- Where did the Protestant mainstream go?
- Your friend will argue with you
- The ban is pretty weak tea
- Repent, for the Great Comeuppance is nigh!
A rural African Rip Van Winkle who dozed off in the late 19th century and awoke today would find many new and alien things. But there would be one continuity: a kindhearted and earnest foreigner pushing the locals to change their culture—for their own good, of course. His tracts used to talk about religion; later it was sanitation and literacy; now it’s safe sex, democracy, female genital mutilation, and gay rights.
(John Allen Gay) This speculation reinforces Gay’s earlier point: that the mainstream Protestant spirit, which survives despite the decimation of mainstream Protestant churches, has been absorbed into secular progressivism.
I have often cited the Russian proverb that Solzhenitsyn used, “The yes-man is your enemy, but your friend will argue with you.” The meaning of this proverb can be misunderstood, since it can be misinterpreted to mean that one should constantly be quarreling with one’s own friends, but it is fairly clear to anyone paying attention. Indulging a friend in his worst, most self-destructive behavior by endorsing whatever he says and does and making excuses for him contributes to the friend’s ruin and can have the same effect as seeking his downfall, and rebuking him when he goes awry helps to protect him against his own bad judgment.
(Daniel Larison who, by the way, is applying this in foreign affairs, not matters of personal behavior)
When Indiana’s marriage law was stricken down, I may have hastily conceded that the locution “ban on same-sex marriage” was perversely apt for a change. I certainly thought about saying that.
There’s a paradoxical adage that a law doesn’t get made until it’s broken. As people invent new forms of perversity – economic, sexual, environmental or whatever – the law responds by making explicit what was theretofore tacit.
So it was in Indiana. When there emerged an insistence that gendered marriage was arbitrary and discriminatory, and the risk rose that some same-sex couple would show up demanding a marriage license from a County Clerk (either a friendly one or one blindsided and unprepared for the effrontery), Indiana passed a law to make explicit that only marriage between a man and a woman is recognized. It sounded a lot like a ban:
IC 31-11-1-1 Same sex marriages prohibited
(a) Only a female may marry a male. Only a male may marry a female.
(b) A marriage between persons of the same gender is void in Indiana even if the marriage is lawful in the place where it is solemnized.
Or does that sound like a ban? What’s the penalty if you go to your favorite Unitarian Pastrix who pronounces you “#1 Person and #1 Person”? Nothing. Nil. Nada. All that happens is you’ve gotten a religious blessing on a relationship the state doesn’t recognize as a marriage.
What happens when you go home (or the “#1 Person Suite” at the fancy hotel of your choice) to consummate this union with a marital act? Well, you can’t. Not “may not,” “cannot.” Two members of the same sex are physically incapable of performing the marital act together. But whatever you do consensually to ape the marital act will not be a crime.
If Islamic countries said “If your father was a Muslim, you’re a Muslim, and we won’t recognize your conversion to any other faith,” but did not punish the unrecognized conversion, would we call it a “ban on conversion”? I don’t think I would. (Coming tomorrow: my blog that will sorta imply “once a Christian, always a Christian.” Stay tuned.)
So for the record, that “ban on same sex marriage,” if ban it be, is pretty weak tea, and I repent of ceding a point too quickly.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to understand the Windsor case and its progeny as something other than a shell game:
- DOMA is unconstitutional in its effort to set a single federal definition of marriage because
- the federal government must follow the definitions of marriage set by the states, who have always had that jurisiciction, but
- who are in turn bound by the single federal definition of marriage enshrined in the Constitution: whatever two currently unmarried adults want it to be (provided, for now, it’s limited to two, we think).
In Punk Rock and Poultry with a Kick, Sarah Albers makes an improbable connection between punk and Bob Jones University graduate Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm (and locavores Left and Right). It’s another sign of something coming that’s unstoppable.
Be afraid, crony capitalists. Be very afraid. Your money won’t save you in the coming day of comeuppance.
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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 