Scio, Scio

A Foretaste of Fascism

nobody@vox.com(Scio, Scio) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:17:56 -0700

Canada has been making a splash in conservative circles lately. The reason? They seem to be systematically destroying the right to freedom of expression up there.

First came the news of Mark Steyn, author of the book America Alone, of which I have blogged. An excerpt from this book was published in the Canadian magazine Maclean's some time ago, making essentially the same point as the book: that demographic trends in the West are pointing towards an imminent Muslim majority and the traditional European cultures may be forced to accomodate radical Muslims.

Wouldn't you know it, a Muslim group was offended by this.

So Steyn was hauled before what I can only classify as the corporeal embodiment of a liberal wet dream: a government sponsored Human Rights Tribunal. This body, while not possessing the actual faculties of a court of law, is authorized to arbitrate complaints of discrimination and "hate." With that authority comes the power to fine "offenders" and award damages to "victims."

Well, I'm not here to write about Muslim relations today, because these Canadians look to be setting up an attack on Christianity itself.

NEWS: Canada Orders Pastor to Renounce His Faith
Catholic Exchange
Pete Vere
June 9, 2008
In a decision that foreshadows the possible fate of Fr. Alphonse de Valk, Canada's leading pro-life voice among Catholic clergy, the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal has forbidden evangelical pastor Stephen Boisson from expressing his moral opposition to homosexuality. The tribunal also ordered Boisson to pay $5,000 "damages for pain and suffering" and apologize to the "human rights" activist who filed the complaint.

You'll forgive the obvious bias of the writer, as this is a Catholic publication. Let's continue:

The complaint stems from Canada's debate leading up to state legislation recognizing so-called same-sex marriage. In 2002, the pastor wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper in which he denounced the homosexual agenda as "wicked" and stated that: "Children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights."

The activist subsequently filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission -- a quasi-judicial body that investigates alleged discrimination within the Canadian province. The government tribunal published its decision on May 30.

Interesting. That's pretty standard stuff here in America.

While agreeing that Boisson's letter was not a criminal act, the government tribunal nevertheless ordered the Christian pastor to "cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals." Moreover, the tribunal's decision "prohibited [Boisson] from making disparaging remarks in the future" about the activist who filed the complaint and witnesses who supported the complaint. Many of Canada's religious leaders and civil libertarians have expressed concern that the government's human rights tribunals are interpreting any criticism of homosexual activism as 'disparaging'.

Not criminal? Then why all the hubbub, bub? Why muzzle a religious figure?

The tribunal also ordered Boisson to provide the complainant with a written apology for his letter to the editor. This last requirement threatens civil liberties in Canada, said Ezra Levant, a Jewish-Canadian author and lawyer. Levant, himself the target of an Alberta Human Rights Commission investigation, is facing the possibility the state may order him to apologize as well.

Never mind the $5,000 he was ordered to pay, they are going to force him to apologize as well? So...

"Ed Stelmach's 'conservative' government now believes that if it can't convince a Christian pastor that he's wrong, it will just order him to condemn himself?" Levant wrote on his blog. "Other than tribunals in Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China, where is this Orwellian 'order' considered to be justice?"

"This is like a Third World jail-house confession -- where accused criminals are forced to sign false statements of guilt," Levant wrote. "We don't even 'order' murderers to apologize to their victims' families. Because we know that a forced apology is meaningless. But not if your point is to degrade Christian pastors."

Welcome to the liberal end game. This is what they want, this is why divisions run so deep. A liberal used to be someone who challenged conventions without undermining the foundations of good government. Our Founding Fathers were all liberals of a sort. But today's liberal is more Mussolini than Madison.

In essence, the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal is ordering to the minister to renounce his Christian faith, since his opposition to homosexuality is based upon the Judeo-Christian Bible. The case against Pastor Boisson has been watched closely by practicing Catholics in the country, especially as news spreads about the current Canadian Human Rights Commission investigation into Fr. de Valk reported on in this space last Wednesday. The Basilian priest and publisher of Catholic Insight magazine stands accused of promoting "extreme hatred and contempt" against homosexuals for having publicly defended the Church's traditional definition of marriage. Some of the allegedly hateful statements are quotations from the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Fr. de Valk told Catholic Exchange.

Now, it's personal.

Although Catholic moral teaching is generally more nuanced in its criticism of homosexuality, evangelicals and fundamentalist Protestants often appear to be used as test cases for the government commissions before targeting Catholics. Thus many Catholics fear the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal will attempt to use the Boisson case to muzzle Fr. de Valk from expressing the Church's traditional moral teaching, delivering a further blow to religious liberty and freedom of conscience in Canada.

See, the real threat to these fascist dregs is a strong faith, grounded in reason. Evangelicals are, I'm sorry to say, all too often hampered by their own zeal. They emphasize the emotional relationship aspect of the faith, and allow that to color their interactions with a hostile world.

But here's the deal folks. They come after the Church, first. Then they come after the people who don't vote their way. Then they come after their own people. That's how it worked all through the 20th century, and it seems that Canada is continuing the trend..

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News & Politics QotW: The Taxman

nobody@vox.com(Scio, Scio) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:06:07 -0700

As the April 15th tax filing deadline looms, many gay couples are facing higher tax bills because they do not get the federal tax benefits that accompany marriage. The same is true for heterosexual couples who chose not to get married. Do you think this is fair?

Of course it's fair. Marriage is a child-bearing union of two people who commit to raise up more little taxpayers. Or, from another perspective, it is a sacramental union of two souls before God, geared towards the production of more lives. The government has a vested interest in promoting stable taxpaying individuals, and is well within its rights to offer tax benefits to married people. God has a vested interest in the human race, and for whatever reason has decided we are worth the effort to love.
In the case of gay couples there is no moral or biological ability to be married as both participants are the same sex. This is just a fundamental concept here, but marriage produces children and homosexuals cannot reproduce unless they perform extreme measures to do so. Marriage, true marriage, is closed to them. Imitations can and have been made, but they lack the essential aspects of true marriage.
In the case of unwed couples, there is no real commitment to hold them together should things get tough. Bill wants to continue playing guitar at college parties, Jane wants to settle down. Poof, the relationship is over. Any kids get shuttled between the parents, or not, and grow up completely unaware of the benefits of a traditional family system. This not only damages children, causing increased juvenile delinquency and increasing the likelihood that they never have a successful marriage, but it also damages the two adults. Bitter feelings are the norm, and that is never good. The good news is that if they live together long enough they become common-law spouses. Why is that? Because the state recognizes that marriage is between a man, a woman, and God...perhaps? I don't know the tax benefits of being a common-law spouse, but all you people living together better watch out!
Homosexuals and unwed couples should not be afforded the benefits of marriage, because marriage is more than just a legal status. It's a moral action, a lifelong commitment. It's more than the state can offer us, and people lose sight of that.
From a practical standpoint, if the benefits of marriage were available to basically anybody regardless of their marital status they would simply lower the tax benefits of marriage. Get real, folks.

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Liberals Are Rational and Compassionate.

nobody@vox.com(Scio, Scio) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:30:22 -0800

Scio's Comments in red.

Bush Death Watch: Countdown!

It's official: Less than one year until history slaps Dubya to the curb. Can you feel the tingle?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, November 16, 2007
It's just that kind of feeling, that sense of hesitant, embryonic optimism, the sense that says, oh my God, we as a culture and a smash-mouthed, war-hammered society really are fast approaching something possibly, potentially, heart-achingly new and different and — because it cannot get any worse — just a little bit better.
Here is my suggestion: Mark your calendars, set your watch, program a celebratory ringtone well in advance, because the countdown has officially begun.
It is now less than one calendar year until the next presidential election. It is less than one year until the country finally takes a deep breath and flexes its atrophied muscles and opens its bloody, Cheney-punched (so that's what we're talking about?) mouth and lets it be known to the world, to the universe, to its own numb and dejected soul just exactly how unwell it has felt, how much pain has raked its heart (slightly overblown, I think), lo, these past seven (eight, by then) years, by ushering in an entirely new political era, as we all exhale a massive sigh of long overdue relief that — praise Jesus, Allah, Buddha and the devil all at once — the long national nightmare of George W. Bush is finally over (One man responsible for all the nation's ills...check).
It is now safe to imagine. It is now becoming increasingly easy to actually dare to think that, in less than one year's time, Dubya will begin packing his bags, jamming into his Spongebob duffel (cheap) his map of the world coloring book (tired), English-to-English translation dictionaries (so 1999), mangled pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution (trite), Bibleman action figure set and a "Mission Accomplished!" sweatshirt, and heading off to face his destiny as one of the bleakest, most morally repellent chapters (from a radical Muslim perspective, perhaps) in all of American history.
You think maybe it's too soon? Too early to let the tingle of positivism and hope take hold? Far from it. After all, the signs of decay and utter GOP desperation keep pouring in. For example, it has now been officially recorded in history what everyone already knows: Bush is nearly exactly as unpopular as Richard Nixon was at his lowest point, and no president in history has had as long a streak at the bottom of the job-approval rankings as Dubya (polls are nearly as reliable as a liberal's commitment to strict constructivism). Heckuva job, Bushie!
What's more, the glorious collapse of the evangelical Christian right marches on apace, as Pat Robertson, now a dejected, lonely widower after the death of secret boy-toy husband Jerry Falwell (see what I mean by compassionate? Where's the respect for an opponent that is necessary to political discourse in this country?), has officially endorsed pro-choice, pro-gay, thrice-married, massively unbalanced moral pit bull Rudy Giuliani for president, which is a bit like a militant vegan endorsing Hot Dog on a Stick for the title of Lord of the Food Court (have to say that I think Pat did make a mistake on this one. Better to endorse your values and then admit you have to compromise rather than compromise from the get go...plausible deniability?). Desperate times indeed.
But wait, it gets better. While it's easy to focus on Shrub and Cheney and to gleefully, achingly imagine their dreary march out of office on that happy day (stop it! grossly overwrought.), it is also vital and heartwarming to note that this time next year will also mark the demise of an entire army of toxic leaders, federal department heads, gay-bashing (ah ha.) appointees and misogynist directors of every stripe and scandal and spittle, a simply huge array of right-wing Bushies who are still entrenched in all manner of powerful federal bureaus and organizations and policy-making bodies.
It's true. Despite how a huge hunk of hideous GOP policymakers lost their seats (not quite 1994) during the last congressional election, plenty more appointees are still around to poison the well. From Kevin Martin, the lackey who oversees the FCC, to noxious Idahoan and rabid anti-environmentalist (so this is a hate crime too I guess) Dick Kempthorne of the Department of the Interior, to anti-choice Republican Mormon knucklehead charity scammer and Department of Health and Human Services overseer Mike Leavitt, and on and on — in a year, all on their way out.
Oh, and one more deserves special attention. Because one year from now will also be the glorious political end of one Dr. David W. Hager, the rabid evangelical Christian gynecologist (I know, so wrong) who currently advises the FDA on women's health issues and who was largely responsible for delaying the approval of Plan B (yay), opposed RU-486 (good), is in fact against all contraception (me too), stem-cell research (probably only embryonic, jerk. You know, the kind that doesn't work? Adult stem cell research is fine, and has shown results.), premarital sex (bad for you, really it is.), and (quite naturally) women's choice (Like the choice to sleep around and deal with the "natural" consequences), and whose own ex-wife claims he anally raped her, over and over again, in her sleep (the obvious question is, if she was asleep at the time how does she know it wasn't just hemorrhoids?.
Intelligent women nationwide still shudder that this man is allowed anywhere near a living vagina, much less permitted to touch and probe and offer advice. But there is one noteworthy aspect to Hager; he is the perfect incarnation of the Christian right's view of women (sure, just like Hillary Clinton is the right's view of the Antichrist...not so) as subordinate, lesser-intelligent sluts who cannot control their own bodies and therefore need men (husbands), God (yes), and the government (not if you're a conservative...then you want the government to protect the right to worship and nothing else) to do it for them. Hager is a deep shame to the male gender, and his return to the private practice of ruining the sex lives of unfortunate women in Kentucky cannot come soon enough.
But why write this column now, so far in advance of Bush's limp-tailed departure? Simple enough: Because it will take a full year to get ready.
It will take every month and every week and every single day from the moment you read this until November 2008 to compile, to gather, to list all the names and all the horrors and all the deeply entrenched policies that are still clawing at the face of America (evocative.) as a result of Bush's reign (Oh, yeah, I forgot he was an Imperial President), to fully get your mind around just how deep is the disease and how widely it has spread, so we may begin to excise the policies one by one like the malignant tumors they so very much are.
What, too strong? Not even close. Go read up on Hager, and get back to me.
Ah, but perhaps you are one of the jaded ones, the non-believers, that certain type of political bitterball who says, oh please, what does it matter, they're all criminals and cretins and powermongers anyway, no matter which party or president they work for? Get rid of BushCo and a new slew of cronies and cretins take their place, and who can tell the difference? (What if you're one of the political bitterballs who don't live in San Francisco?)
To which I say, well, yes. But also, no. Sure, the system is corrupt and lopsided and full of backstabbing and backslapping and backroom deal-making. So what? Has been since the first cavemen voted to see who gets to run the mammoth hunt (at least he's right about this).
Truth is, it's just far too easy to let the ennui wash over and not give a damn, to lump all politics into a phlegmball of nasty negativity and be done with it, thus entirely disregarding the efficacious issues, the things that truly effect change and affect lives and improve or degrade the health of the planet. Outrage fatigue is simply unacceptable. Intellectual apathy is the refuge of the lazy and the spiritually malnourished. Do not let it happen to you (by all means, please let it happen to this man's readers.).
Now is the time. The coming year will slide by rather quickly and the feeling of urgent change and upheaval will only build and it doesn't really matter if it's Hillary or Obama or Edwards leading the shift (it does, but do we expect him to make sense at this point?), because no matter who gets the nod, they will require — from me, from you, from anyone who professes to care — a roiling tidal wave of progressive momentum behind them to help them cleanse and haul away the overwhelming mountain of moral fecal matter (let's not talk about morals, San Francisco.) Bush has left behind.
Mark your calendar. Set your ringtone. Take a deep breath, feel the wave build, and then dive the hell in. Right now, it's the only option that really matters.
Golly day. I can not fathom how much these people hate George Bush. One of the great things about the Republic is that if you don't like who is in power you just have to wait them out. These people act like Bush has voted himself Dictator for Life. For six years it's been nothing but criticism, insults and gloomy forecasts for his place in history. Truth be told, he hasn't done that bad a job. Look at men like Buchanan and Pierce, who were unable or unwilling to do anything to avert the coming Civil War. Bush can't be faulted for doing something in the face of the first great conflict of our century: that of radical Islam. Better to try, make mistakes rather than sit back and do nothing, and be remembered for that.
It will be nice to finally stop hearing about how awful President Bush is, though. Of course, I expect them to miss nary a beat and move on to blaming all the next administrations problems on the previous. Kind of like Republicans do with Clinton.

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Get Ready to Laugh

nobody@vox.com(Scio, Scio) — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:46:33 -0700

SEVENTEEN WAYS TO BE A GOOD LIBERAL (with Scio's comments in purple)

1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on
demand. Consistency is important. Capital punishment should be used judiciously, when there are no better options. Also, the dignity of the human person must be maintained at all times. But the same dignity should be shown to children in utero.

2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments
create prosperity.

3. You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are
more of a threat than nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Iran, China
and North Korea.

4. You have to believe that there was no art before federal funding.

5. You have to believe that global temperatures are less affected by
cyclical changes in the earth's climate and more affected by soccer moms
driving SUVs. I have made the point many times that our footprint on this planet is much smaller than our hubris likes to admit.

7. You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal
funding.

8. You have to believe that the same teacher who can't teach 4th-graders how
to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex. Yes! Nobody ever quite makes this connection.

9. You have to believe that hunters don't care about nature, but PETA
activists do.

10. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually
doing something to earn it. I have strong feelings about this one. I have always thought that people gave me too much praise for doing things that weren't overly exceptional. Being a polite and well-mannered person (in public) shouldn't be exceptional, it should be expected.

11. You have to believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of
the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts
of the Constitution.

12. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.

13. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more
important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, or
Abraham Lincoln.

14. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial
quotas and set-asides are not.

15. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn't worked
anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge. This is probably true. The only way that Socialism might work is in small groups with no cohesive identity beyond the village level. When Hilldawg said it takes a village, she was setting a threshold for maximum occupancy in a socialist system.

16. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag queens and
transvestites should be constitutionally protected, and manger scenes at
Christmas should be illegal. Game, set, match. The solution to this problem is that nobody does anything with public funds, licensing, or facilities whatsoever. No parades, no art, no manger scenes, no music, no debates, no county fairs. I'm willing to tolerate (not condone, mind you) public homosexual lechery if their hounds at the ACLU will let me set up an Infant Jesus by city hall in my primarily Christian town.

17. You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right-wing
conspiracy.

Are you laughing yet?

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A Liberal Democrat's Perspective on Same-Sex Marriage

nobody@vox.com(Scio, Scio) — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:59:04 -0700

Defining Marriage Down . . .
is no way to save it.
by David Blankenhorn
04/02/2007, Volume 012, Issue 28
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/451noxve.asp

Does permitting same-sex marriage weaken marriage as a social institution? Or does extending to gay and lesbian couples the right to marry have little or no effect on marriage overall? Scholars and commentators have expended much effort trying in vain to wring proof of causation from the data--all the while ignoring the meaning of some simple correlations that the numbers do indubitably show.

Much of the disagreement among scholars centers on how to interpret trends in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Stanley Kurtz has argued, in this magazine and elsewhere, that the adoption of gay marriage or same-sex civil unions in those countries has significantly weakened customary marriage, already eroded by easy divorce and stigma-free cohabitation.

William Eskridge, a Yale Law School professor, and Darren R. Spedale, an attorney, beg to differ. In Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse?, a book-length reply to Kurtz, they insist that Kurtz does not prove that gay marriage is causing anything in those nations; that Nordic marriage overall appears to be healthier than Kurtz allows; and that even if marriage is declining in that part of the world, "the question remains whether that phenomenon is a lamentable development."

Eskridge and Spedale want it both ways. For them, there is no proof that marriage has weakened, but if there were it wouldn't be a problem. For people who care about marriage, this perspective inspires no confidence. Eskridge and Spedale do score one important point, however. Neither Kurtz nor anyone else can scientifically prove that allowing gay marriage causes the institution of marriage to get weaker. Correlation does not imply causation. The relation between two correlated phenomena may be causal, or it may be random, or it may reflect some deeper cause producing both. Even if you could show that every last person in North Carolina eats barbecue, you would not have established that eating barbecue is a result of taking up residence in North Carolina.

When it comes to the health of marriage as an institution and the legal status of same-sex unions, there is much to be gained from giving up the search for causation and studying some recurring patterns in the data, as I did for my book The Future of Marriage. It turns out that certain clusters of beliefs about and attitudes toward marriage consistently correlate with certain institutional arrangements. The correlations crop up in a large number of countries and recur in data drawn from different surveys of opinion.

Take the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), a collaborative effort of universities in over 40 countries. It interviewed about 50,000 adults in 35 countries in 2002. What is useful for our purposes is that respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with six statements that directly relate to marriage as an institution:

1. Married people are generally happier than unmarried people.

2. People who want children ought to get married.

3. One parent can bring up a child as well as two parents together.

4. It is all right for a couple to live together without intending to get married.

5. Divorce is usually the best solution when a couple can't seem to work out their marriage problems.

6. The main purpose of marriage these days is to have children.

Let's stipulate that for statements one, two, and six, an "agree" answer indicates support for traditional marriage as an authoritative institution. Similarly, for statements three, four, and five, let's stipulate that agreement indicates a lack of support, or less support, for traditional marriage.

Then divide the countries surveyed into four categories: those that permit same-sex marriage; those that permit same-sex civil unions (but not same-sex marriage); those in which some regions permit same-sex marriage; and those that do not legally recognize same-sex unions.

The correlations are strong. Support for marriage is by far the weakest in countries with same-sex marriage. The countries with marriage-like civil unions show significantly more support for marriage. The two countries with only regional recognition of gay marriage (Australia and the United States) do better still on these support-for-marriage measurements, and those without either gay marriage or marriage-like civil unions do best of all.

In some instances, the differences are quite large. For example, people in nations with gay marriage are less than half as likely as people in nations without gay unions to say that married people are happier. Perhaps most important, they are significantly less likely to say that people who want children ought to get married (38 percent vs. 60 percent). They are also significantly more likely to say that cohabiting without intending to marry is all right (83 percent vs. 50 percent), and are somewhat more likely to say that divorce is usually the best solution to marital problems. Respondents in the countries with gay marriage are significantly more likely than those in Australia and the United States to say that divorce is usually the best solution.

A similar exercise using data from a different survey yields similar results. The World Values Survey, based in Stockholm, Sweden, periodically interviews nationally representative samples of the publics of some 80 countries on six continents--over 100,000 people in all--on a range of issues. It contains three statements directly related to marriage as an institution:

1. A child needs a home with both a father and a mother to grow up happily.

2. It is all right for a woman to want a child but not a stable relationship with a man.

3. Marriage is an outdated institution.

Again grouping the countries according to the legal status of same-sex unions, the data from the 1999-2001 wave of interviews yield a clear pattern. Support for marriage as an institution is weakest in those countries with same-sex marriage. Countries with same-sex civil unions show more support, and countries with regional recognition show still more. By significant margins, support for marriage is highest in countries that extend no legal recognition to same-sex unions.

So what of it? Granted that these correlations may or may not reflect causation, what exactly can be said about the fact that certain values and attitudes and legal arrangements tend to cluster?

Here's an analogy. Find some teenagers who smoke, and you can confidently predict that they are more likely to drink than their nonsmoking peers. Why? Because teen smoking and drinking tend to hang together. What's more, teens who engage in either of these activities are also more likely than nonsmokers or nondrinkers to engage in other risky behaviors, such as skipping school, getting insufficient sleep, and forming friendships with peers who get into trouble.

Because these behaviors correlate and tend to reinforce one another, it is virtually impossible for the researcher to pull out any one from the cluster and determine that it alone is causing or is likely to cause some personal or (even harder to measure) social result. All that can be said for sure is that these things go together. To the degree possible, parents hope that their children can avoid all of them, the entire syndrome--drinking, smoking, skipping school, missing sleep, and making friends with other children who get into trouble--in part because each of them increases exposure to the others.

It's the same with marriage. Certain trends in values and attitudes tend to cluster with each other and with certain trends in behavior. A rise in unwed childbearing goes hand in hand with a weakening of the belief that people who want to have children should get married. High divorce rates are encountered where the belief in marital permanence is low. More one-parent homes are found where the belief that children need both a father and a mother is weaker. A rise in nonmarital cohabitation is linked at least partly to the belief that marriage as an institution is outmoded. The legal endorsement of gay marriage occurs where the belief prevails that marriage itself should be redefined as a private personal relationship. And all of these marriage-weakening attitudes and behaviors are linked. Around the world, the surveys show, these things go together.

Eskridge and Spedale are right. We cannot demonstrate statistically what exactly causes what, or what is likely to have what consequences in the future. But we do see in country after country that these phenomena form a pattern that recurs. They are mutually reinforcing. Socially, an advance for any of them is likely to be an advance for all of them. An individual who tends to accept any one or two of them probably accepts the others as well. And as a political and strategic matter, anyone who is fighting for any one of them should--almost certainly already does--support all of them, since a victory for any of them clearly coincides with the advance of the others. Which is why, for example, people who have devoted much of their professional lives to attacking marriage as an institution almost always favor gay marriage. These things do go together.

Inevitably, the pattern discernible in the statistics is borne out in the statements of the activists. Many of those who most vigorously champion same-sex marriage say that they do so precisely in the hope of dethroning once and for all the traditional "conjugal institution."

That phrase comes from Judith Stacey, professor of sociology at New York University and a major expert witness testifying in courts and elsewhere for gay marriage. She views the fight for same-sex marriage as the "vanguard site" for rebuilding family forms. The author of journal articles like "Good Riddance to 'The Family,'" she argues forthrightly that "if we begin to value the meaning and quality of intimate bonds over their customary forms, there are few limits to the kinds of marriage and kinship patterns people might wish to devise."

Similarly, David L. Chambers, a law professor at the University of Michigan widely published on family issues, favors gay marriage for itself but also because it would likely "make society receptive to the further evolution of the law." What kind of evolution? He writes, "If the deeply entrenched paradigm we are challenging is the romantically linked man-woman couple, we should respect the similar claims made against the hegemony of the two-person unit and against the romantic foundations of marriage."

Examples could be multiplied--the recently deceased Ellen Willis, professor of journalism at NYU and head of its Center for Cultural Reporting and Criticism, expressed the hope that gay marriage would "introduce an implicit revolt against the institution into its very heart, further promoting the democratization and secularization of personal and sexual life"--but they can only illustrate the point already established by the large-scale international comparisons: Empirically speaking, gay marriage goes along with the erosion, not the shoring up, of the institution of marriage.

These facts have two implications. First, to the degree that it makes any sense to oppose gay marriage, it makes sense only if one also opposes with equal clarity and intensity the other main trends pushing our society toward postinstitutional marriage. After all, the big idea is not to stop gay marriage. The big idea is to stop the erosion of society's most pro-child institution. Gay marriage is only one facet of the larger threat to the institution.

Similarly, it's time to recognize that the beliefs about marriage that correlate with the push for gay marriage do not exist in splendid isolation, unrelated to marriage's overall institutional prospects. Nor do those values have anything to do with strengthening the institution, notwithstanding the much-publicized but undocumented claims to the contrary from those making the "conservative case" for gay marriage.

Instead, the deep logic of same-sex marriage is clearly consistent with what scholars call deinstitutionalization--the overturning or weakening of all of the customary forms of marriage, and the dramatic shrinking of marriage's public meaning and institutional authority. Does deinstitutionalization necessarily require gay marriage? Apparently not. For decades heterosexuals have been doing a fine job on that front all by themselves. But gay marriage clearly presupposes and reinforces deinstitutionalization.

By itself, the "conservative case" for gay marriage might be attractive. It would be gratifying to extend the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples--if gay marriage and marriage renewal somehow fit together. But they do not. As individuals and as a society, we can strive to maintain and strengthen marriage as a primary social institution and society's best welfare plan for children (some would say for men and women too). Or we can strive to implement same-sex marriage. But unless we are prepared to tear down with one hand what we are building up with the other, we cannot do both.

David Blankenhorn is president of the New York-based Institute for American Values and the author of The Future of Marriage (Encounter Books).

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Damn the Senate!

nobody@vox.com(Scio, Scio) — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:51:01 -0700

Senatus dementis est.

I mean really. You count on these people to be deliberate and somewhat aloof from the whims of the populace. The House should be where this really populist legislation flares up and fizzles out once Heroes comes on or the clock strikes 4:20. But no, it would appear that we have a sufficient number of pandering oldsters in this august body to allow for a completely stupid piece of legislation to pass.
So they want our troops out by March 2008? Wonderful! Now the terrorists have a goal to meet and can finally update their planners:
March 2008 -- Celebrate American withdrawal. Fire AK-47. Lunch with Kasim. Makeovers!!!!
The only consolation is that the "November Mandate" doesn't give them enough votes to overturn a veto.
So, what have the Democrats gained here? Will their base finally shut up? Can their barely attained plurality possibly translate into anything but deadlock on all but the safest of legislation?
Or will the Republicans vote against the Kitten-Puppy Eye Gouging Regulation Act? It would be politically unpopular, but the last thing any thinking person wants is Big Government in their animal torture. Over Mr. Snuffles's dead body, Pelosi.

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Absolute Truth

nobody@vox.com(Scio, Scio) — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 15:16:55 -0800

I committed one of the classic blunders today. I got into a protracted theological discussion with a coworker.

Now, it should be known that I am a practicing Catholic. This means that I hold certain views that are radically counter cultural. My beliefs about homosexuality, premarital sex, birth control, the sanctity of marriage, Christian unity, and obedience to the Church are wildly out of step with most thinking people of my generation. I believe the prevailing notion is that I am entitled to my beliefs, but I must be tolerant of those who don't believe as I do. Even among those who approach the same ends there is a great difference in some cases. Sure, a person may believe that homosexuality is wrong, with which I agree, but he might couch it in hateful terms (God Hates Fags, etc.) which authentic Christian teaching abhors. No, it is a Christian's duty to charitably correct when necessary.

The coworker I spoke with is of the generation known as X. A self described hippie, she didn't accept the idea that there could possibly be absolute truth.

We were discussing homosexuality, and I was attempting to argue the wrongness of it from a Christian standpoint. This is incredibly difficult to do in these days without being labelled a bigot. But the problem with most of the people born after the 1970s is that we have been presented with this vision of the world in which everything is ok as long as it doesn't hurt somebody else. What's right for one may not be right for some, and all that garbage. This philosophy of relativism, which my pope addressed when he was still a cardinal, has had subtle and damaging effects. My coworker was completely unable to relate to my points, because to her mind it was perfectly alright for me to believe what I believe and for another person to believe what they did.

I realized this after about twenty minutes, and turned the discussion to relativism and the necessity of absolute truth. She replied, "There is no absolute truth."

Gotcha. I informed her that she had just entered into a logical paradox, for she had claimed, absolutely, there to be no absolute truth. This point seemed to give her momentary pause, but unfortunately her commitment to debate did not survive. Or perhaps she was bored. I sometimes think that I am a tedious speaker.

The point I'm trying to make is that absolute truth has to exist, and if we understand that then it follows that one belief will be right and another wrong. In my more pessimistic moments, I tend to think that people embrace this relativism because it absolves them of any responsibility for putting extra effort into their own lives.

I learned long ago that tolerance is not a virtue. In essence, it is the moral equivalent of a lazy parent who will not discipline their children. You know the type: Junior knocks over a display in the grocery store and calls Grandma a fatso. Mom or Dad may offer a few words of correction, but don't go so far as to tell the child he is wrong. And of course he isn't punished. Should someone outside the nuclear family admonish the child, he is immediately branded an interloper who has no business correcting someone else's child. You follow me, I'm sure. Many people who are Christians are caught up in the relativism of our times. The most obvious example of this is when someone will focus only on God as a loving Father who never rejects anybody. This is true, but Catholics understand that it is humanity which rejects God, not the other way around. The God of Love is also a God of Justice. Just as a good parent will set ground rules for their child, so has a loving God provided us with a framework of morals in which to work.

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