Category: Rights Talk
Saturday, 4/18/15
Friday potpourri
Machiavelli meets Alinsky. Are there any survivors?
Bake for them two?
It turns out that I wasn’t the only one to note the problems with Bake for them two, which had a number of my friends purring approval and, as I admitted, getting an initial approval from me. Some of the other caveats are pretty harsh:
“If asked to pinch incense to the emperor, offer a blood sacrifice to the gods as well! Matt. 5:41!” – Too clever by half exegetes
— Nathan Duffy (@TheIllegit) April 8, 2015
But this one, from an organization formally committed to opposing SSM to the bitter end (via a Declaration I subscribed), had worthy moments, starting with acknowledging (mansplaining?) a good impulse behind the bad exegesis:
Kantrowitz, a free-lance editor and part-time nanny, penned a blog that went viral, competing with the reach of those of us who do religious liberty for a living. That’s noteworthy for two reasons:
First, and foremost, it tells me Christians are desperate to communicate love to LGBT people. Indeed, many Christians are willing to ignore biblical principles they know to be true to avoid the appearance of judgment or rejection. This reality stands in stark contrast to the popular misconception of Christians as ignorant bigots. As influential activists in the LGBT movement further this misconception, Christians grow more fearful of embodying the caricature. The result is a spiral of silence among Christians, and historic gains for LGBT activists.
The spiral of silence is evidence of the second lesson: the widespread failure of pastors and other church leaders to properly equip everyday Christians to respond to the culture wars.
In the first half of the next sentence, though, I personally think he goes off the rails:
Christians don’t know what the Bible says, and lack heroes who model both grace and truth.
Maybe I’m reading too much into “don’t know what the Bible says.” In my experience, Bible proof-texts are ever on their lips, be it “go the second mile” or some clobber verse. The first has cultural purchase because it sounds nice when applied to wedding cakes; the latter is almost always worse than a failure in public discourse.
The Declaration I subscribed cited more than the Bible:
We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person.
Then comes the real surprise. “Go the second mile” wasn’t even “nice” when uttered. Kantrowitz’s proof-text is at least as out-of-context as any clobber verse:
Now, finally, we come to Matthew 5: 41. Does this section apply to the current clash over religious freedom and LGBT rights, and, if so, how?
Here is the section in full:
You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:38-48)
… At the time of Jesus, Roman citizens held immense power over Jews, who had few rights. Jesus is instructing believers how to respond to coercive acts in an systemically unjust system. He is not affirming that system. This is similar to the instruction Paul offers slaves to obey their earthly masters (Ephesians 6). Such an admonition is not an endorsement of the slavery system, but a guide to faithful living in the midst of a broken cultural reality.
…
Furthermore, Jesus’ instruction is a means to preserve one’s dignity in a situation where humanity is being denied. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, to turn to him the other also is a display of power. If someone sues you for your tunic, to willingly offer your cloak also relocates the false pretense of power embodied in an unjust system to the shoulders of the one whose dignity is grounded in something else entirely.
Matthew 5 is a subversive text ….
I assume Bake for them two will become the squishy Christian clobber verse against troglodytes like me. But for my money, more in the original spirit of “go the second mile” is this Note from Creator Cakes:
Though we’ve never been asked to service a same-sex wedding, and though it looks increasingly that we someday will, we want to notify our customers of a policy that Creator Cakes will pursue. We’ve decided that if asked, we will provide a cake at a same-sex wedding ceremony. But we will take every dollar from that sale and donate it to an organization fighting to protect and advance religious liberty—organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom, Manhattan Declaration, or the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
No organization, company or person should be compelled to participate in events or speech that conflict with their convictions. This is a basic freedom we thought was afforded under our constitution. But our culture is beginning to turn its back on its rich legacy of protecting dissenting viewpoints. If Caesar insists that bakers must be made to bake cakes or else close up shop, we’re going to see to it that Caesar’s edicts get undermined by channeling resources designed to fight Caesar.
So, we will serve same-sex wedding services. We will do so unhappily and with a bothered conscience. But if we must do so with a bothered conscience, we reserve the right as a condition of the marketplace to bother others’ consciences as well. If we are coerced into baking for events we disagree with, we will return the favor and use the funds of those we disagree with to fund the organizations they disagree with. If you are unhappy with this new policy or it conflicts with your own convictions about marriage, we invite you to take your business elsewhere.
If you need proof-texts for that, let’s look further into Romans than 1:27, to 12:18 and 13:1.
Care to fault my exegesis on that?
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“In learning as in traveling and, of course, in lovemaking, all the charm lies in not coming too quickly to the point, but in meandering around for a while.” (Eva Brann)
RFRA revisited – an irenic set of hypotheticals
As the scorching heat has begun to reduce, the energy over Indiana RFRA has begun to manifest as light.
Today’s newspaper, and Twitter and Facebook, have continued my RFRA thinking. Someone I’ve known for 50+ years pushed back a bit on something I wrote, and for some reason his very brief comment “clicked” with me.
So I’m relenting from RFRA Wind-Down and offering one more, that’s likely to lead to others. I don’t intend to have this posted on social media until after my Holy Week, though, since that’s where most people seem to read and react. This is more of a Journal entry until then.
I’ve come to understand (if not to agree with) the reaction against the law because of the personalities and interest groups behind it, and how poorly politicians articulated the need for it. That makes left conspiracy theorists salivate, as it would those on the right were the roles reversed. (Nota bene: I’ve never seen the press demand a list of concrete problems necessitating any left-leaning Bill. Just sayin’.)
And I’ve come to appreciate that those shouting past each other (“Bigot!” and “God-hater!”, roughly) may have different cases in mind.
With that, I offer seven hypothetical or paradigmatic cases that I consider more or less arranged by increasing justification for the recalcitrant baker:
- Customer walks into bakery. Customer says, pointing, “I’d like to buy a dozen of those cookies.” Baker hands him a questionnaire, including “sexual orientation” and refuses to sell because the answer is “Gay.” “We don’t serve your kind. Get out of here!”
- Customer walks into bakery. Customer says “I’d like to order a wedding cake. May I see your portfolio?” After seeing the portfolio, customer says “I’d like #3, exactly as pictured. I’ll pick it up before noon, May 27.” Baker hands him a questionnaire, including “who’s getting married?”, and refuses to sell because the answer is “Adam and Fred.”
- Customer walks into bakery. Customer says “I’d like to order a wedding cake. May I see your portfolio?” After seeing the portfolio, customer says “I’d like #3, exactly as pictured. Deliver it to Metropolitan Community Church by noon, May 27.” Baker says: “Whoa! Not so fast! Metropolitan Community Church? Who is getting married? This isn’t a gay wedding is it? I won’t do the cake if it is.”
- Customer walks into bakery. Customer says “I’d like to order a wedding cake. May I see your portfolio?” After seeing the portfolio, customer says “I’d like #3, but with two men on top. Deliver it to Metropolitan Community Church by noon, May 27.” Baker says: “Whoa! Not so fast! I won’t put two men on two women on a wedding cake because that’s not what marriage is.”
- Two guys walk into bakery. They say “We’d like to order a wedding cake for our upcoming wedding. We’d like to see your portfolio.” Baker says “No need to bother. I won’t do that kind of wedding, even if you just want something straight out of the portfolio.”
- Two guys walk into bakery. They say “We’d like to order a wedding cake for our upcoming wedding. We’d like to see your portfolio.” After looking at the portfolio, guys say “We’d like #3, but with two men on top.” Baker says “I’ll do #3 without any figures on top, but not with two men or two women. That’s not what I believe marriage is.”
- Two guys walk into bakery. They say “We’d like to order a wedding cake for our upcoming wedding. We’ve seen your work and like it. But we don’t need to see your portfolio. SSM is new and exciting, and your designs are pretty traditional. Make us something new, exciting, one-of-a-kind, and celebrative of our union.” Baker says: “I’m sorry. I don’t have the artistic vocabulary for celebrating SSM. You’d be better off going to someone who’s excited by this new thing.” Customer says “You’re just saying that because you’re a Christianist bigot. We want you to do a custom cake and we’ll see you in court if you refuse.”
With enough time, I could probably come up with extra gradations.
If the people yelling “Bigot!” have case 1 in mind, I’m with them. Case 1 is outrageous, but many, many comment boxes were filled with suggestions that such a thing was exactly what would come from RFRA. They’re wrong about what RFRA would produce, but they’re right that in Case 1, the baker’s wrong. (Got that?)
If they have case 7 in mind, I’m inclined to yell back <hyperbole>”God-hater!”</hyperbole>
One writer has proposed a scriptural proof-text for what to do: “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” (Matthew 5:41) She writes a winsome “Bake for them two.” Some of my friends are quite smitten with that article, but after an initial flush of good will, I’m not smitten with it at all. I’m not sure what kind of case she and they have in mind, but it appears to be in the 6-7 range from how she set it up.
If she has numbers 6 or 7 in mind, I’d suggest that the apt Bible principle, for those who want chapter and verse, is I Corinthians 10:18-28, but especially 25-26, 28:
Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” … But if anyone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, both for the sake of the man who told you and for conscience’ sake.
Or, being translated, “bake anything without looking for trouble, but if trouble comes looking for you, don’t dodge it.”
I’m not really interested in debate over which proof-text fits better. I left battling proof-texts behind when I saw the 40,000 denominations (and counting) it has spawned. I’m just saying “bake for them two” is an arbitrary choice, and probably not the best. It’s certainly not the only relevant one.
Translated to other trades, like photography, it seems to me that there are no portfolios a photographer could replicate exactly, and that every commission is unique. They’re all “number 7s.” It’s not “looking for trouble” to ask details about the time, place, spouses, etc. in preparation for taking the job, and if it is a same-sex wedding, that will invariably come out in the course of that preliminary work.
I hope case 7 sheds light on why I’ve been adamant about the need for exceptions to non-discrimination laws. Case number 7 has been, roughly, the case I’ve had in mind. Number 7 clearly calls for the baker to draw on creativity and imagination to celebrate a same-sex wedding that, for whatever reason, she’s not prepared to celebrate. That’s got both “free speech” and “free exercise” violation written all over it if government compels such expression.
A RFRA is about as narrow an exception as I can imagine: you get your day in court, trying to prove that your religious/conscience/free speech exemption claim outweighs the need for 100% enforcement of an anti-discrimination law or ordinance and the other guy gets to say “no, anti-discrimination is a compelling government interest and anything less than 100% guts that whole interest.” (Again, RFRA is about far more than discrimination claims between merchant and customer, but that’s the hot button issue.)
Thoughts? This is meant to prompt dialog.
I hope soon to attempt an analysis of whether it’s advisable for a Christian to acquiesce in cases like 6 and 7, or whether perhaps it’s very wrong to do so, analyzing via some tools from moral theology, such as formal participation, material participation and their variants.
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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)
Vacation: too brief, too close to home
Hagia Podrig’s Day, 3/17/15
Monday, 3/9/15
Middleweight SSM Opponents duke it out
When it comes to florists, photographers and bakers who decline to service same-sex weddings, I thought the arguments for the two (or more) sides were getting a bit stale.
I don’t exclude my own arguments (although I was pretty pleased with my insight that the law’s burden of persuasion has tellingly if tacitly shifted from (a) the customer seeking to impress artisans into involuntary servitude to (b) the artisans who resist slavishly valorizing some of the most bizarre conceits of the Zeitgeist).
But to my surprise, there’s something interesting (maybe even new and fresh) going on at the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse: a couple of middleweights fairly cordially duking it out, both starting with the premise that same-sex marriage is bad:
Russell Nieli and Jeffery J. Ventrella have been arguing here at Public Discourse about how shopkeepers, such as bakers or photographers, should respond to antidiscrimination laws that require them to provide services at same-sex weddings when they object, on religious or moral grounds, to same-sex unions. Nieli and Ventrella agree that it would be morally permissible and even commendable for such shopkeepers to avoid violating the law by ceasing to serve all weddings, whether traditional or same-sex, or even by ceasing operations completely and finding another line of work. They disagree, however, about a third option proposed by Nieli.
Nieli suggests that it would be morally permissible for such shopkeepers to comply with the law and provide services to same-sex couples if they also announced publicly, perhaps through signs prominently displayed in their businesses, that they believe that marriage is a union of one man and one woman, that the relevant antidiscrimination laws infringe their freedom of conscience, and that they are complying with these laws only under protest and out of respect for the rule of law and the democratic process.
That’s the launching pad for Professor Robert T. Miller’s own foray into moral theology, full of concepts like formal cooperation, material cooperation, just law, unjust law, double effect, and proportionality to “make some distinctions that both Nieli and Ventrella overlook.”
Prof. Miller is keen to emphasize the moral licitness of “material cooperation” with evil (what the reluctant baker, florist or photographer are doing if they go along) when, shall we call them, the plusses and minuses tilt. A watchman unlocking a door for robbers because a gun is at his head, not because he’s in cahoots, is a classic example of the distinction between material and formal cooperation.
The proportionality analysis in cooperation cases has generally concerned such factors as the magnitude of the good the cooperator intends in performing the action constituting cooperation, the closeness of the causal connection between the cooperator’s action and the primary wrongdoer’s action, the degree to which the primary wrongdoer’s action depends on cooperation from the cooperator, and the degree of wrongness of the primary wrongdoer’s action.
Now, the good that the shopkeeper intends is undoubtedly very great: complying with a properly-enacted law, avoiding the stigma and penalties that would come from breaking the law, protecting the goodwill of his business, and earning a just profit by selling his services would each, taken singly, be accounted great goods. Taken together, they comprise a very great good indeed. This implies that cooperation in order to attain these goods will be justified unless the other factors, taken collectively, are extremely powerful.
As to both proximity and dispensability, the shopkeeper’s cooperation with the primary wrongdoer is very slight. There’s no question but that the causal connection between selling a wedding cake to a marrying same-sex couple and any same-sex sexual conduct in which they may engage is very remote. The causal connection with the couple’s action of exchanging vows and getting married is closer, but still remote. It’s not as if the shopkeeper is performing or witnessing the ceremony; at most, he is making the party afterward more enjoyable and memorable. Moreover, the shopkeeper’s cooperating action is dispensable two times over: for not only will some other baker supply the wedding cake if this baker declines to do so, but the same-sex couple would undoubtedly get married even if every shopkeeper refused to sell them a wedding cake. Cakes, flowers, and photographs are very nice accoutrements to a wedding, but they are not essential, and a great many people get married every day without any of these things.
That leaves us with the issue of the gravity of the wrong that the cooperating agent helps or facilitates ….
As for “complying with a properly-enacted law, avoiding the stigma and penalties that would come from breaking the law,” I wonder if he has overlooked the possibility that “a properly-enacted law” is unconstitutional, and thus not “properly-enacted,” if it contains no exception allowing artisans to discern what they’re willing to express for a commission. No comment box allowed me to pose the question to the good Professor, though. (That is a little frustrating, but I’ve seen comments turn into cesspools without attentive moderation, so I understand the choice.)
Professor Millr has even got a link to the Kindle version of Moral Theology A Complete Course Based on St. Thomas Aquinas and the Best Modern Authorities, which is on offer – all 1395 pages(!) – for the very reasonable price of “free.” I suspect this means that the “best modern authorities” are at least one copyright cycle old, but unless the examples are impenetrable to the modern reader, it’s hard to think that the book isn’t worth that price.
As for the underlying Nieli/Ventrella debate, I think Ventrella comes across as the religious freedom litigator he is (Alliance Defending Freedom, a/k/a ADF), unwilling to allow that his clients might have mistaken a moral option for a moral duty, and I think Miller if not Nieli refutes his hyperbole pretty well.
I’m old enough to recall when Christians were called “hypocrites” if they only practiced their faith at Church on Sunday, and didn’t take it into the marketplace with them the rest of the week. Now we’re called “bigots” if we do – unless our Christianity is anodyne Religion of Nice.
But it behooves us at least to try to understand with utmost clarity what faith and conscience do require of us in the marketplace, so I’m looking forward to reading my new free Kindle book (one of these years, real soon now).
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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 