Rod Dreher

A Frenchie Romance

Douthat Says ‘Cut The Crap’

By Rod Dreher • July 28, 2012, 11:58 PM

Standing up and cheering here over Ross Douthat’s column about “the free exercise of religion” and the anti-religious bigotry of the leadership class. Excerpt:

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

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

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

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

Read the whole thing. Damn, that is greatness. It must kill the editors at The New York Times to publish stuff like this. But I’m glad they did.

Posted in Culture war, Media, Religion. Tagged bigotry, religion, religious freedom, Ross Douthat.

152 Responses to Douthat Says ‘Cut The Crap’

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Erin Manning says:

July 29, 2012 at 5:33 pm

Elizabeth Anne, when you say that people are only dying on one side of this issue, you’re forgetting a couple of people:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stachowicz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jesse_Dirkhising

(No word on whether the 13-year-old boy in China who was recently attacked by two men at the bicycle shop where he was working–they stuffed a bicycle pump in him and pumped him full of air–were committing a sex crime or not; can we at least agree that crimes like these are terrible regardless of the sexual orientation or habits of the perpetrators?)

To those who say that Christians won’t suffer any more than they have in having to pretend that divorced/remarried people are really “married” or invalidly married people are really “married”: there’s one obvious difference. The fiction still centers around one man and one woman, and no Christian child is being indoctrinated to believe that divorce/remarriages is the same thing as sacramental marriage–because few children know the details of the adult relationships around them; but gay “marriage” forces Christian children to sit in the public school and chant endlessly and listlessly: “Two men can be married just like my mom and dad. Two women can be married just like my mom and dad.” If you look at Massachusetts, Christian parents can’t ask that their children be exempt from indoctrination into the belief that gay “marriage” is exactly the same thing as Christian marriage; their children are forced to be present for gay lifestyle talks and gay lessons and gay examples and the the reading of pro-gay children’s books about Heather’s two mommies and Daddy’s roommate and the King and King who get married and then find a little prince with no parents to raise as their own…

In other words, the Christian children will be indoctrinated into a lie, and will be told over and over that their parents’ deeply held religious beliefs and values are knuckle-dragging bigotry that must be eradicated from every right-thinking society. They will be instructed (as children in Canada are) to refer to the adults in their home as “my parenting partners” in order not to offend Sally who is being raised by her mom and stepdad with weekend visits to dad and girlfriend number three; or Jimmy who is being raised by his mom and her new wife and mom’s first wife’s brother who was the sperm donor; or Jane who is being raised by her grandmother and her grandmother’s lesbian partner and her mother and her mother’s newest boyfriend…ad infinitum. So of course we must indoctrinate children to remove words like “husband” and “wife” and “parents” from their vocabularies in favor of “spouse or partner one” and “spouse or partner two” and “parenting partners in coalitions of support” as the new language of families–at least, until someone decides that the very word “family” is offensive and discriminatory against those who see themselves as collectives of adults and pre-adults living in temporary group/union for the benefit of all, without any of those old stuffy, bigoted, Christianist words for male or female sex partners and any children who happen to end up in the collective (and it’s best if we don’t ask how, because we wouldn’t want to privilege the womb-mothers unfairly over the other mothers in the collective, especially since we think the word “mother” is hate speech in the first place).

Oh brave new world, that has such idiots in it.
Public_Defender says:

July 29, 2012 at 5:34 pm

Dreher writes, “For one thing, it’s not ‘potential social harm.’ It’s actual, material legal harm.”

Isn’t that exactly what you are working so hard to inflict on the children of same-sex parents?
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 6:37 pm

It coexists with the Fourteenth Amendment. In a relatively homogenous society, religiously speaking, that coexistence is not as fraught as it is in a society of increasing religious heterogeneity.

Care to elaborate, Liam? Didn’t think so.

The 14th Amendment was enacted in 1868 to grant citizenship to freedmen and in response to the black codes enacted during the years immediately after the Civil War. It has five sections.

The fifth allows federal legislation pursuant to enforce the other four sections. The 4th cancels the war debts of rebel governments, which is not exactly a topical issue. The 3d enumerates certain restrictions on the civil rights of rebels, which is not exactly topical either. The 2d delineates some rules for apportioning members of the House of Representatives consequent to the Census, which is not relevant to a question of freedom of religion or contract or what have you.

The money quote is as follows: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Officious appellate courts have manufactured a dense web of regulations from the latter two clauses, so it is quite possible people going just about their business will be hoist on Stephen Reinhardt’s petard. The rest of us might wonder how a directive to state legislatures not to abridge the privileges and immunities due citizens of these United States, a directive to state courts to follow proper procedure (the word “due” modifying the word “process”), and a directive to state and local executives to enforce the law without favor can be turned into an instrument to require private businesses to pay for their employees contraceptives, to pay for those contraceptives when they have antique religious objections to contraception, and to pay for those contraceptives even when employer and employee reside in the same locality and the legislative authority in question has been delegated no general police power.

We might wonder how that can be. But then we aren’t sophisticates, eh?
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 6:41 pm

but it when you fight against same sex marriage, you do hurt children, a lot of them.

Yeah, and you torture puppies, too.
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 6:54 pm

So as a liberal on the issues Ross Douthat raises:

2. Chick-fil-A was absolutely reprehensible has been roundly condemned by most liberals including myself.

3. Male circumcision is genital mutilation.

“As a liberal” you are telling us it is “absolutely reprehensible” for the owners of a limited corporation to contribute funds to advance their views on a public controversy manufactured by others aiming toward a public policy dispensation no one had ever thought of prior to about 1987.

“As a liberal” you are telling us that a banal and harmless procedure done by obstetricians for decades for reasons of hygiene is “male genital mutiliation”.

“As a liberal”, you are telling us you live completely in the moment, that you expect your opposition to adopt the disposition commonly attributed to battered wives, and that you are persuaded by stupid rhetorical flourishes.

Thanks for the education.
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 6:57 pm

People who practice traditional norms are not under any kind of attack. It’s the people who insist, as you do, that “practice” means “enforce on others” who are under attack. And you don’t make any sort of case that they shouldn’t be. Where in the idea of “religious freedom” is the idea that you have any sort of freedom to enforce it on anyone else?

Justin, I do not know if you have noticed, but one of the matters at issue is whether legislative bodies should compel employers to do things they would rather not (such as pay for your rubbers). Who is coercing whom (or is it that you think you have an undifferentiated claim on your employer’s resources)?
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 7:00 pm

I think the Times, like me, would really like to see more intelligent

Pinch Sulzberger?
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 7:04 pm

When have Catholic organizations ever denied spousal medical coverage to the opposite-sex second (or third, etc.) spouse of a one-time divorced employee? Clearly, this is only a civil marriage, and not a valid, sacramental Catholic marriage. If Catholic organizations have never in the past denied spousal benefits, and don’t intend to try to do that as they deny benefits to same-sex spouses, they have no doctrinal leg to stand on.

You mean if I offer someone a dispensation for whatever practical reason I have, I lose any discretion to withdraw that dispensation (say, if the practical considerations disappear, or if a new supervisor arrives and adjudges the old supervisor has erred)?
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 7:09 pm

I will stand aside, and in some few aspects cheer aloud, when religiously-owned public employers start to think they can choose to discriminate against others solely on the basis of either their religions or their moral choices.

Let the private employers stand up and state their intentions. Let them post on their doors and websites: No homosexuals, no unmarried pregnant women, no non-believers, etc. Let them experience the social fallout and backlash, and move on from there. No more assumptions, no more “oops, we shouldn’t have hired that one”, no more civil suits over their [sarcasm off, never on for this post] God-given right to consider sin unacceptable, period.

I hate to break it to you, Franklin, but one thing the personnel office does is sort applications. It does so according to certain criteria which may be injurious to the company but which make the personnel officer’s job easier. That’s right, they discriminate. They just tend to hold your preferred mascot categories immune and cut down groups which have no name about which liberal twits do not give a rip.
Public_Defender says:

July 29, 2012 at 7:25 pm

Let’s try a reality check from the liberal side:

1. The Number One Reality is that this is a zero-sum game. Dreher and Douthat want the liberty to discriminate against same-sex couples and their children; same-sex couples and their children want freedom from that discrimination. Likewise, many liberals want to discriminate against those who discriminate against same-sex couples; the other side wants freedom from that discrimination. Any victory for one comes entirely at the expense of the other.

2. I concede that many liberals don’t acknowledge that we are creating a religious liberty problem, but even Dreher and Douthat (and especially Erin Manning) refuse to acknowledge the very real harm their position inflicts on same-sex couples and their children, as well as the religious liberty restrictions on liberal clergy who wish to perform same-sex marriages and have them recognized by the state.

3. In the end, I don’t see how the conflict of liberty is even close. On one side, we have very real people suffering very real harm–loss of all of the protections of marriage (survivor benefits, pensions, health insurance, visitations and support in case of break up, etc.). On the other side we have a squishy psychic injury that results from not discriminating, as well as wildly speculative theories of harm in sometime in the unspecified future.

More simply, the right of children to the protections of marriage trumps the right to deny those children the protections of marriage. And real harm to real children trumps psychic harm and wild speculation about potential future harm.

Unfortunately, I don’t see any solution other than a fight for one side to win victory over the other. That’s why this is so hard. It’s a zero-sum game, there is no teneble middle ground, and only one side can win.
Turmarion says:

July 29, 2012 at 7:28 pm

Erin, I can tell you from my personal experience as a high-school science teacher, and from stories my sister, who teaches college biology has told me, that no amount of teaching evolution–which, along with Earth’s vast age, is demonstrably true–will budge the minds of creationist kids who are convinced the Earth is about 6000 years old, etc. I have encountered such intransigence in other areas of science (and sometimes math), as well.

Given that, I doubt that very many children whose families are strongly committed to a belief in the wrongness of SSM will change their minds no matter how they are “indoctrinated”. As to the supposed rules for Canadian schools, I’d like to see a link to that; and I doubt it will keep kids from referring to their parents as “Mom and Dad”!
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 7:43 pm

The Number One Reality is that this is a zero-sum game. Dreher and Douthat want the liberty to discriminate against same-sex couples and their children; same-sex couples and their children want freedom from that discrimination. Likewise, many liberals want to discriminate against those who discriminate against same-sex couples; the other side wants freedom from that discrimination. Any victory for one comes entirely at the expense of the other.

Whether this is a zero-sum game or not, the practical import of homosexuals wishing to be ‘free from discrimination’ is

1. That employers, landlords, and merchants are compelled by courts and administrative agencies to enter into agreements which they would prefer to avoid, and

2. Various sorts of institutions, public and private, are compelled by judicial decrees or ordinances to grant recognition and benefit to affiliations they would rather ignore.

–

What Chick-fil-A wishes to do is sell chicken on the same terms other vendors do, which means they get their permits according to the true meaning of “equal protection of the laws”.

–

It should be noted that polities governed by electoral and deliberative institutions presume…deliberation. The proper function of such policies is diminished when deliberation is restricted because the regulatory authority of the state is used to harrass someone who annoys an alderman-potentate.
Justin St. Giles Payne says:

July 29, 2012 at 7:45 pm

Justin, I do not know if you have noticed, but one of the matters at issue is whether legislative bodies should compel employers to do things they would rather not (such as pay for your rubbers).

You must know that’s not true. The supposed “contraception mandate” is a mandate on insurers, not on employers. The complaint of these pseudo-Catholic organizations is that their employees are doing something with their compensation that they don’t like. Who is coercing whom, indeed!

is it that you think you have an undifferentiated claim on your employer’s resources

I certainly have an undifferentiated claim on my contractually agreed-to compensation, of which my health insurance coverage is a part. Having stipulated that it’s for my health needs, contraception – which is a health need – is a part of that.

But I don’t want to re-litigate that issue; it’s settled. The point is that “religious freedom” is the right to practice your own faith – not that of anyone else.
johan says:

July 29, 2012 at 7:54 pm

The day when pre-modern beliefs were privileged and could be translated into public policies that caused some degree of marginalization to people who didn’t share those beliefs, I think are simply gone. Fire breathers such as Ms Manning and Mr Douthat object, but I don’t see a mechanism by which the new situation is reversed.
Erin Manning says:

July 29, 2012 at 8:01 pm

Okay, I’m getting pretty tired of this “You’re hurting the children being raised by same-sex parenting partners!” meme.

According to the latest census (you can check, but the document’s a .pdf and I don’t do well linking to those), there were about 594,000 same-sex “households” in the United States in 2010, which is about 1% of all couple households. Of that number, only 115,000 of those households were raising anybody’s children (and the census report itself suggest that the majority of these children are the biological children of one or the other partner from a previous failed heterosexual marriage or relationship, which means a lot of these kids are in shared custody with their other biological parent, not the “children” of the gay couple).

Statistically speaking it is likely that more children are being raised by vegetarians than by gay couples, so should we push for strong anti-meat laws to avoid harming the children of vegetarians?

I just don’t see why such a tiny segment of the population has the right to redefine words like marriage and family for the rest of us. Simple tolerance without changing the law to redefine marriage and attempt to alter reality ought to be more than enough.
Dave Dutcher says:

July 29, 2012 at 8:15 pm

I don’t see how the conflict of liberty is even close. On one side, we have very real people suffering very real harm–loss of all of the protections of marriage (survivor benefits, pensions, health insurance, visitations and support in case of break up, etc.).

What’s a little annoying about this, is How many people?

LGBT are maybe 5% of the population. About how many of them would marry in the first place? Then how many would stay married long enough or be married at a time when the denial of those benefits that specifically come from marriage (and cannot be given by a civil union) would provide real value?

And kids, how many gay couples would have kids in the first place that result from their union (as opposed to prior unions) to need those benefits? Even lumping in past unions to have guardian benefits-I can’t see massive amounts of gays in the closet long enough to have kids as openness continues.

I’m betting the real, physical harm affects a fairly small subset of people and could easily be remedied through non-punitive legislation. What I see here is a lot of talk about actual equality and that SSM in some nebulous sense will make gays no longer be attacked for being gay, make tolerance increase somehow, and many intangible things.

What a lot of us worry is that when you do win (and you probably will,) you are going to suddenly find out that it changes nothing. SSM becomes even less of a factor than normal marriage because the pool of people affected is small, and homosexuality isn’t like heterosexuality-a lot of the protections marriage offers simply don’t matter with two equal partners as opposed to one male partner who can bolt, and one female partner who suffers at a huge disadvantage by themselves.

The problem is when people realize this, they are going to look for a scapegoat. And it’s going to be Christianity, and society has just given a minority group a huge stick to beat them with. So the attempt will be to try and force that equality through suppressing religious faith rather than admit that true acceptance will not happen although tolerance of a minority can and will.

I’m serious, if SSM suddenly was legal in all fifty states, this would happen. SSM is being used as a proxy fight way above it’s actual importance and impact. This isn’t healthy, because when the proxy is achieved, the main goal isn’t, and then it has to escalate.
Church Lady says:

July 29, 2012 at 8:32 pm

“one of the matters at issue is whether legislative bodies should compel employers to do things they would rather not (such as pay for your rubbers). Who is coercing whom (or is it that you think you have an undifferentiated claim on your employer’s resources)?”

I am sure employers would prefer not to pay for health insurance at all. Maybe they would prefer a national health insurance plan (single payer). But as long as we have employer-mandated health insurance, we are going to have regulations specifying what it has to cover, meaning all legitimate health care.

Now, you could certainly try to argue that contraceptives aren’t legitimate health care, but not that employers should be the ones deciding that. Contraceptives are considered by the medical profession to be basic preventive health care, and you won’t find many doctors who see it any other way. And let’s be honest, if health care plans are going to cover Bob Dole’s erection pills, they better cover his grand-daughter’s contraception as well.

It’s not a question of what employers approve of, it’s a question of what medical care we should all have access to in our health care plans. Everyone has different health care needs, and we don’t want to give employers the decision as to what is covered and what is not by the basic plan.

On the other hand, I’d very much approve of going single payer, if conservatives would reverse their opposition to that policy. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about what some religious hospital wants covered in their employee-insurance policy. It would all be covered for everyone by a publicly financed single payer insurance system. Of course, everyone would pay taxes into that system, whether they are employees of a Church affiliated business or not.
Franklin Evans says:

July 29, 2012 at 8:43 pm

Art Deco: sorry for sneezing in your general direction, but you packed a lot of straw in your short paragraph. If you really want to analyze the current debate over employ benefits, I strongly suggest you start reading the actual regulations that define and enforce such things. I’ll let you get started. Dusting off 14 years of professional experience reading and applying them on behalf of clients won’t take quite as long. Let me know when you’ve started.

Dave Dutcher, setting aside the prior sarcasm for your excellently made point: Your use of measurements and statistics has a formal answer: We are debating individual rights. That an entire class (in the legal sense) of citizens are demanding equal protection under and application of the laws is irrelevant. They are a group of individuals. This is not an abstract to any group. It becomes, as de Tocqueville put it, an example of tyranny of the majority.
Franklin Evans says:

July 29, 2012 at 9:00 pm

Just a little background for all of us to ponder.

Medicare Part A — hospital insurance — is the only part of Medicare funded by collection of revenue from taxpayers.

Employer provided benefits are not mandated by law. I don’t mean things like paid vacations, mandated lunch breaks or overtime. I mean thinks like health insurance and pension plans. Make no mistake: Competition for workers and getting substantial tax relief because contributions towards those benefits are fully deductible, is why companies offer health and pension benefits. What the law does mandate is legal conduct by employers and their assignees concerning administration of the benefits — particularly in defining who is and is not eligible — and paying them to current and former employees. Mostly its under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974. Art Deco, are you paying attention?
Justin St. Giles Payne says:

July 29, 2012 at 9:07 pm

Statistically speaking it is likely that more children are being raised by vegetarians than by gay couples, so should we push for strong anti-meat laws to avoid harming the children of vegetarians?

No, because my consumption of meat doesn’t harm, or even affect, a vegetarian household in any way. Neither does your belief in a conception of marriage harm a homosexual household in any way, of course.

It’s the part where you demand that your conception of marriage be the only one that will be allowed that harms gay families, and I struggle to see what is so confusing about that point. And I fail to understand where it is in “religious freedom” where you’re allowed to enforce your faith on anybody else.
Rod Dreher says:

July 29, 2012 at 9:21 pm

It’s the part where you demand that your conception of marriage be the only one that will be allowed that harms gay families, and I struggle to see what is so confusing about that point. And I fail to understand where it is in “religious freedom” where you’re allowed to enforce your faith on anybody else.

1) You mistake your viewpoint as neutral. In fact, your viewpoint is not neutral.

2) Over and over and over again, we have talked about how the viewpoint you take would cause material harm to religious institutions compelled to live under your viewpoint, when it becomes law. If you cannot see this, even if you believe that the harm that would be visited upon these institutions is justified, then you are invincibly ignorant and epistemically closed, and there’s nothing left to be said to you.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

July 29, 2012 at 9:23 pm

“Cut the crap” is a great slogan, but Ross Douthat is full of it. He freely mixes apples, oranges, rocks, and horse droppings, then throws a common label over it all and announces “Respect all this, or admit you hate me.”

“If you want to fine Catholic hospitals for following Catholic teaching…” I’m only saying this again because the same tripe keeps getting offered up as unassailable truth… Catholic hospitals are being infringed upon not as religious institutions, but only to the extent that they are employers of employees. Their freedom of religion does not trump the rights of their employees to the same benefits all other employees are entitled to by law. If they fill up their staffs with religious brothers and sisters who have taken vows of poverty, labor and health care laws will not apply. End of story.

“…or prevent Jewish parents from circumcising their sons…” Yes, there are some idiotic idolaters who worship homogeneity who have jumped to the conclusion that if mutilating women’s genital organs is an outrage, therefore, males may not be mutilated either. Now IF male circumcision was the same painful, permanently mutilating procedure that female genital mutilation is, the mere fact that “this is what our religion teaches” would not be dispositive. After all, those Muslims and Christians who live in regions where girls are circumcised make the same claim to religious freedom, do they not?

The application to each sex can be distinguished by:

1) male circumcision is an integral rite of at least two religions, whereas as female genital mutilation is an older regional custom that has merged with religious notions of the practitioners, but is NOT integral to ANY religion.

2) Male circumcision reduces transmission of AIDS, by removing a rather useless outer appendage, whereas female genital mutiliation removes vital, borderline internal tissue. Etc. So Ross is right, male circumcision is an orange, not a horse apple.

…or ban Chick-fil-A in Boston…” That’s been beaten to death, but the fact is, the loud mouth mayor has no power to prevent Chick-Fil-A opening in Boston. He’s pandering to a voting constituency, with powerless posturing. So don’t take him more seriously than this deserves.

The First Amendment is alive and in full operation. Stop blubbering and stand on its very real protections, but don’t make it out to be more than it is. To paraphrase Justice Scalia, the Roman Catholic Church has made the common error of believing that the First Amendment means what we would like it to mean. It does not. It means what it says.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

July 29, 2012 at 9:49 pm

Sorry to be posting twice in a row, but the thread seems to have wandered away from Ross Douthat to well worn topics.

“Simple tolerance without changing the law to redefine marriage and attempt to alter reality ought to be more than enough.” Hear, hear! Erin Manning hits the bulls eye!

Franklin Evans may not have intended to say this, but as INDIVIDUALS, neither a gay man nor a gay woman has been denied “equal protection of the laws.” Every man, and every woman, has an equal right to the institution of marriage. A minority of men, and a minority of women, don’t want it. Fine well and good. It is not mandatory. In fact no man can marry without a WILLING woman, and vice versa.

When a man and a woman walk into a clerk’s office for a marriage license, and the clerk says “You can’t marry, one of you is gay,” THEN will be the time to rail about being denied equal protection of the laws.

The constitution simply does not say, no matter what your choices, preferences, or nature, you are entitled to anything your little heart desires. Most, if not all, people born with Down’s Syndrome are unqualified for pilot’s licenses, and unless they meet every qualification, they can’t have one. Their condition does not per se bar them, but its not “unfair” or a denial of “equal protection of the laws” that they don’t qualify.

Justin and Rod are both wrong, for understandable and well-worn reasons. No religious institution or religious believers have had their freedom of religion infringed because the legislature of New York decided to license same-sex couples as a marriage. That IS how such decisions should be made – by a community’s governing representatives deciding to give recognition by the community to one more human relationship, not by judges who don’t know how to define terms laying a hastily concocted DUTY on the community to do so.

IF the legislature attempted to impose by statute on churches, which they did not, THAT would be speedily stricken down in the federal courts. Admirable precedents include Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Hurley v. South Boston Gays and Lesbians, Bryce v. St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church. There is not one case where a court has imposed upon any church a duty to honor gay marriage or cease teaching that homosexuality is an abomination unto the Lord – not in the USA. The Goodrich court was very explicit that its jurisdiction extended only to CIVIL marriage.

There are legitimate questions about imposing “equal rights” administrative laws on individuals engaged in commerce… and on those points, I concur that individuals have a right not to PARTICIPATE in private activities that violate their own religious principals. But that is more of a grey zone.

The bottom line, Justin, is that no community has an affirmative DUTY to honor a same-sex couple as anything, in any way. The very notion of “gay marriage” was concocted in the late 20th century out of whole cloth and a childish me-tooism. There are biological reasons to single out the relationship of male and female, which is unique. Whether same-sex relationships are similarly honored is irrelevant, no matter how great the passion these couples may share.
Public_Defender says:

July 29, 2012 at 9:59 pm

As long as we’re being blunt, how does it hurt our society if the Catholic Church decides that it is more important to deny children of same-sex parents the protections of marriage than it is to, say, run hospitals?

There is no difference between Catholic and non-Catholic hospitals as to charitable care, so the only real differences are that 1) the Catholic Hospital provides fewer services (sometimes, as a bishop in Arizona has reminded us, that means that they must let a pregnant woman and her fetus die when the woman can be saved); 2) they want to treat their gay employees worse than many (most?) secular hospitals would when it comes to family benefits; and 3) they want to restrict all of their employee benefits based a set of beliefs that not even most American Catholics support.

So if the Catholic Church sells off its hospitals, how is society hurt? We’ll have the same hospitals with more complete services and fairer treatment of employees. Again, for those of us who don’t share the bishops’ minority viewpoint (and again, that includes most American Catholics), how is that bad?
Dave Dutcher says:

July 29, 2012 at 10:02 pm

No, because my consumption of meat doesn’t harm, or even affect, a vegetarian household in any way. Neither does your belief in a conception of marriage harm a homosexual household in any way, of course.

It’s the part where you demand that your conception of marriage be the only one that will be allowed that harms gay families, and I struggle to see what is so confusing about that point. And I fail to understand where it is in “religious freedom” where you’re allowed to enforce your faith on anybody else.

This ties in to what I wanted to respond to Franklin too, so I’ll quote you.

The thing is that there are rights which are created and don’t infringe on any other or force the renunciation of other, and there are those that do. It is one thing to say “we must have civil unions” because you can have those and yet not directly argue that the religious tradition of marriage is wrong by definition. You are essentially arguing that it is wrong-that marriage should be extended to same sex couples.

However you are arguing the latter type of right, where this should have precedence over other people’s conceptions. This doesn’t make it illegitimate, but this is where Franklin comes in.

What I would say to Franklin is that in the arguments said here, that the size of the cohort of the individuals and the actual harm need to be a factor. It’s harmful to kill people, so the strongest form of rights are needed. It’s harmful to deny them employment, but not as much as killing them, so while serious measures are taken, they aren’t as drastic as the first. You don’t shoot people for refusing to hire gay people, but you do jail or fine them.

But here, the harm is only to a small actual amount, but we are asked to essentially deny the religious (and in many cases, common apart from religion) view of marriage. I don’t think the harm given is equal to what is asked to be sacrificed specifically.

If anything, the real fight should be “Is Christianity harmful to same sex tolerance and equality enough to warrant state suppression and censure?” Which is kind of Ross’s point, let’s call a spade a spade.
Mary Russell says:

July 29, 2012 at 10:03 pm

“…and we don’t want to give employers the decision as to what is covered…”

Church Lady: But that is exactly what we do under our current system. Dental care is basic preventive care, but many employers don’t cover it. My health insurance doesn’t cover my daughter’s autism therapy because it doesn’t cover any medical care having to do with developmental delays. Medicaid in Oklahoma didn’t cover physical therapy. The list goes on… For better or for worse, what employers cover in their health packages is up to them. Government mandates as to what must be covered are the exception rather than the rule.
Sam M says:

July 29, 2012 at 10:22 pm

“the anti-religious bigotry of the leadership class”

Wait. I thought I kept reading how the leadership class is more likely to marry, more likely to go to church, and it’s the lower classes that have abandoned religion.

Which is it?
richao says:

July 29, 2012 at 10:28 pm

I’ve been reading the autobiography of Edwin Muir, perhaps my favorite poet of the twentieth century. Tonight I was reading his recollection of his time in Prague immediately after WW II. He saw the ref lowering of the republican government after German occupation and stayed until just after the Communists took power. His description of this transition is heartbreaking, and the story of one individual he knew is arresting:

A Czech lady whose husband was killed in the Resistance was offered a choice. Her father and mother, both of them invalids, lived on a pension she had been granted after her husband’s death, and on a small salary she earned in a government office. She was asked to join the Party or lose her pension and her work. Her parents, who like herself were Catholics, would not speak to her again if she became a Communist; if she did not, they would starve. The problem was completely impersonal, and completely insoluble: the only choice left for her was a false one: to declare herself a Communist and remain a Catholic…. What the Communists asked of her must, I think, have appeared quite reasonable in their eyes, since their theory did not take the soul into account. Persuading her in friendly voices to do what she could not do, they may have thought they were behaving with indulgence. Freedom to them was a strange aberration, almost a nothing; for real freedom was necessity; and so what they offered the lady was necessity. They did not hate or dislike her, I feel sure. They did not realize she had become their victim; they merely did not understand. As a Catholic she fell into a category, it is true; but she was also, in their eyes, a possible convert. What they did not realize was that she was a human being. Their categories, the working class, the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, the communists, the anti-communists, were far more real to them than she was. Their moral judgments were judgments of their categories…. They could understand a good worker, but a good human being was an abstraction which fell outside their sphere of thought and therefore a source of confusion. So they could not believe that my Czech friend really found it hard to give up her religion or cut herself off from her parents. History, the masses, revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the final utopia when, at the great halting place of history, the state would wither away and all would be changed; what could a private person’s beliefs and affections matter compared with these great things?

What we are learning is that the totalitarian mindset – the mindset that believes that the cause (whatever the cause; it doesn’t have to be the communist utopia) justifies the trampling of individual conscience – remains with us. And the scary thing is that, as many of the commenters here demonstrate, those on the progressive side of these issues think that what they’re asking of Catholic institutions, and of Mr. Cathy, is eminently reasonable. They do not realize that they are making their own victims, because who can be a victim when the cause is just, right?

(And to clarify: Although I think that boycotting in most cases is silly, I do not think it reflects a totalitarian mindset. However, the notion that one should not be permitted to do business unless one espouses the right view on controversial issues, that one’ livelihood is fair game if one holds to the wrong views, does reflect at least a totalitarian tendency.)
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 10:28 pm

I certainly have an undifferentiated claim on my contractually agreed-to compensation, of which my health insurance coverage is a part. Having stipulated that it’s for my health needs, contraception – which is a health need – is a part of that.

Condoms are sold in drug stores. If you think they are a ‘health need’, you are seriously confused.

As for your compensation, the insurance plan itself is your compensation. Whatever the contours of the plan are is your compensation. Your compensation is not an amorphous promise to take care of your ‘health needs’.

You must know that’s not true. The supposed “contraception mandate” is a mandate on insurers, not on employers.

So bleeding what? You are preventing employers and insurers from agreeing on a plan that suits their purposes because by statute you lard it with crap that neither wants.
Public_Defender says:

July 29, 2012 at 10:30 pm

I love Erin Mannings argument, which comes down to, “We’re only hurting the children in 115,000 families.” Hurting more than 100,000 kids is still pretty darn bad. None of my clients have been able to hurt that many.
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 10:38 pm

Now, you could certainly try to argue that contraceptives aren’t legitimate health care, but not that employers should be the ones deciding that.

I am not going to ‘try’ to say employers should be deciding that. I am simply going to say that it is the employer’s discretion what they put into the health plan and what they do not. So long as transparency is respected with prospective hires, this is not a problem. The only practical problem you get are information imperfections in the labor market. For that you might wish to legislate some general understandings of what a health plan is, but that would never mandate that you include cheap crap like condoms and anovulant birth control pills.

Contraceptives are considered by the medical profession to be basic preventive health care, and you won’t find many doctors who see it any other way.

I have no reason to believe that undifferentiated physicians think that, having gone to them for 40-odd years and never heard one say that and having worked in hospitals for years and never heard one say that. I would not care if any one of them did say that. Contraceptives are not ‘preventive care’, and it does not matter of Dr. Smock says it’s spinach. They make use of medical technology for personal convenience. They are no more medical care than is cosmetic surgery, just cheaper.
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 10:42 pm

It’s the part where you demand that your conception of marriage be the only one that will be allowed that harms gay families, and I struggle to see what is so confusing about that point. And I fail to understand where it is in “religious freedom” where you’re allowed to enforce your faith on anybody else.

The ‘harm’ is fanciful. In any case, helping homosexual men to feel better about themselves is not a social goal worth bothering about.
Sands says:

July 29, 2012 at 10:43 pm

Oh come on Siralys, you and Scalia are expecting too much. The Church believes it is the true authority and holds the keys to heaven. It has never, will never, embrace the Enlightenment-inspired First Amendment for what it is. Perhaps Douthat would feel better if he just admitted that.
Art Deco says:

July 29, 2012 at 10:45 pm

I strongly suggest you start reading the actual regulations that define and enforce such things. I’ll let you get started. Dusting off 14 years of professional experience reading and applying them on behalf of clients won’t take quite as long. Let me know when you’ve started.

No need for my purposes.
Ron Beasley says:

July 29, 2012 at 11:09 pm

Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion. When you take on the cause that Quakers shouldn’t have to pay for military spending then I will take you seriously on the contraception issue.
Charles Cosimano says:

July 29, 2012 at 11:14 pm

Two points. First I think in a bizarre sense (and you have no idea how truly it pains me to say this) Ross may be right for the first time in his life about something. Second, the battle lines are now so tightly drawn and each side so entrenched on SSM that it is now a matter of which side will get the full power of the state to ram its view down the throat of the other side. The issue is still in doubt but as that line comes from Wake Island a day before it fell to the Japanese, maybe it is not that much in doubt.

Chick-Fil-A may very well come out the winner in this. Given the reaction to the boycott, it would not be a surprise if it posts a sizable increase in profit next quarter.
Lord Karth says:

July 29, 2012 at 11:46 pm

Art Deco writes: “Whether this is a zero-sum game or not, the practical import of homosexuals wishing to be ‘free from discrimination’ is

1. That employers, landlords, and merchants are compelled by courts and administrative agencies to enter into agreements which they would prefer to avoid, and

2. Various sorts of institutions, public and private, are compelled by judicial decrees or ordinances to grant recognition and benefit to affiliations they would rather ignore.

An excellent argument in favor of the repeal of the 1964 “Civil Rights Act” and all its evil progeny, immediately and forthwith.

I’ll take that one, at a black-market price, right now.

Your servant,

Lord Karth
Another Matt says:

July 29, 2012 at 11:53 pm

Over and over and over again, we have talked about how the viewpoint you take would cause material harm to religious institutions compelled to live under your viewpoint, when it becomes law.

And over and over again, many of us have asked for examples. I’m here to learn, and this space is usually an excellent place to do so, but I’m finding it difficult in the long discussion over gay marriage because so far, the material harm to religious institutions just have not been described in any detail.

Maybe there’s another way to go about this: you’ve mentioned that you would welcome civil unions to remedy the manifest injustice gay couples face, but with religious protections. What would the protections look like that would keep civil unions legally separate from civil marriage?
Rod Dreher says:

July 29, 2012 at 11:53 pm

P_D: I love Erin Mannings argument, which comes down to, “We’re only hurting the children in 115,000 families.” Hurting more than 100,000 kids is still pretty darn bad. None of my clients have been able to hurt that many.

And with that — the comparing of Erin unfavorably to accused criminals, because she holds an opposing opinion — this Helen Lovejoy whine has jumped the shark.
Lord Karth says:

July 29, 2012 at 11:53 pm

Church Lady writes: “I’d very much approve of going single payer, if conservatives would reverse their opposition to that policy. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about what some religious hospital wants covered in their employee-insurance policy.

Here’s a better idea: get the State out of the health-care business altogether. Let individuals, families and businesses make the best arrangements they can for themselves, with their own resources, and stop forcing other subjects of that State to pay for them.

That one I’ll take, at loan-shark rates, right now.

Your servant,

Lord Karth
Another Matt says:

July 29, 2012 at 11:59 pm

Now IF male circumcision was the same painful, permanently mutilating procedure that female genital mutilation is…

Um… it doesn’t grow back — it’s a permanently mutilating procedure. Let men decide whether or not to have it done when they are old enough.
Art Deco says:

July 30, 2012 at 12:20 am

I love Erin Mannings argument, which comes down to, “We’re only hurting the children in 115,000 families.” Hurting more than 100,000 kids is still pretty darn bad. None of my clients have been able to hurt that many.

You might ask yourself if innovations in matrimonial law in the last 40-odd years have been beneficial to children or were ever intended to be.
Art Deco says:

July 30, 2012 at 12:25 am

So if the Catholic Church sells off its hospitals, how is society hurt?

1. The distinctive charism of the religious orders operating them is lost to society.

2. A voluntary association is quite gratuitously inhibited in the course of executing its institutional mission.
Dave Dutcher says:

July 30, 2012 at 12:35 am

Second, the battle lines are now so tightly drawn and each side so entrenched on SSM that it is now a matter of which side will get the full power of the state to ram its view down the throat of the other side

I don’t even think it’s a matter of which side. It’s more a matter of when the secular side wins and how long it takes before the post ssm blowback, when they use the cudgel.

I’ve come to share Rod’s sense of inevitability about this. Though the problem is that if’d we were honest, eventually we’d realize that relying on a secular system to protect any religious rights is just as flawed. Still, the urge takes a long time to die, as my own posts show I guess.
Franklin Evans says:

July 30, 2012 at 12:46 am

No need for my purposes.

Then you are arguing from ignorance, and I see no reason to lend credence to any aspect of your position. Scoff and denigrate all you like. It just makes you look like a troll.

Rod, Erin’s statements do lend logical fodder to the basic conflict here. We struggle constantly with group vs. individual in our society. There is no such society in history that has experienced that level of conflict. Perhaps it’s too political an assertion, but the concept of tyranny of the majority is the deciding factor. If the societal consensus — not a vote, but an acknowledgment of the prevailing moral sense — determines that murder is criminal, then any attempt to label it as tyranny falls flat.

We are at a juxtaposition unique in human experience. We are causing harm to people. Forcing an objective — I’d hazard to call it arbitrary — measurement on the issue begs the question the founders attempted to answer at several levels. What is the societal priority? Is there an overriding fact that simplifies the issue? When it comes to national defense, foreign trade and diplomacy, interstate commerce, the issues are very clear. When it comes to the individual expectation of equal treatment under the law, all other things being equal (meaning I intend to be simplistic), the founders come squarely down on the side of the individual.

Frame SSM in that light, and that’s why my support for it is so easy to decide. Are they claiming rights that are tantamount to conveniences? Sure, why not. Being white and male has given that class enormous convenience for decades. Being mainstream Christian has been an automatic door opener at every level of society. Do you (general) take harm because those who’ve not enjoyed those conveniences are now doing so at the expense of yours? Sure, why not. In the end, the foresight of the founders prevails. Find an overriding priority to deny them equal access to those conveniences. Seeing yours decline is trivial in the eyes of the law.
Franklin Evans says:

July 30, 2012 at 12:59 am

Dave, I apologize for hasty (and tired) typing. My previous post was intended to be a response to you as well. I don’t have much to add here, except that yours has been the most cogent argument on this thread, and I don’t need to agree with you to acknowledge and admire your logic.

The most important thing to me is that both sides get aired, and that some sort of understanding develop from it. We need rational debate. It has become dangerously rare.
Erin Manning says:

July 30, 2012 at 2:24 am

Rod, Public Defender won’t admit that the “harm” question is even sillier if you actually look at the 2010 Census data on same-sex households raising children.

73% of those households–remember, only 115,000 households in all–were raising the biological children of one partner. At least some of that 73% were children born during previous heterosexual relationships–that is, they were not all manufactured using IVF and reproductive prostitutes, especially given the low birth rates associated with some of those reproductive technologies.

The remaining households were raising adopted children or stepchildren from previous relationships. In the case of adopted children, the legal protections for the child come from the adoption; the parenting partners’ marital status is irrelevant. In the case of children of failed heterosexual relationships and/or stepchildren, the children’s legal protections come from the custody agreements entered into by the children’s original parents; again, the marital status of the same-sex partners is irrelevant as to any potential “harm” to the children.

Only in the case of manufactured children where one partner is biologically related to the child(ren) and the other is not could there even conceivably (pun intended) be any disparity between the parenting partners, given the law’s tendency to privilege biological parenthood. And since the “marriage” of the two same-sex partners should not in any way automatically terminate the parental rights of the reproductive prostitute whose genetic material is providing half the child’s DNA, it’s hard to see how these children are being “harmed” any more than they are already being harmed by being selfishly created as commodities and denied their right to know their biological parents (but fixing that means regulating or even abolishing IVF, and I should disclose that I’d be in favor of abolishing IVF anyway regardless of who is using it because it turns children into consumer products).

I doubt if Public Defender can name one direct, material harm to children being raised by same-sex parenting partners that is solely and specifically the result of those parents being denied a “marriage” and which can’t be remedied in other ways (for instance, two “dads” can set things up so that if Dad A dies, Dad B can be named the legal guardian; but even if Dad A and Dad B are “married” Dad B’s legal guardianship or “marital” status means nothing if the children they are partnering to parent are actually the children of Dad A and his former wife–the wife will still get sole custody after Dad A’s death, barring any extreme circumstance, and that’s how it should be because they are HER children, not Dad B’s).

But I think that Public Defender’s definition of “harm” to children being raised by same-sex parenting partners is a more nebulous sort of thing: the kiddies might feel bad because they have to make two Father’s Day cards and get left out on Mother’s Day, etc. But again, those sorts of “harms” aren’t going to be fixed by forcing the absurdity of same-sex “marriage” on a population in which about 24 million households are still households with opposite-sex married couples raising their own biological children, and–here’s that number again–only 115,000 households involve same-sex parenting partners raising children at least some of whom are in shared custody arrangements with their opposite-sex biological parent.

The bottom line is that you can’t create a legally equivalent situation between same-sex and opposite-sex parenting because the vast majority of the time the two situations are completely different. Most opposite-sex parents are raising their own biological children, while NO same-sex parents are raising their own (as a couple) biological children. If adopted children are primarily protected by the adoption agreement, then there’s really no basis for same-sex parents to demand “marriage” as a way of being treated equally to opposite-sex parents who are, as a couple, equally the biological parents of their own children whom they are raising, because the law simply can’t make it possible for two men or two women to make a baby together, nor can the law erase the substantive difference between biological parenthood and other sorts of parenting arrangements (especially since traditionally those arrangements have been made only after the failure of the biological parents to provide a proper home).

But we’re fast approaching a reality where saying that you think biological parenthood should be legally privileged will be taken as a hateful bigoted anti-gay thing to say…
Sean Nelson says:

July 30, 2012 at 2:42 am

Rod,

And with that — the comparing of Erin unfavorably to accused criminals, because she holds an opposing opinion — this Helen Lovejoy whine has jumped the shark.

Oh come on, Rod. Erin’s argument was literally that the damage done to the children in same sex families is tolerable because there are only 115,000 of them. It’s not unreasonable to point out how utterly barbaric that is, or to compare it with the relative damage done by criminals. You ignored his substantive point completely, in favor of a whine of your own. (Hint: it’s not a real argument to say “because she holds an opposing opinion.” The content of that opinion is relevant and deserves to be addressed.)

This casual dismissal of (again) ACTUAL, DEMONSTRABLE HARM TO REAL PEOPLE is getting really old, Rod. You have been asked so many times in these threads to respond to this simple, perfectly legitimate point, yet you have only ever avoided it or mocked it.

According to Erin’s numbers, 115,000 families are being harmed TODAY by not being granted the protections of marriage. By comparison, according to the Census there were about 115,000 families in Boston in the year 2000. Imagine some religious edict of yours (or someone else’s) harming every child in Boston and you might get a sense of how non-trivial this objection is, from our perspective.
Public_Defender says:

July 30, 2012 at 4:57 am

Re: Dreher’s jumped the shark comment:

I don’t hold Erin’s position as bad because it’s her opinion. I don’t care what she, the Catholic bishops, Dreher, or Douthat believe in their hearts. But when they fight to use the power of the State to enforce that opinion on others, including, yes, the kids of same-sex parents, that’s action, not mere opinion.

Would you say that liberals pushing to use the power of government to enforce discriminatation laws on conservative Catholics should be free from criticism simply because they are just expressing opinion?

A necessary part of “cut the crap” has to be for conservatives to drop the “we’re just expressing our opinion” crap. Another part has to be for conservatives to drop the fantasy that the mere fact that a law contradicts their faith renders that law immoral and unenforceable. No religion gets that kind of blanket exemption
Art Deco says:

July 30, 2012 at 5:43 am

Then you are arguing from ignorance, and I see no reason to lend credence to any aspect of your position. Scoff and denigrate all you like. It just makes you look like a troll.

I never made any argument based on the text of contemporary labor law.