Live and Let Live

One of the lamest tropes in our political discourse (not known to lack for vacuity) is “imposing morality.”

The light isn’t always very good at the border, but there is a border between mala prohibita and mala in se. Positive law forbidding mala in se are necessarily impositions of morality when viewed by those who greatly crave something malum in se.

I have tended toward liberalism in the sense of allowing certain mala in se to occur lawfully so long as all competent participants agreed. One needn’t think this is all about sex, either (although that’s an area where the law has retreated pretty dramatically during my lifetime, with the Supreme Court finally striking down laws in holdout states). Boxing and other contact martial arts involve consenting to the battering of one’s body by another, which is certainly wrong without consent.

But just how much do I want government to micromanage? How badly is society harmed if a few outliers want to do this particular bad thing? How, short of police state tactics, would a ban on such-and-such mala in se be enforced?

But there are increasing signs that I’ve committed the grave strategic error of unilateral disarmament, and that there is a party that wants to impose its transvalued values (evil is the new good, good the new evil) by requiring me and others to participate, not just tolerate, their proclivities.

A current example is the employer contraception (and abortifacient, be it remembered) mandate. It’s not enough that Catholics who consider “artificial contraception” malum in se not be allowed to prohibit it by law. They (and Protestants, who may oppose only the abortifacient part) must, as the price of working in their own business as an employer, be forced to pay 100% of it for employees. Life-saving drugs and treatment come with a co-pay; chemical sterility is “on the house.”

That’s aggressive imposition of (im)morality by the government. I don’t look for the Culture Wars to end until “live and let live” becomes a two-way street, and I’m seeing no signs of that happening.

* * * * *

On a somewhat related topic.

As soon as you allow something as vague as Big Brother protecting your feelings, anything and everything can be punished …

In every genuinely diverse community I’ve ever lived in, freedom of speech had to be the rule . . . I find it deeply ironic that on college campuses diversity is used as an argument against unbridled freedom of speech.

Greg Lukianoff, president of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) on How Free Speech Died on Campus.

Perhaps Lukianoff’s characterizations are a bit exaggerated. Both sides in the Culture Wars have their anecdotal horror stories. I don’t have the time or the sociology chops to measure whether the sorts of examples Lukianoff cites in this Wall Street Journal piece are the exception or the rule.

But I’ve followed FIRE for several years now, and I sure as heck am glad it exists. It’s sort of the new ACLU of free speech on campus.

The pairing of (1) “something as vague as Big Brother protecting your feelings” and (2) diversity being used as a argument to limit free speech seems to me to be akin to the motivation for Human Relations Ordinances that add sexual orientation as a protected class.

Maybe things are different elsewhere, but I sat through every minute of every public meeting on our local Human Relations Ordinance amendments, listening for evidence of economically significant discrimination. Not only did I not hear it, I heard credible evidence of not even one isolated incident that would fall within the Ordinance. To my knowledge, no complaint of discrimination based on sexual orientation has yet been sustained locally, and very few have been lodged at all. I haven’t tried to follow execution as carefully as I followed implementation, but I was involved in establishing that Human Relations Commissions must operate under Open Door laws, and the press should be covering them to the extent their activities are newsworthy.

What motivates college administrators to act so viciously? “It’s both self-interest and ideological commitment,” Mr. Lukianoff says. On the ideological front, “it’s almost like you flip a switch, and these administrators, who talk so much about treating every student with dignity and compassion, suddenly come to see one student as a caricature of societal evil.”

My feelings are hurt, but my status as “a caricature of societal evil” is not a protected class. It’s okay, therefore, to impose the new morality on me.

Yes, I’m aware of development gurus like Richard Florida arguing that it’s important to get ahead of the curve by signaling tolerance to attract creative types. That doesn’t really change my analysis, because it’s still big brother protecting feelings, even if there’s a business development motivation behind (or façade in front of) it.

* * * * *

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Lord’s Day/Veterans Day, November 11, 2012

The election past.
Raw materials of the political future.
Realism on the cultural future.
Front Porch election symposium.
Valorizing and usufructs and political incorrectness.

Continue reading “Lord’s Day/Veterans Day, November 11, 2012” →

Keep your Rosaries off my Hanging Chads

Michigan statute (MCL §168.931(1)(e)) is an extraordinary criminal law:

A priest, pastor, curate, or other officer of a religious society shall not for the purpose of influencing a voter at an election, impose or threaten to impose upon the voter a penalty of excommunication, dismissal, or expulsion, or command or advise the voter, under pain of religious disapproval.

Violation is a misdemeanor. Really. This is not The Onion.

Dr. Levon Yuille, pastor of The Bible Church in Ypsilanti, Michigan, National Director of the National Black Pro-Life Congress and former Chairman of the Michigan Black Republican Council of Southern Michigan has sued, seeking an injunction, claiming that the law violates his free speech, free exercise and equal protection rights (and, of course, asking for reasonable civil rights act attorney fees). From his complaint:

…
13. Pastor Yuille believes that the Church is the body of Christ.
14. Pastor Yuille believes that when a person acts contrary to God’s Word, the person
risks separating himself or herself from the body of Christ.
15. Pastor Yuille believes that excommunication occurs when a person separates himself or herself from the body of Christ.
16. Pursuant to his sincerely held religious beliefs, Pastor Yuille believes, professes, and advises that abortion and gay marriage are gravely immoral and contrary to God’s Word. Pastor Yuille expresses his beliefs publicly and privately, including when he is speaking to potential voters, including potential voters who are members of his church.
17. Pursuant to his sincerely held religious beliefs, Pastor Yuille believes, professes, and advises that it is a grave sin for a politician to support abortion and gay marriage. Pastor Yuille expresses his beliefs publicly and privately, including when he is speaking to potential voters, including potential voters who are members of his church.
18. Pursuant to his sincerely held religious beliefs, Pastor Yuille believes, professes, and advises that it is a grave sin for a Christian to knowingly vote for a politician that publicly supports abortion and gay marriage. Pastor Yuille expresses his beliefs publicly and privately, including when he is speaking to potential voters, including potential voters who are members of his church.
19. Pastor Yuille believes, professes, and advises that it is a grave sin for a Christian to vote for a candidate such as President Barack Obama, who publicly supports abortion and gay marriage. Pastor Yuille expresses his beliefs publicly and privately, including when he is speaking to potential voters, including potential voters who are members of his church.
20. Pastor Yuille believes, professes, and advises that when a Christian knowingly votes for a politician who publicly supports abortion and gay marriage, the voter becomes a partner in the sin and his or her soul is in danger of eternal damnation. As a result, the voter is separating himself or herself from the body of Christ. Pastor Yuille expresses his beliefs publicly and privately, including when he is speaking to potential voters, including potential voters who are members of his church.
21. As a result of the upcoming presidential election scheduled for November 6, 2012, Pastor Yuille is compelled by his sincerely held religious beliefs to influence voters to vote consistent with their Christian faith and to advise and inform them that to do otherwise is contrary to God’s Word, it is a sin, it is looked upon with religious disapproval, and it could endanger their soul and separate them from the body of Christ.
22. Pursuant to his sincerely held religious beliefs, Pastor Yuille advises voters, including those voters who are members of his church, that to vote for a candidate that publicly supports abortion and gay marriage, such as President Barack Obama, is to act contrary to God’s Word, it is a grave sin, it is looked upon with religious disapproval, and it could endanger their soul and separate them from the body of Christ.
23. As a result of his sincerely held religious beliefs and his desire to express those beliefs publicly, Pastor Yuille is a pastor, who, for the purpose of influencing a voter at an election, including those voters who are members of his church, advises the voter, under pain of religious disapproval and the potential for suffering separation from the body of Christ, to vote consistent with God’s Word.

Michigan’s Attorney General pooh-poohs the suit on the basis that the law isn’t enforced.

Here endeth the reading of the day. (H/T Howard Friedman at Religion Clause blog)

There’s a reason why the law isn’t enforced, of course. A more brazen violation of any “separation of Church and State” could hardly be imagined than the state criminalizing the expression of religious convictions that intersect politics, such as homiletically warning people of the spiritual consequences of, oh, becoming “a partner in sin.” That Michigan’s Attorney General could find 20 pages worth of stuff to say in resisting the suit testifies that Michigan has a world-class bloviator in the A.G.’s office (although he, unlike the Obama administration, is actually doing his job by defending, as best he can, a law he disagrees with).

I don’t know what Dr. Yuille preaches for, nor do I know how broad and balanced is the list of things he preaches against. I’ve got “seamless garment” leanings, and it’s my current expectation that I’ll vote neither for (1) the regal imposter who’s never met an abortion he didn’t like. doesn’t remember what marriage is, thinks free birth control is more important than religious freedom and personally maintains a list of people who can be assassinated as enemies of the state, nor for (2) the empty suit who thinks there’s nothing wrong with the world that can’t be fixed by American invading or bombing some sovereign state.

But monitoring or punishing religious admonitions is no role of the government, even if those admonitions have very pointed political implications. The first amendment was addressed to Congress, and has been extended to Michigan by the 14th Amendent (or so the incorporationist story goes).

The first amendment has no application whatever to what any church, “priest, pastor, curate, or other officer of a religious society” may do. As my constitutional law professor, the late Patrick Baude put it, “If the Pope of Rome, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem and the Rev. Billy Graham got together and engineered the assassination of the President because of some common religious conviction, they would not thereby violate the Constitution.”

So I both wish and predict that Dr. Yuille should win, and that his attorneys for the American Freedom Law Center should be awarded the modest attorney fees (no lodestar multiplier, please) earned from successfully laying down the royal flush the Michigan legislature dealt them – nearly sixty years ago, when anti-Catholicism was perhaps even more brazen than it is now.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

This was not “prophetic.”
Beware of Traverse City.
Foul-Weather Libertarianism.

Continue reading “Thursday, October 25, 2012” →

Lizard brains

At its most fundamental level, same-sex marriage is not about what we think about homosexuality. It is about what we think about marriage.

(Maggie Gallagher)

I listened Friday evening to Jonathan Rausch’s and David Blankenhorn’s discussion on The Future of Marriage, facilitated by Krista Tippett, on On Being‘s “Civil Conversations Project.” The participants are two of the brightest, most thoughtful and civil, contestants in the struggles we’ve been undergoing over what we think about marriage, and they’ve “achieved disagreement” in large part because they share many counter-cultural convictions about marriage.

Rausch, a gay man who lectures straights about how they’ve screwed up marriage (and what they need to do to fix it), summarizes part of his view:

When I talk to young people on college campuses, they all think marriage is, you know, it’s a thing two people do and, if they need a piece of paper from the state, that’s just a convenience. I tell them, no, no, no, no. Maybe you have to be gay to see this, what it’s like to be excluded from a community and all the tools that go with this, but this is an institution.

This is a commitment that two people make not just with either other, but with their community. And that commitment is to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness to health, till death do we part. That’s a promise you as a couple are giving to care for each other and your children forever to your whole community and the community has a stake in it. And that’s what we gay people want. We want to be married in the eyes of community in that web of family.

Blankenhorn, formerly an opponent of same-sex marriage (arising from his conviction, before same-sex marriage was a hot issue, that children need their fathers), announced a change of tactic, if not of heart, this summer, for reasons he explained in a New York Times Op-Ed.

The whole point of the On Being series is civility in disagreement, of course, but I was surprised when Blankenhorn recounted “losing it” the first time he engaged with Rausch publicly:

Mr. Blankenhorn: … I was a fatherhood nut and then I was a marriage nut and we weren’t giving a single thought to gay anything. This was just what we were doing, trying to strengthen this institution that protected children. So when the gay marriage issue came along, I first tried to avoid it. I spent years not trying to talk about it because I knew it was divisive and I didn’t want to — it seemed like a side issue. I didn’t take it that seriously. Eventually, in the early 2000s, I got drawn into it a bit, got all tangled up when I met Jonathan because he invited me to come talk when his book came out in 2005…

Mr. Rauch: 2004.

Mr. Blankenhorn: 2004. He invited me to come give a talk. We didn’t know each other, you know. I had met him. I read the book and I thought I was going to give a rational calm presentation, but I found myself just being overcome with emotion and I said many ugly things about him and the book and accused him of bad faith and cited all these radical gay writers and said that this is what his real agenda was. It was an un — uh, it was not by best day.

[laughter]

Mr. Blankenhorn: But, I…

Ms.Tippett: Why do you think it works that emotion in you?

Mr. Blankenhorn: I don’t know. I still don’t know.

Ms.Tippett: I haven’t read anything about that.

Mr. Blankenhorn: It just kind of poured out. I called him the next day. I said I was sorry. I said I really regret having acted this way. He was like, oh, OK.

Far too much of our “debate” over this issue consists of “being overcome with emotion and I said many ugly things” about the other side.

I won’t try to rehash the bad, hateful arguments, or summarize the good, thoughtful ones – that’s why I’ve provided some links (though they’re skewed toward the pro-SSM side, which is not my own; Tippett and her staff perhaps had trouble finding good arguments on the anti-SSM side now that Blankenhorn has left it) – nor will I declare which side I think more prone to saying ugly things.

Rausch and Blankenhorn both acknowledge that SSM is a profound change:

It took me a long time to get my mind around the notion that in the straight world this is not, you know, an obvious thing. This is a huge shift in the way they’re thinking about marriage for 3,000 years and I think we need to respect that. I think societies have to ingest change at a rate they can sustain. That was something I had to learn.

(Rausch) As Tippett quipped in a different podcast recently, “as human beings, one of the things we’re learning from science, change is stressful and it sends us back to our lizard brains, right?”

But there’s good change and there’s bad change. Just as paranoiac can have real enemies, so a stressful change can be truly bad, not just lizard-brain-stressful bad. A huge shift in the way we think about marriage after 3,000 years is an eminently debatable subject. That something should go from unthinkable to almost axiomatic in 50 years ought to give us pause, and I intend to continue saying and writing things to incite pauses.

But I intend to say them civilly –as by and large I think I’ve done so far.

Before I had gay friends who were comfortable enough to be “out” to me, I tried empathically to enter into what it might feel like to have come to terms with one’s same-sex attraction in a society where, it appears, you and those like you have the political and social momentum. Blankenhorn describes the process I went through:

There’s the intellectual, you know, you think, you read, you know, you sit in your study and you try to think about the correct view … But, I — you know, you build up a kind of a barriers of belief in theory and it keeps the other people out, and so you talk about them. You have theories about them. You can explain their lives to them, but you never really talk to them and see it from their point of view.

Since then, I’ve had more chance to “see it from their point of view,” and I don’t think my prior empathic effort to enter into their world led me far astray.

Three good aspirations in the debate would be:

to stay away consciously from the lizard brain;
to consciously lower barriers and try find thoughtful opponents to share their point of view (someone who shares your religious faith and trusts you enough to come out would be especially good; I’m not likely to learn much from someone who thinks sex has no more meaning than a handshake or hug); and
so to debate this and other issues that if “the little light goes on” some day so that you change your mind, you won’t have to apologize for having been abusive or arguing in bad faith.