[T]here’s a lot of ignorant, tendentious and even aggressive media chatter about the [Roman Catholic] church right now, and it’s starting to grate. Church observers are blabbering away on cable and network news telling the church to get with the program, throwing around words like “gender” and “celibacy” and “pedophile” and phrases like “irrelevant to the modern world.”
I wouldn’t presume to tell Baptists or Lutherans or Orthodox Jews how they should interpret their own theology, what traditions to discard and what new ones to adopt, what root understandings are no longer pertinent. It would be presumptuous, and also deeply impolite in a civic sense. The world I came up in had some virtues, and one was that we gave each other a little more space, a little more courtesy both as individuals and organizations, never mind faiths. That kind of public courtesy is what has allowed America, with all its sharp-elbowed angers and disagreements, to operate.
Right now every idiot in town feels free to tell the church to get hopping, and they do it in a new way, with a baldness that occasionally borders on the insulting.
…
But when they just prattle on with their indignant words—gender, celibacy, irrelevant—well, they’re probably not trying to be constructive. One might say they’re being vulgar, ignorant and destructive, spoiled too. They think they’re brave, or outspoken, or something. They don’t have enough insight into themselves to notice they’d never presume to instruct other great faiths. It doesn’t cross their minds that if they were as dismissive about some of those faiths they’d have to hire private security guards.
Daniel Brewington was involved in a contentious child custody dispute; Judge James D. Humphrey ruled against him in this dispute, giving sole custody to Brewington’s wife, limiting Brewington’s visitation, and finding Brewington “to be irrational, dangerous and in need of significant counseling.” After this decision, Brewington posted various items online “discussing Judge Humphrey, in which he described the judge as ‘corrupt,’ and accused him of engaging in ‘unethical/illegal behavior.’ He also repeatedly referred to the judge as a child abuser.” Brewington was then prosecuted for, among other things, violating Indiana Code § 35-45-2-1, which (in relevant part) criminalizes as “intimidation.”
Mr. Brewington indeed may have proven himself irrational and in need of significant counseling – maybe even dangerous – by his shennanigans, but the focus now is whether his conviction for intimidation, affirmed by the Indiana Court of Appeals, threatens free speech in Indiana.
Even the Attorney General agrees, as the Indiana Supreme Court is invited to review the matter, that the Court of Appeals affirmance is too broad, but thinks the conviction should stand anyway. Eugene Volokh discusses here and here. This blog isn’t an amicus brief, so I’ll leave it there.
Paris and Florence don’t have entertainment districts. Neither does San Francisco. Melbourne doesn’t either. What these cities have are spaces for people.
Our Disneyfied and tax-subsidized entertainment districts generally stink, require subsidy, and benefit only politically-connected developers.
Sounds like business as usual, but we can end it if we insist.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 