Bigger than tidbits. 7/9/11

Tipsy’s Tasty Tidbits filled to overflowing today, so I took a few, including some slightly more extended reflections, over to here. There’s just four categories: Law, Internet, Journalism and Sex.

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Speaking of race, I read on my iPhone during lunch yesterday a blog from American Conservative under the name “Dennis Dale” claiming that urban blacks have been using social media to organize flash mobs to terrorize whites. Supposedly Rahm Emmanueul had closed Chicago beaches with implausible concerns about heat stroke in 88-degree weather, and the mainstream media weren’t reporting the phenomenon.

Inasmuch as no media I’d encountered had reported it, and the story was so big if true, I vowed to return when I had a big screen and faster internet connection.

I don’t recall seeing the name Dennis Dale before, and the link was dead by the time I returned to it. I wonder of AmConMag got hacked by a race-baiting imposter?

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This piece on the comparison or contrast between race and sex in the law of equality is the sort of thing that contributes to understanding the law and public policy. Yellow “=” on blue background doesn’t, though as a même, it’s been darned effective.

That frustrates me because I’ve never been able to suspend disbelief enough to think that the gay rights movement was really and totally about “treating everyone alike.” There’s always resistance in varying degrees to any counterproposal that really treats everyone alike. I’m not saying the proponents are lying — except, through lack of introspection, to themselves. In other words, I think many of them are a bit deluded (and a few may be consciously lying).

In fact, I’m absolutely convinced that the gay rights movement is partly about getting government endorsement of gay and lesbian relationships. That may seem obvious, and banal, but I’ve heard it denied innumerable times.

For instance, when my hometown was considering amendment of its Human Relations ordinance to include “sexual orientation,” I noted the undue haste and the lack of definition of that  term. It was my first time venturing into the arena with gay rights proponents. I wasn’t being cunning when I asked for definition. That’s just good legal drafting when a term isn’t univocal. I didn’t know how my question would be countered or what “the next move” would be.

When an ACLU representative offered a definition she’d been holding in her back pocket (Why? Why not define terms from the start, fer cryin’ out loud!?) of “homosexuality, heterosexuality or bisexuality, by orientation or practice, by and between consenting adults,” I noted:

• Excluding pedophiles belied the claim that the ordinance was about treating everybody alike.
• This definition turned the ordinance into at least a weak endorsement of three sexual orientations over others by implying that other orientations are beyond the pale of equality and respect for human dignity.

I got fierce denials, especially from City Councilmen, but I think the facts and logic speak for themselves.

For another example, a University law professor a decade or so ago effectively killed domestic parter benefits at his University, when they were proposed in Faculty Senate, by seeing their “equality” bluff and raising them spinster sisters and bachelor brothers. In other words, he urged that if it really was about offering coverage to employees’ dependents, and not about endorsement of homosexuality, benefits shouldn’t be limited to dependents who live together and are erotically involved. That apparently, he reflected afterward, took away the desired endorsement of homosexuality and left the proposal unattractive to gay and lesbian proponents.

This reflection is prompted by a New York Times piece (may count toward your monthly NYT freebies) that rather laments the announcement of several big “diversity-friendly” employers that they will require same-sex couples to marry if they want to continue getting the benefits formerly extended to them on the theory that they could not marry.

I rarely blog on this topic except when prompted by what someone is saying or implying on “the other side.” But as the late Joseph Sobran said (I paraphrase), “If Freud taught us nothing else, he taught us that sex is a very big deal. I’d rather believe that homosexuality is preferable to heterosexuality than to think it makes absolutely no difference.”

I also suspect, as a Christian, that no amount of outside affirmation will ever entirely silence twinges of conscience about what the ACLU representative’s definition referred to as “homosexuality or bisexuality, by … practice.”

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Two prominent Evangelical proponents of Natural Family Planning have abandoned their position, divorced and left Evangelicalism (may count toward your monthly NYT freebies).

I admired their position a decade ago and continue to have very friendly feelings toward NFP and toward the Roman Catholic position against “artificial birth control.”

I will in this instance freely admit the accusation “Easy for you to say!” But let my rationale speak for itself:

• It’s clear from history that there has been a nexus between procreation and government involvement in marriage.
• Any intent never to have children is totally incompatible with the formation of a Christian marriage. The Orthodox Crowning (Marriage) Service speaks powerfully of that.
• The widespread separation of sex from procreation by artificial contraception (and artificial conception, for that matter) begins with the same at the smaller scale.
• The widespread separation of sex from procreation by artificial conception and contraception has contributed to the present controversy about the meaning of civil marriage and the increasing, and troubling, trend toward children in “fatherless” homes.
• There is (or was) a tendency in Evangelicalism to treat marriage as a Sex License — any kind of sex, without ever a break for fasting and prayer, as long as it’s a man and a woman and they’re married. (I get the feeling that the “as long as they’re married part” is weakened today among hetero Evangelical kids, but I don’t really know.) Artificial contraception contributes to that view, which is outside the historic Christian practice of asceticism.
• However, I’m made ambivalent because I know from personal experience that it is possible, at the level of a particular couple if not culture-wide, both to practice contraception for a time (because of a conviction that Now Is Not A Good Time For A Baby) and to be open to new life should there be a contraceptive failure. So I have trouble with lived experience in contrast to the Roman Catholic view that every marital act must be uncontracepted.