from bullying, Brittany transferred to Jackson Middle School. Her very first day of eighth grade, eight boys crowded around her on the bus home. "Hey, Brittany, I heard your friend Sam shot herself," one began.
"Did you see her blow her brains out?"
"Did you pull the trigger for her?"
"What did it look like?"
"Was there brain all over the wall?"
"You should do it too. You should go blow your head off,"
with,
"Minnesota Family Council president Tom Prichard blogged that Justin's suicide could only be blamed upon one thing: his gayness. "Youth who embrace homosexuality are at greater risk [of suicide], because they've embraced an unhealthy sexual identity and lifestyle," Prichard wrote,"
and
"She added that if LGBT kids weren't encouraged to come out of the closet in the first place, they wouldn't be in a position to be bullied."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202?page=4
well, draw your own conclusions.
The law requires attendance at school until a certain point in ones life. Along with that comes the obligation to provide a reasonable level of protection to those the laws requires to be there.
Posted by al | February 8, 2012 1:54 PM
Al, look, we know you don't give a damn. You've shown that again and again. Hugonin _shouldn't_ have been "on the wrong side of the law." You are a bully, Al. Your very words here show it: "Hey, I wouldn't talk like that if I were you, homophobe. You should keep your mouth shut. Remember, you're on the wrong side of the law." Again and again, where there are laws that are manifestly unjust but your ox isn't being gored and your political perspective is being forced on people, you couldn't care less. You just make menacing, bully-like noises about how people are "on the wrong side of the law."
The whole point if this article in the main post is that the "anti-bullying" statute _was applied_ to stating one's politically incorrect views on homosexuality.
If you don't like kids being bullied in school, well and good. Neither do I. But it should be stopped just as much if based on someone's wearing an uncool outfit as if based on someone's being perceived as "gay." Moreover, the constant, disgusting sexualization of the schools by sodomite advocates is hardly helpful here and has introduced to children a whole new set of concepts barely known or used in bullying when I was in school. Thanks a lot, guys.
I've gone round with you enough times to know that you are no civil libertarian. You *do not care* when people are forced to violate their consciences on this subject. You are *positively gleeful* at the prospect of homosexual "marriage" and forcing people to recognize it in the workplace and in numerous business relations.
Why should anyone at this web site care what you think about such subjects?
Posted by Lydia | February 8, 2012 2:14 PM
Step2,
"Simply that if you wish to tar liberals with actual blood libel, ironically in the comments of a post where Lydia has strongly suggested good liberals should always assume the best motives about conservatives, you might be a little paranoid and prone to reading certain conspiracy theories."
I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about here.
I can assure you that I'm not paranoid. I have a related psychosis, though: I have the delusional belief that everyone is out to get YOU. ;-)
Posted by Steve P. | February 8, 2012 2:30 PM
A couple of politically incorrect comments here in response to some of the liberal comments in this thread:
1) An enormous amount of actual bullying, to the point of constant physical violence, beatings, and threats thereof, in our public schools, is racial in nature and is black-on-white. The idea that stopping bullying in schools is chiefly about getting people more and more on-board with acceptance of sodomy as a sexual activity is risible. If educrats were really concerned about bullying, as opposed to "bullying," they would stop black-on-white violence in schools and let the chips fall where they may. They would stop the idiocy of so-called "zero-tolerance" which punishes children for defending themselves and innocent others when directly attacked and beaten. They would get a clue and kick out those who are really the trouble-makers, and brave the opinion of the world as to the results. One of the results would be what everyone whines that they want: "Safe schools." What a joke. "Safe schools" as a slogan means that a black gang of entitlement-trained ten-year-old thugs can beat the living tar out of your son's friend and _he_ gets kicked out for trying to stop them, while meanwhile teachers indoctrinate everyone on the wonderfulness of sodomite pseudo-families, thus destroying their sexual innocence while making the schools not one whit less violent.
2) It is disgustingly ironic that a liberal like Al can smirk over a comment about how people shouldn't be so inclined to "express their feelings" apropos of Christian and conservative businessmen who dare to say out loud that they do not wish to use their talents to celebrate sodomite unions. The _entirety_ of the homosexual agenda in this country is about people who want to go around "expressing their feelings," telling everyone in loud voices that they "are gay," while demanding with legal club upraised that no one treat this as a negative feature. That's what being "out of the closet" _means_. So when Al tells us that conservatives are too demanding of the right to "express their feelings," what he is really doing is ordering normal people into the closet, hiding their reasons and thoughts if they dare to have "discriminatory" motives for refusing to celebrate homosexuality in their business and other dealings, while homosexuals get to celebrate their "diversity" at the top of their voices and demand full societal acceptance. To which conservatives should unanimously reply: "The hell with that. No, we won't shut up."
Posted by Lydia | February 9, 2012 12:22 PM
"You just make menacing, bully-like noises about how people are "on the wrong side of the law.""
"You *do not care* when people are forced to violate their consciences on this subject."
Golly, sounds pretty bad when you put it like that! That is until one realizes that "violating their consciences on this subject" is code for acting out in a rude and uncivil manner. Both of your examples are folks doing just that. Just how was our store manager's "conscience" being violated? Are there any limits to this "conscience" thing? Doesn't seem like it.
I am glad to see that you have changed your mind on bullying laws in schools, however I don't think anyone has ever advocated restricting the definition of bullying to Teh Gay; certainly not moi.
Some further thoughts on bullying,
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/liberty-of-local-bullies.html
And while we are at it, just how is it "bully-like" to point out simple facts? The store has a policy and New Mexico has a law. Our manager had a choice - his job or giving into his impulses; he chose to act impulsively. Our photographer had more choices. She could have swallowed hard and accepted the commission, she could have declined gracefully by replying that her schedule was full, or she could have taken the job and expressed her feelings, er, "conscience" by behaving like a jerk whilst on the job. It was her call and she chose to break the law AND tick off the customer; you call it "conscience", I call it self-indulgent, self-destructive behavior.
(There's a simple rule in life; If one is going to break the law, don't harm or annoy folks who can drop a dime on you - one of the major sources of tips for the ATF and IRS are aggrieved significant others.)
Moving on, you have yet to flesh out this theory of "conscience". All I see is a fancy rationale for copping a 'tude whenever ones nose is out of joint. If there are no limits, that's all we have; if we have limits, what are they - when does this "conscience" claim trump other considerations?
I've found this change in our culture to be both interesting and disturbing. We really need to take a look at this creeping nihilism that began on the touchy-feely left and has been adopted by social conservatives to their own ends.
Turns out others are picking up on this,
"It felt as though Rushdie had plundered everything I hold dear and despoiled the inner sanctum of my identity. Every word was directed at me and I took everything personally. This is how, I remember thinking, it must feel to be raped."
http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/beyond-the-sacred/
Turns out Islamists also have "conscience" claims.
"People who still naively believed that the ACLU would defend social conservatives like the student in the story, against the homosexual lobby."
I could find no evidence that the ACLU was ever contacted; do you have any? When actual First Amendment issues like Brandon's arise I'll side with them but Ward is a wobbler (she should be free to run her practice as she sees fit, but her inability to set her feelings aside in a training program is bothersome) and Hugonin/Vedala is about behavior not opinion.
And I guess I need to add that no one should be arrested for expressing an opinion.
Posted by al | February 9, 2012 3:20 PM
AKA lying. There goes Al--Get back in the closet, you conservatives. Lie if necessary.
Her belief that homosexual acts are wrong and self-destructive (hence, not good for the client) was supposed to be _positively denied_ in counseling. She was asked to engage in counseling that _affirmed_ homosexual behavior. Either you don't understand that or you are being misleading. You can call a belief that it would be wrong to affirm homosexual acts a "feeling," but that's just your decision to put it that way. If someone asked you to engage in counseling in which you had to _affirm_ his belonging to the KKK, we'd see how far this notion of "feelings" fared.
A) You've already implied, without any evidence, that Vedala lied. Why should I care what you think? He said he was harassed repeatedly by the woman asserting that she was engaged and getting "married." And _you_ dare to talk about "copping a 'tude" and "being rude"? You have a heck of a nerve.
B) Yes, behavior. The "behavior" of not _hiding_, by lying if necessary, the fact that one does not do celebratory photography of lesbians kissing each other in a "commitment ceremony." What horrible, horrible "behavior."
See, Al, "behavior" in your lingo means not STAYING IN THE CLOSET if you're a conservative on sexual matters.
We've got that, now.
You could save us all time by not giving us more evidence to that effect.
Posted by Lydia | February 9, 2012 3:30 PM
With apologies to Chesterton, there are two kinds of people in this debate: those who have an orthodoxy and know it, and those who have an orthodoxy and don't know it.
The Left -- this week evidenced in the controversies on Komen/PP, Catholic doctrine/Obamacare, and 9th Circuit/gay marriage -- is in the business of enforcing conformity to an orthodoxy on human sexuality. At the same time the Left is also in the business of self-righteously promoting its commitment to the mythical open society which lacks an orthodoxy.
I could handle the clash of orthodoxies fine; its the self-righteousness that galls.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 9, 2012 3:39 PM
"You've already implied, without any evidence, that Vedala lied"
I believe I indicated that what information i found made things not so clear. For example, did she keep getting in his face or did he just overhear her talking to a series of other folks? Did he confront her with terms like "deviant" or not? I'll allow that women (straight or gay) gushing on and on and on and on and on about impending nuptials can get tiresome but civility and commonsense should prevail.
I see no problem with little white lies that spare the feelings of others; others mileage may vary (children and folks with certain autistic disorders can have a problem with this concept).
I notice that you again avoid fleshing out this "conscience" thing. Why is it so all fired important that each and every instance of Teh Gay be met with an instant denunciation? You call it "the closet", I call it tact and self-control. Maybe it's a generational thing - I was raised to think twice and understand that fighting words can have undesirable consequences.
And once again i reiterate that no one should be arrested for an opinion.
Posted by al | February 9, 2012 3:57 PM
"...is in the business of enforcing conformity to an orthodoxy on human sexuality."
If "live and let live" is an orthodoxy, so be it. The problem Paul is that you once again make the mistake of phrasing things in a way that implies a symmetry between sides that isn't reflected in actual practice.
"The Left -- this week evidenced in the controversies on Komen/PP, Catholic doctrine/Obamacare, and 9th Circuit/gay marriage -- is in the business of enforcing conformity to an orthodoxy on human sexuality."
First of all (and as I've made clear on the relevant post just south of here) the whole Komen thing is one of those manufactured controversies that the right specializes in. It's designed to gin up the culture wars in an election year and nothing more.
For that matter so is the "controversy" over the HHS ruling as twenty eight states already have variations on this ruling.
Now, in your orthodoxy, women of whatever dispensation get the "freedom" to have personal matters with significant financial implications decided by single men of a particular dispensation.
In my "orthodoxy" those women who agree with the single men have the freedom to do so while those who don't are free not to be treated like second class citizens and have their pockets picked.
In your orthodoxy it's OK to deny one class of folks with family responsibilities the full protection of our laws over things that have zero material effects on your own situation.
In my "orthodoxy", one refrains from needlessly meddling in the private lives of strangers.
I hope that restores your sense of "fineness".
Also Paul, as you are of a philosophical bent, how about taking a stab at explaining just how this whole "conscience" thing isn't anything other than a rationalization for a mean junior high schooler level of social interaction?
Posted by al | February 10, 2012 12:13 PM
Oh, yah. One "refrains from needlessly meddling in the private lives of strangers." So it's a _needful_ meddling to make contact with someone who offers wedding services, such as a photographer, and then to _sue_ or make a _formal legal complaint_ against the person if, in refusing to do your "commitment ceremony," he (or she, in the New Mexico case) says the _wrong thing_ (which Al considers "rude") about his ethical beliefs.
Yah, that's a real needful meddling.
It's also needful meddling to get someone fired if he has the gall to ask you not to keep pushily bringing up your same-sex "marriage," which he finds a controversial and offensive subject, and putting it in his face in the workplace. That's not "unnecessary meddling." No, no. Making sure everybody shuts up, on pain of job loss, about holding traditional moral views in the workplace while homosexuals can go around chattering constantly and loudly about the celebration of their sexual practices isn't meddling what-so-ever. Nor is it rude. Nor is it pushy. It's just...you know...normal and reasonable. In Al-world.
Posted by Lydia | February 10, 2012 1:09 PM
Indeed, Lydia: and there is certainly no "meddling" in an edict from DC that obliges all nation's Catholics to subsidize a practice their Church forbids.
And note the usual liberal elision. If a thing is not subsidized it is functionally forbidden. Unless Catholics, too, are coerced into conformity with liberal orthodoxy, women won't be able to get birth control.
But I suppose it's progress that he's admitting he has an orthodoxy. The next step (we can hope) would be defending it via rational discourse, which necessarily entails the recognition that we must have exterior standards by which to judge of the quality of the competing orthodoxies. Lacking those standards the judgment is rendered by force or fraud.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 10, 2012 1:50 PM
Lydia, what we had in New Mexico was the serendipity of two jerks coming together. The concept of professional behavior seems totally lost on you. Behaving professionally isn't what one does only when one is in an unstressful situation, it's how one conducts oneself in difficult ones.
On the one hand,gratuitously getting in someones face when it involves ones livelihood and one is violating the law is frankly stupid. On the other hand, asserting ones "rights" when one has suffered no actual harm and others are equally unlikely to be harmed is stupid in its own way and a waste of ones time.
"It's also needful meddling to get someone fired if he has the gall to ask you not to keep pushily bringing up your same-sex "marriage..."
You don't know that that is what actually happened. There are indications that that may not be what happened and there are indications that his "asking" may have involved some offensive language. i don't understand why you insist on naively believing assertions that are likely to be self-serving.
We have his story, I was unable to locate hers and the termination letter raises some serious questions. Unless you have more information, you have no sound basis for your position.
"Making sure everybody shuts up, on pain of job loss, about holding traditional moral views in the workplace while homosexuals can go around chattering constantly and loudly about the celebration of their sexual practices..."
My understanding after listening to his you tube video is that she referred to her fiance, qua fiance, not to their specific "sexual practices". Where did you get information to the contrary - the human mind is fascinating? Also, it seems she mentioned this finance four times in the course of the day and it isn't clear that it was solely to him. It was the end of the day and she was leaving when he had his outburst. She wasn't going to be able to mention it anymore so what was the point? And four times in the course of a day is intolerable? Really?
Further, the language he used to express his discomfort is not clear and my spidy sense after listening to him is that we are getting a sanitized version. He used the term "deviant" twice to the HR person and a coworker claimed he said that he "hated those people" so what you seem to see as a witness of his faith may well have been something else.
The rest of the claims in his video are somewhat over the top . At best we don't really know what happened.
"Because,'' said Scrooge, `"a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!''
So far all this "conscience" thing still seems to me is a lot of distemper and lack of self-control.
Posted by al | February 10, 2012 2:42 PM
Al, you're hopeless. Yep, I count it as advertising the celebration of the lesbians' sexual practices for her to refer repeatedly to her "fiance" after making it darned clear that her "fiance" is female. You, no doubt, disagree. That you shd. consider what she was doing totally uncontroversial and not in any way inconsiderate--even if she was just as you describe it bubbling on about her "upcoming nuptials--tells us all we need to know. If a Christian employee in a context with a Hindu employee went around repeatedly during the course of the day, in the presence of the Hindu, making random remarks to the effect that, "Wow, I'm so glad to know I'm going to heaven, because Jesus is the only way," he would beyond doubt be told that this was "insensitive" and that he should stop bringing up this controversial religious topic, as it might make his fellow employees who disagree feel uncomfortable. "Hostile work environment," y'know. Ain't it funny how homosexuals aren't subject to those little rules? Funny, that.
But I don't know why I even interact with you on this stuff. You won't recognize the shoving of normal people into the closet no matter how egregious it is. Unless, _maybe_ it comes up in the course of something like someone's writing an op-ed for a newspaper. Then that pushes your remaining "freedom of the press" or "freedom of speech" button, such as it is. That normal people should be told, on pain of legal repercussions or loss of livelihood, to shut up and keep their opinions a dark secret and even (as in Ward's case) to _affirm_ homosexual activities, under all manner of other ordinary life situations, is no problem atall to you.
Posted by Lydia | February 10, 2012 3:33 PM
I want to note the extraordinary implicit belittling of poor folks that is contained in the drive to mandate Catholics paying for abortifacients, and its elevation in importance to the status of women's very Health itself. That anyone, of virtually any age, can walk into any store in America and buy condoms is a whole huge fact set aside; because the Catholic imposition by not paying for them is so awful as to necessitate the monarch's edict to enforce conformity.
Maybe Al thinks no poor person can see that if you're too poor to buy 10 dollar condoms you're probably too poor to have sex. Maybe Al supposes the dimwits in the lower ranks ought to be rationed a pinch of bourbon every hour to ease their miserable existence. Al surely thinks his fellow-citizens so weak that sex without consequences should be a luxury enshrined not just at liberty but by active subsidy.
The fact is, of course, that those poor folks who embrace continence, sobriety, patience, perseverance; who wait to have sex until they get married and wait until they get married to have children -- why these folks are not poor for very long. Not infrequently they gain solid success. And their success raises their -- and our -- lot far better than any social democratic scheme of wealth transfer.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 10, 2012 3:53 PM