Reweaving the Rainbow

Is anyone there?

2008-05-01T00:05:00.002-04:00

Wow. It's been three years since I last posted. And so much has changed. Like that fact that it's midnight and I am working. Yes, I finished law school, passed the bar, and started working for a big firm. And I'm loving every minute of it! Really. I am.

2005-03-24T11:13:00.000-05:00

PVS & Eye Tracking: Schiavo, apparently, can track objects with her eyes, which suggests her diagnosis of PVS is more complicated than media accounts have suggested (recall as well Terri's husband won't let her have MRI testing done even though it can detect the brain lesions associated with PVS):

Eye tracking and Emotional responses are the most common ways of determining whether a patient is responding, and therefore no longer in a vegetative state. The first sign of a patient emerging from PVS is the localizing of the eyes on a visual stimulus. This can be observed because persons in a vegetative state are unable to track moving objects or fixate their vision on an object, and as a patient recovers they regain this ability. This type of a response if most often detected by family members or caregivers that have worked directly with the patient. Eye tracking is not necessarily enough to show that a person is recovering from PVS because patients may not show any other evidence of other meaningful response to the environment.
More difficulties with eye tracking may come into play because of the possibility of other neurological or ophthalmological damage that may prevent a patient from tracking stimuli. This means that a patient may actually have a degree of recovery that will be missed because it cannot be detected through eye tracking.
Emotional response is also difficult to determine because a response must be directly related to specific stimulus. This can be difficult because patients in PVS can scream, cry, grunt or have other actions associated with emotional responses, which are not done in response to stimuli. Therefore significant testing must be done to determine that emotional responses are not being done randomly, but are performed as responses.
A patient recovering from PVS usually recovers in a progressive manner where they move into a post vegetative state. Some patients have recovered significantly. Individuals with relatively short periods of time in PVS have been able to regain nearly normal physical and mental capabilities. There has also been documentation of individuals recovering from periods of PVS lasting over a year who have been able to regain the ability to think, communicate and recover a fair level of physical independence (move without a wheelchair, and feed themselves) (CRA 54).

2005-03-23T21:53:00.000-05:00

Schiavo's Brain: Here's something I hadn't read in the other news reports about Terri Schiavo's condidtion. According to Charles Krauthammer (who is a medical doctor):

The crucial issue in deciding whether one would want to intervene to keep her alive is whether there is, as one bioethicist put it to me, "anyone home." Her parents, who see her often, believe that there is. The husband maintains that there is no one home. (But then again he has another home, making his judgment somewhat suspect.) The husband has not allowed a lot of medical testing in the past few years.

I have tried to find out what her neurological condition actually is. But the evidence is sketchy, old and conflicting. The Florida court found that most of her cerebral cortex is gone. But "most" does not mean all. There may be some cortex functioning. The severely retarded or brain-damaged can have some consciousness. And we do not go around euthanizing the minimally conscious in the back wards of mental hospitals on the grounds that their lives are not worth living.

2005-03-22T16:03:00.000-05:00

Trickle-Down Politics: A while back I wrote about my sort of apolitical approach to politics. Here's Father Neuhaus making a similar point about C.S. Lewis:

The phrase "public square" evokes images of the political arena with its partisan games and intense debates over public policy. Lewis did occasionally, very occasionally, address what are ordinarily called political issues. One thinks of his reflections on the Second World War, on pacifism and belligerency, on laws regarding obscenity, and on the nature of criminal punishment. But, for the most part, Lewis is understandably viewed as a determinedly apolitical, even private, man. Indeed, in many ways he took his stand, and encouraged others to take their stand, over against politics—especially politics as dominated by the machinations of the modern State. He was on the side of reason, myth, splendor, and virtue, in the hope that such vital elements of life might "still trickle down to irrigate the dust–bowl of modern economic Statecraft." This might be called the C. S. Lewis trickle–down theory of politics.

2005-03-15T12:37:00.000-05:00

California Gay Marriage Decision: Here's a link to California Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer's 27-page decision explaining why marriage is a fundamental right that cannot be denied to same-sex couples. The ruling is the fourth court opinion in favor of marriage equality in the last year. Meanwhile, movements to ban gay marriage by state constitutional amendment continue in Indiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Wisconsin, and elsewhere (for a roundup see here and here).

2005-03-15T11:27:00.000-05:00

The Latter Days: A NY Times article about the church shootings in Wisconsin last week observes:

The church's "pre-millennial" view of history, which asserts that humankind is moving inexorably toward the "end times," when the world will go through a series of cataclysms before the second coming of Christ, is not uncommon among evangelicals. Dr. Meredith preached in a recent sermon broadcast internationally that the apocalypse was close, warning members to pay off credit-card debt and hoard savings in preparation for the United States' coming financial collapse.

Hmm. I don't know about you, but if the end is really that close, the last thing I'm going to be worrying about is my credit card debt. Then again, perhaps this explains the motivation behind the tough new bankruptcy reform bill currently making its way through Congress.

(Hat tip: Evangelical Outpost.)

2005-03-15T00:32:00.000-05:00

Why Holy Matrimony, Part II: Last week I wrote a post explaining why I consider the church’s opposition to gay marriage to be a much more serious matter than the state’s (see here). But this raises a second question which I did not address there: why, despite my submission to the authority of the church in matters of faith and morals, I not only reject the church’s teaching on homosexuality, but feel free to act in opposition to it?

Like many theological questions, this is not the sort of question that can be answered in a few paragraphs. But in my own thinking about the issue, one thing I've found especially helpful has been the realization that doctrinal change has been a constant feature of church history from the beginning (see, e.g., the evolution in the church’s stance toward the continuing validity of Jewish law as recounted in Acts 15 and Galatians 2). As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, "even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made fully explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries” (No. 66).

Of course, the mere fact that doctrine develops over time does not mean that any given proposed change is legitimate. How, then, do we know what is corruption and what is authentic?

Father Richard John Neuhaus suggests an answer to this quetion that offers both Catholics and Protestants much to ponder:

"Recall Cardinal Newman’s reflection on the development of doctrine, a reflection that has been incorporated by magisterial teaching. He suggested seven marks of authentic development: authentic development preserves the Church’s apostolic form; it reflects continuity of principles in testing the unknown by the known; it demonstrates the power to assimilate what is true, even in what is posited against it; it follows a logical sequence; it anticipates future developments; it conserves past developments; and, throughout, it claims and demonstrates the vigor of teaching authority.

“And thus it is, said St. Vincent of Lerins in the fifth century, that in authentic development of doctrine nothing presents itself in the Church’s old age that was not latent in her youth. Such was the truth discovered by Augustine, a truth ‘ever ancient, ever new.’”

This last point expresses well the task that gay and lesbian Christians must be prepared to accept as we come to the church asking it to bless our unions. In short, we must be willing to show our brothers and sisters why, despite the fact that gay marriage appears to be and indeed is a novum or new thing, it nonetheless represents an authentic development of doctrine that affirms and even underscores the church's ancient understanding of what marriage is and what it is for.

This is an issue that I have already discussed here, here, and here. But next week I will offer a third installment in this series that will attempt to bring these arguments together in a more systematic way.

2005-03-14T12:22:00.000-05:00

Light Blogging: It's going to be a busy week in law school, so blogging will be light the next few days.

2005-03-11T14:35:00.000-05:00

Boys Will Do Boys: At least according to a number of Gay.com members. Consider this pearl of wisdom:

Since sex is between two consenting adults and everyone's standards of moral obligation are different, we do not have the right to tell someone who is HIV+ or HIV- what they are allowed to do behind closed doors. We can give information and listen to people's needs. From there an answer and lasting solution will come to this problem that has plagued our community for so many years.

Ah yes. That most venerable of heresies, gnosticism, rears its ugly head again, still claiming after all these centuries that knowledge alone is sufficient to solve every problem. The only trouble is that experience suggests a rather more complicated explanation of human behavior is in order, one that neither denies the existence of the human will (i.e., one that concedes we can change our behavior) but that also does not fall into the trap of presuming we sin out of ignorance.

Consider the AIDS epidemic among American gay men. Most of us know what HIV is, how it is transmitted, and what steps (abstinence, monogamy, use of condoms) can be taken to reduce its spread. In short, we have been given knowledge about the disease, and most of us have received it. Yet still the (largely self-inflicted) plague continues. All of which would seem to confirm the psychological--if not the soteriological--truth of St. Paul's confession to the Roman church:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. (Rom. 7:15).

Paul's answer to this dilemma, of course, was to turn for help to the One who created us:

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you... (Rom. 8:7-9a)

But then this answer to the problem of HIV is not likely to be taken seriously by those who think knowledge or gnosis is the answer to everything. After all, Paul's approach would require people to get down on their knees for some purpose other than indulging sexual "needs." And this, in turn, would involve making a moral judgment against promiscuity, a definite no-no in this age of moral relativism--even, it would appear, when the only alternative is quite literally death.

2005-03-11T13:53:00.000-05:00

Christian Blackmail?: Stupidity is no sin, but the Christian tradition has long held that sloth--mental as well as physical--is. The thought came to mind as I read this defense of blackmail offered by libertarian blogger Vox Popoli:

Exposing the sins of an unrepentant individual to others, far from being a wrongful act, is actually required of the church member in good standing. Since such exposure is a virtuous act under Biblical principles, it cannot and should not be viewed as something negative, much less as the basis for a crime.

Where to begin. First note that no scripture references are cited to support this rather unconventional conclusion. In fact, the New Testament denounces both the spirit of busibodiness that leads some to expose the sins of others as well as the greed that actually motivates those who engage in blackmail. This does not mean there is no time or place for "exposing the sins" of others, of course, but the underlying motive is never to be either financial gain or exposure for the sake of exposure. Consider, for instance, this passage from the Sermon on the Mount:

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye."

Notice the two main concerns of Jesus here. First, we are to focus on our own short-comings. Second, we are to turn our focus onto the sins of others only after we have first removed our own sins and then only for the purpose of helping our brother to see clearly (i.e., to help him "sin no more," as in the story of Jesus stopping the attempted stoning of the woman caught in adultery; see John 8 & especially v. 7: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." ).

Then there is the general framework for handling disputes among believers set forth in Matthew 18:

"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector."

Notice that disputes are to be worked out in private if at all possible. If that fails, then a small number of others may be brought in to help reach a resolution. Only if that step fails is the entire church to be brought in, and then the remedy is to cut ties with the person, not to cause scandal or financial harm through blackmail.

2005-03-11T13:29:00.000-05:00

Spanish Muslims Take a Stand: CNN is reporting that the Islamic Commission of Spain has issued a fatwa stating that, according to the Koran, "the terrorist acts of Osama bin Laden and his organization al Qaeda ... are totally banned and must be roundly condemned as part of Islam." The clerics also accuse bin Laden of "abandoning his religion and urged others of their faith to denounce the al Qaeda leader...."

2005-03-11T10:24:00.000-05:00

Today's New International Version: Zondervan's revised, gender-inclusive version of the best-selling NIV Bible is out now (see here for background on the controversy and here for the new text). Following are some famous verses as rendered in the KJV, RSV, NIV, and TNIV:

(1) Gen. 1:27:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.... (KJV)

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him.... (RSV)

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him.... (NIV)

So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them.... (TNIV)

(2) Psalm 23

(a) v. 3:

"He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness..." (KJV)

"...he restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness..." (RSV)

"he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness..." (NIV)

"he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths...." (TNIV)

v. 4:

"the valley of the shadow of death" (KJV)

[same] (RSV)

[same] (NIV)

"the darkest valley" (TNIV)

Note from Strong's: "from 'tsel' (6738) and 'maveth' (4194); shade of death, i.e. the grave (figuratively, calamity):--shadow of death."

(3) 1 John 2:9ff:

9 He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. 10 He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. 11 But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes. (KJV)

9 He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in the darkness still.... (RSV)

9Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.... (NIV)

9 Those who claim to be in the light but hate a fellow believer are still in the darkness. 10 Those who love their fellow believers live in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. 11 But those who hate a fellow believer are in the darkness and walk around in the darkness; they do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them. (TNIV)

2005-03-11T10:07:00.000-05:00

Christian Arabs: Here's an article that gives an update about last month's slaying of the New Jersey Coptic family as well as the rise in persecution of Arab Christians in the Middle East. The jist of the U.S. murder story is that "New Jersey police say they have no proof it was religious murder and are still considering robbery among the motives, although Armanious was far from rich and family jewelry was found untouched in the house." Meanwhile, the killings apparently followed a "Koranic prescription for ritual execution."

Divide, Conquer, Abort:

2005-03-10T13:29:00.000-05:00

A Maine legislator has introduced a bill that “would make it illegal in Maine to abort a fetus that is known to have the ‘gay gene.’ Anticipating a future day when scientists might clearly identify such a gene, Rep. Brian Duprey claims he introduced the bill to prevent women from ending pregnancies based on their fetus' projected sexual orientation.”

Duprey says he got the idea for the law one afternoon as he was listening to Rush Limbaugh. But many gays in Maine don’t exactly appreciate the help. "This bill is a feeble attempt to drive a wedge between groups and individuals who have worked together to protect and defend a woman's right to choose and eliminate bias based on sexual orientation," says Betsy Smith, the executive director of EqualityMaine.

Notice how Smith focuses on Duprey’s motives while completely sidestepping the delicate but important question of what should be done when a woman’s decision to abort her fetus is based on bias against homosexuals. Would Smith really have no problem with such a choice? Or would she not at some point have to admit that abortion, contra the implicit claims of the pro-choice lobby, is not quite the equivalent of an appendectomy?

2005-03-09T14:59:00.000-05:00

Hating the 'Sinner': "It's just a wonderful way to show the contrast between the truth of God and the abomination of sin,” says the Rev. Fred Phelps of the invitation from the Indiana Equal Rights Coalition to speak next week at a forum on gay rights being held at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

Phelps, of course, is the (self-ordained) minister who runs the God Hates Fags website and made national headlines when he picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard. The purpose of the invitation, I guess, is to be nice to him and see whether in return he will stop hating us or at least leave us alone. Or perhaps the invitation is meant only to show how ignorant homophobia really is.

Whatever the purpose, Phelps says he plans to picket six area churches that he claims are tolerant of gay rights, prompting this response from one of the targeted ministers:

"One cannot hate in the name of God," said the Rev. Phil Emerson of Good Shepherd United Methodist Church.

"My great heartbreak is unchurched people in Fort Wayne will read this story and will say that's what it means to be Christian or that's what it means to be godly. There's nothing of God about this group, and I'm sorry they associate themselves with any Christian names."

2005-03-09T12:35:00.000-05:00

Antisemitism & Civilization: Blogger Eugene Volokh makes an interesting point about antisemitism:

The most powerful country in the world, America, is one of the ones that has been most open to Jews. Look at the most anti-Semitic countries in recent history: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Arab world. Right up there at the forefront of civilization and power, aren't they? Is it all the workings of The Conspiracy? Or is it just that the sorts of idiots who hate Jews do other idiotic things, too?

But there are other reasons why the most successful nations also tend to be the most open to the Jewish people in their midst. Tom Cahill does an excellent job of explaining the reasons in his book The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. Here's a short excerpt that focuses on how our western understanding of history as a story with a beginning, middle, and end (or telos) is in large part a Jewish invention given to the world via the Bible:

The Jews started it all—and by ‘it’ I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and gentile, believer and atheist, tick...For better or worse, the role of the West in humanity’s history is singular. Because of this, the role of the Jews, the inventors of Western culture, is also singular: there is simply no one else remotely like them; theirs is a unique vocation. Indeed, as we shall see, the very idea of vocation, of a personal destiny, is a Jewish idea....
The assumptions that early man made about the world were, in all their essentials, little different from the assumptions that later and more sophistocated societies, like Greece and India, would make in a more elaborate manner. As Henri-Charles Puech says of Greek thought...: ‘No event is unique, nothing is enacted but once...; every event has been enacted, is enacted, and will be enacted perpetually; the same individuals have appeared, appear, and will appear at every turn of the circle.’
The Jews were the first people to break out of this circle, to find a new way of thinking and experiencing, a new way of understanding and feeling the world, so much so that it may be said with some justice that theirs is the only new idea that human beings have ever had.

2005-03-08T23:38:00.000-05:00

50 Ways to Leave Your Partner: Tom Chatt of UpWord writes: "For lesbians and gay men, there's a handful of ways to legalize our relationships, and then there must be 50 ways to leave them: one for each state. When Vermont civil unions first arrived on the scene, many non-residents flocked to Vermont for the chance to legally affirm their relationships. As was inevitable, some of them didn't last, and the participants then sought to have their unions terminated in the courts of their home states. The courts have been mixed in their response to requests to dissolve civil unions."

You can read the whole post here to find out what, exactly, the courts have done.

2005-03-05T09:41:00.000-05:00

Why Holy Matrimony?: Here's an excerpt from G.K. Chesterton's excellent book Orthodoxy that came to mind the other day as I tried to explain to a friend why the church's opposition to gay marriage bothers me so much more than the state's even though the latter prevents us from obtaining tangible legal rights. The basic reason is that, to me, legal rights are a far different (and lesser) good than are the benefits of the grace which (I believe) God dispenses to us through the sacrament of holy matrimony.

But that only raises the prior question of why I should place so much faith in the church, a question which, I think, Chesterton addresses better than just about any other writer. He begins by noting that it is rather like asking someone why he prefers civilization to savagery:

"'Why, there is that bookcase . . . and the coals in the coal-scuttle . . . and pianos . . . and policemen.' The whole case for civilization is that the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible...."

Chesterton explains that the same point holds true when a person tries to "defend" his faith, and continues that, in his view, the question boils down to not just finding the gods, but rather the real chief of the gods--i.e., God. He continues:

"I have another far more solid and central ground for submitting to it as a faith, instead of merely picking up hints from it as a scheme. And that is this: that the Christian Church in its practical relation to my soul is a living teacher, not a dead one. It not only certainly taught me yesterday, but will almost certainly teach me to-morrow.... Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture to-morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song.

"The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. There is one only other parallel to this position; and that is the parallel of the life in which we all began. When your father told you, walking about the garden, that bees stung or that roses smelt sweet, you did not talk of taking the best out of his philosophy. When the bees stung you, you did not call it an entertaining coincidence. When the rose smelt sweet you did not say 'My father is a rude, barbaric symbol, enshrining (perhaps unconsciously) the deep delicate truths that flowers smell.' No: you believed your father, because you had found him to be a living fountain of facts, a thing that really knew more than you; a thing that would tell you truth to-morrow, as well as to-day.

"And if this was true of your father, it was even truer of your mother; at least it was true of mine, to whom this book is dedicated. Now, when society is in a rather futile fuss about the subjection of women, will no one say how much every man owes to the tyranny and privilege of women, to the fact that they alone rule education until education becomes futile: for a boy is only sent to be taught at school when it is too late to teach him anything. The real thing has been done already, and thank God it is nearly always done by women....

"For I remember with certainty this fixed psychological fact; that the very time when I was most under a woman's authority, I was most full of flame and adventure. Exactly because when my mother said that ants bit they did bite, and because snow did come in winter (as she said); therefore the whole world was to me a fairyland of wonderful fulfilments, and it was like living in some Hebraic age, when prophecy after prophecy came true. I went out as a child into the garden, and it was a terrible place to me, precisely because I had a clue to it: if I had held no clue it would not have been terrible, but tame. A mere unmeaning wilderness is not even impressive.

"But the garden of childhood was fascinating, exactly because everything had a fixed meaning which could be found out in its turn. Inch by inch I might discover what was the object of the ugly shape called a rake; or form some shadowy conjecture as to why my parents kept a cat. So, since I have accepted Christendom as a mother and not merely as a chance example, I have found Europe and the world once more like the little garden where I stared at the symbolic shapes of cat and rake; I look at everything with the old elvish ignorance and expectancy. This or that rite or doctrine may look as ugly and extraordinary as a rake; but I have found by experience that such things end somehow in grass and flowers....

"This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right, like my father in the garden.

"Theosophists for instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait for its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty of caste. For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins, people will tend to despise the beggar. But Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we wait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and pity; for only with original sin we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king. Men of science offer us health, an obvious benefit; it is only afterwards that we discover that by health, they mean bodily slavery and spiritual tedium.

"Orthodoxy makes us jump by the sudden brink of hell; it is only afterwards that we realise that jumping was an athletic exercise highly beneficial to our health. It is only afterwards that we realise that this danger is the root of all drama and romance...."

2005-03-04T21:37:00.000-05:00

Daily Life Update: It occurs to me that, despite the description of this blog above, I write very little about daily life. So, in case any one's interested, here goes.

The boyfriend is away this weekend visiting friends, and I'll be leaving tomorrow for North Carolina to visit my family. It should be a great time. I'm especially looking forward to seeing my long ex-girlfriend, who is now married and had her first child (a daughter) in January.

This means I won't be blogging much over the next few days. But I'll be back by the middle of next week, no doubt with plenty more to write about.

2005-03-04T21:05:00.000-05:00

HRC To Name Abortion-Rights Advocate As Head?: If you care at all about who the next executive director of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) will be, check out this post from Steve Miller on IndeGayForum. The rumor is that HRC may name Joe Solmonese, the current head of a group dedicated to electing abortion-rights Democratics to Congress. Sounds to me like an excellent way to conflate what are very separate issues and, in the process, further undermine our cause in the eyes of Republicans. As Miller puts it:

Selecting an abortion advocate identified exclusively with electing Democrats would ensure that, going forward, HRC continues to have zero clout lobbying the party that actually controls the presidency and Congress....

Oh well. If can't beat 'em, you can always thumb your nose at up 'em. Meanwhile, states red and blue continue the work of banning gay marriage.

2005-03-04T20:13:00.000-05:00

Big Apple Big on Gay Marriage: According to this poll, at least, which found that a majority of NYC voters support granting same-sex couples the right to marry.

2005-03-03T18:54:00.000-05:00

The Ten Commandments--religious symbol or Hollywood plot?: Here's a good report of how the oral arguments in McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky went on Wednesday. I don't have much to add, but I will note (1) that I've never really understood why the ACLU is so afraid of Moses, and (2) that most of the Ten Commandment displays that can be seen in town squares and courthouses across the country date back only to the 1950s and 60s.

This last fact is interesting because, it turns out, thousands of them--including a Texas display that is also being challenged--were put there by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which in turn received funding from the director Cecil B. DeMille, who at the time just happened to be promoting his movie "The Ten Commandments."

Only in America, as they say.

2005-03-03T18:30:00.000-05:00

Another Gay Bashing: This time in Chapel Hill, NC, near where I used to live before I came to D.C. for law school. The attack occurred last Friday around 2 a.m.:

"Out of nowhere I just hear 'Fag' and all sorts of derogatory comments made towards me," Stockwell, 21, said. "At first I didn't realize they were yelling at me."

The six men, all about 20, chased Stockwell down, then broke his nose and knocked him out.

"They just punched me in the face," Stockwell recalled. "I did fight back. I'm not the only one hurting in town tonight."

Good for him.

2005-03-03T18:14:00.000-05:00

The Resurrection of the Dead: A while back I criticized John Ray of Scripture Blog for lapsing into an anachronism when he claimed that Christians envision the afterlife to be “purely spiritual.” Here's what the Cambridge-trained historian E.P. Sanders of Duke University says of the resurrection in his excellent book The Historical Figure of Jesus.

After noting that Paul speaks of the resurrection in terms of the "spiritual body" and that Luke seems to suggest something similar (e.g., by reporting the resurrected Jesus as saying : "a ghost has not flesh and bones as you see that i have", 24:40), Sanders comments:

"In Paul's view [Jesus] had been transformed, changed from a 'physical' or a 'natural' body to a 'spiritual body'. Luke thought that he had flesh and could eat, but also that he had been changed. He was not obviously recognizable to people who saw him, and he could appear and disappear.

"Both authors were trying to describe--Paul at first hand, Luke at second or third hand--an experience that does not fit a known category [i.e., neither a resuscitated corpse nor a ghost or phantasm]. What they deny is much clearer than what they affirm."

As, indeed, it always is when people are attempting to explain something that has never happened before.

2005-03-03T06:26:00.000-05:00

Lutherans Debate Homosexuality: "Seventeen scholars from 12 campuses have released a strong statement against a proposal that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America officially maintain its stance against same-sex ceremonies and gay clergy while tolerating dissent from that policy," the S.F. Gate reports. "The protesters say that the measure, put forward by a task force in January, threatens the church's unity and its 'historical, biblical and confessional teachings and practice.'"

2005-03-03T06:24:00.000-05:00

The Politics of Satan, Part 2: A few years back, Father Richard John Neuhaus of FIRST THINGS had this to say of his failed bid for Congress in the early 1970s:

I've never seen anyone look incredulous, but I suspect some are, when I say that I've thanked God almost every day—well, almost every week—that I lost. Only weeks into the campaign, which was going frighteningly well, I knew that this was not where I belonged. Politics, and especially Washington politics, has for many years seemed to me oppressively dehumanizing, verging on the demonic. It's the all-pervasive corruption of self-importance.

2005-03-03T06:23:00.000-05:00

Award-Winning Hopelessness: Thomas Hibbs has written a smart, intelligent critique of Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby. Money quote:

In Million Dollar Baby, Frankie (Eastwood as the aging boxing coach) attends daily Mass and has ongoing discussions with his parish priest. He berates the priest with puzzles about the doctrines of the trinity and the Immaculate Conception. But Frankie has no genuine interest in the answers to the questions. They are, as the priest suspects, trivia questions designed to trump and frustrate him.

Frankie's faith is a husk, void of vitality. In fact, even the priest's understanding of faith is shallow, a perversion of the church as a community of sinners redeemed by divine grace into a meeting place for the hopelessly unforgiven. The priest himself articulates the distortion, when he tells Frankie that the only individuals who attend Mass as often as Frankie does are those "who can't forgive themselves." That would make priests, who celebrate Mass daily, precisely what Nietzsche thought they were, masochists consumed by self-hatred.

You can read the whole thing here.

2005-03-02T19:06:00.000-05:00

Gays Reading Maps: If I were the president of Harvard, I wouldn't dare link to this story about a new study which shows that gender differences affect gays and lesbians in surprising ways. But since I don't have to answer to under-sexed feminist humanities professors, here goes.

The study suggests, among other things, that gay men have "mosaic minds" which combine certain features of both men and women:

Gay men employ the same strategies for navigating as women - using landmarks to find their way around . . . . But they also use the strategies typically used by straight men, such as using compass directions and distances. In contrast, gay women read maps just like straight women, reveals the study of 80 heterosexual and homosexual men and women.

Sounds about right to me. Not only do I read maps and use landmarks, but I don't mind listening to either Madonna or Eminem while I do it. All of which raises the question: Are gay men superior to their less mosaic-minded peers? It's probably too early to say conclusively one way or the other. Still, the next time you get lost, you just might want to stop and ask one of us for directions. Just don't ask me as I tend to get lost pretty easily.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)

2005-03-02T10:41:00.000-05:00

E!'s 'Michael Jackson Trial': Here's Tom Shales of the Washington Post on E!'s new show reenacting the trial's daily proceedings: "The makeup job on the faux King of Pop is pretty good, but he really suggests the Michael Jackson of two or three noses ago."

Ouch.

2005-03-02T02:40:00.000-05:00

The Politics of Satan: Before I started this blog, I debated whether or not to write about politics. It didn’t take me long to decide that I didn’t want to—or at least not very often. And the reason why is because, except for mundane things like collecting the trash and making the trains run on time, I simply don’t expect much from the government.

I know, I know: Sometimes politics does touch on issues whose importance to our everyday lives should not be underestimated. The pro-democracy demonstrations going on right now in Lebanon are a perfect example of a story that truly is newsworthy. But most of what we read about in the papers or see on television is neither new nor worthy of our attention. For instance, is the fact that life expectancy has increased under the Bush presidency—as it undoubtedly has under almost virtually every administration since George Washington’s—really the politcal "news" that some have claimed it out to be? And even if the claim is meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek, isn't it suggestive of the poison of partisan politics, which encourages us to see everything in terms of us-versus-them?

I think so. I also think that, all in all, the relative unimportance of American politics to daily life is a good thing. It would be very hard to maintain the sort of vigilance that our American experiment in democracy requires if every day we had to worry about whether a fundamental change was afoot.

But there’s something else about American politics that bothers me, something that has to do with the tendency of both politicians and pundits to speak in a tone that sounds suspiciously similar to the voice of that dread spirit who tempted Christ so long ago in the wilderness:

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." Then Jesus said to him, "Begone, Satan! for it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'" (Matt. 4:11)

I like to think that my own disinterest in political “news” sends a similar message to those devils who continue to promise us the world in exchange for our adulation. But, alas, this is probably hoping too much. Still, it’s a message that our political leaders could stand to hear. So let’s all do our favorite politicians a favor and write them a letter telling them just how unimportant they really are.

Who knows? Perhaps this news will give them the courage they need to reach the sort of sober-minded, well-considered compromises that our fractured country so desperately needs right now. At the very least, it might give them reason to doubt whether their latest plan to "save" us is really necessary. And that, it seems to me, would be a very good thing indeed.

2005-03-02T02:29:00.000-05:00

Gay Marriage Watch: "I don't care what Fred Phelps, George W. Bush or Rick Santorum say about marriage being only between a man and a woman," says blogger Andy of The Last Debate, "I'm in love. I'm going to marry my iPod."

2005-03-02T01:50:00.000-05:00

Scalia’s Sting Part 2: Here’s more from Scalia’s dissent in Roper v. Simmons (see below for background information):

As petitioner points out, the American Psychological Association (APA), which claims in this case that scientific evidence shows persons under 18 lack the ability to take moral responsibility for their decisions, has previously taken precisely the opposite position before this very Court. In its brief in Hodgson v. Minnesota, . . . the APA found a rich body of research showing that juveniles are mature enough to decide whether to obtain an abortion without parental involvement.

Ouch. That's got to hurt. Meanwhile, the LA Times has a balanced report on the decision, including this description of the case's underlying facts:

In 1993, [then 17-year-old Christopher Simmons] and two younger accomplices broke into a neighbor's home, intending to burglarize it. When the neighbor, Shirley Crook, awoke and recognized him, Simmons tied her up, put duct tape over her eyes and mouth, put her in the back of a minivan and threw her off a railroad bridge south of St. Louis. She drowned in the waters below. Simmons bragged about the crime at his high school and soon was arrested....

2005-03-02T01:15:00.000-05:00

A Very Lutheran Serial Killer?: Reports that Dennis Rader—the suburban family man and Cub Scout leader accused of leading a double life as the BTK serial killer—was also active in his Lutheran church have already caused some Christians to express shock. But maybe it’s not so surprising after all. The idea that a Christian is simul iustus et peccator—at the same time justified by faith and a sinner—lies at the heart of Martin Luther's theology. It would also seem to be at least one way of comprehending the horrible deeds of Rader, not to mention all the (hopefully less gruesome) sins which the rest of us commit every day.

2005-03-02T00:24:00.000-05:00

Idol Watch: "You weren't annoying in the slightest," Simon Cowell told American Idol hopeful Mikalah Gordon last night, "because you weren't talking." Ouch.

By far the best performance of the week, however, was that of 29-year-old rocker Bo Bice, whose stirring and suprisingly authentic rendition of "Whipping Post" Monday night was a welcome change from the safe, boring performances of the other contestants.

Here's my prediction of who'll get booted this week:

(1) Janay Castine (cute, but not that great of a singer, and an even worse performer);

(2) Vonzell Solomon (likable, but an "overcooked performance," as Simon put it);

(3) Constantine Maroulis (the uninspired, off-key rendition of "Hard to Handle" was even harder to listen to); and

(4) Nikko Smith (surely I couldn't have been the only one whose response to his version of "Let's Get It On" was the thought: "not unless you've got a lot of money").

2005-03-02T00:13:00.000-05:00

Scalia's Sting: The Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roper v. Simmons yesterday, ruling 5 to 4 that it is unconstitutional to sentence anyone to death for a crime he or she committed under the age of 18.

In concluding that the death penalty for minors is "cruel and unusual punishment" within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment, the court cited a "national consensus" against the practice—a claim that sent the increasingly acerbic Justice Scalia into a tizzy from which even the Amish weren't left unscathed:

Consulting States that bar the death penalty concerning the necessity of making an exception to the penalty for offenders under 18 is rather like including old-order Amishmen in a consumer-preference poll on the electric car. Of course they don’t like it, but that sheds no light whatever on the point at issue. That 12 States favor no executions says something about consensus against the death penalty, but nothing, absolutely nothing, about consensus that offenders under 18 deserve special immunity from such a penalty.
In repealing the death penalty, those 12 States considered none of the factors that the Court puts forth as determinative of the issue before us today—lower culpability of the young, inherent recklessness, lack of capacity for considered judgment, etc. What might be relevant, perhaps, is how many of those States permit 16- and 17-year old offenders to be treated as adults with respect to noncapital offenses. (They all do; indeed, some even require that juveniles as young as 14 be tried as adults if they are charged with murder.) The attempt by the Court to turn its remarkable minority consensus into a faux majority by counting Amishmen is an act of nomological desperation.

Scalia makes a fine point as a matter of constitutional law. But in articulating it he also calls attention to why, despite his deeply-held Roman Catholic faith, those who mistake him for a pawn of the Pope are simply wrong. The charge may hold water when it comes to anything that has to do with homosexuality (see, e.g., Scalia's derisive discussion of the "so-called homosexual agenda" in his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas). But when it comes to capital punishment, at least, Scalia seems all-to-willing to flaunt the teachings of John Paul II, whose 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) explained:

On this matter there is a growing tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely. The problem must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with God's plan for man and society...
If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person....

2005-03-01T18:22:00.000-05:00

Gay Bashing in Santa Fe: Here's a sad reminder of what far too many gay men in America continue to suffer for no reason other than their sexuality.

2005-03-01T14:15:00.000-05:00

The Twilight of Atheism: The Oxford University theologian Alister McGrath notes that atheism, once hailed as new, exciting, and liberating, has lately fallen on hard times:

With time, it turned out to have just as many frauds, psychopaths, and careerists as religion does. Many have now concluded that these personality types are endemic to all human groups, rather than being the peculiar preserve of religious folks. With Stalin and Madalyn Murray O'Hair, atheism seems to have ended up mimicking the vices of the Spanish Inquisition and the worst televangelists, respectively.

You can read the whole thing here.

2005-02-28T13:38:00.000-05:00

Best Oscar Lines: Some (silly, idiotic, killjoy) Christian groups had protested the selection of Chris Rock to host the Oscars, but it’s hard to imagine any other mainstream comedian making this sort of joke: "Nobody wanted to make 'Passion of the Christ,' man. Come on. They made six 'Police Academies' and can't make one 'Passion of the Christ.'"

It was the best line of the night. But the award for second best line has to go to Robin Williams, who observed: "SquarePants is not gay. Tight pants, maybe. SpongeBob Hot Pants, you go girl. What about Donald Duck? Little sailor top, no pants. Hello?" ... "Bugs Bunny? In more dresses than J. Edgar Hoover at Mardi Gras. Hello?"

Telling the Truth:

2005-02-28T11:24:00.000-05:00

Sometime during the early twentieth century, American Protestants had a revelation that was nicely summed up in various slogans like, "Deeds, not creeds," and "Doctrine divides, service unites." It was, as one might delicately put it, a nice thought. For centuries Protestant churches had become increasingly fractured over seemingly minor points of doctrine. But as the Epistle of James had observed: "For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead" (2:26). Why, then, shouldn't Protestants--and, indeed, all Christians--focus on those works that alone make our faith living rather than those dogmas that divided us?

And then came the Great War; Stalin's purges; Hitler's Holocaust; Mao's 'Revolution.' Millions and millions perished, and, with the advent of the Cold War and the nuclear age, it seemed likely that many millions more might die. For the first time in human history, human beings had learned how to wipe out entire cities and render whole regions of the earth unihabitable. Slowly, gradually, it dawned on many that the deeds-not-creeds approach to Christianity had a fatal flaw in that it tended to obscure the close nexus between the content of faith and the nature of what one will deem to be a good work.

Take lying. Most of us agree that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. Indeed, most of us believe this for reasons that don't seem to depend on Christian doctrine ("Oh what a web we weave..."). But the devil is in the details, and in actual everyday life it is the details of circumstance that work together to make lying so tempting.

Say you've made a commitment to meet a friend for dinner. When the day comes, however, you find yourself busier than you'd anticipated. You're having a hard day, as we all say, and you realize it would be ever so much easier to simply cancel the date and reschedule for another time. But you fear that doing so might send the wrong message that you don't value the friendship. And so, rather than risk a misunderstanding, you make up a "white lie." You tell your friend something has come up and, in a way, it has: you're much more tired than you thought you'd be when you first scheduled the date. Going through with the plans now, you tell yourself, would defeat the whole purpose for which they were made.

It all seems so harmless and easy. But is it? Paul Griffiths of the University of Illinois, Chicago, doesn't think so. In his book Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity, Griffiths sets forth and defends St. Augustine’s notoriously rigorous position on lying. For Augustine, he explains, to lie is to speak contra mentem, against the mind. It is to say one thing while thinking another. This “duplicitous” use of language is the evil proper to lying because it contradicts the very being of creatures made in the image of the Triune God—the God whose identity is revealed in the Word spoken by the power of the Spirit in the man Jesus Christ.

One reviewer puts it this way: "contemplating the legitimacy of duplicity is tantamount to contemplating the dissolution of Christian theology: it is entertaining the possibility that words might legitimately conceal rather than reveal identity." But this is a thought that Christians cannot entertain. "For I have not spoken on my own authority," Jesus says of his life and work in the Gospel of John; "the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has bidden me" (John 12:49-50).

It is this very same pattern of faithfully hearing and faithfully speaking that Christians are called to imitate when, through Christ, we come to participate in the Triune life of God. But we do not imitate Christ--much less become one with him as he is one with the Father (cf. John 17:22)--when our words to one another are not faithful reflections of who we are. Nor do we build the community of trust that God seeks for us. When we tell "white lies," we not only fail to tell the truth about ourselves, we make it impossible for others to place the sort of faith in us that genuine friendship requires.

Hence the reason why it is better to simply tell your friend the truth when you cancel a dinner date rather than make up an excuse. Your friend may not always understand why you can't keep your word, but chances are they won't be your friend for long if they're not even given the opportunity to try.

2005-02-28T10:45:00.000-05:00

Fair-Weathered Homophobes: The Economist has an excellect editorial urging the U.S. to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military. Money quote:

According to a recent poll of enlisted men, more than half thought gays should be allowed in the armed forces. In the current time of overstretch, even the older, more conservative, officer class seems to be changing heart. The number of gay discharges rose steadily till 2001, when America went to war in Afghanistan; since then the annual figure has halved. As for the idea that the ban reflects American mores, polls suggest that at least 64% of Americans would allow gay soldiers.

2005-02-25T09:41:00.000-05:00

Anglican Schism?: This strikes me as bad news: "Anglican leaders struggling to resolve explosive differences over homosexuality have asked the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada to temporarily withdraw from a key council of their global communion because of the election of a gay bishop in the United States and the blessing of same-sex unions there and in Canada."

On the other hand, as much as I am a supporter of gay marriage in the church, the ecclesiology of the Anglican Communion is such that the local provinces cannot expect to go it alone on important issues such as these and not be forced to answer to the whole communion. Still, as I wrote here, this does not explain why the other provinces seem to care so much more about gay marriage than such basic issues of doctrine as the divinity of Christ.

Update: More on the suspension of the Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion's international council here and here.

2005-02-24T14:08:00.000-05:00

'Naked in the Pulpit': I thought the same thing: what's the address of that church? But, alas, it's just an article about how one minister's preaching became "an act of intimacy in the pulpit." Oh well. Maybe some day.

2005-02-24T13:27:00.000-05:00

Class Rings: "It used to be if you saw a ring on someone's finger, you knew exactly where they went to school. It used to be more of a unity thing," says Joanne Butts, a representative for the class ring company National Quality Products.

But those days are long gone. As the Post reports:

With hundreds of options -- symbols for everything from rock music to calf roping to paintball -- a ring can be all about the student and only incidentally about the school.

Oddly, though, the percentage of graduates who purshace class rings has fallen from one-half in the 1960s to one-third now. Yet more evidence, I suppose, of how our American love affair with personal autonomy and hyperindividualism at first changes tradition to improve it, but ends up only killing it.

2005-02-24T12:48:00.000-05:00

Righting the Religious Wrong: "Listening to the rhetoric coming from the religious right, one would think every person of faith in Wisconsin feels terribly threatened by the prospect of same-gender marriage," Rev. Bob Voss of Lake Edge Lutheran Church writes in an opinion piece. "This is far from the truth. Christians of all dominations across Wisconsin, and members of other faiths, are appalled by the current drive to change the Wisconsin constitution to permanently outlaw not only marriage, but any official recognition of same-gender partnerships."

Meanwhile, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams urges those on both sides of the debate over homosexuality within the Anglican Communion to calm their push for "immediate resolution." In other words, let the Spirit be the Spirit, and don't try to put a timetable on its work of guiding the Church into the truth.

Sounds like good advice to me.

2005-02-24T04:18:00.000-05:00

Blame the Buddha!: The thought came to mind as I read the interview with Pema Chödrön, an American Buddhist nun and best-selling author, that is posted today on Belief Net. In it Chödrön discusses her discovery of Buddhism, explains how pain can be a great spiritual teacher, and then dispenses these words of wisdom:

We need to let the story line [of our problems] go and have an immediate experience of what's actually happening, without blaming ourselves or anyone else. This is an important message for Westerners, because we get hooked on a story about a problem.
In Tibetan Buddhism this hooked feeling is called shenpa [Listen to an audio clip about shenpa.] It's an urge, a knee-jerk response that we keep repeating over and over again. We lose our balance and intelligence. But you can notice when it happens. You can acknowledge it. You can catch yourself. You can do something different, choose a fresh alternative. Because if you do what you've always done, you're never going to get unhooked.

What's so interesting about this statement is the suggestion that westerners resort to self-blame when things go wrong while easterners do not. My own brief study of medieval Japanese history in college, however, would lead me to believe that one could just as fairly argue that the reverse is true. The well-known Japanese practices of seppuku and hara-kiri, for instance, condone suicide as not only an appropriate response to personal shame, but one that, in certain circumstances, is the only honorable thing to do.

How, I wonder, does Chödrön square this with her suggestion that in Buddhist cultures people don't fall into the trap of "get[ting] hooked on a story about a problem"? Surely suicide is not the sort of "fresh alternative" for dealing with one's sense of shame that she would recommend.

Again, my understanding of Buddhism is limited. But I suspect that the Japanese glorification of suicide cannot be understood apart from the Buddhist emphasis on personal enlightenment as opposed to the communal practices of repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation which lie at the heart of Christian salvation. This difference, it seems to me, goes a long way toward explaining why the church, unlike Buddhist culture, has traditionally condemned suicide as the gravest of sins.

Lending further support to this claim is the fact that, even today, Japan continues to suffer from one of the highest suicide rates in the world. It's a problem, moreover, that appears to be growing worse with the advent of internet-based suicide pacts. As one Japanese author who has written a best-selling handbook on suicide recently told the BBC:

'There's nothing bad about suicide. We have no religion or laws here in Japan telling us otherwise. As for group suicides - before the internet people would write letters, or make phone calls... it's always been part of our culture.'

It's a shame Chödrön did not discuss any of this in her interview. I would have been genuinely interested in learning what light, if any, western Buddhists might be able to shed on this very important subject.

The Resurrection of the Dead:

2005-02-24T02:47:00.000-05:00

Here's an interesting blog that offers a "friendly view of the Bible from an atheist."

From what I can tell, it's an accurate description. I must take exception, however, with one thing that John Ray, the site's blogger, wrote:

---------
Do Christians believe that Heaven is a place where there are physical bodies with bosoms -- physical bodies that even lean on one-another for support and fellowship? No? Quite to the contrary, Christians believe that to be the OPPOSITE of the truth. They believe that Heaven is in fact a spirit realm.
--------

Whether or not this is emperically true, it certainly is not true from the standpoint of orthodox Christian dogma. There is a "spirit realm," I suppose, but it's important to realize that this, too, is part of God's creation, for God himself does not exist in any "realm." He is, so to speak, beyond "realms." Put another way, God simply is. Thus the divine name, YHWH, can be translated as "I am" in all tenses of the verb.

But the story is more complicated than that. When the orthodox speak of Heaven, we may mean where God is, but, unfortunately, that gets us back to the idea of "realms" and must be understood as a not entirely accurate way of speaking about God. Alternatively, we may mean where Christ--who has assumed human flesh--is, and where the dead either are or will be when the heavens and the earth pass away and the new heavens and the new earth are come.

But what place is this? The short of it is that no orthodox theologian has ever dared to say. Yet this does not mean we don't know some things about this "place." The key doctrine here is the doctrine of the Incarnation, which holds that Christ was, is, and will always now be both fully God and fully human. In short, we believe that Christ came in the "flesh," that on Easter morning he was raised in the flesh, that he then ascended into "heaven" in the flesh, that he continues to bear flesh as he "sits" at the right hand of the Father, that he now becomes present to us in the flesh through the Eucharistic feast, and that one day he will return to earth in the flesh, judge the quick and the dead (who also will be raised in the flesh), and establish his kingdom (which will be a physical as well).

Thus the flesh, the physical, and the body are very much at the core of what Christians believe about "heaven." It's not for nothing, we believe, that God created us in the flesh; he did so because this is the way or mode of being in which he intends us to live.

On the other hand, this idea is complicated by St. Paul in 1 Cor. 15, where Paul speaks about "spiritual bodies" and "the perishable put[ting] on the imperishable." But even here we do not shed our bodies; nor are they "translated" into the imperishable. Instead they "put on" something else (the "spiritual" or "imperishable"), which suggests that they become something more than they are now, not something less.

One analogy that comes to mind is the difference between a photograph and a living person: both bear similarities to one another, and both are "physical." But the living person is far more physical than the photograph--e.g., 3 dimensions rather than 2-- not less. In the same way, we believe that the imperishable flesh or the spiritual body will be far more physcial than the perishable bodies we now have, but that they will also bear similarities to one another just as photographs of people "look" like the people pictured in them.

Passionate Cyncism?:

2005-02-24T00:31:00.000-05:00

It was Jesus who said that the children of this world are wiser than the children of light, a point that seems to be borne out by this post from blogger Michael Gallaugher of Christian Convervative.

At one point, for instance, he complains that Hollywood continues to church out movies like Sideways ($58 million) and Million Dollar Baby ($54 million) rather than producing more blockbusters like the Passion of the Christ ($370 million gross). Then, in the very next sentence, he writes: "But they don’t care. Their view of the world is so cynical it transcends money."

Huh? Isn't it the cynical who care about nothing of the art of storytelling and therefore make movies based solely on the bottom line?

No doubt people are cynical in many different ways, and for many different reasons. But I don't think it either conservative or Christian to suggest that naked materialism would somehow be a preferrable mode of cynicism.

Update: Gallaugher says that I mischaracterize his point. Apparently, he was appealing to the bottom line to suggest that Hollywood has an inherent anit-Christian bias--something that, no doubt, is true. But in this I suspect that Christians are not entirely without blame. I wonder, for instance, how many Christian writers there are who (1) actually write decent scripts that (2) dramatize faith rather simply moralize or push theology?

I have no idea what the answer to this question is. But it does seem like something that ought to be investigated before we start casting stones. But, alas, in this century as in the first, the latter option seems to be ever so much simpler.

Pope on Gay Marriage:

2005-02-23T12:32:00.000-05:00

"It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man," Pope John Paul says in a newly published book.

I'm not quite sure yet what to make of this. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced that the Pope, in his current condition, really wrote this book. Nevertheless, blogger Tom Chatt of Upword has a well-considered post on the subject here.

Superman Is a Penis:

2005-02-23T00:44:00.000-05:00

At least according to this website -- though that's not the word they use.

(Hat tip: Sharks With Lasers.)

'Beasts of Satan':

2005-02-23T00:32:00.000-05:00

"They are murderers," says Lina Marino, mother of Chiara Marino, whose daughter was murdered during a Satanic ritural performed by members of heavy metal band. "It's not fair."

She was referring to the sentences received by the killers. For killing three people--including one person whom they buried alive--the "mastermind" was sentenced to 30 years in prison, while the second received just 16 years. A third was cleared because of his "secondary" role in the murders; the remaining members of the cult are set for trial later this year.

According to CNN, "Prosecutors asked for relatively light prison terms because the suspects cooperated with the investigation and expressed remorse."

The reference to how the killers made things easy for the authorities sort of gives new meaning to the saying, "No harm, no foul," doesn't it? Well, at least they were sorry.

Meanwhile, a Vatican-linked university recently opened a two-month course on exorcism to combat the growing popularity of satanism in Italy. If you're interested in applying to the program but aren't quite sure what to put in your admission essay, Father Giulio Savoldi, Milan's chief exorcist for the past 20 years, explains what they're looking for:

I would include the supernatural force - the presence of God - and then suggest that the man picked to do this kind of work be wise and that he should know how to gather strength not just from within himself but from God.

Indeed. As this article explains:

Widely accepted signs of possession - some of which were depicted in the 1973 movie, "The Exorcist" - include speaking in unknown tongues and demonstrating physical force beyond one's natural capacity. In 1999, when the Vatican issued its first new guidelines since 1614 for driving out devils, it urged priests to take modern psychiatry into account in deciding who should be exorcised.
The updated exorcism rite, contained in a red, leather-bound book, was a reflection of Pope John Paul II's efforts to convince the skeptical that the devil is very much in the world. At the time, he gave a series of homilies denouncing the devil as a "cosmic liar and murderer."

Whiny Little Brat:

2005-02-23T00:27:00.001-05:00

That's my take on columnist Mike Adams, but you be the judge:

In 2001, I was jogging on campus when I passed a group of feminists marching in the annual “Take back the night” event. After they marched by me shaking their fists and screaming, I first experienced [erectile dysfunction]. They certainly took back that night!

I'm all for good conservative writing, but there's a difference between writing that is satirical and writing that is just plain bitter. It's called wit. There's also a difference in ends: satire seeks to expose, and hence eliminate, stupidity or ignorance. Mere scorn, on the other hand, seeks only to attack for the sake of attacking.

Europe's New 'Faith':

2005-02-23T00:27:00.000-05:00

CS Monitor has a must-read article about the growing "religion gap" between the U.S. and EU. Among other things, the article notes that just 21 percent of Europeans say that religion is very important to them compared to 59 percent in the U.S.

Others, however, insist that the story isn't quite this simple. According to Rocco Buttiglione, the Italian politician whose ambition to become the European commissioner for justice was thwarted last year by the European Parliament, which objected to his description of homosexuality as a sin:

"The new soft totalitarianism that is advancing on the left wants to have a state religion. It is an atheist, nihilistic religion - but it is a religion that is obligatory for all."

The article notes that the new European religion may be contributing to a potentially even more momentous change on the continent: rapidly falling birthrates which, combined with Islamic immigration, portend a radically different Europe in the coming decades. As Mary Noll Venables explains in Books and Culture:

If you ask the average European woman of child-bearing age how many children she would like to have, you are unlikely to receive the answer "2.1." That number, however, is crucial for European bureaucrats. When women on average bear less
than 2.1 children, as has happened in most European countries over the last several decades, the country can no longer reproduce itself and must rely on immigration to keep its population stable and its social system healthy....
[Suddenly] private choices about having babies have worked their way into public debate.

The iGod:

2005-02-22T15:29:00.000-05:00

Technology has given us a universe entirely for ourselves — where the serendipity of meeting a new stranger, hearing a piece of music we would never choose for ourselves or an opinion that might force us to change our mind about something are all effectively banished.

So writes Andrew Sullivan in his latest column for the Sunday Times. And yet it's not just culture that's been affected by the advent of what Sullivan calls the iWorld; it's the "cult" around which culture exists as well.

An untold number of Christian groups, for instance, have created virtual "iChuches" where a person can read devotionals, take Bible studies, hear a sermon, join an online community, and even take a quiz that will tell you whether you've been saved and, if not, how to do it--all without ever actually meeting another human being in person.

So far, I haven't come across a site that promises to baptize or celebrate the Eucharist via the internet. It also bears point out that, at this point, it would be premature to suggest that the iChurch is anywhere close to being ascendant in the religious world. Still, this does not mean that Christians shouldn't be more wary than perhaps we are about substituting the internet or television for the weekly ekklesia ("gathering") that, for 20 centuries, has been the definitive practice of the Christian faith.

Our God may well be the God of the Internet; but he is not an iGod, and he did not create us to live in isolation from one another--least of all in our spiritual lives. The promise of Satan--that a self unencumbered by the bonds of community will flourish and find happiness--is a lie. Just ask those who've spent time in solitary confinement. They will tell you that the self is the smallest and loneliest prison of all. The real wonder is why so many of us who don't have to bear such a punishment nonetheless choose to do so.

But it's not just ourselves we need to worry about. Proponents of other faiths are also busy setting up virtual religious communities, including some who stand ready to exploit the loneliness of those who seem to have no ties to any real community at all. The recent Satanic ritual slayings discussed here, for instance, highlight a growing problem in the secular, atomized cultural landscape of western Europe:

Beyond the violence, Italian officials are concerned about young people who develop personal forms of Satanism, outside the sects closely monitored by police. They often learn about the devil through the Internet.
"It's a more spontaneous and hidden phenomenon, a problem of loneliness and isolation, a problem of emptiness, that is fulfilled by the values of Satanism," said Carlo Climati.

Interview With a Vampire:

2005-02-21T10:57:00.000-05:00

Christianity Today has an interview with Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, who is the leader of one of the most controversial Islamist groups in the U.K.

Here’s an excerpt characteristic of the Sheikh's obfuscating take on terrorism:

What about the hostage-taking and massacre of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia, in September 2004?
As stated, there is no restriction on place (it could even occur in Mecca)—so schools are legitimate targets of jihad, but it is up to local mujahedeen [those who engage in jihad] to decide the best strategy.
Killing women and children never was and never will be part of the jihad in Islam, whether that be the women or children of the Muslims or non-Muslims. So if Chechen mujahedeen killed women and children in Beslan, I would condemn it. The children of non-Muslims, such as those at Beslan, who die in such circumstances go to Paradise.

Notice the use of the word “if.” Perhaps someone should let the good Sheikh know that there is no doubt the “mujahedeen” killed children in Belsan. At least 156 of them, and maybe many more.

Here’s a website where you can learn more about what happened during the attack and what can be done for the surviving children, many of whom are disfigured, cannot walk, see, or hear, and continue to suffer severe psychological stress.

The Simpsons:

2005-02-21T10:56:00.000-05:00

I guess it was only a matter of time, but gay marriage has finally come to Springfield.

Bush on 'Kicking' Gays:

2005-02-21T10:55:00.000-05:00

In private conversations with George Bush secretly taped by an old friend before the 2000 election, the future president explains that he had no plans to "to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

Too bad Karl Rove never got that memo.

Free Speech or Bad Manners?:

2005-02-19T15:19:00.000-05:00

Charges against the "Philadelphia Four" were dropped last week. The four Christian protestors had been arrested for refusing to obey police orders that they stop disrupting a gay pride parade by, among other things, reciting anti-gay Bible verses on a bullhorn. The judge ruled that such peaceful expressive activities are fully protected by the First Amendment and cannot form the basis of a criminal prosecution.

All in all, this is a good result for Christians, gays, and gay Christians. The fact is that we are in the midst of an important cultural debate about the place of homosexuals in American society and the Church. Silencing those on the wrong side of this debate would not only be the wrong thing to do from a constitutional standpoint, but it might actually hinder our ability to win genuine support for our cause.

Still, the judge’s decision leaves unanswered a much more basic question: Do the Christians who would disrupt the peaceful celebrations of gays and lesbians really think they are called by God to do this? Yes, the Bible says that sodomy is a sin. But Jewish law also mandates an ethic of hospitality that would seem to run counter to this sort of "free speech":

Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Ex. 22:21)

The logic of this command is really no different than the do-unto-others ethic of Christ, and it would seem to counsel against resorting to the sort of "speech" the Philadelphia Four engaged in. During the incident, which happened in October, several of them were calling out, "Sodomists repent. You're going to hell," a police officer testified.

At some point, those who would justify these kinds of spiritual threats by appealing to the First Amendment must also ask whether they would want gays and lesbians to demonstrate in front of their churches, disrupt their services and celebrations, and attack their faith using similarly incendiary rhetoric.

Would these Christian really find such tactics to be an acceptable exercise of “free speech”? Or would they simply find it to be what any good mother would call it: bad manners?

So Much for Courtship:

2005-02-19T14:46:00.000-05:00

This is lifted from a comment written by Brendan on gaypatriot:

----------------------------------

Have you ever checked out the "personals" section at Craigslist? They have all sorts of dating categories (men seeking women, women seeking women, etc.), but only one category carries the following disclaimer:

1. I am at least 18 years old.
2. I understand men seeking men may include explicitly sexual content.
3. I am not bothered by explicitly sexual content.
4. By clicking on the men seeking men link below, I will have released and discharged the providers, owners and creators of this site from any and all liability which may arise from my use of the site.

-----------------------------------

Kinda gives the impression that gay men are obsessed with lewd talk, meaningless hookups, and pleaures of the flesh.

So much for "courtship."

Global Consciousness & the Incarnation:

2005-02-18T12:30:00.000-05:00

"It's earth-shattering stuff," says Dr. Roger Nelson, whose Global Consciousness Project--orginally hosted at Princeton University and now joined by researchers around the world--aims to detect whether all of humanity shares a single subconscious mind.

You can read the entire article here. The short of it is that a growing number of carefully designed experiments have suggested that the human mind possesses powers which no known laws of science can (yet?) explain.

For instance, Random Event Generators (called Eggs) are machines that generate random numbers which, according to the law of chances, should generate equal numbers of ones and zeros. A researcher in the 1970s decided to investigate whether the power of human thought alone could interfere in some way with the machine's usual readings:

He hauled strangers off the street and asked them to concentrate their minds on his number generator. In effect, he was asking them to try to make it flip more heads than tails. It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results, however, were stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained.
Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their minds could influence the machine and produce significant fluctuations on the graph, 'forcing it' to produce unequal numbers of 'heads' or 'tails'.

During the 1990s, Dr. Nelson decided to set up 40 Eggs around the world and hook them up to his lab at Princeton. Then, on Sept. 6, 1997, something odd happened: "the graph shot upwards, recording a sudden and massive shift in the number sequence as his machines around the world started reporting huge deviations from the norm."

That was the same day that an estimated one billion people worldwide watched the funeral of Princess Diana on television. The most amazing finding, however, occurred the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when similar fluctuations began to occur four hours before the terrorist attacks. The same thing happened last December 24 hours, only this time the fluctuations began 24 hours before the earthquake that generated the tsunami occurred.

Dr. Nelson admits he has no idea what, exactly, these findings suggest about either the human mind or time (i.e., whether time runs backward as well as forward). But he does draw this conclusion:

We're taught to be individualistic monsters. We're driven by society to separate ourselves from each other. That's not right. We may be connected together far more intimately than we realise.

What Dr. Nelson does not mention--and what, without implying any disrespect for the work of Dr. Nelson, must be pointed out--is that there are already a number of people who believe exactly this, and have for some time now. They're called Christians.

Writing during the Second World War--a time when it was hard for anyone to have faith in the proposition that human beings aren't monsters--C.S. Lewis explained the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation this way:

The Second Person in God, the Son, became human Himself: was born into the world as an actual man--a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular colour, speaking a particular language, weighing so many stone....
The result of this was that you now had one man who really was what all men were intended to be: one man in whom the created life, derived from his Mother, allowed itself to be completely and perfectly turned into his begotten life...Thus in one instance humanity had, so to speak, arrive: had passed into the life of Christ.

Lewis goes on to explain how Christian theology links this event--the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ--to all other events in human history:

[Human beings] look separate because you see them walking about separately. But then, we are so made that we can only see the present moment. If we could see the past, then of course it would look different For there was a time when every man was part of his mother, and (earlier still) part of this father as well...
If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would not look like a lot of separate things dotted about. It would look like one single growing thing--rather like a very complicated tree. Every individiual would appear connected with every other. And not only that. Individuals are not really separate from God any more than from one another. Every man, woman, and child all over the world is feeling and breathing at this moment only because God, so to speak, is "keeping him going."
From that point [of the Incarnation] the effect spreads through all mankind. It makes a difference to people who lived before Christ as well as to people who lived after Him. It makes a difference to people who have never heard of him....
What, then, is the difference which He has made to the whole human mass? It is just this; that the business of becoming a son of God, of being turned from a created thing into a begotten thing, of passing over from the temporary biological life into timeless "spiritual" life, has been done for us. Humanity is already "saved" in principle. We individuals have to appropriate that salvation. But the really tough work--the bit we could not have done for ourselves--has been done for us...
If we will only lay ourselves open to the one Man in whom it was fully present, and who, in spite of being God, is also a real man, He will do it in us and for us

Polygamy Challenge Fails:

2005-02-17T14:14:00.000-05:00

From Deseret News:

With a handful of court rulings over the past century upholding the constitutionality of Utah's ban on polygamy, those who choose to contest the prohibition face "an insurmountable hurdle," a federal judge said Wednesday.
With that, U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart dismissed a lawsuit brought last year by three Utahns — a married couple and the man's would-be second wife — challenging the state's bigamy law and seeking a court order directing the issuance of a marriage license for the man and second woman.
...
The Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, he said, cannot be read to require the state to give "formal recognition to a public relationship of a polygamous marriage."
"Contrary to plaintiffs' assertion, the laws in question here do not preclude their private sexual conduct," the order says. "They do preclude the state of Utah from recognizing the marriage . . . as a valid marriage under the laws of the state of Utah."

Gay Irresponsibility:

2005-02-17T10:26:00.000-05:00

Some veteran gay activists are proposing radical new HIV-prevention strategies to combat unprotected sex among some sexually active gay men, including confronting these men directly in sex parties and chat rooms. Charles Kaiser, a noted gay author, explained it this way to the New York Times:

A person who is HIV-positive has no more right to unprotected intercourse than he has the right to put a bullet through another person's head.

But Bob Hattoy, an AIDS activist and former Clinton administration official, disagrees:

Three things led us to this point: A shameful lack of government-funded prevention and education, complacency brought on by the new meds, and the destructive power of crystal meth addiction.

Notice that Hattoy blames everyone and everything -- including the life-saving drugs which government agencies and pharmaceutical companies have spent billions of dollars developing -- except those gay men (up to 40%, according to a NYC study) who refuse to grow up and live sexually responsible lives.

I was a crystal meth addict a few years back. I was going out and doing horrible things and acting out at bathhouses. It placed me on a downward spiral. I was only able to forgive myself after I got clean and sober. It really brought out the dark side.

Let me see if I got this right: Hattoy reached a point where he regularly did "horrible things," and his response has been to forgive himself? What about asking forgiveness from all the people whose lives he endangered? And what about good old-fashioned repentance, as in to feel genuine reproach, regret, and remorse for one's actions?

We have to address this together as a community rather than blaming individuals. People who are addicted are out of their minds. It is certainly warranted to talk about addiction and sex in places like bathhouses and sex sites. But condemnation is not the answer.

Well, yes, we do have to address this as a community. No one disputes that. What we are disputing is how to best do this when the community in question is comprised of so many irresponsible adults who, long past the age at which drug and sexual experimentation can be chalked off to youthful ignorance, continue to engage in risky behavior that is now creating a very real--and very public--health threat.

As Gay Patriot West observes:

[T]oo many gay men have become so 'obsessed with sex' that everything else becomes secondary, not only the health and lives of others, but their own health and lives as well. For all too many, the quest for the best sex eclipses all other things--and becomes the be-all and the end-all of their gay identity. And the meaning of their entire lives.

Given the circumstances, what's wrong with a little blame? To blame, after all, means nothing more than "to find fault with" and "to hold responsible." Is this really too much to ask of grownups? Or do Hattoy and those who would excuse gay irresponsibility genuinely think gay men are too feeble-minded and weak-willed to be held accountable for their actions? And if so, why? Would this not run counter to all the arguments we are now making in favor of gay marriage?

Desperate Mommies:

2005-02-16T10:08:00.000-05:00

Here's an article about how stressful motherhood is for "this generation":

I read that 70 percent of American moms say they find motherhood today "incredibly stressful." Thirty percent of mothers of young children reportedly suffer from depression. Nine hundred and nine women in Texas recently told researchers they find taking care of their kids about as much fun as cleaning their house, slightly less pleasurable than cooking, and a whole lot less enjoyable than watching TV.

Because, of course, if people don't find something "fun," then there must be a problem with it.

'Aides' and God's Judgment:

2005-02-15T09:40:00.000-05:00

“Aides is God’s judgment on faggots,” the graffiti scribbled on the bathroom stall proclaimed. I can’t remember exactly when or where I saw it, but I’ve never forgotten either its misspelling of the word AIDS or its hateful—though not entirely irrational—message.

I thought of the graffiti again this weekend as I read about the new drug-resistant HIV strain that has so many health officials and AIDS activists on edge:

DOHMH officials issued the alert after a New York man who tested HIV-positive last December was diagnosed with full-blown AIDS earlier this month. (The usual progression toward AIDS takes years, not months.) The man, in his mid-40s, told health officials that he had unprotected sex with more than a hundred male partners, often while under the influence of crystal methamphetamine.

Yes, that’s more than one hundred sexual partners. And not just during his lifetime, but during the 20 months that lapsed between his last negative and first positive tests. The average American male, by way of contrast, reports just 20 lifetime sexual partners, with the median number reported being only eight.

The claim that gay men are incapable of monogamy is an old and contemptible canard. But it doesn’t take too many visits to anti-gay Christian websites to discover that the common perception of most gay men—that we tend to be far more promiscuous than our heterosexual counterparts—is not an entirely undeserved stereotype. In fact, it's not undeserved at all.

One study conducted in San Francisco before the AIDS epidemic found that, of 685 homosexual men surveyed, 83% reported 50+ partners in their lifetime, 73% had 100+, 58% had 250+, 41% had 500+, and 26% exceeded 1000 partners. A 2002 study of couples living in Seattle found that a total of 28% of respondents (31% of men and 26% of women) reported being in a relationship that had not been mutually monogamous. Few gays will be shocked to learn that reports of concurrent partnerships were far more common among gay and bisexual men (60%) than among heterosexuals (25%).

What is less well known is just how heavy the price of such sexual practices has been. An epidemiological study from Canada of data tabulated between 1987 and 1992 for AIDS-related deaths revealed that male homosexuals and bisexuals lost up to 20 years of life expectancy. The damaging effects of cigarette smoking pale in comparison--smokers lose on average about 13.5 years of life expectancy.

But the effect of the so-called “gay lifestyle” on life expectancy may be even greater. Not only is HIV/AIDS underreported, but gay men also suffer disproportionate rates of syphilis, anal cancer, and Hepatitis B and C, as well as suicide rates that are up to 3.4 times higher than the general U.S. male population.

“Aides is God’s judgment on faggots.” The claim sounds cruel. But can it not be said that the health crisis still being experienced by the gay community reflects, at least in some sense, God’s judgment against the sexual promiscuity of so many gay men?

As long as 50 years ago, the British writer Dorothy Sayers argued that the Christian doctrines of sin and judgment were so poorly understood that they needed to be completely restated:

The word punishment for sin has become so corrupted that it ought never to be used. But once we have established the true doctrine of man’s nature, the nature of judgment becomes startlingly clear and rational. It is the inevitable consequence of man’s attempt to regulate life and society on a system that runs counter to the facts of his own nature.
In the physical sphere, typhus and cholera are a judgment on dirty living; not because God shows an arbitrary favoritism to nice, clean people, but because of an essential element in the physical structure of the universe....
We must not say that such behavior is wrong because it does not pay; but rather that it does not pay because it is wrong. As T.S. Eliot says, “A wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God, and the consequence is an inevitable doom.’”

And so must it be said of the doom that continues to befall so many gay men as a result of our wrong attitude toward sex. So many of us have gotten into our heads the image of an angry God zapping people in retaliation for their sins that, in rejecting this caricature, we've fundamentally misunderstood what the church actually means when it speaks of God’s judgment against sexual immorality. Thus, in the name of sexual liberation, we not only engage in risky behavior, but we pride ourselves as being urbane and sophistocated for doing so.

And so rather than facing up to the truth about ourselves—and rather than taking seriously the biological reality that, in a world of cause and effect, we cannot simply do whatever (and whomever) we please—and rather than reckoning with the fact that no piece of legislation and no Supreme Court decision can ever liberate us from our physical bodies—we blame our problems on homophobia. Or the lack of hate crimes legislation. Or the failture of the government to spend enough money on AIDS research and treatment.

And all the while we go on parroting the silly mantra that what is needed to fix the problem is more "education"—as though a lesson in the proper use of condoms would cure everything that ails the gay community. But latex can't shield us from the jealousies, the lies, the emptiness and ruined relationships that go hand in hand with sexual indulgence. It can't even shield us from HIV. Simply put, condoms fail. And with an average failure rate of 3% even with perfect use, they fail so often that, over the longhaul, condom use alone cannot be an effective strategy for preventing the spread of HIV.

Call it God's judgment, or call it the inevitable doom that results from a wrong attitude toward nature. But either way it has become more and more clear that our experiment in radical promiscuity, far from spelling an end to sexual "repression," actually has lead to everything that is the reverse of health, happiness, and sexual fulfillment. And yet, somehow, this collective surrender to all sexual desire still gets called liberation.

Family Values...:

2005-02-15T09:33:00.000-05:00

A German zoo's plans to tempt its gay penguins to go straight by importing more females has been declared a failure. The zoo had hoped that the female penguins—flown in especially from Sweden, no less—would encourage the penguins at the Bremerhaven zoo to reproduce.

But the six male penguins, who have adopted “rocks” which they treat like eggs, showed no interest in their new female companions. As Zoo Director Hieke Kueck puts it: “The relationships were apparently too strong.”

...and the Lack Thereof:

2005-02-15T08:09:00.000-05:00

He has had success at two things, losing elections and dividing the American family. Apparently his angry and hateful rhetoric has divided his own family.

So says Christopher Barron, political director of the Log Cabin Republicans, of the ultraconservative political commentator Alan Keyes. The occasion for the remarks is the news that Keyes—who called Vice President Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter a “selfish hedonist” during his recent failed bid for a U.S. Senate seat—has disowned his 19-year-old daughter Maya Marcel-Keyes in response to her decision to come out as a lesbian and get involved in gay activism.

But not to worry: Marcel-Keyes’ “hedonism” will not affect her father’s political ventures, as a two-sentence press release issued by Keyes promises:

My daughter is an adult, and she is responsible for her own actions. What she chooses to do has nothing to do with my work or political activities.”

Keyes, it may be recalled, lost his recent campaign for the U.S. Senate in one of the most lopsided popular elections in Illinois history, garnering just 27% of the vote compared to Barack Obama’s 70%.

The Victim Wars:

2005-02-12T14:08:00.000-05:00

The black writer Colbert I. King has a generally insightful column in the Post today that compares same-sex marriage bans to the anti-miscegenation statutes which once barred interracial marriages in 41 U.S. states.

The column is marred, however, by this smug little qualification:

Let's get one issue out of the way before the e-mails and letters start flooding in. I don't equate the long, bloody struggle of African Americans against racial injustice, ugly brutality and unjust treatment with the effort to give equal rights to lesbians and gay men.

Oh yes, the victim wars, that strange liberal pastime of ranking injustices and creating a heirarchy of victims. Who suffered more, African Americans or Native Americans? And which was worse: slavery, which lasted for centuries, or the Holocaust, which lasted just a few years? And what about white women? Where do they fit in on the discrimination continuum? They unquestionably suffered a lot under patriarchy; but a large number of them also benefited from the sweat of their black maids.

Then there are gays, lesbians, and other sexual minorities. King is far from being the only prominent African American to reject comparisons between their civil rights movement and ours. Jasmyne Cannick of the National Black Justice Coalition recently made this sweeping statement:

I don't ever want to see a white gay man stand before a camera again and equate his struggle to the Black civil-rights movement.

This is a remarkably condescending rebuke coming from a person who, unlike white gay men in America, enjoys every single civil liberty recognized by the U.S. Constitution. But since some African Americans seem bent on raising the question, let’s go ahead and ask it: How does homophobia compare to racism?

We know that racism is a relatively modern idea, a construct developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries largely to explain (and justify) slavery. In contrast, discrimination against those who engage in same-sex sexual behavior—death, castration, banishment, burning at the stake, electro-shock therapy—seems to have been well-established in the West as early as the times of Moses and Aristotle. Even in the ancient Greco-Roman world homoesexuality was to be confined to pederasty, temple prostitution, and the occasional lover; neither the Greeks nor the Romans had a concept of adult people of the same sex choosing to marry one another rather than a person of the opposite sex.

There are other differences between race and sexuality. African Americans have long formed a large, public community in the U.S. But due to the relatively small numbers of gay people, the possibility of hiding in the closet, and the fact we are not a group whose boundaries are determined by family or other readily identifiable traits, gays and lesbians never had a public community large enough to challenge prevailing views about homosexuality until the rise of large metropolitan cities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the very idea of homosexuality as a sexual orientation came to be developed.

So where does this put us on the victim scale? We never experienced anything like slavery, but unlike blacks and women, we did not have the benefit of a community which could share our struggles--or even acknowledge them--until relatively recently. Thus, while the Quaker Susan B. Anthony could turn to other suffragists and her church for comfort, and while the slaves of the Old South could draw strength from their families and churches, gays and lesbians had literally no one to turn to because, the moment they did so, their families and religious leaders would have become their enemies.

Whether this makes our experience worse or only different and more lonely--I have no idea. I just know that, to whatever extent our movement bears resemblances the black civil rights movement, this gay white man will go on making comparisons between the two. Ms. Cannick and Mr. King would do well to listen to the comparisons rather than simply condemning them. They might even learn a thing or two about their own failure to live up to that principle of equality to which they claim such commitment.

YEEEE-ARG-HHHH!:

2005-02-11T04:06:00.000-05:00

Do Democrats really think Howard Dean can cure what ails the party?

I ask that with all seriousness, as a person who would very much like to vote for a Democrat who would actually support gay rights, all of them, and not simply ask for our money.

Defending Terrorists:

2005-02-11T03:47:00.000-05:00

Bad news for defense attorneys representing alleged terrorists:

Radical lawyer Lynne Stewart was convicted Thursday of smuggling messages from her jailed client -- a blind Muslim cleric convicted of terrorism -- to his Islamic fundamentalist followers in Egypt, actions that a jury found amounted to material support for terrorism.
The jury deliberated for 13 days in Manhattan federal court before delivering guilty verdicts against Stewart and two men. U.S. postal worker Ahmed Abdel Sattar was convicted of conspiracy for "plotting to kill and kidnap persons in a foreign country" by publishing a paper urging the killing of Jews. The third defendant, Arabic interpreter Mohammed Yousry, was found guilty of providing material support to terrorism.
The verdict -- which could carry a sentence of at least 26 years -- staggered the activist lawyer. As the jury foreman spoke, Stewart, 65, turned pale, slumped back into her chair and began to cry. But half an hour later she was again the leftist lawyer who has stood at the center of so many high-profile cases in the same courthouse, offering no apologies.

We read an earlier decision in this case for my international criminal law course my first year of law school. I have to say that, while I happen to be a strong supporter of the war on terror, this strikes me as deeply disturbing news. Most of the "evidence" in the case amounted to little more than a determination on the part of Stewart to offer her client the best possible defense and a willingness to push the edge in doing so.

Was she willfully blind to the fact that her client was passing along messages to the interpreter? Perhaps. But at the same time, it is doubtful that her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, was a danger to anyone at the time the alleged "conspiracy" took place. Stewart and her co-defendants were accused of scheming to obtain Rahman's release. She was found guilty of trying to cover up secret conversations between Rahman and his followers--even though she does not speak Arabic--and violating federal regulations by publicly announcing in 2000 that the cleric had withdrawn his support for a cease-fire between the Egyptian government and the Islamic Group, a fundamentalist organization that carried out terrorist attacks on tourists and police officers.

But these charges seem petty compared to the role of zealous advocate which defense attorneys are supposed to play in our adversarial system. As David Cole, one of my professors at Georgetown, has said:

"This will have a chilling effect on lawyers who might represent an unpopular client. The prosecution showed videotapes of Osama bin Laden, of terrorist attacks . . . it was all very inflammatory."

Ballsy Brits:

2005-02-10T13:18:00.000-05:00

Ouch.

A Welsh rugby fan cut off his own testicles to celebrate Wales beating England at rugby, the Daily Mirror reported on Tuesday.

Here's another story about British testicles:

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage in May last year after Geoffrey Jones, 37, who had ended their long-term relationship, rejected her advances.
She grabbed him by the genitals, tearing off his left testicle, then hid it in her mouth before a friend of Jones handed it back to him saying "that's yours."

Bloody Profs:

2005-02-10T10:33:00.000-05:00

Here’s something I hope never to see in one of my law school classes:

... I have also learned where this UCLA graduate student may have gotten the idea to play Russian roulette in front of his classmates.
It seems that his professor, an HIV-positive gay man, once cut himself open and bled (HIV-positive blood flowing from one of his tattoos) in front of a live audience. Another UCLA professor once allowed himself to be shot in the arm with a rifle in an art gallery as a means of “artistic expression.”

Monsters or Madness?:

2005-02-10T10:27:00.000-05:00

As long ago as 1966, Philip Rieff’s book The Triumph of the Therapeutic predicted that the psychological mode of understanding human behavior would triumph over traditional moral modes that emphasize personal responsibility.

Nearly 40 years later, it’s hard to deny Rieff’s prescience. Oprah, Dr. Phil, and even Dr. James Dobson of the conservative Christian Focus on the Family have become household names in large part because of their ability to “feel our pain.” But how many ethicists, moral philosophers, and theologians can you name?

Jonah Goldberg has an excellent column tying these changes to the recent spate of gruesome child abuse cases:

For decades, a therapeutic culture of "understanding" was on the rise. Except for acts of racism and so-called homophobia, there was a mad rush to "understand" evil people. Were they victims of a racist culture? Were they abused themselves? Were they expressing their natural frustration with the patriarchal capitalist system? Blah, blah, blah.
The tragedy of the imagination was that we couldn't appreciate that evil is real and it exists. In a society where everyone is a victim and it's not right to "judge" others, there's just not much room left for real monsters, while society itself becomes monstrous. Hannibal Lecter became a charming rogue, the Grinch who Stole Christmas became the victim of the judgmental Whovilleans in the Jim Carrey movie, the ersatz Mayberry of Andy Griffith became a nest of fascists in "Pleasantville."

Goldberg makes excellent points. Still, we mustn’t be like the drunk who, having once fallen off the left side of the horse, climbs back up only to fall off the right side. In other words, mental illness is no less real than evil, and to deny this would do a great disservice to those who desperately need psychiatric intervention and treatment.

Beers, Steers, and Queers:

2005-02-09T06:46:00.000-05:00

It's 6:22 in the morning, and I still haven't gone to bed yet. Between class, law review assignments, and the paper for work I've been trying to get finished for the past four months, it's a wonder I sleep at all.

But I'm not complaining. How could I in this age of Queer Beer? That's the new Swiss beverage that will be marketed especially for gays and lesbians. It's a shameless (and not especially clever) ploy to exploit the gay market, of course. And it's not quite the same thing as full legal and social equality.

But it sure beats the hell out of being burnt at the stake, hung, castrated, sentenced to hard labor, or subjected to electroshock therapy--all prospects that "sodomites" in England and the U.S. once had to fear. Even today sodomy remains a legal offense in many countries carrying penalties ranging from caning in Malaysia to life imprisonment in Nepal to death in Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

One day all this will change. But until then, this "beef and beer" Christian--to borrow Chesterton's fine phrase--eagerly awaits his first taste of Queer Beer.

(Hat tip: Evangelical Outpost.)

Brave New World:

2005-02-09T01:53:00.000-05:00

And so it begins:

The scientist who attracted the world's attention by cloning Dolly the Sheep is about to take another major step for medical research: cloning human embryos . . . .

Read the whole thing. As you consider all that this research promises, consider as well the position taken by Amy Laura Hall, an ordained Methodist minister and professor at Duke University who specializes in bioethics.

Hall--who is neither a fundamentalist nor a rightwinger--brilliantly exposes the lie behind the argument that embryonic stem cell research is simply a matter of personal ethics and private choice. She predicts that, within five or ten years, we will see courts forcing parents to provide their children with therapies derived from the research.

Hall also observes how the media have caricatured the debate as a simple contest between "the broadminded, rational pursuit of science versus the myopic, irrational protection of human embryos." But these are not our only choices even from a scientific standpoint. After all, embryos are not the only or even the most promising source of human stem cells.

And if everyone has suddenly become so concerned about saving sick children--the goal which advocates of this research inevitably tout in their propaganda--why do we let millions of children in the developing world die each year when we already possess relatively inexpensive medical therapies that could save the vast majority of them? To cite just one example, the UN has noted:

Despite the availability of a safe, effective and relatively inexpensive vaccine for over 40 years, measles remains a major cause of childhood mortality affecting nearly 30 million children and killing an estimated 610 000 children in 2002.

That's a lot of dead children we could save without destroying a single human embryo. But, as Amy Laura Hall observes, things really aren't that simple--a fact that has not been lost on the "medical-industrial complex":

Those of us who listen to NPR and watch The West Wing expend considerable effort earnestly avoiding twists of fate that would bring us into contact with suffering. We have ways to avoid and distance the plight of “other” people’s children who suffer from lead paint exposure or emission-induced asthma.
But this dying child [featured in an article touting the promise of stem cell research], with his blue eyes and light brown hair, taps into my deepest fear that I am not in control and cannot ultimately protect my daughters from the anguish of finite, fragile, human existence.
For all of our care and attention, our private-schools, gated communities, and combat-style vehicles, the children of the upper classes may still end up with a life-altering or even fatal disease. Disease still creeps through the fortress, and that child on the cover of the magazine could just as easily be my own. His face thus compels not only my mercy, but my reconsideration of the status of incipient life.

Vatican Revises Annulment Rules:

2005-02-09T01:34:00.000-05:00

Just over six percent of the world's Catholics live in the United States. Yet the U.S. church generates 70 percent of the church's 56,000 annual annulment requests. That number may increase under revised annulment procedures released yesterday by the Vatican:

A rule in the new document makes an annulment slightly easier to obtain by allowing a church appeals court to uphold an annulment grant by a lower court even if the appeals court's conclusion differs slightly from the original tribunal's on why the marriage should be voided. On the other hand, the new rules still require an appeals court to rule even if all parties and the initial tribunal agree that an annulment is permissible.
The document disappointed some American Catholics who had hoped that the Vatican would dramatically tighten the rules. "In America we are swamped by a culture that treats marriage very lightly," said Charles Molineaux of McLean, who belongs to a lay group devoted to defending church orthodoxy. "The church is supposed to be confronting the culture, not floating with it."

Indeed. Some may remember the small scandal that broke out a few years back when the church granted an annulment to US Rep. Joseph Kennedy, who was married to Sheila Rauch-Kennedy for 14 years and has two children with her. Kennedy's request for an annulment was granted on the ground that he lacked "due discretion," a term which means he did not possess the proper mental capacity to enter into marriage at the time of the weddinig.

One could be forgiven for wondering why a priest would not have noticed such a decifiency during the ceremony. But this may be a bit unfair. Ascertaining the mental capacity of another human being can be quite difficult, after all. This may be why most churches require only that the two have the right combination of genitalia. That, and enough money to pay the wedding fee.

Martha Stewart’s Accomplice:

2005-02-08T14:32:00.000-05:00

This strikes me as important news I should have commented on earlier:

NBC said [last] Tuesday it would broadcast an additional version of the hit reality show "The Apprentice" featuring Martha Stewart as host . . .
[T]he format of the show will be tailored to Stewart's personality and brand identity, according to the network.

Hmm. There must be at least several dozen jokes lurking in that last sentence. But I'll resist the temptation to exploit them and leave it to you and your conscience, dear reader, to ponder the question posed in an advertisement for the show: "Do you have what it takes to be Martha Stewart's apprentice?"

Teaching Our Children Well:

2005-02-08T13:16:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple of stories about good old-fashioned, red-blooded Americans who like straight sex and enjoy torturing and killing their children.

What the first story does not mention is that Florida--where the Dollars and their adopted children live--does not allow gays and lesbians to adopt children. The second story, meanwhile, doesn't explain how a person can successfully bludgeon her 14-year-old daughter with a hammer and a shovel, and then botch her own suicide attempt. Can a person really be smart enough to kill her child but too dumb to kill herself?

Well, at least all the news today isn't bad:

Cancer doesn't doom youngsters to a miserable childhood, new research suggests, finding that after treatment, many are just as happy and well-adjusted as those who never had the illness -- sometimes even more.

This story, on the other hand, is a little bit harder to evaluate:

The church-owned Great Western Forum has canceled an April 9 concert appearance by the heavy metal band Lamb of God because church leaders were offended by the group's previous name, Burn the Priest.
"We do owe something to our congregants,"said Marc Little, general counsel for the Faithful Central Bible Church, which owns the Forum, the former home of the Los Angeles Lakers. "We have to draw the line somewhere."

Well, I reckon we do have to draw it somewhere. Here's where I'd recommend drawing it:

The growing use of highly addictive methamphetamine throughout the country is creating a prominent scar on an increasing number of users — rotting, brittle teeth that seem to crumble from their mouths.

Trust Fund Paupers:

2005-02-08T05:14:00.000-05:00

I have a rule against writing about Social Security that has nothing to do with my complete lack of expertise in the subject and everything to do with the fact that, at my age and income level (i.e., $0), it's hard to get worked up over the issue.

But this article by Brian Riedl suggests that those of us who are Gen Xers and Gen Yers (is that the right word?) have more reason to worry about Social Security than some of our political leaders would have us to believe. Reidl makes the following analogy to explain how the government uses the program's current surpluses to "invest" in Treasury bonds, which then provide the government with additional funds that are mixed in with all the other tax revenue and spent on current spending programs:

It’s like a family that borrows money from its retirement fund each year to pay for vacations and expensive dinners. When they finally retire, their retirement fund consists of nothing more than paper IOUs.

This strikes me as a very imprudent strategy for raising revenue. My own Episcopal Church, however, would apparently ask only whether it meets the demands of “justice and compassion." Or so, at least, it would appear from the claims set forth by the Episcopal Public Policy Network in its “Faith Reflection on the Federal Budget.” The document, which is also signed by a number of other denominations and religious groups, makes a number of other remarkable claims:

The budget should reflect a commitment to the common good by ensuring that the basic needs of all members of society are met. At this time, when more than 45 million Americans are uninsured, over 8 million are unemployed and over 12 percent live in poverty, additional cuts to critical human needs programs cannot be justified....

The key words here would seem to be “critical” and “needs.” As in programs that really work and do not simply waste money, foster habits of dependency, or attempt to address problems that do not really exist (as appears to be the case with the exaggerated claims about the health insurance "crisis").

Budget decisions must be evaluated not just in the short term, but with respect to their long-term effects on our children’s children, the global community and on all of creation . . .

All of creation? Even the planet Pluto?

Our government should be a tool to correct inequalities, not a means of institutionalizing them. The federal budget should share the burdens of taxation, according to one’s ability to pay, and distribute government resources fairly to create opportunity for all.

Well, who can disagree with that? But the devil is in the details, as the saying goes, which is why I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for legislators to be preached to in such vague, generalized terms, but never given any real specifics.

Perhaps the well-intentioned religious leaders ought to have spent more time reflecting on the example set by Joseph before they assumed the role of government advisor. At least he offered Pharaoh a very practical plan for avoiding what otherwise would have been a devastating famine.

Ex-Gays and Ex-Ex-Gays:

2005-02-07T13:30:00.000-05:00

When I first heard about the elected school board official in Fairfax, Virginia, who is urging high school principals to invite ex-gay speakers to their campuses, my initial reaction was anger. The official, after all, has not exactly make an effort to hide his anti-gay agenda. As he put it in a letter to the principals:

Children are being taught that homosexuality is normal and natural. It is neither. To state that it is normal or natural is to promote the myth that accompanies the homosexual activist rhetoric.

Then I remembered John Paulk, the former head of Focus on the Family’s campaign to convert gay people to heterosexuality and author of Not Afraid to Change: The Remarkable Story of How One Man Overcame Homosexuality. I’m sure the kids could learn a lot from his “remarkable” story.

Possibly the most well-known ex-gay man in the US, Paulk earlier in life was a little-known transvestite named Candi. Then, with conversion to heterosexuality, came fame. He and his ex-lesbian wife Anne were featured in a 1998 campaign that included advertisements in the New York Times and other newspapers with messages about “overcoming” homosexuality. The couple was also on the cover of Newsweek, and they've been featured on "Oprah" and "60 Minutes."

Things began to unravel several years ago when Paulk caused a scandal after being spotted and photographed in a Washington, D.C., gay bar. He claimed that he had gone in to use the bathroom, but other patrons said he spent nearly an hour at the bar, used an alias, and flirted with at least one male patron. The incident was a major setback for the "ex-gay" movement, and Paulk was removed as chairman of Exodus International, a pioneer "ex-gay" group.

Now that's a pretty remarkable story, don't you think?

But if Paulk is unavailable to speak, the schools could always call on Gary Cooper and Michael Bussee, two men who helped found Exodus International and then left the ex-gay movement after they fell in love with one another. They had a commitment ceremony in 1982 and have been together ever since. I would think theirs would be a far more appropriate story for children than Colin Cook’s, whose career as founder and head of Homosexuals Anonymous ended in disgrace when it was discovered he was having sexual encounters with his male clients.

On second thought, maybe the schools should invite Jeremey Mark, the former head of the UK-based ex-gay ministry Courage (which is part of the umbrella group Exodus International). Mark left the group in 2001 after determining that the ministry needed a fresh approach. The reason? After fourteen years, he said, “None of the people we've counseled have converted no matter how much effort and prayer they've put into it. There is much more benefit to the honest view.”

The honest view. Now that’s something the kids—and school officials—of Fairfax could really stand to hear.

The Not-A-Genocide:

2005-02-07T13:28:00.000-05:00

A U.N.-appointed commission reports that 70,000 black Sudanese have died and another 1.8 million have been forced from their homes in government-supported militia attacks that do not constitute a “genocide.”

The last time the UN hesitated to use the “g”-word, it will be recalled, was back in 1994, when an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were literally hacked to death by machetes within the span of 100 days. Only after most of the killings had stopped did the international community decide that a “genocide” had begun. After all, making the determination earlier would have created a legal obligation for the UN, US, and other signatories of the Convention on Genocide to intervene in order “to prevent” further acts of genocide.

Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, who was head of a small UN peacekeeping force stationed in Rwanda when the massacres began, spoke last year at a UN memorial conference marking the 10th anniversary of the genocide. He explained how at the time no one was interested in saving Rwandans. On the contrary, the small force he commanded was prevented from intervening and eventually ordered to leave the country. Then Dallaire told the conference:

I still believe that if an organization decided to wipe out the 320 mountain gorillas there would be still more of a reaction by the international community to curtail or to stop that than there would be still today in attempting to protect thousands of human beings being slaughtered in the same country.

That was March 2004. Nearly a year later, we now know Dallaire was right. Interestingly, though, this has not stopped EU and US leaders from squabbling over how the perpetrators of the not-a-genocide in Sudan should be prosecuted once it is over. Justice may not be swift, but when it comes, at least we can rest assured it will be rendered by the proper authorities. All of us, that is, except for the victims.

Bacchus and the Commerce Clause:

2005-02-07T09:24:00.000-05:00

In classical antiquity, ceremonies celebrating the wine god Dionysus or Bacchus were the scene of orgiastic rites:

Chiefly associated with women, the worship of Dionysus or Bacchus took place every two years in the winter months, when the bacchantes took off to the mountains. Once beyond the reach of their men folk, they were inspired to ecstatic frenzy, drinking excessive quantities of wine and dancing wildly to the clashing of cymbals and the pounding of their long staffs.

Things are a bit different for modern American law students. We get invitations to events like this: "The American Constitution Society's '21st Amendment v. Dormant Commerce Clause Wine Event.'"

I don't think I'll go. It's not that I have anything against mixing business with pleasure, mind you, but I draw the line at the dormant commerce clause. It's just not the sort of thing I ever want to cross my mind when I'm enjoying a glass of Merlot.

NY's Gay Marriage 'Victory':

2005-02-07T01:25:00.000-05:00

I've already explained here and here why I don't think gays and lesbians should resort to lawsuits to win the right to marry. But shouldn't we be happy when the strategy works?

Consider the reaction of Jo-Ann Shain, one of the plaintiffs in Hernandez v. Robles, to the New York trial court's ruling that the state's constitution prohibits restricting marriage to opposite sex couples:

I was even more moved than I thought I’d be when I heard about this ruling. All of us cried – me, Mary Jo and our 15-year-old daughter. For the first time, our family is being treated with the respect and dignity that our friends, coworkers and neighbors automatically have.

It's hard not to be moved by Shain's words. At the same time, however, the court's reasoning in Hernandez leaves much to be desired. John Balk finds particularly puzzling the court's due process argument that the right to marry includes an unqualified right to choose whom to marry:

But the problem is that this would undermine state laws regarding incest and polygamy as well, and the court makes no attempt to distinguish those cases from the case of same-sex marriage. Indeed, at one point in the opinion (p. 45), the court uses the example of polygamy to show that marriage has meant different things at different times and in different places.

If Balk--a supporter of gay marriage--can spot this issue, we can be certain the religious right will as well. It's only a matter of time before they exploit it as yet more evidence for why the Constitution should be amended to prohibit gay marriage. Already Mathew Staver, president of the "pro-family" legal group Liberty Counsel, has said to the Baptist Press of the decision:

To preserve marriage we have to win 100 percent of the time. To destroy the institution, we only need one loss. And that's another reason why we need constitutional amendments on the state and federal level.

Hernandez will be appealed, and it's anyone's guess what the New York Court of Appeals (the state's high court) will do. But even if the decision is affirmed, gays and lesbians must carefully scrutinize claims that cases like these represent "victories." It's simply too early in the story of gay rights to know whether they really are. To put the matter in terms of the black civil rights movement, this could be the 1960s--or it could be the 1860s. We just don't have enough information to know for sure which it is.

Then, too, there is the basic counter-majoritarian difficulty posed by judicial activism. Balk explains the problem this way:

I strongly support same sex marriage, but my decided preference is for legislatures to adopt reform of the marriage laws rather than have courts impose the reform. If courts are going to get involved, I greatly prefer the approach of the Vermont Supreme Court in Baker v. State-- hold that the current law is unconstitutional, explain the rough contours of the constitutional principles that a statute would have to satisfy, and send the issue to the legislature to come up with a solution.
That is not the same thing as having the legislature take the issue up on its own, but it does have the advantage of giving the result some degree of democratic ratification.

Just so.

Government of the People, by the People, for Allah:

2005-02-07T01:22:00.000-05:00

Today we are assured with confidence that Arabs, consumed by tribe or religion or whatever, don't really care about freedom either. On Jan. 30 millions of Iraqis said otherwise. They really do care about the right to speak freely and to vote secretly, the ordinary elements of democratic citizenship.

So wrote conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer on Feb. 4. I wonder what he’ll say about this news from over the weekend?

Iraq's Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and another top cleric today staked out a radical demand that Islam be the sole source of legislation in the country's new constitution.

Then there are the troubling reports about the persecution of Iraq's Christians and claims they were prevented from voting in last week's election.

None of which is to deny or downplay the prudence of toppling Saddam Hussein's regime or the significance of Iraq's first multiparty elections in half a century. But it does seem worth remembering that democracy, when wrenched from the principle of limited government, can be just as tyrannical as any dictatorship. As Burke observed more than two centuries ago:

Of this I am certain, that in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority, whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often must; and that oppression of the minority will extend to far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre.
In such a popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much more deplorable condition than in any other. Under a cruel prince they have the balmy compassion of mankind to assuage the smart of their wounds; they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings: but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes, are deprived of all external consolation. They seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.

St. Paul Miki:

2005-02-06T14:11:00.000-05:00

Today's Saint:

Nagasaki, Japan, is familiar to Americans as the city on which the second atomic bomb was dropped, killing hundreds of thousands. Three and a half centuries before, 26 martyrs of Japan were crucified on a hill, now known as the Holy Mountain, overlooking Nagasaki. Among them were priests, brothers and laymen, Franciscans, Jesuits and members of the Secular Franciscan Order; there were catechists, doctors, simple artisans and servants, old men and innocent children—all united in a common faith and love for Jesus and his Church.

Brother Paul Miki, a Jesuit and a native of Japan, has become the best known among the martyrs of Japan. While hanging upon a cross Paul Miki preached to the people gathered for the execution: “The sentence of judgment says these men came to Japan from the Philippines, but I did not come from any other country. I am a true Japanese. The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ. I certainly did teach the doctrine of Christ. I thank God it is for this reason I die. I believe that I am telling only the truth before I die. I know you believe me and I want to say to you all once again: Ask Christ to help you to become happy. I obey Christ. After Christ’s example I forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on all, and I hope my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain.”

When missionaries returned to Japan in the 1860s, at first they found no trace of Christianity. But after establishing themselves they found that thousands of Christians lived around Nagasaki and that they had secretly preserved the faith. Beatified in 1627, the martyrs of Japan were finally canonized in 1862.

Muslim Apostacy:

2005-02-05T15:22:00.000-05:00

Commentary has an excellent article about what happens when Muslims convert to Christianity or other faiths:

In the Islamic world, there is a broad consensus, both popular and scholarly, that apostates deserve to be killed. A rich theological and intellectual tradition, stretching as far back as Muhammad and his companions, supports this position. Though official proceedings against those who reject Islam are fairly rare—in part, no doubt, because most keep their conversion a closely held secret—apostasy is punishable by death in Afghanistan, Comoros, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen.1 It is also illegal in Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Maldives, Oman, and Qatar.
The greatest threat to apostates in the Muslim world derives not from the state, however, but from private individuals who take punishment into their own hands. In Bangladesh, for example, a native-born Muslim-turned-Christian evangelist was stabbed to death in the spring of 2003 while returning home from a film version of the Gospel of Luke. As another Bangladeshi apostate told the U.S. Newswire, “If a Muslim converts to Christianity, now he cannot live in this country. It is not safe. The fundamentalism is increasing more and more.”

The article also notes that, in Canada and elsewhere--and much to the chagrin of feminists--there are efforts to incorporate more elements of Sharia into the civil law for parties willing to be so bound. Read the whole thing.

HEADLINES:

2005-02-05T13:21:00.000-05:00

Good News For My Hometown Winston-Salem (a.k.a. the Camel City): Everyone knows the government is way too wussy to actually ban smoking, but that hasn't stopped first the states and now the federal government from trying to get their cut of the profits. This may finally be coming to an end:

A federal court yesterday rejected the government's attempt to recover $280 billion in past profits from the tobacco industry, wiping out the most powerful penalty that could have been imposed in the landmark racketeering case against cigarette manufacturers...

But by a vote of 2 to 1, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned an earlier decision by the judge presiding over the trial, who said she could order the companies to make such a payment, known as "disgorgement," if she found an industry pattern of past fraud.

Democracy and the Islamic Revolution: The people of Iraq have finally spoken, and it looks like what they've said is that they want a government more like Iran's than Turkey's. Or so it would seem based on returns so far:

Despite the absence of full results, some Shiite parties heralded a landslide. "According to the last report we got from the election commission, our blessed list got 57 percent," Jalaledin Saghir, who represents the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told worshipers at the Baratha mosque in Baghdad. "I want to kiss the hands of the workers at the elections commission, who were completely honest."

Debt relief for African nations may be coming soon.

French workers don't mind going to the trouble of protesting if it means they can save the 35 hour work week.

Metropolitan bishop Panteleimon of Attica, Greece, was suspended for six months pending a church probe into alleged embezzlement of parish funds and "ethical" misconduct.

Global warming has some benefits, as the people of South Dakota learned yesterday when temperatures reached 70 degrees and higher -- warmer than Miami.

Marriage Equality in NY:

2005-02-04T13:12:00.000-05:00

From 365gay.com:

A New York State court ruled Friday that same-sex couples must be allowed to marry.
State Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan said that the New York State Constitution guarantees basic freedoms to lesbian and gay people, and that those rights are violated when same-sex couples are not allowed to marry.
The ruling said the state Constitution requires same-sex couples to have equal access to marriage, and that the couples represented by Lambda Legal must be given marriage licenses.

Churchill's Horrific Screed:

2005-02-04T13:11:00.000-05:00

I say tar and feather him. But Eugene Volokh takes a more thoughtful approach to the question of what the University of Colorado should do to Ward Churchill, the professor "who wrote the horrific screed praising the murder of the people in the World Trade Center (on the grounds that they were 'little Eichmanns')":

I think Justice Hugo Black was right to say that First Amendment rights "must be accorded to the ideas we hate or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish"; and the same is true of academic freedom principles. . .

Sounds about right to me. Churchill has already resigned as chair of the university's ethnic studies department. The great marketplace of ideas--in the form of widespread outrage--seems to be finishing the job of discrediting his depraved views. As Justice Holmes wrote in the 1919 decision Abrams v. US:

[W]hen men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.

Whither Iraq?:

2005-02-04T01:20:00.000-05:00

"We knew we needed the truth to build a new nation. Without truth, no healing. Without forgiveness, no future." So says the Rev. Peter Storey, a South African Methodist minister who was appointed by Nelson Mandela after the collapse of apartheid to help form the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The commission, which offered amnesty to perpetrators in exchange for truth, has been widely credited for helping both blacks and whites wrestle with their national demons and, in the process, discredit the previous political order. It also provided an opportunity for many families of victims to find out what had happened to loved ones taken away by authorities and never heard from again.

Perhaps President Bush—who caused quite a stir during the 2000 race when he named Christ as his favorite political philosopher—should remember South Africa’s experience as he continues to struggle with the insurgency in Iraq. It was Christ, after all, who spoke of the power of truth to set people free (John 8:32). No doubt such an approach would sound as pollyannaish to Iraqi ears as it does to our own. But to paraphrase Chesterton, that’s not so much because it has been tried and found wanting as that it has been found difficult and seldom tried.

State of Gay Unions:

2005-02-03T19:47:00.000-05:00

In the State of the Union address last night, President Bush said:

Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be re-defined by activist judges. For the good of families, children, and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage. (Applause.)

Well, that's his opinion, and voters knew it when they elected him. But how does he square this with ideas like these?

Because a society is measured by how it treats the weak and vulnerable, we must strive to build a culture of life . . . .
Because one of the deepest values of our country is compassion, we must never turn away from any citizen who feels isolated from the opportunities of America . . . .
Because one of the main sources of our national unity is our belief in equal justice, we need to make sure Americans of all races and backgrounds have confidence in the system that provides justice.

Doesn't homophobia render gays and lesbians "weak and vulnerable"?

Wouldn't the culture of life be strengthened by giving same-sex couples the opportunity to marry? Would this not reduce prosmiscuity (by far the leading cause of AIDS) even as it brings to gay couples all the other benefits of marriage that work together to increase the life expectancy of married people by an average five years -- an increase that is comparable to the negative consequences of smoking on life expectancy?

Isn't this the meaning of the 14th Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws"? Isn't marriage still "one the basic civil rights of man" that is "essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men,"as the Supreme Court held nearly 40 years ago in Loving v. Virginia?

Just wondering, Mr. President.

Fundamentalists, Science, and the Conquest of Man:

2005-02-03T17:23:00.000-05:00

I hold no brief for the theology of fundamentalism. But having been raised by two conservative Christians -- both of them smart, loving people -- I find it more than a little frustrating to see their faith maligned. It’s especially frustrating when they're put down for things that simply aren’t true.

Blogger Faithful Progressive claims today that one of the "common features of the religious right" is that "it is hostile to science."

Hostile to science? The accusation might apply to the Amish or to Christian Scientists. But people who make full use of modern medicine, drive cars, fly in airplanes, watch television, surf the internet, and marvel at photographs of the heavens can hardly be accused of bearing a hostility to either "science" or its achievements.

What many Christian conservatives are hostile to is not science, but those atheist scientists who overreach in their claim that life began and evolved via a completely random, blind process. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, the claim may well be true, but it's not the sort of thing that can be proven by the scientific method. It's not even the sort of thing that can be observed. How could one ever place a fossil under a microscope and determine that it is the product of blind chance rather than an intelligent creator? How, that is, unless one first crudely assumed that God's presence should be subject to detection by human instruments? Only then would it make sense to conclude from our inability to detect his presence that God does not exist. But no Christian assumes this. Even snake-handling Baptists in the deepest hollers of Appalachia know that God is spirit.

There are other things about scientists--as well as those who fund them and stand to profit from their work--that concern many Christians on both the left and the right. Embryonic stem-cell research, for instance, disturbs many of us because it commodifies human beings by turning embryos into mere tools for research. But human embryos are not white mice, and it dehumanizes us all when we treat them as though they were. This is so even if they are not (yet) human beings but only potential life. After all, there is not a person living who was not first an embryo -- and that includes those scientists who would destroy embryos in the name of science.

The most disturbing trend in modern science, however, is the revival of eugenics under the prettified guise of "genetic engineering." C.S. Lewis wrote about the "false conquest" that this project entails nearly half a century ago:

Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won . . . But who, precisely, will have won it? For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please . . .
[T]he man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.

Another Solomon Victory:

2005-02-03T11:18:00.000-05:00

The U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut declares the Solomon Amendment (which forces law schools receiving federal funds to allow military recruiters on campus even though it may violate their antidiscrimination policies) unconstitutional in lawsuit brought by certain members of Yale Law School faculty. You can access the ruling online in two parts, here and here.

Uncle Tom Faggots:

2005-02-02T17:32:00.000-05:00

John Corvino's Bay Windows column "Civil Discourse on Civil Unions" is now posted at Independent Gay Forum. There he notes that a previous piece on the subject resulted in the accusation that he is an "Uncle Tom faggot." Corvino responds to this charge by arguing:

Our best strategy for securing the social endorsement (i.e., marriage under the name “marriage”) is first to secure the legal incidents. Then people will look at our civil unions, realize that they are virtually indistinguishable from marriages, start calling them marriages, and gradually forget why they objected to doing so before. That's what happened in Scandinavia, and it's happening elsewhere in Europe.

True enough. But this line of reasoning misses at least two major points.

First, as a matter of strategy, it makes no sense for gay rights advocates to push for civil unions rather than the full marital rights we desire. It may well be that our efforts will not succeed in the short-run and that law-makers will "compromise" by proposing a civil union option. This is what has happened in Vermont and California. But as any negotiator worth the name will tell you, it's simply bad strategy to start the negotiations off by ceding our ultimate objective because this may well jeopardize our chances of getting even the compromise we may be content with.

A second point Corvino misses is that there is more than a little uncle tommism in the idea that civil unions are an acceptable compromise. Thus Corvino warns:

Attempts to force the social endorsement too quickly (by demanding the name “marriage” above and beyond the legal incidents) may backfire, resulting in state constitutional bans not only on gay marriage but also on civil unions. The upshot would be to delay both the legal incidents and the social endorsement.

Well, yes and no. Attempts to demand rights from the courts may well backfire (as I argue here and here) by engendering support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. But there is no reason this should be the case with legislative advocacy. As long as we are making our arguments in public and then giving the people -- speaking through their representatives -- a chance to consider our arguments and respond accordingly, no one should be worried but the minority who loses. That minority is likely to be gays and lesbians. And if it is the minority that is losing, the risk of the majority passing a state constitutional ban should not be very likely.

The only reason not to fight for marriage rights, then, would be because doing so might offend the sensibilities of "mass'a." But this is exactly what the gay rights movement is about: offending the sensibilities of those in power who believe that we are perverts, inverts, sick, sinful, pscyhologically damaged, and otherwise incapable of forming relationships worthy of the name marriage. Which is why it's one thing for a legislature to reach a civil union compromise, and quite another for gay people to start the debate off with it. We should never send the message that we will settle for "separate, but equal" treatment. The black civil rights leaders didn't make this mistake, and they were subjected to physical abuse and brutality. We should be just as courageous.

Classblogging:

2005-02-02T14:42:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting in my corporate law class now, and just about everyone has a laptop in front of him. Here's what we're doing with them:

(1) The guy to the left of me: reading espn.
(2) The guy to the front and left: taking notes.
(3) The guy in front: reading the Washington Post.
(4) The guy in front and to the right: handwriting notes (no computer).
(5) The girl in front and to the far right: playing solitaire.
(6) The guy to the right of me: writing an email.
(7) Me: blogging and IMing friends.

Don't you want us to represent you some day?

Global Warming and the Rapture:

2005-02-02T03:26:00.000-05:00

Ouch. David Kopel of the Volokh Conspiracy has posted a scathing rebuke of Bill Moyers' "lurid and hostile" new column, which argues that right-wing Christians have taken over the government and look forward to environmental destruction because of their belief in the imminent Rapture. Among many other fine points, Kopel notes:

Moreover, at least some of those Americans who believe in the prophecies have actually read the "Book of Revelation." I suspect that Moyers did not bother to do so before writing his screed against "delusional" Bible-believers--or else he would not have twice given the book the incorrect title of "Relevations."
Would you trust a writer who couldn't even give the correct title of the book he was denouncing? A writer who complained about Muslims who believe in the "Koan" or Jews who believe in "the book of Jobs"?

Just so. It should also be pointed out that belief in the imminence of the end need not translate into a lack of concern for the environment. The dying typically express a strong desire to make sure they are "right with the Lord" (as people in the South often put it). Why should those expecting to be taken via the rapture be any different?

And to the extent that getting right with God requires true repentance, and that this requires an end to the sin of making waste of the world, I see no reason why these evangelicals should not be more worried about the environment than those secular leaders who fear no god and believe that (at least as far as they are concerned) the world ends the moment they die.

Of course, this assumes we have good reason to be concerned about alleged apocalyptical disasters like "global warming," an issue about which the scientific community remains very much divided.

Little Fascists and People in Pain:

2005-02-01T17:06:00.000-05:00

This story from the BBC is fairly depressing:

A significant number of US high-school students regard their constitutional right to freedom of speech as excessive, according to a new survey.

The survey found, inter alia, that only half of American students believe newspapers should be allowed to publish stories without governmental approval, while two-thirds think that burning the U.S. flag is illegal. So much for Bush's dream of exporting democracy to the rest of the world.

Oh well, at least not all the news lately has been bad, especially if you don't mind watching reporters get reporters get hurt on live television. As a friend put it, next time one of your colleagues goes down, be sure to express your concern with a blatantly sarcastic "yowch!"

Note: In case the link doesn't work, here's the URL which you can type directly in your browser. It's well worth a look: http://www.933flz.com/audio/atlantagrape.mpeg.

Cars, Boys, and Heaven:

2005-02-01T15:30:00.000-05:00

I mentioned in my introductory post that I would be writing on occasion about arguments that I may have with my boyfriend. When I wrote that, I had in mind my sense that people who oppose gay marriage tend to do so because they think that, on some fundamental level, our relationships are not the same as heterosexual ones. But I don't think that this is true—neither in a temporal sense nor a spiritual one. Maybe I should explain.

Temporal Matters: By this I mean what gay couples actually do as couples on a daily basis. Putting the matter this way naturally raises in many people's minds the issue of sex, and, of course, gay couples do have sex. This an aspect of our relationships that neither can nor should be downplayed. What Saint Paul said of the role of sex in heterosexual marriage applies just as forcefully to same-sex couples:

But because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. (I Cor. 7:2-3)

Sex is a part -- and indeed an important part -- of my relationship with my boyfriend. And yet, as anyone who has ever been involved in a serious relationship knows, the tasks of cultivating and sustaining an intimate relationship involves so much more than sex that it seems petty to reduce it to just that one thing.

Take something as simple as this: I am suppposed to drive home to North Carolina this weekend to visit my family. It just so happens, however, that my car's side-view mirror was knocked off the other day by a passing motorist while it was parked on the street (a motorish who, incidentally, did not leave his insurance information). The result is that I need to get my car fixed before I drive home, which means that it would be very helpful to have someone give me a ride home after I drop it off at the shop. It would also be nice to have someone give me a lift back there once it is fixed.

For people in a relationship, this sort of everyday need poses no problem. You simply ask the person you're dating (or married to) and that's the end of it. But if you're not in a relationship, things are much more complicated. I am fairly new to D.C., so I do not yet have that many friends whom I would feel comfortable asking to do a favor like this. Most of them are either married or have have reached that stage in their lives where they're one person dating seriously. Either way, most of my friends no longer talk to or see their friends on a daily basis. Thus, for the single person, something as simple as turning a car into the shop becomes a vivid reminder of the temporal "good" of having a partner whom you can rely on to take care of everyday matters like turning your car into the shop.

Spiritual Matters: People tend to draw a bright line between things spiritual and temporal, but I don't think this is warranted from a theological or a biblical standpoint. On the contrary, Christian thought posits the spiritual and temporal as existing in what today we might call a symbiotic relationship. Thus St. Paul envisions Christian marriage as a relationship that is a sort of image of the Marriage which is to exist between Christ and his bride the Church. At the same time, Paul speaks of human marriage as functioning as a means of furthering our own participation in this Marriage and, hence, our salvation. The basic idea is that, in and through the temporal relationship of marriage, we learn how to practice with one person the same sort of sacrificial love that one day we will practice with everyone.

Of course, we must also love our friends, our family members, and even our enemies in a sacrifical way. But it is a fact that our romantic relationships are the primary vehicles through which most adults come to experience the hard tasks of loving an other—warts and all—on an intimate and permanent basis. It is simply too difficult to do this with more than one person in a world that is limited by time and space, and it is virtually impossible to do once a person's friends have all married, had children, and gone their ways. I know that, for me at least, I never felt called to sacrifice for my friends to the degree and intensity that I do now for my boyfriend. The issue just didn't come up the way it does now.

Nor do I have any doubt that this experience of loving an other is teaching me many things that will one day become—to borrow Saint Paul's words of what marriage accomplishes for the married—a means of my "consecration." What other result could there be when a person is learning, however slowly, both to love and to be loved the way that Christ loves us?

-----

The following are a few of the passages from the pauline epistles that have informed my understanding of the temporal and spiritual goods of marriage:

If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is consecrated through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is consecrated through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is they are holy.... Wife, how do you know whether you will save your husband? Husband, how do you know whether you will save your wife? (1 Corinthians 7:13-14, 16)
I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband. (2 Corinthians 11:2)
Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."
This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (Ephesians 5:21ff)

Today's Saint:

2005-02-01T15:15:00.000-05:00

Sometimes even saints fail, as the story of St. Ansgar (b. 801) reminds us. The "apostle of the north" spent much of his life trying to bring the faith to Denmark and Sweden. Along the way, he faced harships with funding his missionary efforts, was captured by pirates, and saw his northern apostolate burned to the ground by invading Northmen. Meanwhile, Sweden returned to paganism after his death and did not embrace Christianity until two centuries later.

It's a sobering lesson for those of us who are trying, in our own little way, to change the church's teaching on homosexuality -- but also encouraging. It may sound corny to say it, but what matters is less the result we achieve than our willingness to stand up and fight the good fight. God will take care of the rest in his own time and his own way.

Resisting Antichrist:

2005-02-01T13:54:00.000-05:00

In one of the most haunting passages of the gospels, Jesus asks the disciples: "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8). And later, in the johannine espistles, believers are warned to "believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world" (I John 4:1).

The verses came to mind this weekend as I read the Washington Post's excellent story about Joel Osteen, "the smiling preacher" who leads the 30,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston. The article notes that Lakewood is the largest and fastest growing church in the nation, making Osteen the "new face" of Christianity" and "the hottest commodity in the world of multimedia religion these days."

These are fairly impressive titles for a man who dropped out of college during his first year and never received formal theological training. But the history of the church is filled with stories of saints who were not educated by the standards of the world. What makes Osteen so dangerous is just how little his feel-good version of the gospel has in common with the goods news of "Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (I Cor. 2:2).

The Post quotes one sociologist:

Joel is doing it better than most. He is purposely seeking to lower the barriers that keep people from going to church. They don't know the hymns; they don't have to learn the creed. It's all there for them.

Indeed. There is that troubling business in the gospels about the need to take up the cross and follow Christ. But people these days are ever so much busier than they were in the first century. Who has time to sit down and actually memorize the words of the creed when there's work, little Timmy's soccer practice, and "Desperate Housewives" to contend with? Who indeed?

Joe Carter of the evangelical outpost has said: "The day [Osteen] becomes the representative for evangelicalism is the day that I stop calling myself an evangelical." This is a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree.

Gay Marriage Watch:

2005-02-01T13:29:00.000-05:00

Here's yet more evidence for why, as I argued in an earlier post, now is not the time to push for marriage rights in the courts.

The Washington Blade has a story about the efforts of the Arlington Group, a coalition of conservative religious leaderns, to get Bush serious about supporting the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment that would ban gay marriage. A sternly-worded letter sent by the group to the president warns:

“Is he prepared to spend significant political capital on privatization but reluctant to devote the same energy to preserving traditional marriage? If so, it would create outrage with countless voters who stood with him just a few weeks ago, including an unprecedented number of African-Americans, Latinos and Catholics who broke with tradition and supported the president solely because of this issue.”

Primate Porn:

2005-01-31T23:59:00.000-05:00

It appears that homo sapiens are not the only apes who enjoy looking at photographs of genitalia. An interesting new study has found that "male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey's bottoms."

The experiment is set up so that the act is akin to paying for the images, researchers say. "The rhesus macaque monkeys also splurged on photos of top-dog counterparts, the high-ranking primates. Maybe that's like you or me buying People magazine."

What all this says about the readers of People, however, is a question the researchers delicately avoid.

(Hat tip: Instapundit.)