Category: Sundry flakes

Impacting Indiana for 33 years!

Advance America, in a Sunday bulletin insert offered to churches, lays out what its leaders see as dangers ahead:
» Authorities jailing pastors for preaching against homosexuality.
» Cross-dressing men violating women’s privacy in their restrooms.
» Government forcing business owners to cater to same-sex weddings.
» Schools teaching children that gay marriage is normal.
The flier, put out this fall, argues that the items are “Just Four Dangers of Same-Sex Marriage” that could be on the horizon if Indiana fails to safeguard its traditional marriage definition, which already is contained in state law.

(Indianapolis Star story reprinted 12/13 by the Journal & Courier on page C1)

The flyer was quickly dismissed by “experts.” I’m an expert of sorts, and in the context of the article (“dangers of same-sex marriage”), I’d say the fourth is almost certain to happen in Indiana if Indiana recognizes same-sex marriage, even if there’s no legislative mandate to do it.

The others really are, in varying degrees, either (a) plausible but not consequences of recognizing same-sex marriage or (b) outright implausible in the United States.

Bear in mind that the defeat of HJR-6 does not mean that Hoosiers favor same-sex marriage or that SSM will become law. I likely would vote against it, with mixed feelings, because the second sentence is so vague that it feels like deliberate sabotage of the Resolution by false friends. (This isn’t an accusation of anyone. I don’t know who dreamed up that second sentence, or what they had in mind.)

A statutory prohibition already exists. The way litigation on homosexuality-related laws progress these days, things like the Advance America bulletin insert likely will end up marked as Trial Exhibits in any lawsuit alleging that Hoosiers only approved HJR-6 because they’re bigots with a “bare desire to harm” gays (not to mention that we’re ugly and our mothers dress us funny). That kind of evidence weighs heavily with Justice Kennedy, and he’ll be sure to accuse us of bad stuff in his 5-4 opinion for the majority.

But how about the specific “dangers ahead”?

  1. “Authorities jailing pastors for preaching against homosexuality.” “Jail,” implies crime. Eric Miller of Advance America, a lawyer, knows this. Free Speech remain pretty secure, though the made-up right to sexual expression, free from any stigma, is ascendant. I’d not bet against jail in 50 years, nor would I bet against extreme social and media hostility toward anti-homosexuality preaching in very short order. And there will be preachers so obsessively fixated on this particular sin that they’ll deserve to be held suspect. But jail? I call “bullshit” on this one.
  2. “Cross-dressing men violating women’s privacy in their restrooms.” Not a consequence of same-sex marriage. There are apparently true stories about “gender identity” mismatches with biological sex, and of a school being forced to allow a boy who identifies as a girl to use the girl’s restroom. Weird marks of cultural insanity, to be sure, and of the sort of insanity that would also think same-sex marriage reasonable. But whoever came up with this “danger” was just free associating about the outlandish things sexually troubled people do, not reasoning about consequences of SSM.
  3. “Government forcing business owners to cater to same-sex weddings.” This is a big topic. Lots of stories about this sort of thing from states that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Indiana has no such law. New Mexico bans SSM adheres to a traditional definition of marriage but does have such an anti-discrimination law, and a New Mexico photographer is on her way to SCOTUS appealing her hefty fine for declining to photograph a “commitment ceremony” that couldn’t be a “marriage” precisely because of the state’s non-recognition of SSM. Some Indiana cities and counties, moreover, have banned (maybe more accurate to say “subjected to free-floating flak from do-gooders on Human Relations Commissions if someone complains”) “discrimination based on sexual orientation.” I think it’s highly likely that caterers, photographer, bakeries and the like will be subjected to petty harassment of Human Relations Commissions in some localities if Indiana recognizes same-sex marriage, but those ordinances are relatively toothless.

Of course, it’s hard to imagine Indiana recognizing same-sex marriage without previously or concurrently banning discrimination based on sexual orientation statewide.  Bear that in mind as you look at my precis on some of these three items.

Advance America, despite its Christian pretenses, appears guilty of transgressing the 9th Commandment which, even Protestant Reformers agreed, includes reckless gossip.

But what do you expect from a group whose website boasts that it’s “Celebrating 33 Years of Impacting Indiana!”? What say we give Indiana a high colonic, to thoroughly rinse out 33 years of accumulated Advance America toxins, and call it a day?

* * * * *

“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)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

When confusion is the refuge of scoundrels

Steve Viars, a local Pastor, normally quite irenic, sort of lost it when gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson came to Purdue for a series of provocations.

I say “sort of” because his response was uncharacteristically testy, plowed no new ground (is there any new ground left?) and used an example known to infuriate homophiles and people who just want the whole debate to go away, whatever the result. His was a solid if unimaginative column.

His example, polyamory, however, raises a legitimate question, however little people want to deal with it:

So here’s my question for Lowell, Gene and Peter: Is polyamory right or wrong? If a group of five polyamorists wanted to have a family because that is their perceived identity, should that desire be celebrated? And if they wanted to be married, should Indiana law allow them to be?

Gale Charlotte decidedly doesn’t want to deal with that. Days later he claimed that the Pastor’s column left him “confused”:

Here are some facts: From almost the beginning of time, people have “pair bonded,” to provide stability in child-rearing and organization for the larger group. One man and one woman were together for purposes of procreation, and then it behooved them to stay together to protect their offspring and the larger group from predators. Over time, people signed a legal document of “marriage” in an effort to form alliances, to produce legitimate heirs or for purely economic reasons.

In western cultures, the Christian religion did not get involved in defining or even “blessing” marriages until the fifth century AD, and it was not until the 13th century that the Catholic Church declared marriage to be a Holy Sacrament, thus needing to be a ceremony involving a priest, and also involving only one man and one woman.

…

[W]e all agree: Committed relationships between two people are the “gold standard.” Is it any surprise to discover that most of us want this very thing — to have the state “bless” our commitment to another person?

I gather from this that Charlotte believes:

  • Until “over time” began, pair-bonds for stability in child-rearing included procreative pairs but wasn’t limited to them.
  • From the beginning of “over time” until the 5th century, marriage was whatever people’s private legal documents said.
  • In the 5th century, the  Christian religion defined marriage, but as something other than involving only one man and one woman, since only in the 13th century did the Catholic Church narrow marriage to one man and one woman (and inject Priestcraft – boo! hiss! – into it).
  • That Baptist Viars maybe is in mental slavery to medieval Roman Catholic Priestcraft.
  • That Charlotte is liberated from slavery to religious dogma; he wants the state to bless hiss commitment to another person.
  • That Charlotte has seen into my heart (and yours) and knows that I want the state’s blessing, too. We all do.

I suspect that Charlotte’s confusion is a mere rhetorical launching pad into his gauzy plea that we all all gather on his proprietary “bridge of understanding” where, over coffee, we’ll eventually decide to compromise his way. He sure didn’t step onto Viars bridge to answer the questions Viars pointedly posed.

Sometimes “confusion,” the inability to comprehend even fairly elementary stuff, is the real refuge of scoundrels.

But I’ll not let Charlotte set the rules for what contributes to understanding.  My contribution du jour is to suggest, as I think I have above, that Charlotte’s invitation isn’t bona fide, that his notion of understanding is oriented to achieving his own pre-ordained conclusions.

UPDATE: I’m informed that Gale Charlotte is a woman. It would be sexist for me to withdraw what I wrote under a false impression from the spelling of her first name.

* * * * *

“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)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.