Ross Douthat, NY Times: "Defining Religious Liberty Downwards"

A tribute to moral and theological
pygmies, illiterates, and American
Dumb Asses.  Calling them
what they are is the beginning
of change.  E.g. the first step
in AA.  Recognizing you are
what you are, or, in this case, that
you are a moral and theological
man-baby.

A few classic lines and takeaways from Douthat:  (1)  "It may seem strange that anyone could look around the pornography-saturated, fertility-challenged, family-breakdown-plagued West and see a society menaced by a repressive puritanism. But it’s clear that this perspective is widely and sincerely held."  (2) "If you want to fine Catholic hospitals for following Catholic teaching, or prevent Jewish parents from circumcising their sons, or ban Chick-fil-A in Boston, then don’t tell religious people that you respect our freedoms. Say what you really think: that the exercise of our religion threatens all that’s good and decent, and that you’re going to use the levers of power to bend us to your will" [emphasis added].

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/douthat-defining-religious-liberty-down.html

Defining Religious Liberty Down

By ROSS DOUTHAT 

THE words “freedom of belief” do not appear in the First Amendment. Nor do the words “freedom of worship.” Instead, the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans something that its authors called “the free exercise” of religion.

It’s a significant choice of words, because it suggests a recognition that religious faith cannot be reduced to a purely private or individual affair. Most religious communities conceive of themselves as peoples or families, and the requirements of most faiths extend well beyond attendance at a sabbath service — encompassing charity and activism, education and missionary efforts, and other “exercises” that any guarantee of religious freedom must protect.

I cannot improve upon the way the first lady of the United States explained this issue, speaking recently to a conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. “Our faith journey isn’t just about showing up on Sunday,” Michelle Obama said. “It’s about what we do Monday through Saturday as well ... Jesus didn’t limit his ministry to the four walls of the church. He was out there fighting injustice and speaking truth to power every single day.”

But Mrs. Obama’s words notwithstanding, there seems to be a great deal of confusion about this point in the Western leadership class today.

You can see this confusion at work in the Obama White House’s own Department of Health and Human Services, which created a religious exemption to its mandate requiring employers to pay for contraception, sterilization and the days-after pill that covers only churches, and treats religious hospitals, schools and charities as purely secular operations. The defenders of the H.H.S. mandate note that it protects freedom of worship, which indeed it does. But a genuine free exercise of religion, not so much.

A similar spirit was at work across the Atlantic last month, when a judge in Cologne, Germany, banned circumcision as a violation of a newborn’s human rights. Here again, defenders of the decision insisted that it didn’t trample on any Jew’s or Muslim’s freedom of belief. But of course to be an adult Jew in good standing, as The Washington Post’s Charles Lane pointed out, one must circumcise one’s son at 8 days old. So while the ruling would not technically outlaw Jewish theology or Jewish worship, it would effectively outlaw Judaism itself.

Now we have the great Chick-fil-A imbroglio, in which mayors and an alderman in several American cities threatened to prevent the delicious chicken chain from opening new outlets because its Christian president told an interviewer that he supports “the biblical definition of the family unit.” Their conceit seemed to be that the religious liberties afforded to congregations (no official, to my knowledge, has threatened to close down any Chicago churches) do not extend to religious businessmen. Or alternatively, it was that while a businessman may have the right to his private beliefs, the local zoning committee has veto power over how those beliefs are exercised and expressed.

I have described all these incidents as resulting from confusion about what freedom of religion actually entails. But of course every freedom has its limits. We do not allow people to exercise beliefs that require, say, forced marriage or honor killing. You can believe in the gods of 15th-century Mesoamerica, but neither Chicago values nor American ones permit the use of Aztec sacrificial altars on the South Side.

To the extent that the H.H.S. mandate, the Cologne ruling and the Chick-fil-A controversy reflect a common logic rather than a shared confusion, then, it’s a logic that regards Western monotheism’s ideas about human sexuality — all that chastity, monogamy, male-female business — as similarly incompatible with basic modern freedoms.

Like a belief that the gods want human sacrifice, these ideas are permissible if held in private. But they cannot be exercised in ways that might deny, say, employer-provided sterilizations to people who really don’t want kids. Nor can they be exercised to deny one’s offspring the kind of sexual gratification that anti-circumcision advocates claim the procedure makes impossible. They certainly cannot be exercised in ways that might make anyone uncomfortable with his or her own sexual choices or identity.

It may seem strange that anyone could look around the pornography-saturated, fertility-challenged, family-breakdown-plagued West and see a society menaced by a repressive puritanism. But it’s clear that this perspective is widely and sincerely held.

It would be refreshing, though, if it were expressed honestly, without the “of course we respect religious freedom” facade.

If you want to fine Catholic hospitals for following Catholic teaching, or prevent Jewish parents from circumcising their sons, or ban Chick-fil-A in Boston, then don’t tell religious people that you respect our freedoms. Say what you really think: that the exercise of our religion threatens all that’s good and decent, and that you’re going to use the levers of power to bend us to your will.

There, didn’t that feel better? Now we can get on with the fight. 

Rev. Paul McCain: How Obama Embraced Homoerotic Unions

          The Rev. Mr. Paul McCain, a Confessional Lutheran Churchman (LCMS), offers sage, balanced, thoughtful, and important counsel for all reformational (three streams), catholic, Biblical and historic Christians.  How should one deal with a loved one, a friend, or any discussion about the matter in re: homosexuality?  Rev. McCain notes, “You will desire to keep both them [a family member, friend, etc.] and your beliefs [Biblical, Confessional commitments] close.”  These twin desires will be a challenge.  

          Rev. McCain’s blog is recommended to Confessional Anglicans.

          Here is Rev. McCain’s blog-site and post.

http://cyberbrethren.com/2012/05/10/how-president-obama-became-pro-gay-marriage/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cyberbrethren+%28Cyberbrethren%29

How President Obama Became Pro-Gay Marriage

Excellent blog post by Pastor Philip Hoppe.

Listen to his own words:

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together; when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told Roberts in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.

Obama become Pro-Gay marriage relationally. He knew people who were gay and wanted no longer to offend those people by denying them the rights other couples have.

He did not come to this position through biological reflection. No one discovered a hereunto unknown gene which shows that people are born genetically gay. Every male and female born today are still born with private parts that suggest the only biologically compatible relationship is that between man and woman. It remains the only relationship which can propagate the species. Nothing has changed there.

He did not come to this position after re-examining the Scriptures Christianity holds as sacred. For again, those scriptures still testify from the first book to the last that marriage and sexuality are given only to men and women. Those wish to argue otherwise are required to come to the scriptures with a Jeffersonian love for excising troublesome parts of the Book at their own discretion.

He did not come to this position historically or sociologically. The research all shows that homosexuality is not a practice that prospers societies.

Obama become Pro-Gay marriage relationally. And he is not alone. I would suggest that everyone who does not come to this position by virtue of personally embracing homosexuality as their own sexual identity comes to this position relationally. They know someone who claims homosexuality as their identity and cannot bear to stand in opposition to them.

And I do not wish to minimize this struggle for a moment. It is a dark and torturous place for anyone to be. I have experienced it personally though not as closely as many of you may have. But the fact that it is hard to stand in opposition to those we love does not make it okay to not do so.

Matthew 10:37-39 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

If you have not felt the heat of this crucible yet, you surely will. You will know someone and love someone who will choose homosexuality as their way of life. You will desire to keep both them and your beliefs close.

When it happens, do not melt away. Do the truly loving thing, stand firm, and speak the truth in love. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you may save both yourself and them.

And yet be prepared for the opposite also. For if that person does not turn after much loving counsel, the intensity of the heat will grow. Eventually it may dissolve the connection between you and them. And while that is never the intention, it is far more important that you remain connected to Christ. You must remain relationally connected to Christ. It is your life.

WSJ: Sexual Revolution Good for Women?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304724404577297422171909202.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Has the Sexual Revolution Been Good for Women? No

By MARY EBERSTADT

Spring came early to most of the 50 states this year—and with it, at least in the political fields, the usual crop of mixed truths, untruths, and wildly growing falsehoods. Let's yank up one of those weeds for a little inspection: the idea that a national "war on women" is afoot.

It's an ideological whopper that demands more scrutiny than it has so far gotten, because underneath it are solid rocks of myth concerning what are called the "social issues." Let's turn over a few of these to see what facts they hide.

Myth No. 1: The "war on women" consists of tyrannical men arrayed against oppressed but pluckily united women.

In the first place, womankind, bless her fickle heart, is not exactly united on…anything.

Public opinion polls show women to be roughly evenly divided on the question of abortion. This same diversity of opinion was also manifest in the arguments over the proposed new federal mandate forcing employers to pay for birth control, including abortifacients.

© Charles Gatewood/The Image Works

It seems difficult to argue that the results of the revolution have been a slam-dunk for happiness.

Over 20,000 women, from all walks of life, signed an open letter to President Barack Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius objecting to the federal mandate. Co-written by lawyers Helen Alvare and Kim Daniels, that letter alone answered the taunting question of supporters of the measure, "Where are the women?" The answer: in impressive numbers on the opposite side of the dispute.

Other leaders hailing from the XX side of the chromosome gap also took public stands against the mandate, including politicians, pundits, professors, editors and authors who don't seem to have gotten the message that they are victims in all this. They considered the unexpected federal fiat a violation of religious liberty and individual conscience, but they didn't think these wrongs had anything to do with themselves qua women. Many men shared their view.


Myth No. 2: If it weren't for the Catholic Church, no one would be talking about contraception anyway.


It is not only a series of popes but also a number of prominent secular thinkers who believe that the birth-control pill has been one of the major milestones in human history—a diverse group that runs from public intellectuals of a previous generation like Walter Lippmann to such contemporary scholars as Francis Fukuyama and Robert Putnam. As many pundits had occasion to observe in 2010, the 50th anniversary of the pill, it is hard to think of anything else that has changed life so quickly and dramatically for so many.


In other words, this isn't just a Catholic thing. In severing sex from procreation, humankind set into motion forces that have by now shaped and reshaped almost every aspect of life in the Western world. Families are smaller, birthrates have dropped, divorce and out-of-wedlock births have soared.


Demography has now even started to work against the modern welfare state, which has become harder to sustain as fewer children have been produced to replace aging parents.
The sexual revolution has transformed economics, culture and law. Witness this week's Supreme Court case, in which the question at hand is whether an individual's Social Security survivor benefits belong to children conceived with his sperm months after he died.


Even on the religious playing field, this isn't just a Catholic thing. Christian teaching against artificial contraception dates back to the earliest Church fathers confronting pagan Rome. Christians remained united on that teaching until relatively recently—1930, to be exact, which is the year that the Anglican Communion made its first, carefully circumscribed exceptions to the rule. Orthodox Jews, Mormons and some traditionalist Protestants have also pondered the issue and ended up proscribing or limiting contraception in different circumstances.


Which brings us to Myth No. 3: The "social issues" are unwanted artifacts of a primitive religious past that will eventually just fade away.


To the contrary. What we know as the "social issues"—abortion, gay marriage and the rest—are here to stay, and we'll be dealing with them for generations to come. In fact, one might even predict that these vexing issues will outlast almost every other controversy burning today.


That's because they cannot be resolved until the legacy of the sexual revolution has been settled in the Western mind—and this certainly includes the question of whether it has been a good thing or a bad thing. Judging by the state of much current commentary, we've only just begun down that road.


This brings us to Myth No. 4, which is perhaps the most interesting one of all: The sexual revolution has made women happier.


Granted, happiness is a personal, imponderable thing. But if the sexual revolution has really made women as happy as feminists say, a few elementary questions beg to be answered.


Why do the pages of our tonier magazines brim with mournful titles like "The Case for Settling" and "The End of Men"? Why do websites run by and for women focus so much on men who won't grow up, and ooze such despair about relations between the sexes?


Why do so many accomplished women simply give up these days and decide to have children on their own, sometimes using anonymous sperm donors, thus creating the world's first purposely fatherless children? What of the fact, widely reported earlier this week, that 26% of American women are on some kind of mental-health medication for anxiety and depression and related problems?


Or how about what is known in sociology as "the paradox of declining female happiness"? Using 35 years of data from the General Social Survey, two Wharton School economists, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, made the case in 2009 that women's happiness appeared to be declining over time despite their advances in the work force and education.


The authors noted that women (and men) showed declining happiness during the years studied. Though they were careful not to draw conclusions from their data, is it not reasonable to think that at least some of that discontent comes from the feeling that the grass is greener elsewhere—a feeling made plausible by the sexual revolution?


However one looks at the situation, it seems difficult to argue that the results of the revolution have been a slam-dunk for happiness.


It is always hard to disentangle the weeds from the plants in such a large field. But if the sexual revolution has made women so happy, we can at least ask what it would look like for them to be unhappy. A broader inquiry might yield some results worth thinking about, in contrast to the shortsighted political theatrics over a supposed "war on women."


—Mrs. Eberstadt, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a consulting editor to Policy Review, is the author of a new book, "Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution."