What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

About

What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Look into your crystal ball

Perhaps I just don't read enough web sites or the right web sites, but I have seen less chatter about this explosive recent federal court decision than I might have expected. I didn't even see the news linked from Drudge! I found out about it when I was driving and flipped on a very conservative talk radio show on a fundamentalist Protestant station.

A federal judge has ruled that Kentucky must recognize out-of-state same-sex "marriages," thus striking down a portion of the state's same-sex marriage "ban" passed by the voters. The state may appeal but hasn't even said yet if it will appeal. This comes close to home for me, not because I live in Kentucky, but because my state of Michigan has a similar ban, passed by the voters as a voter initiative and made part of the state constitution.

So much, by the way, for the declaration that a federal marriage amendment is not needed. The activist judges are never finished, so yes, it's needed.

Let me note, too, to those reactionaries who attribute our woes to the evils of democracy: Nowhere has this analysis been more clearly erroneous than in the history of homosexual "marriage" in the U.S. (As if Roe v. Wade weren't a clear enough counterexample.) Not invariably, but for the most part and repeatedly, this agenda has been moved forward by liberals in a hurry who get the courts--state or federal--to force their agenda onto a reluctant or opposed electorate.

Finally, my own crystal ball is broken on this one. This was "just" one federal judge trying to force the issue of cross-state recognition of homosexual "marriage." Will the state appeal? Will his ruling be upheld or overturned at the higher federal levels? What do readers think?

Comments (66)

Al Mohler addressed it a few days ago in an evocative post. In my words, he sees it a domino falling from the Supreme Court strike-down of DOMA, with, all other things being equal, nationwide institutionalization of same-sex marriage being inevitable and soon. Again, I emphasize that this was my take on what he said. I see it the same way. There is nothing on the horizon to stop it. Only God can deliver us.

I agree with Mike Gantt. Things are coming apart at an accelerating rate. A Federal judge just did the same thing in Virginia.

The Virginia ruling was different, if I heard correctly (I haven't followed up to look at the orders, I've been swamped at the office). The Virginia court struck down, I believe, the law prohibiting persons of the same sex from entering marriages in Virginia.

This ruling in Kentucky is different. This is about full faith and credit. Well, at least, I would expect it to be. The news article---and news articles about legal decisions are generally terrible---mentions equal protection. Here we have the question of whether or not State A must recognize a marriage contracted pursuant to the laws of State B.

I don't think the equal-protection clause will work on this angle, although it might help. Normally those questions are handled under the full-faith-and-credit clause. DOMA immunizes states from having to recognize out-of-state unions under the FFC (although some claimed that the statute actually violates it; I think that doesn't hold water because the FFC itself allows Congress to limit its application). That part of DOMA wasn't at issue in the cases from last year, so if the District Court is acting like it's not valid, it needs to have its head screwed back on straight.

In general though, district courts appear to be taking the prior SCOTUS rulings as marching orders to zap any marriage law they can lay hands on. I don't think the rulings actually require that result. There's no way this is going to stay in the lower courts, though. We'll have another SCOTUS ruling on it within a year or so. How that will turn out depends on how much Tony Kennedy's ego needs stroking that month.

Titus,

Thanks for that update. Further complicating the picture is this legislation being proposed by Senators Cruz and Lee:

http://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=926

That's not a particularly illuminating press release there, Senator. Reid will never bring that up for a vote, not when the alphabet-soup lobby has the wind at its back in the federal courts.

I think Titus is right: the SCOTUS ruling was explicitly about one section of DOMA, and did not touch the other sections of DOMA.

That said, it was almost inevitable that this should come up, once the DOMA ruling was issued. You have the incredibly outrageous situation where 2 people who cannot be married in Kentucky can both travel to MD and "get married" there, and then return to KY, and then KY has to decide whether to "recognize" or "not recognize" the so-called marriage. What the DOMA ruling inevitably caused was that KY will have to "recognize" the marriage for those things that hinge directly on FEDERAL recognition of marriage, and then not recognize the "marriage" for anything else. Which is a terrible hodge-podge. Just for example, state law controls contract law and regulates insurance companies, but then the state would have to interpret contract law differently for a case that touches on health insurance insofar as that health insurance touches the couple, or differently on pension contracts because joint and survivor pension rules are at the federal level not state level. Given how convoluted it all would get in a very short time with trying to have KY say the couple is not married for x,y, and z purposes, but is "married" for a,b, and c purposes, is guaranteed to get you law suits saying it is unjust.

This issue plays up something I said recently on another thread: states should NEVER have had the right to establish marriages for parties that are not citizens of that state. It would be utterly unconscionable that MD can "marry" 2 people who are citizens of KY who cannot get married in KY (for non-discriminatory reasons, by the way, such as being first cousins) and then when they return home force KY to recognize the marriage by reason of FFC. That would be a really terrible application of FFC. And if FFC should not be applied in that situation, I see no reason why it should apply here with gays.

Interestingly, I doubt that the district court ruling will hold up, given that there are states already have laws that explicitly take note that other states may allow first cousins to marry and STILL don't recognize those marriages for their own residents - apparently (so far as I know, which is close to zilch) without a federal court overturning the law.

I'm a little unnerved by the fact that the gov. of KY didn't immediately say the state will appeal. Certainly this shouldn't just be left to stand by inertia. Is there any chance KY won't even bother to appeal?

Tony, is it your impression that the judge ruled that KY must recognize the out-of-state "marriages" only in some sense "for purposes relevant to" federal law? My impression was that he ruled that they must recognize them in their own state law tout court.

Lydia, I agree with you. The judge was ruling that KY must recognize the "marriage" for ALL KY purposes. (Or so it appears.) What I was saying is merely that the screwy DOMA decision set the stage for this by forcing all of the states to consider (and be frightened by) the ridiculously complex prospect of trying to come up with a regime of KY recognizing the "marriage for some state purposes and not for other purposes in order to comply with the SC DOMA decision. Spend a few weeks thinking about that scenario, and it becomes much, much easier to argue that it is just an across-the-board requirement.

Not that this judge was (apparently) trying to apply FFC or (directly) the SC DOMA decision anyway. He seems to think that the state constitution violates the 14th in its own right, even apart from any FFC obligation.

I would like to point out (again) another facet of this:

Gregory Bourke and Michael De Leon of Louisville, who have been together for 31 years. They were married in Ontario, Canada, in 2004 and have a 14-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son.

They "had" these children in a non-legal non-marriage for several years before their situation was called a "marriage" by Canada. However this happened, it SHOULD have been stopped at the state level before that. The two had to have gone before a state board, office, tribunal, or judge somewhere along the line to get custody of the kids. No state should have granted these two people that kind of custody of the kids. Either the kids were the product of "natural" but non-married sexual liaisons, in which the children were ripped from their natural parent (at least one, if not both), or they were test tube / surrogate mother commodities, or they given up for adoption and were placed with a (non-married) sexually involved couple. All three of these are grave violations of the natural law. One can easily trace the gradual degradation of the natural law here: ignore problems with extra-marital sex, then ignore problems with contraceptives, then ignore problems with having children out of wedlock, then ignore problems with homosexuality itself, then ignore problems with who is granted custody of children, then simply blow up the entire meaning of marriage altogether as being "no longer relevant." Well, yes, if you aren't going to observe ANY of the inherent meanings of marriage, then to you it will indeed seem irrelevant.

If the state is not involved in marriage at all in Kansas, then the federal action will be irrelevant. The only play is to take marriage away from the state. There's some talk out of Oklahoma about this, though I don't know how strong this is- the real beneficiaries of gay marriage are still the lawyers, and I suspect the Oklahoma divorce industry won't let their meal ticket disappear without a fight.

But you should put it on the table, if you have any pull, because that's all there is. If you have state marriage, you'll have gay marriage, period. You'll probably have bestial marriage coming soon. As long as it some form of serial monogamy, where one has to keep going back to the state to get whatever it is 'blessed' and to the state to get it 'dissolved' and subsequently get financially raped, it'll all be just dandy to these lawyers.

August, we've hashed that one out here before, and I'm just going to make a comment and then an executive decision that we aren't going to rehash it. In short: All of the legal aspects of marriage, even if they are pulled apart and placed into a legal make-it-up-as-you-go hodge-podge, are such that someone in some position in government will have to decide them. Someone will have to decide who inherits in cases of intestacy. Someone will have to decide which contracts (e.g., "I made a contract that I'm "married" to twenty-five other people, and we all have equal custody of the kids") to enforce. Someone will have to decide who has prima facie decision-making rights in medical cases of incompetence where no document has been written. Most of all, the elephant in the room for all reality-challenged calls for "getting the state out of marriage" is child custody. Someone has to decide who has prima facie custody of children and who has de jure and ultimate custody of children. Marriage does that legally, but it has to be done legally somehow, and there is no evading the question. Child custody decisions don't happen all on their own, and it is both impossible and immoral to allow adults to make up child custody in any way they please by contract and then demand that the state enforce it. See my example above of the twenty-five "parents." What this comes to is that if marriage didn't exist as a civil, legal category it would have to be invented. Dismantling it as a civil, legal category will only result in its being re-mantled piecemeal and ad hoc by contract judges, family law judges, and activists, based on what they think is "reasonable," which is hardly a prospect any conservative should endorse.

And my executive decision is that this is not the thread on which to have a 107-comment debate over whether those statements are true. As a practical matter, they are obviously true, so I just suggest that you meditate on them for a while.

Lydia, well said!

The SCOTUS DOMA decision was the first step in a fabian march to a federal constitutional "right" to SSM. The state bans will continue to fall, some state(s) will appeal the striking of their ban(s) to SCOTUS, and SCOTUS will strike them all down.

Before we get there, some state attorneys general will exercise their unconstitutional vetoes by refusing to defend the bans in court.

I think we've reached a tipping point on this issue and the snowball will continue to roll. The judiciary has already decided that they will be "on the right side of history" so how they decide to get there won't matter. Full Faith and Credit, Privileges and Immunities, refusal to defend the law, or 14th Amendment, I think SSM will be a reality in all 50 states by 2016 or 2020 at the very latest.

Lydia,

It's true that the particulars of the federal court rulings in California, Utah, Virginia, and Kentucky differ and technically have different legal implications. And we have another one brewing here in Michigan. But it's all pettifoggery of lawless judges who are channeling the Sun King to impose their political will on these states. Until we the people reclaim our sovereignty from the judges and break their crowns, passing more laws and amendments to restrain these petty tyrants will have as much effect as chains made of tin foil. They think they are the law.

I think we've reached a tipping point on this issue and the snowball will continue to roll.

This is my prediction, too. This most recent court decision would make Kentucky similar to Oregon, where, if I'm not mistaken, the state has decided to recognize marriages performed out of state, even though same-sex marriages are not performed in Oregon (or Kentucky.)

In theory, that would make same-sex marriage similar to first-cousin marriages, in that some states allow those marriages to be performed and some don't, but all states recognize them once they're performed.

I don't think it will stop there, though, because gays and lesbians are being legally treated as a class in a way that people who happen to have first cousins aren't. There's an equal protection issue when some couples with wealth and means can travel outside of their state to marry and others can't.

My prediction is this: within five years, seven at the most, same-sex marriage (and married same-sex couples) will have exactly the same legal status as interracial marriage.

States like Kansas might try to pass legislation like their HB 2453, but those laws won't fly, due to the same equal protection issues. The problem with the Kansas law, legally, is that it allows religious citizens and government officials to refuse service to couples only in instances where those couples are same-sex. The law doesn't permit discrimination against interracial couples (for example), even though there are absolutely religious folks in the state of Kansas who believe god does not permit miscegenation. Thus, the law will fail in two ways: 1) It singles out certain religions for favorable treatment. 2) It singles out certain citizens and exempts them from anti-discrimination laws. We would have to live in a very different country for those two things to fly in the long run--and we don't.

It might be possible for a state to draft legislation that would allow all private business owners to discriminate against anyone they want, thus providing religious exemptions for any possible religion. But legislation like that won't gain traction. They could've fifty years ago, but not today.

If you're a betting person, here are my full predictions:
I. Within ten years, same-sex marriage will be legal in every state, and fully recognized under federal law. Discrimination against same-sex couples will be treated the same, legally, as discrimination against interracial couples. That means that churches will _not_ be forced to perform same-sex marriages, but private businesses, no matter who owns them, will have to serve married same-sex customers.

II. Ten years from now, bestial marriages will not be recognized by any state, or by the federal government. Sorry August, there isn't a path from point A to point B for that.

III. Ten years from now, there will be no polygamous marriages recognized as marriages by any state or the federal government. Some states may decriminalize the practice of living as a polygamous unit/family, however. (In point of fact, such arrangements are legal in many states.) The states that do decriminalize polygamy will do it in the name of religious freedom.

will have to serve married same-sex customers.

AKA, will have to celebrate same-sex unions if their business has anything to do with weddings. We've already seen that. Which, if you care even a tiny little bit about freedom of expression, you should care about. But those on that side of the issue don't. They really think the guy who doesn't want to bake a cake with two little grooms on top and celebrate their union as part of his baking business is a hater and shd. be driven out of business if he won't get with the program. Or a photographer who won't take artistic pictures of two lesbians kissing at their "wedding."

Which, if you care even a tiny little bit about freedom of expression, you should care about. But those on that side of the issue don't.

To be honest, both sides dropped the ball on the freedom of expression issue. The most famous examples of photographers and bakers who were sued because they refused to provide their services to a wedding happened in states that didn't have legal SSM at the time. Those cases stemmed from nondiscrimination statutes, not from marriage law.

That puts anyone who advocates the right of a private business owner to refuse service on the grounds of freedom of expression at a disadvantage, because the nondiscrimination statutes were largely noncontroversial when they quashed the freedom of expression of bakers, florists, and photographers who didn't want to "celebrate" second marriages, interracial marriages, cousin marriages, etc.

A case can, and should, be made for the rights of artists to control the expressive content of their work. But it's reasonable to say that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of currently married couples who did not realize (or believe) that they were asking their photographer, baker, caterer, florist, DJ, etc. to personally approve of their union before providing an advertised service.

If you're arguing for freedom of expression and religious liberty, then the specifics of your own personal religious beliefs aren't relevant.

...there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of currently married couples who did not realize (or believe) that they were asking their photographer, baker, caterer, florist, DJ, etc. to personally approve of their union before providing an advertised service.

This is true. During preparations for my own wedding, I do not recall asking the florist, the baker or the photographer to approve my union. Their enthusiasm seemed intrinsic to the occasion. People need neither ask for, nor confer, approval on events that are (1) legal,(2)morally good and (3) metaphysically real; while for a same-sex "union," which is sometimes legal, always evil, and a socially constructed phantasm, approval must be compelled.

Those nondiscrimination statutes need some overhauling, so that they might better reflect the truth of things, for example, the fact that interracial marriage and the homosexual parody bear no relation to each other. It won't happen, but it should.

Their enthusiasm seemed intrinsic to the occasion.

Right. In other words, the issue didn't arise, but everyone understood what was being done.

Presumably opposition by photographers and prosecutions for refusal to take pictures of interracial marriages have not been in the news because there are few or no wedding photographers who are asked to take pictures of interracial marriage who really believe interracial marriage is wrong. Not because there is nothing celebratory or approving about saying, "Okay, now kiss her. That's it. Great!" And trying to make the picture look really nice and romantic. The analogy to interracial marriage stinks in any event, and is insulting to interracially people to boot, but, yes, if there are such photographers, they shouldn't have to take the pictures.

Lydia, do you think that it should be legal for private business to discriminate on the basis of race? If you had been an adult in the 1960s would you have supported the anti-discrimination provisions in the Civil Rights Act?

I'm not trying to claim that homosexuality and race are equivalent, I'm just trying to figure out where the Christians on this blog stand. It seems odd to say that Christians should get the right to discriminate based on their values when other groups don't.

I'm just trying to figure out where the Christians on this blog stand. It seems odd to say that Christians should get the right to discriminate based on their values when other groups don't.

I don't presume to speak for anyone else here, but IMO, our history with race plus our individualistic society has crippled our ability to handle "discrimination" sensibly. Anti-miscegenation laws were wrong because they prohibited the recognition of real marriages for illegitimate reasons. SSM recognizes non-marriages as marriages for illegitimate reasons. But that type of thinking goes over the head of our collective public square and all we see are two instances of oppressed minority groups being denied recognition of their love.

This fight was over the minute it started because SSM is entirely consistent with the prevailing zeitgeist, while the counter-arguments about essences, teleology, etc. are completely alien. Those arguments are dismissed as post-hoc justifications for bigotry because the other side is incapable of knowing what else to make of them.

"It seems odd to say that Christians should get the right to discriminate based on their values when other groups don't."

You are, implicitly, making the comment the Christian values are mere opinions of a herd. Christian values are truth made flesh.

Secondly, people of different races of two different sexes can reproduce together, naturally, so races are equal under the Natural Law, but same-sex relationships are already discriminated against by the Natural Law, since they are, inherently, sterile. It is not only man who discriminates. It is God, first, Nature, second, Man, third.

The Chicken

III. Ten years from now, there will be no polygamous marriages recognized as marriages by any state or the federal government. Some states may decriminalize the practice of living as a polygamous unit/family, however. (In point of fact, such arrangements are legal in many states.) The states that do decriminalize polygamy will do it in the name of religious freedom.

I think this prediction is wrong. First, I am not sure what "decriminalize" means practically in this context: most states already don't actually do anything about it if you merely live in a polygamous relationship. They only do something about it if you try to make the multiple official in some sense. Which means that primarily the states won't give official sanction to polygamy.

But I think that we will have official sanction a lot sooner than 10 years. There have been people arguing in its favor for a while now, mostly "under the radar" because the idea was so socially unfavored - a lot like SSM a few years ago. But in this case, they don't have nearly as much work to do to overcome social sluggishness: (a) polygamy isn't nearly as contrary to the natural law as SSM is, and (b) the SSM people have already prepared the legal framework for judges to say "you're just discriminating against people on the basis of YOUR stupid theory that marriage is between two people only." I would be very surprised if we don't see law suits within 2 years, and successful ones within 5 at the outside.

Another reason is (c) there are tax and other economic advantages: if I marry 4 wives, then all 4 get my employer to pay for their medical care. And all 4 get a survivor's pension if I die. And all 4 get Social Security benefits based on my work. I can easily see people advertising in the paper to "marry" someone just for these reasons alone. I suspect, but haven't tried to sort out the details, that there will be legal/economic advantages for business owners, partnerships, etc.

If you want to put your hand to something that might work, you should be the one meditating.
I suspect you simply enjoy this handwringing. Sure, make up rules that result in your enemies being in complete control. The prediction is easy- your enemies will win.

If you want to put your hand to something that might work, you should be the one meditating.
I suspect you simply enjoy this handwringing. Sure, make up rules that result in your enemies being in complete control. The prediction is easy- your enemies will win.

Lydia, do you think that it should be legal for private business to discriminate on the basis of race? If you had been an adult in the 1960s would you have supported the anti-discrimination provisions in the Civil Rights Act?

I would have rejected the entire federal Civil Rights Act as unconstitutional per the 10th amendment. I suppose therefore that the more pertinent question you really want to ask me is what I would have said about _state_ versions thereof. I consider that in general anti-discrimination laws are unfortunate and have a wealth of unintended consequences and are therefore imprudent. Now that they are _here_, I do not oppose Christians' suing under them when blatant anti-Christian religious discrimination has taken place. We might as well try to retain some vestige of fair application of the laws that exist rather than resigning ourselves to an illegal double standard that will only make matters worse. However, I would be willing in a semi-ideal world to accept a turn-back-the-clock compromise whereby atheists can refuse to hire Christians (or take pictures of their weddings, for that matte), vegans can refuse to hire meat eaters, racist blacks can refuse to serve whites, racist whites can refuse to serve blacks, and moral traditionalists can refuse to engage in hiring or service behaviors that they believe amount to an endorsement of an immoral lifestyle. That, however, is not a state of affairs that is likely ever to come about.

None of this, however, amounts to an agreement that the analogy holds between interracial marriage and homosexual faux "marriage." That is a metaphysical and ethical matter, and as I have said, the insistent use of the analogy is a grave insult to interracially married couples.

It seems odd to say that Christians should get the right to discriminate based on their values when other groups don't.

Christians are not the only group that has severe opposition to homosexuality. Off the top of my head, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism do as well. So the argument that Christians are the ones imposing their views here as though their views are unique is absurd. India, for example, is currently swinging hard away from legalized homosexuality toward criminalizing any homosexual conduct. The Islamic world's stance needs no explanation here for obvious reasons.

Now I know that other religions don't exist to liberals, but to everyone else the fact that the 4 religions that account for approximately 75% of the human race are opposed to homosexual conduct should serve as a wakeup call here that perhaps the liberal position is in the minority and should be the one to get democratically suppressed.

I always find it interesting that leftists believe they can simply _make_ us believe that "discrimination" on the grounds of homosexual conduct is analogous to racial discrimination. Apparently just by saying it. As though the mere assertion is sufficient to confound the moral conservative. Both employers and service providers (the former more than the latter) use zillions of factors in deciding whom to deal with. "Discrimination" in this sense is inevitable. You hire some people and you don't hire others, and you have to decide what is relevant. I have no doubt that most leftists would approve of refusing to hire someone for many jobs *on the basis of* their "regressive" or "racist" or "homophobic" or "sexist" views. For that matter, even smokers are discriminated against in various ways in our society, including in the workplace, usually with the hearty approval of the left. In the nature of the case, the number of factors which the government tells us we *must not* take into (negative) account in our business interactions is going to be limited, for otherwise it would be infinite, and economic social interaction would grind to a halt. The case for making homosexual conduct, of all things, one of this limited number of factors which we *must not* take any (negative) account of has always been conspicuous by its absence. It has amounted to bare assertion that such "discrimination" just is like discrimination on the basis of race, period. But I could do that with anything. I could pick something that leftists think it's fine to "discriminate" on the basis of and simply _declare_ that such discrimination is like discrimination on the basis of race. And what would that prove? Precisely nothing.

August, I see that you profited nothing by the _argument_ I made in my previous comment. Indeed, I cannot even tell that you read it. So be it. But bag it anyway.

You are, implicitly, making the comment the Christian values are mere opinions of a herd. Christian values are truth made flesh.

If we accept the reality of non discrimination statutes based on religion--that is, whether you agree with the thinking behind such statutes or not, they exist and are not going anywhere soon--then it seems reasonable to acknowledge that there are plenty of religious people who believe that their _own_ religious beliefs are true.

Failure to acknowledge this, or to be able to say, "For the sake of issue X, let's assume our beliefs are equal" has practical consequences.

(a) polygamy isn't nearly as contrary to the natural law as SSM is, and (b) the SSM people have already prepared the legal framework for judges to say "you're just discriminating against people on the basis of YOUR stupid theory that marriage is between two people only."

I don't think natural law is going to play into the debate that much. If we randomly select 100 American citizens of the 300 million or so who will be voting age in the next 5 years, how many of them would be able to articulate an explanation of natural law as it is understood by the bloggers and commenters on this site? I think you 'd be lucky to get 2 or 3 percent. And some of the people who understand it well enough to explain it also reject it as a theory.

I think your "stupid theory" comment indicates a different understanding of the successes of SSM legal cases than has actually been playing out in courts, and natural law thinking may have something to do with that. Same-sex couples have successfully argued that they are situated similarly to opposite-sex couples. When the argument is raised that opposite-sex couples can conceive children, same-sex couples can point to specific, concrete, identifiable opposite-sex couples who are completely unable to conceive children. This is logical unless you possess (and accept) a deep and nuanced understanding of natural law.

In order to win in court and in public opinion, the anti-SSM side needed to come up with a clear and rational difference between same-sex couples and sterile heterosexual couples that didn't sound like mumbo-jumbo to lay persons and secularists. That didn't happen.

But with regard to opposing the creation of a new legal structure for multiple-partner marriages, it isn't necessary to resort to a nuanced, intellectualized explanation of how the universe works. You can stick to practical, simple arguments.

Mike,

1. The United States is not a global democracy and should not base its policies on what a majority of human beings believe. The US is an independent republic that is beholden to its citizens and its primary obligation is to them. Guess what? A majority of American support gay marriage. That doesn't necessarily mean we should legalize gay marriage, but it's certainly more relevant than global statistics.

2. I mentioned Christians because this is the United States, and most local opposition to gay rights is driven by Christianity. This should have been obvious, but I suppose you thought that your rhetorical point was a good substitute for a real argument.

3. Since you adopted a combative tone, let it be known that I look forward to Christian viewpoints being democratically suppressed and denounced as bigotry.

Lydia,

The 10th amendment is basically meaningless because it merely says that powers not delegated to Congress in the Constitution are reserved for the states. IOW, Congress has the legal authority to use its enumerated powers, but that's all it can do. There is no reason to think that the CRA violates the 10th amendment because it was passed using one of those enumerated powers. You would be better off arguing that Congress doesn't have the power to pass something like the CRA using the commerce clause, but that is also a fairly specious argument that most legal scholars wouldn't take seriously.

That "most legal scholars" think the commerce clause justifies everything and the kitchen sink ("Based on the commerce clause, Congress has the authority to rule that everyone must eat broccoli every Tuesday, buy health insurance, and, oh, by the way, you can't eat grain that you grow on your own property") is not much of an argument. "Most legal scholars" accepted long ago that the Constitution "means" whatever SCOTUS says it means, a postmodern view of law that is easily susceptible to reductio ad absurdam. SCOTUS could say that the Constitution means that Mickey Mouse is President. SCOTUS could say that the Constitution means that Catholicism is the established religion of the U.S., etc. If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

So, yeah, I'm totally unmoved by the bandwagon based on "most legal scholars." But that is not a debate for here and now anyway.

Oh, btw, you tell Mike T. that you look forward to the _democratic_ suppression of Christian views as bigotry? You folks weren't willing to wait for that, though. You've been very happy, it seems, to look forward to the _judicially enforced_ suppression of traditional moral views as bigotry, including the judicial decision mentioned in the main post.

Explain what you think the limits of the commerce clause are, Lydia. It seems to me that the Commerce Clause is more expansive than it was in the 1700s because interstate commerce now permeates all aspects of our lives due to modern technology and trade. There is almost nothing that isn't connected to interstate commerce these days, and that means that Congress has pretty broad authority to regulate anything it wants. I think that argument is pretty hard to refute even if you reject the relevant case law out of hand. In the case of the CRA, regulating business and requiring them to treat customers in a certain way is almost certainly constitutional.


If Anthony Kennedy wants to hand us an early victory then I'll take i,t but I'm fairly content waiting. Liberals have already won, the battle is over.

1) Support for gay marriage is not a majority in the US as a whole. In fact, support for gay marriage is a good deal lower among non-whites than whites and this will only further compound the issue as the white majority recedes.

2) You specifically phrased in such a way as to imply that it was just Christians getting their way when opposition to homosexual conduct is present in all major religions present in the US except perhaps Buddhism (and even there it varies).

3) Your side, as Lydia notes, has not just been trying to force its views on us democratically but has gleefully used the courts to suppress the democratic process while wrapping yourselves up in the Constitution (a liberal doing this is as obnoxious as the conservatives wrap themselves up in the flag to justify their own misdeeds). So what else is new? You're going to threaten to start doing what your side has been doing without compunction for decades?

You've been very happy, it seems, to look forward to the _judicially enforced_ suppression of traditional moral views as bigotry, including the judicial decision mentioned in the main post.

I think another reason that the tide has been turning is the false equivalence between the harms suffered by same sex couples versus people who oppose same-sex unions.

On the one hand, you have two individual citizens of the same sex who are, presumably, acting within the framework of their own personal religious views. This couple wishes to take part in civil marriage and enjoy all of the attendant benefits, many of which can _only_ be granted by the state, as Lydia pointed out in this thread. If they lose the battle for SSM, then they are prevented, for life, from marrying their chosen partner.

On the other hand, you have individual citizens who believe that same-sex marriages ought not be legally recognized. If they lose the battle for SSM, then the have to deal with living in a world where same-sex couples can file their taxes jointly and act like married couples.

If you can't acknowledge the disparity in terms of direct, measurable harms, then you'll have difficulty understanding why the anti-SSM side is losing.

But the oppression of "we are prevented from getting married!" versus the oppression of "we are prevented from preventing you from getting married!" just doesn't feel (or sound) equivalent, no matter how you try to dress it up.

Also, it didn't come up as a meme in the recent debates over SSM, but I suspect that many people have a gut feeling that the right to marry is comparable to the right to vote, if not more important. So the complaint of "I deserve the right to vote on whether these _other_ people get the right to marry!" rings a little hollow. Would you divorce your spouse, permanently, for the right to vote in a single election?

(I realize, that within this thread, there are automatic responses to the kinds if things I'm pointing out. Things like, "Same-sex 'couples' are harming themselves by committing a grave sin, and therefore I am _helping_ them by opposing their 'marriages,' which are not really marriages, because the telos of the vagina, etc." That's all well and good, but I think the failure to recognize that other people have a right to different religious and philosophical viewpoints is an Achilles' heel, and not just on this specific issue. Saying, in effect, that your beliefs aren't beliefs because you believe them, is never going to be persuasive to people who don't already share your very specific worldview. )


Dear Moderators,

Given the current political climate and the specific aims of this blog, it might be good to start a thread devoted to organized discussion on how to prepare for and hopefully turn back what, to many frequenters to this blog (myself included), seems like an impending collapse of anything like socially conservative morality and law in our culture; at least on an institutional level. I have in mind something like the following six domains:

Short-term (i.e., within the next five years)
Middle-term (.e., within the next generation)
Long-term (i.e., anything beyond one generation)

Personal (i.e., within one's immediate family or household)
Professional (i.e., within one's sphere of influence on the job, whatever that involves)
Public (i.e., in the larger marketplace of ideas, be it online, in physical space, or what have you).


So, for example, if I were a religious conservative working for a mainstream media outlet, one of my middle or long-term professional goals might be to try and get news stories or interviews published in the main stream media that portray religious conservatives as something other than uninformed, anti-gay bigots. One of my long-term public goals might be to try and create a new political party for "real" social conservatives, and so forth.

In short, given the culture we have, and "what's wrong with the world," what should we do about it?

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

"Support for gay marriage is not a majority in the US as a whole. In fact, support for gay marriage is a good deal lower among non-whites than whites and this will only further compound the issue as the white majority recedes."


I can see you have no idea what you are talking about. I already suspected that was the case, but this proves it. A majority of the public supports marriage equality, and a super-majority of Americans under 30 are in favor it. Your claim about minorities is also factually inaccurate. Your views are antiquated and will never be dominant again barring some sort of unforeseen and highly unlikely religious revival.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/31/gallup-gay-marriage-poll-_n_3682884.html

http://www.freedomtomarry.org/resources/entry/marriage-polling


This is one of my favorites, even though it did come from a Romney staffer so there's no telling how accurate it is.

"Evangelical Millenials: Pollster and Former Romney Director of Data Science, Alex Lundry, found that 64% of self-identifying Evangelical millenials support same-sex marriage. "

I don't recall using the word "benefits" in this thread. I said that _decisions_ that come up in regard to marriage (e.g., inheritance in cases of intestacy and child custody) must be made by the state. Whether these decisions result in benefits or not, and if so, for whom, depends on a host of circumstances. I suppose in some cases the married person might not feel that he reaped a benefit from the fact that his relationship was previously recognized as marriage. Moreover, one of the reasons marriage would have to be reinvented if destroyed is because men and women can have babies together, sometimes even without deliberately intending to, and someone has to decide to whom those children belong. Homosexual and lesbian couples can't just "happen" to have children together. The only reason custody decisions come up with respect to them at all is because of various convoluted circumstances such as allowing them to adopt, in vitro fertilization, and divorces from previous heterosexual marriages. None of the ways of _generating_ parenthood de novo by homosexuals not married to a member of the opposite sex is inevitable or has to be allowed at all. In vitro surrogacy relationships, for example, could and should be illegal, as should adoption by homosexuals. Custody decisions where there has been a divorce from a previous heterosexual marriage should be covered by custody laws governing the previous heterosexual marriage and do not need to recognize the new homosexual relationship as having any legal standing at all.

To the extent that the legal recognition of marriage does bring benefits, they aren't owed to people. My reaction to, "I can't get my relationship to my homosexual partner to be called 'marriage' by the state and be recognized as such for purposes of law" is essentially, "Cry me a river." If I were in love with a biological sibling, I also couldn't get that relationship called "marriage" by the state. Or with my father. There are lots of relationships, *even if we just stick with two-person relationships*, that the state doesn't call "marriage," no matter what the state of the feeeeelings of the persons involved. What homosexuals are demanding is that their emotions be given state recognition. Just because. Basically, because they insist that their feelings are very important and that it's unfair not to give them that recognition and also force other people in their private businesses to give them that recognition. The massive social upheaval this causes is nothing to them in the name of abstract Justice as they view it. To try to trivialize that upheaval is disingenuous. Indeed, among themselves and when they aren't trying to downplay the changes they wish to force on everyone else in society, they rejoice in it. ("Overturning heterosexist norms," "eliminating homophobic bigotry," blah, blah.)

I don't recall using the word "benefits" in this thread.

Lydia, that's a fair criticism. What you actually wrote was that the "legal aspects of marriage [...] are such that someone in some position in government will have to decide them." Fair enough--I should have hypothesized a couple who wish to enjoy the attendant "legal aspects" of marriage, be they benefits or not.

Basically, because they insist that their feelings are very important and that it's unfair not to give them that recognition and also force other people in their private businesses to give them that recognition.

You're conflating legal recognition of same-sex marriages with nondiscrimination laws that include either sexual orientation and/or sex/gender.

Also, that thing that I pointed out that people sometimes do? That failure to recognize that other people have a right to different religious and philosophical viewpoints? You're doing it...do you realize that?

Couple A says, "We'd like to spend the next 4 or 5 decades of our lives married to the person we love, and it would really suck to be legally prevented from doing that." And you're saying, "But I don't want to have to recognize you. If you exist, then I might have to acknowledge your existence, and that is a huge burden for me."

If only those darn homosexuals could just stop what they personally believe, and come around to your viewpoint, then they'd see that the harms they face aren't bad! If only they could stop being gay, or, barring that, embrace an Orthodox Christian viewpoint and accept a life of celibacy and prayer, why then the idea of being forced to remain unmarried would be a welcome blessing. It would clearly pale in comparison to living in a world where gay couples are treated as if they are a natural part of the human condition. Because social upheaval. Because the telos of the vagina and of the penis. It's all so simple; why can't they just stop thinking their own thoughts?

Imagine if the tables were turned. If some person, from some hypothetical religion, said, "I really don't want to have to bake a cake for this ceremony, because baking a cake is personal for me, and the 45 minutes I spend mixing the batter is actually active celebration of whatever function the cake is being prepared for."

Would you honestly ever consider saying, "If I can help prevent you from having to bake this cake by being forcibly divorced from my husband for the rest of my life, then that is a choice I will gladly make!"

I doubt that you'd make that choice. I suspect that you'd see such a choice as unreasonable, because of beliefs that you hold--beliefs that are very important to you.

Other people have beliefs. Some of them are different from yours. I don't think it's useful (and frankly, I don't think it's moral) to proceed as if that doesn't matter.

And you're saying, "But I don't want to have to recognize you. If you exist, then I might have to acknowledge your existence, and that is a huge burden for me."

Brrrother. Because calling a person "married" to his boyfriend just is acknowledging that he exists. Only, y'know, it's not. I don't have to agree with him that he's married to his male homosexual partner to acknowledge that he exists. I can say that he exists but is _wrong_ both in his views and in his actions. I'm not denying his existence by disagreeing with him and refusing to have my arm twisted to say shibboleth.

the 45 minutes I spend mixing the batter is actually active celebration of whatever function the cake is being prepared for.

Again, this is disingenuous. At some level you must know, though you pretend you don't, that a gorgeous cake with two little figures on top representing the couple (in this case, two _male_ or two _female_ figures on top) has social meaning, that it is a part of a social ritual that acknowledges and celebrates the wedding. This ain't a sheet cake we're talking about. But you keep on pretending.

If I can help prevent you from having to bake this cake by being forcibly divorced from my husband for the rest of my life,

Because no marriage is valid and legal if not celebrated with a cake? C'mon, stop dramatizing. The alternative to having _this_ baker make _this_ cake is, first, to go to a different baker. And if they all refuse, not to have a cake. Or to get a friend to make it for you for your private ceremony saying how wonderful it is that you are with your homosexual lover. Again, cry me a river.

Other people have beliefs. Some of them are different from yours. I don't think it's useful (and frankly, I don't think it's moral) to proceed as if that doesn't matter.

Oh, believe me, I know that it matters. Just not in the way you want it to (i.e., that I am morally required to submit to what they think). It matters especially when they happen to be standing in the jackboots of government ready to punish me or others who think as I do if we don't affirm what they believe. But that doesn't make it right for them to be given the jackboots.

I can say that he exists but is _wrong_ both in his views and in his actions. I'm not denying his existence by disagreeing with him and refusing to have my arm twisted to say shibboleth.

You actually, can, legally, disagree with him. In fact, you are blogging to that effect right now.

But you've not indicated a willingness to separate disagreement from preventing them from getting married. You would have a point, here, if your stance, "Yes, let them get legally married with full state and federal legal aspects, according to their own beliefs, just don't force any private business to serve any customers that they don't want to serve."

But that's not your stance, is it? You actually think that the marriages should be prevented, legally, according to your strongly-held beliefs. The harm that you cited was having to "acknowledge" them.

Well, if merely having to acknowledge is not a harm, that's fine. But it sounds like you're conflating marriage law and nondiscrimination law when it suits you, and then de-conflating them when you want to.

In other words, if we were comparing the harm of 1) A couple being forced to find another baker with 2) A baker being forced to bake a cake, then I think you've got a defensible point. It is a reasonable comparison, and, whether I agree with your personal views or not, I can acknowledge that it's a discussion worth having.

But that's not really what you've been doing. You're comparing 1) A couple being forced to remain unmarried--contrary to their own beliefs- in perpetuity with 2) A baker being forced to bake a cake, and you're pretending that these things are equal harms.

I don't think you're intentionally being dishonest. But can you see how, from someone else's perspective, it looks like you're dodging the point that I was making?

You, in turn, are treating having your sexual relationship legally recognized by the government as a "marriage" as a prima facie entitlement and then using the term "being prevented" to describe "not being recognized." You're even doing this for states where such relationships have _never_ been so designated, as though the mere continued absence of that legal designation is preventing people from some physical action, or even threatening to punish them for such an action. That itself is highly misleading. Two homosexuals can hold any private ceremony they want, and no one is stopping them. They can fill out any private paperwork they want that is available to indicate one's desires when one is incompetent or after one's death (wills, powers of attorney, etc.), and no one is stopping them. What you want is for the person in the justice of the peace's office to be under threat of punishment (being fired, at a minimum) if he doesn't give them a marriage license and carry out their ceremony. There is a very strong aspect here of faux victimhood--aggression under the guise of being the victims of aggression. "Give us the state recognition we demand or you are actively hurting us and preventing us from doing what we have a right to do." I have never accepted that rhetoric or allowed it to go unchallenged.

Moreover, you know perfectly well that _all_ of the private implications of this for business will then come in like a truck, even beyond what is now required by non-discrimination law (though from a combination, legally, of that non-discrimination law with the new "marital" status), and the fact of the matter is that you will be extremely pleased by that. You don't really want for a nanosecond for a business that, say, gives healthcare benefits to spouses to be able to deny those benefits to homosexual "spouses" and only allow them to the spouses of employees whom the owner recognizes as spouses. You don't really want Christian schools who are foolhardy enough to accept the children of homosexual couples to be able to allow their teachers not to refer to the homosexual couple as married without being socked with a lawsuit. Nor do you care tuppence about the baker, the photographer, the wedding planner, the harpist who rents out her musical abilities to play at weddings, and on and on and on, who will be forced to cooperate in this new regime at peril of losing their livelihoods. Then there are people like Peter Vadala who was fired for refusing on the job to respond positively to constant verbal goading by his lesbian superior who wanted him to admit that she was marrying her girlfriend. You know quite well that the vision of a world in which only the state is forced to regard homosexuals as "married" but in which that has _zero_ repercussions for private employers, businesses, and individuals is not even close to the world homosexual activists are aiming for and is not a world that will ever happen or could ever happen. It is unrealistic. Marriage impinges about economic interaction in too many ways. So all "offers" to the contrary are to be taken with many grains of salt.

Finally, my own crystal ball is broken on this one. This was "just" one federal judge trying to force the issue of cross-state recognition of homosexual "marriage." Will the state appeal? Will his ruling be upheld or overturned at the higher federal levels? What do readers think?

The state will not appeal. It's a waste of money and no one cares. Gay marriage is something that offends peoples' sense of the rightness of the world, but has little if any practical impact on their lives. They aren't going to the mat over it.

If the state appealed and it made it to the Supreme Court, it would most likely be used as pretext to overturn the rest of DOMA. If the state has any sense, they know this and hence won't appeal.

has little if any practical impact on their lives.

Actually, I can think of a ton of small business owners on whom such a decision would undeniably have an effect. For example, suppose that you are a Christian small business owner with a homosexual employee. You haven't discriminated against him as an individual, but you aren't being obligated to do anything that seems to endorse his lifestyle. Then your state's constitutional amendment that says marriage is recognized only between a man and a woman is struck down and your state is forced to start issuing marriage licenses to homosexual couples. You, as a business owner, have worked hard to give benefits packages to your employees which cover their spouses. Now your employee goes and gets "married" to his boyfriend and signs him up as his "spouse" for your company's paid-for benefits package. Not only does this increase your costs, because a person who previously wouldn't have ever gotten married now is so regarded, it also forces you to act as though he really is married by subsidizing his boyfriend's benefits *on the grounds that* his boyfriend is his spouse. Yeah, that's a practical effect.

I also note that in a state such as Michigan (or Kentucky) that *officially* and by state constitutional amendment doesn't recognize homosexual "marriages," it would be much harder to get off the ground any lawsuit that tries to use non-discrimination statutes to force the complicity of the gazillions of marriage-involved businesses into helping them celebrate their "weddings." I doubt that any such lawsuit (against a baker or a photographer) would stand up in Michigan under non-discrimination statutes alone, since the Michigan governmental entities are forbidden by the state constitution from recognizing same-sex unions as marriages. This would seem to make it extremely difficult for the state or local governments to force a baker to make a wedding cake with two grooms on the top or to force a photographer to take pictures of a purely private and legally unacknowledged homosexual "marriage" ceremony.

Hence, homosexual "marriage" affects everyone involved in the wedding business, which is a whole lotta people and includes millions of individuals who are private contractors--e.g., musicians, small caterers, etc. It also affects any private individual who owns a venue which they sometimes rent out for weddings. Any of these people who have objections to homosexual "marriage" have a stake in these decisions and will be affected by them in very direct ways.

Lydia,
You didn't respond to the specific points that I was making, and instead you made a host of assumptions about my views. (Some assumptions correct, and some incorrect.)

Can you see how my criticism was accurate--that "your side" (for want of a better term) suffers from a failure to recognize that other people have a right to different religious and philosophical viewpoints?

You, in turn, are treating having your sexual relationship legally recognized by the government as a "marriage" as a prima facie entitlement and then using the term "being prevented" to describe "not being recognized."

Lydia, I've shown that I'm capable of discussing a same-sex couple as either legally married or legally unmarried. Whatever my personal beliefs, if two adults profess their desire to enter into the institution of civil marriage, it is reasonable to discuss what would happen to them if they did get married versus what would happen if they don't. If you refuse to consider that any harm can stem from remaining unmarried because they aren't married and they can't marry, then you are begging the question.

So, yeah. With regard to certain private businesses, it might be nice if the law recognized that business owners have a right not to actively perform services that they believe are contrary to their own, personal, deeply held beliefs. In order to accomplish that, or even argue for it, we need a culture where people can acknowledge and accept that other people have a right to their own religious and philosophical beliefs.

You are actively working to prevent such a culture.

If you treat this like a zero sum game, why are you surprised that the left has started agreeing with you?

You can respond and argue with me, if you like, but if you insist on ignoring the point I tried to make so that you can talk more about how people who aren't like you are just plain wrong, then it's probably not worth it, is it? Just keep telling atheist lesbians that they are evil because of the telos of the vagina and see how far that gets you.

If you treat this like a zero sum game, why are you surprised that the left has started agreeing with you?

No, the left has treated this as a zero-sum game all along. Believe me, they didn't take their cues from me or from anyone like me. That was always where they were coming from. See Scott W.'s example above. And in fact, they have always been right. It is a zero-sum game. In fact, I have a whole series of posts pointing this out. It is, rather, the conservatives who have made the mistake, again and again, of not recognizing this. Hence, conservatives sometimes have naively supported the inclusion of "sexual orientation" in non-discrimination laws, believing that there is wiggle room in such laws for them to keep living according to their consciences. Some conservatives have supported civil unions, not realizing that the impact of civil unions upon child custody law is identical to that of the same legal status under the name of "marriage," and not realizing what this means in concrete instances.

The reasons are legion for the left's being right that this is a zero-sum game. Just to begin with, marriage is woven into the warp and woof of our society. Zillions of laws refer to it, and ordinary people make use of the concept constantly both in their private and in their business relationships. There is no way that homosexual couples' relationships could be included in such an integral concept to our society without repeated and constant clashes arising from the difference between their concept and the even *somewhat* more traditional concept that includes only one-man-one-woman pairs. Society would be constantly deciding what attitudes on this subject are acceptable and what aren't. If an employer, for example, decides that he wants to make sure his business is "gay-tolerant," then he's going to have to be "traditional-concept intolerant." If his employees in the break room are chatting and express highly negative opinions about homosexual acts and the concept of homosexual "marriage," this creates a "hostile work environment" for homosexuals. If, on the other hand, he fires employees who, chatting in the break room, express negative views concerning homosexuality, he has created a "hostile work environment" for moral traditionalists! Unless he just happens to be running a company where nobody has any opinions on these subjects (seriously?) or where the topic never comes up in informal chats, or unless he finds some way to micromanage all interpersonal interactions so as to ban all controversial attitudes from being expressed on either side or all controversial topics from ever being discussed, he cannot possibly create a work environment that is equally welcoming to both traditionalists and leftist homosexuals. Something has to give. Societal norms in employment, *to name just one area*, have to favor one side or another, now that the issue has come up. Which means one group or other is going to be at risk for job loss. So, yes, it is a zero-sum game. And many, many other examples could be given.

Lydia,
I suppose everything feels like a zero-sum game if you approach from a position of privilege and are accustomed to special treatment at the expense of other groups.

Would you agree with the following statement?

"Christians, and their beliefs, should be treated, under the law, exactly the same as Jews, atheists and Wiccans (and their beliefs)."

I suspect that one's answer to such a question would really have an effect on what one considers "religious liberty" to be, and it would also be a pretty strong indicator of one's willingness to accept that other people have a right to their own personal religious and philosophical views.

It depends on what you mean by "treated under the law." For example, would assent to such a proposition involve some sort of affirmative action for the number of army chaplains representing each group? I would also want to know more about Wiccan ceremonies and the extent to which they would prima facie violate extent law (e.g., against running around naked in fields) which applies to all groups.

Lydia,
Those are fair questions, although the question was meant more as a general question of the principal behind policy-setting, and not as a specific policy in itself.

My personal opinion is that laws that apply equally to all groups should apply equally to all groups, without regard to religious belief. So, for example, if the hallucinogenic tea Ayahuasca is so dangerous that the U.S. feels it necessary to ban its use, then it should be banned for everyone, even members of the Santo Daime religion. On the other hand, if use of the tea is deemed safe enough that members of the Santo Daime religion ought to be allowed to use it, then its use should be allowed for everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs.

In this regard, I disagree with the U.S. Supreme Court, though I suspect you and I both agree that the court can render a wrong decision--we just might disagree on the substance.

I say this not because I want to argue about Ayahuasca or about running naked in fields, but because I think one ought to be able to discuss religious liberty without considering the specifics of one's own religious beliefs. (And, as I've mentioned, one can't effectively advocate for religious freedom or religious liberty without taking the specifics of one's own religion out of the equation.)

By the way, my point above re. a hostile work environment and the zero-sum game ought to be just as clear to those who regard themselves as "traditionally victims" as to those (e.g., heterosexuals) whom they regard as "traditionally privileged." It doesn't matter which side of the issue you are on. The fact remains that it is impractical to try to make society, or even a single workplace, a "friendly" environment to people with views on both sides of this issue. Nor is that the only example. In fact, Phil, people on your side of the issue have far more often treated this as a zero-sum game (with the desire to eliminate homophobia in society, to get rid of "heterosexist assumptions," and the like) than people on my side of the issue. The fact is that anyone who implies that it is _practically_ possible for society as a whole to be neutral on what constitutes marriage and in some way to give "equal respect" to the views of people who think it ought to include homosexual couples and those who disagree with them has either not thought the issue through clearly or else is being disingenuous. It is, in fact, not practically possible. That is one place where those who (as I saw one person say on Facebook openly the other day) would like to "destroy evangelicals" and right-wing culture warriors like me can agree: there really is a culture war on this issue, and both sides cannot win. One set of opinions is going to be regarded as acceptable in society and the other not. The issue has too many cultural, legal, and practical ramifications for detente to be within the realm of practical politics. Again, one doesn't *by any means* have to be on one side or another to see this.

The fact remains that it is impractical to try to make society, or even a single workplace, a "friendly" environment to people with views on both sides of this issue.

Generally, my impression is that a workplace environment that I would view as "everyone getting treated equally, without regard to religious views" is a workplace that you might view as "traditionalists are being suppressed at the expense of all the other wrongheaded people."

I think these discussions boil down to considering hypothetical scenarios and making a guess at the likely outcome, and I think your guess at likely outcomes is tainted by how you view and think about people who are different from yourself. In that regard, the people that you perceive as the left are better than you. Sure, there are extremist voices, but generally, people like me are much, much better than you at reading the tea leaves of human behavior when it comes to diverse groups, or the masses as a whole.

For example, if, in a workplace, a group of gays and lesbians was sitting around the break room with a lone Christian and talking, seriously, about how Christians should be stoned to death because a source that is very important to them said so, thus creating a hostile work environment, I suspect that you and I would have different expectations about how that scenario would play out in court and in terms of public opinion.

People on this blog actually think that bestial marriages will be legal in the near future. That's ludicrous. Do you agree? Do you think it's possible that you are so certain of the rightness of your own personal belief system that you have difficulty detecting shades of gray in the personal beliefs of people who disagree with you?

Phil, I think that the distinctions between things like bestiality and homosexual marriage try to be made, but ultimately as distinctions fail miserably.

To the contrary of what you say I think that the left is utterly blind when it comes to figuring out the implications of their beliefs.

Generally, my impression is that a workplace environment that I would view as "everyone getting treated equally, without regard to religious views" is a workplace that you might view as "traditionalists are being suppressed at the expense of all the other wrongheaded people."

I'm not even sure what that means. If you're going to fire people who say somewhere in the workplace within hearing of others that homosexual "marriage" isn't marriage in order to create what you view as an "environment in which everyone is treated equally," but you don't fire people who sit around talking about how they are getting "married" to their homosexual partner and about how terrible "homophobia" is, then that is really a sham of treating people equally. Now, isn't it? Whether you regard the people on the left in that scenario as being wrong-headed or correct, you can hardly say that the moral traditionalist was treated equally with them, and if he was fired for the sake of making the workplace friendly to them, then there was no equal treatment. But, again, I'm not arguing per se for equal treatment. I'm arguing that you can never guarantee that a workplace will be equally "friendly" to people with all views on this subject. You can always end up with more who think one thing than another, and somebody can always feel like it's "hostile" for him because several others disagree with him or because someone in a higher position disagrees with him. The employer will either care about this or he won't. And if he cares, he will either try (futilely, in my view) to shut down _all_ opinions on such subjects in the name of equality, or he will have a certain view about which side is more of a problem and must not be allowed to make others "feel bad."

Lydia,

You seem to really want to present asymmetric scenarios as "equal." If Person A talks about his own spouse, that's one thing. If Person B talks about Person A's spouse, that is not really the same thing. (I'm not saying that one right is more necessary than the other, but can you see how that is not exactly the same thing?)

The comparable scenario is not "You get to talk about your life and I get to talk about your life." It's "You get to talk about your life and I get to talk about my life." Or, if you want, "You get to talk about both your life and my life, and so do I."

Whatevs. In real life, people talk about all kinds of things. People talk about political issues, about what other people do, about what movie stars do, about what they think is good, bad, and ugly. That's called life. The minute you start nitpicking the scenario to say, "Yeah, it's fine to fire the guy who gave his opinion of marriage as between only one man and one woman while retaining the person who put his left-wing opinion on the subject in other people's faces, because...um...let me think...I know...because the first guy is talking about somebody _else's_ marriage but the second guy is talking about his _own_, so see I'm being equal after all," I know what I'm dealing with. The ad hoc nature of all of this is pretty darned blatant. You'd be on stronger ground with your Mr. Moderate, Defender of Freedom shtick if you just said you'd let people in the break room talk about whatever they are gonna talk about and let the chips fall where they may, tell the whiners on either side to grow up. At least that would have some pretense of equality. But nah. You had to make it come out that the "homophobe" got fired and the people talking about the wonderfulness of homosexual "marriage" and the evils of "homophobia" are sitting pretty, but somehow this is "equal treatment."

Thanks, that's clarifying.

You'd be on stronger ground with your Mr. Moderate, Defender of Freedom shtick if you just said you'd let people in the break room talk about whatever they are gonna talk about and let the chips fall where they may, tell the whiners on either side to grow up.

So, you mean, exactly like the second example that I presented as a "comparable scenario?" The one where I said, "You get to talk about both your life and my life, and so do I?" Gotcha.

Yes, if only I had said that, I'd be on stronger ground. I assumed that you would read all seven sentences before responding. Mea culpa.

Yeah, that's a practical effect.

Right, an extremely minor one that in aggregate is pretty much a rounding error. After all, we are talking about a very tiny proportion of the population (gays, ~3%), an even tinier proportion of which even care about being married. Say 20% thereof, so about 0.6% of the population. Even if you hate gay marriage with the fury of a thousand suns, you may well never actually see a gay marriage.

Matt, the visibility of homosexual relationships, including "marriages," has deliberately been made to be out of all proportion to their number in the population. Moreover, with more and more schools actively recruiting for the homosexual and trans agenda, we have lots of gender-confused young people out there, so the percentage of people so identifying and loudly demanding that they not be offended is constantly rising. Add to this the whole issue of "hostile work environment," and there will be more and more people affected in their businesses. "Trans" people are particularly pushy about making themselves visible and demanding affirmation. Shortly after the "trans" rights ordinance in my town was passed, a couple of men walked into J.C. Penney and, in my opinion, harassed the (fairly young) salesgirl by demanding a) that she show them where the skirts were, b) that she show them to the women's changing room, and c) that she answer the question, "How does it look on me?" after trying on a skirt.

Moreover, I think it's really wrong-headed to be downplaying the effects of this on real individuals, quite a few of whom I could name all over the country, because there aren't enough of them! The baker forced out of business is not a "rounding error." The employee fired because he didn't respond with sufficient deference to his lesbian supervisor's harassment concerning her upcoming "marriage" is not a "rounding error." The little girls right now in Colorado being forced to share a bathroom with a boy are not "rounding errors." These are real people being harmed in real ways. I don't know how many of such incidents you are waiting to hear about (and the ones you hear about are only a percentage of the total) before you admit that ordinary people have reason to be concerned, but I think you are gravely wrong to downplay the importance of these effects.

Phil, I understand now what you were getting at with allowing both sides to talk about their lives. If that is what you are advocating, I will simply say that, in that case, the employer has to be willing to allow a sort of invisible hand among the employees to work out by chance in such a way that the atmosphere is, in fact, hostile to the homosexual contingent. (E.g. Because there are more of the "homophobic" contingent among the employees.) In other words, the employer has to not think that "homophobia" is socially unacceptable. Under current non-discrimination laws, that is highly unlikely to be allowed, because preventing hostile work environment is part of the law. However, religious discrimination is also disallowed in the law, which means that, given that many Christians (and members of several other religions, as Mike T pointed out) are by current definitions "homophobes," there is an ineliminable tension in the application of such a law against "hostile work environment" as part of "non-discrimination."

Another point: Such cases (and I could cite a passel of them) of persecution of businessmen by the homosexual lobby send, and are intended to send, a message. The message is that all businesses must be gay-friendly. The homosexuals themselves do not wish us to think that they are such a small percentage that we don't need to think about them! On the contrary, everybody is supposed to be thinking about them so often that all sorts of interactions and language are modified so as to eradicate the last vestiges of "heteronormativity." Lawsuits that destroy businesses people have built up over their entire lives are one tool in the toolbox of forcing all of society to be preemptively gay friendly. A principled moral traditionalist, Christian or otherwise, knows that such a thing *could well happen* to him after he has spent decades building up a business. This is an enormous disincentive to entrpreneurship by moral conservatives. It only takes one disgruntled employee or customer to do enormous harm. Unless, of course, you give in and kow-tow. If you know ahead of time that you aren't willing to do that or, at least, that you _shouldn't_ do that and don't want to be tempted, the strong inclination is just not to start the business in the first place.

All of this is disgusting and coercive. And it is intended to be. These "rounding errors" in which businesses are made an example of are a tool of societal change, and a very effective tool, too.

However, religious discrimination is also disallowed in the law, which means that, given that many Christians (and members of several other religions, as Mike T pointed out) are by current definitions "homophobes," there is an ineliminable tension in the application of such a law against "hostile work environment" as part of "non-discrimination."

The tension is compounded when Christians define statements that simply aren't deferential to Christian beliefs as anti-Christian.

For example, a woman who says, "I am a lesbian and I love my wife" isn't saying anything anti-Christian. She isn't verbally creating a hostile work environment for Christians. She just...isn't an adherent to a Christian sect that believes otherwise. As the other thread keeps pointing out, we ought not expect that we have a right not to be offended.

Meanwhile, a Christian who says, "I'm a Christian and I love the Lord!" also isn't saying anything homophobic or anti-gay.

You might perceive that it's gay people who are more likely to take offense to benign statements from Christians, but I'd probably disagree. The problem is that too many (orthodox, conservative) religious types re-define benign statements as ant-(orthodox, conservative) religious types, and that's because they don't truly accept and understand the right of other people to believe differently.

From a practical perspective, with regard to nondiscrimination law, the U.S. is going to draw a line somewhere. You might feel a libertarian bent, but realistically, we're never going to be a country where a hotel can put out a "No Jews Allowed" sign. There will always be business owners forced to deal with people that they think are (wrong, inferior, evil, etc.) Where the line is drawn might be nudged in one direction or another, but there are always going to be competing interests, and gay/straight Christian/nonChristian are just a few of the competing interests.

The problem is: the ability of same-sex couples to legally marry is a separate issue from the ability of a secretary to chortle in the breakroom about whether lesbianism is a sin.

You don't get to draw the line that broadly, and you never will. If you fail to understand this--and you demonstate that failure every time you talk about a baker, photographer, or florist who was sued under nondiscrimination law as a reason to oppose civil same-sex marriage--then you don't understand the issue, and you're going to lose.

And you're going to lose big, and long-term. I don't really benefit from pointing this out to you, except that I like to have my beliefs challenged by people who have spent a lot of time thinking about their own. But the practical reality is that you're never going to have any influence on the conversation about where the lines should be drawn with regard to nondiscrimination if you insist on lumping everything you disagree with into one evil pot that must always be opposed at all times.

For example, a woman who says, "I am a lesbian and I love my wife" isn't saying anything anti-Christian. She isn't verbally creating a hostile work environment for Christians. She just...isn't an adherent to a Christian sect that believes otherwise. As the other thread keeps pointing out, we ought not expect that we have a right not to be offended.

If she said it once, in a larger context in which that would have been a natural comment for a man to make as well, then you are right, that would not be "creating a hostile work environment". However, if she kept at it, and did it more often in the immediate presence of someone whom she knew took a literal understanding of Biblical injunctions against homosexual behavior, then YES, according to the current definitions that would indeed be creating a hostile work environment.

However, the protected categories under employment civil rights laws (at least federal) are race, color, religion, national origin, or sex. Although there is some failure in the courts to correctly distinguish between "sex" and "sexual orientation" or "sexual activity", the failure is not complete and at least in some cases the above described discriminatory behavior would accurately be labeled as a form of discrimination, but would not be considered illegal discrimination, while in other cases it would depending on which judge tried it.

You don't get to draw the line that broadly, and you never will. If you fail to understand this--and you demonstate that failure every time you talk about a baker, photographer, or florist who was sued under nondiscrimination law as a reason to oppose civil same-sex marriage--then you don't understand the issue, and you're going to lose.

And you're going to lose big, and long-term. I don't really benefit from pointing this out to you, except that I like to have my beliefs challenged by people who have spent a lot of time thinking about their own. But the practical reality is that you're never going to have any influence on the conversation about where the lines should be drawn with regard to nondiscrimination if you insist on lumping everything you disagree with into one evil pot that must always be opposed at all times.

Translation: we are winning the cultural battle for what people think about this, and you will never win with your dumb arguments about what's "right". Right doesn't matter if you don't have the votes, and you don't, and you won't GET the votes by talking about "what's true."

Phil, I have news for you: the conversation here is rarely, RARELY, intended to illuminate "what will convince the masses in the given political context." That's just not the focus of our discussion. If it is for you, because you are a pragmatic sort of guy, well fine for you but "that won't play well in Peoria" isn't the reason we discuss what is the right of the matter on gay "marriage," or the historical truth of the Gospels, or the accurate definition of death or totipotent or substance, or refining just war theory. In a different sense than "Right doesn't matter if you don't have the votes," votes are irrelevant if you are not in the right. For instance, God won't take a vote on my behavior in judging me. Nor will votes change the nature of your lung cancer after 50 years of smoking. The early Christian martyrs didn't change their minds because they weren't "winning" the political battles.

I have difficulty seeing what absence of factual understanding I show "every time" I bring up bakers, photographers, and florists. Such lawsuits *can* arise from non-discrimination laws in the absence of official homosexual "marriage," as in the extremely broad interpretation of non-discrimination in New Mexico, which doesn't recognize homosexual "marriage." However, I took some of my (to me, valuable) time up above to discuss the fact that in states that _explicitly_ refuse to recognize homosexual "marriage," such lawsuits would have much less legal color. In other words, the _combination_ of legal recognition of homosexual "marriage" together with non-discrimination laws that include "sexual orientation" create an especially high number of types of situations in which these things will happen, and they leave the baker and the photographer with little or no legal recourse. That is a factual statement about the legal situation, not a partisan statement nor even a statement about what is wrong or right. How it demonstrates a "lack of understanding" is quite mysterious.

Phil, I have news for you: the conversation here is rarely, RARELY, intended to illuminate "what will convince the masses in the given political context." That's just not the focus of our discussion.

Fair enough. I joined this thread because I was intrigued by the request for what readers think will happen in the future. I haven't commented on this blog for a year or so because I don't think it's my place to tell others to change their religious beliefs, but I do feel qualified to offer an opinion about where the country is headed.

However, I took some of my (to me, valuable) time up above to discuss the fact that in states that _explicitly_ refuse to recognize homosexual "marriage," such lawsuits would have much less legal color.

Right, and I disagree with you. If the fact that I disagree with you means that your valuable time was not well-spent, then so be it. My stance is that we could have had a legal situation in this country where same-sex marriage was legal in every state based on a "live and let live" philosophy, where even people who were religiously opposed to same-sex marriage advocated for it, on the grounds that "other people's marriages aren't our business." But that philosophy didn't take hold. The right insisted on popular votes as a strategy to prevent civil same-sex marriage--even though popular votes aren't a way to determine what is "true," right?--and that strategy worked for a few years, and now it's backfiring.

Backfiring? When the main post, as I pointed out in the main post, was about a judge overriding the popular vote? Not yet, it isn't "backfiring." If it were, the left wouldn't bother going to the judges anymore, they'd go straight to the people. And once the judges have hammered their ideas well enough into the people's heads, of course the ideas will be in, and then the people will vote for them. Cute strategy, but it was yours, not ours.

In any event, everything in your comment is such that it is not addressed to my comment which you said you disagreed with. Concerning what would have less legal color in what legal context in what states. Odd, that.

Why is it that liberals are capable of tolerating any view except a view that says toleration should be confined within limits that respect more important goods than toleration?

Post a comment


Bold Italic Underline Quote

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.