Attack of the gay lobby! (Revenge of the 'gay lobby'-alarmists!)

So in case you hadn't heard, the 'gay lobby' is still hard at work: according to the LSN headline, "Christian jeweller made gay couples’ rings but still got targeted by gay lobby" (see story here).

The first thing to note is that, yes, homofascists are still homofascists (angry, violent, irrational, mob-mentality types). But hopefully we understood that already.

The second thing to note is that the lesbian quoted in the story seems to be quite reasonable.* Aside from the intrinsic unreasonableness of her actual view of marriage, there is nothing unreasonable about her not wanting to do business with a jeweler who publically posts, right there in his business, his support for a view of marriage which she opposes. If a business-owner wants to mix business and politics, that's his right, but he shouldn't complain if he doesn't like the impact it has on his business.
[*Whether or not she had a binding contract after putting down her deposit is a different matter, which I will set aside. It is a technical legal matter. (fwiw, I don't think her breach of contract was reasonable and it sounds like it was not legal either - but apparently the jeweler decided to let the homofascist mob settle the question).]

Rod Dreher's comments, on the other hand, are not so reasonable. (I would note that Dreher's writing is, generally speaking, pretty intelligent and interesting.) He writes: “Is a fundamentalist Christian permitted to send her osso buco back to the kitchen if she discovers that homosexual hands cooked it? Of course not. Some delicate snowflakes are more delicate than others.” Please. What a bad analogy. A better analogy would be, "Is a fundamentalist Christian permitted to cancel her order of osso buco and leave the restaurant if she notices a pro-gay-marriage sign in the window?" And if we again set aside the breach of contract issue, the answer should be, "Of course." That is, we have a fundamental right to avoid doing business with business owners who use their businesses to promote things that we find offensive.

Another serious problem with Dreher's analogy is that it seems to suggest that the fundamentalist Christian's aversion is just visceral, to the ickiness of homosexual hands, as opposed to based on any kind of reasonable, principled objection. That would hardly be defensible, and would only make sense as an analogy if the lesbians didn't want to do business with the jeweler merely because of the ickiness of his pro-marriage hands. But that was not the case. They just didn't want to do business with a businessman who used his business to promote beliefs about marriage which they rejected. The old-fashioned term for this is 'boycott.' Thus Dreher mischaracterizes the situation when he talks about “the next phase in the March of Progress. You must not only bake the cake, or arrange the flowers, or make the ring, you must hold the correct opinion when you do it.” This is no 'next phase' of anything. It is just the ordinary right to freedom of association.

And it's just common sense that business owners shouldn't antagonize those whom they want as customers. I would certainly be within my rights to avoid a jewelry store that publicly promoted a perverted view of marriage. And yes, - pace Weatherbe, the LSN author (see article) - when it comes to freedom of speech and association, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

So yes, business owners should be free to post signs promoting their political views and allegiances (and they should be able to do so without being threatened by a fascistic mob, even if it's just on FB). And of course customers should be free to patronize whichever businesses they choose. And, for that matter, people should be free to post short slogans and assertions on Twitter. But whether such a mode of political discourse ('sloganeering') is really a good idea, whether it actually contributes to the formation of a well-informed citizenry and a healthy polity, is another question entirely. It is, in any case, rather sad to observe people who seem unable to form or follow thoughts more than 140 characters long. That's something that all people should work to overcome, regardless of their views about marriage.

Bishop Conley: "Preach from the Rooftops" - rational conversation vs. evangelization

James Conley, bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, has published a very pithy, read-worthy piece at Public Discourse: Preach from the Rooftops: Evangelium vitae at Twenty - I'd recommend reading the whole thing. Conley's explicit theme is John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life); but substantive issues that we'd naturally think of as more properly belonging to Fides et ratio (Faith and Reason) are clearly just as relevant and crucial for the development of Conley's thesis. Taking up Conley's train of thought at about the two-thirds mark, Conley notes the generally decayed state of moral understanding and moral conviction of most Catholics, as well as of Americans in general (not to mention Canadians, etc.):

We have not successfully convinced most Catholics, or anyone else for that matter, that contraception has grave social consequences. Nor have we yet convinced enough Americans that abortion is a real social injustice. Until we do that, we can expect to see the contraceptive mentality continue to foster and encourage libertine social tyranny, religious persecution, and family disintegration.

This is a powerful statement: in the absence of widely shared moral conviction rooted in the truth - an absence exemplified, for Conley, by "the contraceptive mentality" - we are left with libertine social tyranny, religious persecution, and family disintegration. (Conley provides specific examples of such things further up in his piece.) And this is what we currently generally have: instead of widely shared moral conviction rooted in the truth we have relativism. So relativism is a problem; but what to do about it? Conley writes:

But relativism is not immediately overcome by rational conversation in the public square. Rational conversation is important. But among the effects of relativism is a popular culture increasingly less capable—and less willing—to engage in rational discourse at all.

While it leaves us with plenty of unpacking to do, this point is, in certain respects, well put: There is, obviously enough, a natural, inherent affinity between, first, adopting the proposition: "there is no truth of the matter on this subject, just various perspectives and opinions" (relativism); and then, as a result of adopting relativism, being less capable of - or at least less open to - considering non-relativistic propositions: "there is a truth of the matter on this subject (even if the truth is complicated and an understanding of it can only be achieved at the cost of considerable effort, and probably also some luck); and the truth of the matter is this: ..."

It seems obvious enough that the adoption of the relativistic claim will likely leave the resulting believer-in-relativism less capable of considering non-relativistic propositions in an open-minded and intelligent way. Without the prior adoption of the relativistic proposition, one would simply be confronted with a proposition of the latter form, a proposition of a kind which serves as an invitation, and a provocation, to actually think; to embark on the potentially difficult undertaking, with no guarantee of success, of trying to sort through the arguments and evidence for different views in order to discover which is fairest and truest. But with the prior adoption of the relativistic proposition, one confronts propositions of the latter form with a ready-made, catch-all defense, an ideological filter: "of course, that's your opinion, so it's 'true for you'; but we all have our own equally valid opinions and perspectives - and that's all there is: heaps and heaps of equally 'valid' opinions and perspectives." Which is to say: relativism is the opiate of the intellect, a powerful medicine for inducing intellectual apathy. And intellectual apathy, or laziness, leads to intellectual dishonesty, and eventually to a more or less generalized state of bad conscience.

In Conley's quite justified view, then, relativism is bad, something to be overcome. But how?

According to Conley, "Rational conversation is important. But..." That is, Conley admits that rational conversation is 'important'; but this 'importance' is qualified. How, exactly?

Clearly enough, I think, Conley has in view, at least principally, the instrumental importance of rational conversation. The importance of rational conversation, here, seems to lie principally in its instrumental role in convincing people of moral truths - such as the truth about the morality of contraception and abortion. If, however, cultural conditions are such that rational conversation can no longer effectively serve this, its instrumental purpose, then what becomes of the presumed importance of rational conversation? One could get the unfortunate impression in reading what Conley has to say here that rational conversation has no intrinsic importance; and that if cultural conditions are such that the instrumental value of rational conversation seems to have been effectively suppressed, then the importance and value of rational conversation itself will have been effectively nullified - at least relative to that particular social context...

Having thus - implicitly, and perhaps disastrously - argued for the effective nullification of the importance of rational conversation in our relativism-ridden culture, Conley proceeds to provide an (ostensible) alternative to it, namely, evangelization. This move, however, I would argue, is one that is dangerous, misleading, and even self-defeating.

Very briefly: It is dangerous because it would seem to feed the flames of irrationalism already blazing in our culture, and especially in the Church. To the contrary, we must be very clear: "rational conversation" is not of merely instrumental value, it is intrinsically valuable, and morally imperative. It is misleading, because evangelization, like worship (see Romans 12:1), should be a form of "rational conversation," certainly not opposed to it. And it is self-defeating, because it implies - just as does relativism! - that the value of "rational conversation" is merely relative. Ironically, the call to evangelization, when framed as an alternative to rational conversation, ends up having the same effect as relativism: it promotes a culture wherein people - especially people of faith - are "less capable - and less willing - to engage in rational discourse at all."

Let's examine what Conley has to say about the 'evangelization' option:

Evangelium Vitae made clear that the dignity of human life is best understood by disciples of Jesus Christ. The Holy Father’s proposal for eradicating the social evils of abortion and contraception—and their profound social consequences—is evangelization.

Okay; but is JPII's "evangelization" rightly understood as something that steps in to fill the breach when "rational conversation" has proven ineffective in a particular cultural situation?

Well, fundamentally Christians believe that "at the fullness of time God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those under the law" (Gal 4, 4-5). This is the Gospel, and this is very different from saying "at a random time and place God sent his son, born of a random woman into a randomly selected culture, in order to redeem some randomly selected group of people." (Think about it.) The point is, the Christian gospel is organically rooted in its Jewish, Judeo-Hellenic, Judeo-Roman roots. The Christian gospel in fact claims to transcend history, but only and precisely from within history, from out of the divinely chosen and prepared historical (cultural, religious, intellectual, etc.) setting of the incarnation and life of Christ, which thereby becomes a definitive reference point and centre for the whole history of man and human culture.

The other way of putting this is to say that grace builds on nature. Grace does not substitute for nature; nor does it make nature - history, culture, intellectual and political environment, etc. - irrelevant or worthless. Grace elevates nature. But natural wounds still need natural cures. Grace does not save us from the natural ill effects of an unhealthy diet, nor does it save us from having to put in the work to develop and use our natural intelligence in order to avoid and counter the intellectual errors to which we are susceptible in our particular (relativistic) culture. That is, evangelization cannot and must not replace rational conversation.

Conley continues:

The Gospel of Life is the Christian gospel. John Paul said that we only understand human dignity in this life if we understand the human potential for eternal life.

"...we only understand..."? Or we most fully understand? Again, don't we need some distinctions here, in regard to the complementarity of nature and grace, reason and faith, rational conversation and evangelization?... (In this context, how can we ignore the opening line of JP II's Fides et ratio: "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth..." - the point being, it's rather difficult to fly with only one wing!) In any case, for Conley's purposes here, "the human potential for eternal life" is certainly too vague of a phrase; it is not the kind of thing that we can or should forthwith associate specifically with evangelization (i.e., with the Christian gospel). After all, even many relativists will understand (in some sense or other) "the human potential for eternal life," so this kind of Gospel of Vague won't really get us anywhere in regard to the fundamental issues Conley is trying to take on.

Conley concludes:

I remember vividly John Paul II’s homily in Denver, at World Youth Day in 1993, less than two years before he wrote Evangelium Vitae. I was a young priest who had traveled there with pilgrims from Wichita, Kansas. John Paul outlined the culture of death’s grave social dangers. And he proposed this solution:

Do not be afraid to go out on the streets and into public places, like the first Apostles who preached Christ and the Good News of salvation in the squares of cities, towns and villages. This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is the time to preach it from the rooftops!

Evangelium Vitae proposed the urgency of transforming human hearts—and human culture—through the Gospel of Life. Cultural transformation will take time. It is likely that successive generations will be called upon to re-Christianize the western cultural tradition. But restoring Christian culture must begin by restoring hearts—through transformative, kerygmatic encounters with Jesus Christ. Recognizing that fact was the truest genius of Evangelium Vitae.

No doubt this is a stirring invocation. But taken as a proposal to turn away from rational discourse and towards evangelization, it is also undoubtedly profoundly impractical. If people don't want to hear the truth in the context of a rational conversation, why, pray tell, are they going to listen when some zealot climbs on the roof and starts preaching to them? Or again, speaking about "transformative, kerygmatic encounters with Jesus Christ" sounds profound and edifying. But what does such a phrase actually refer to, concretely - other than some form of "rational conversation"? Why would Conley want to imply that "evangelization" refers to something that is fundamentally not a form of "rational conversation"? Surely this kind of implicit separation of faith and reason - at least at the level of Conley's specific rhetoric, if not his general practice - in fact risks falsifying the gospel and ignoring and discounting that complementarity of faith and reason we find proclaimed and defended in JPII's Fides et ratio. Rhetoric which sets up a false dichotomy, where we seem to be encouraged to opt for faith instead of reason, looks more like a symptom of the dictatorship of relativism than a cure for it.

Frosh week! Chanting is fun!

I was shocked by this when I saw it. Shocked and appalled. A bunch of 'student leaders' at St. Mary's University in Halifax chanting about what St. Mary's boys like in the way of sex: Y - your sister, O - o so tight, U - underage, N - no consent, G - grab that ass. But the reaction to it has been predictably silly and shallow: People are shocked, disappointed, offended by the U and the N, sometimes even the Y, while the O and the G generally seem to get a pass.

First of all, I’d love to know who came up with this chant (fricking dumbass ‘student leaders’ – these are the same kind of 'bro-choice' morons who somehow figure they have the moral authority to ban pro-life groups from campus), but the reality here is that even if what they’re chanting is evil – not ‘inappropriate’ or ‘sexist’; evil – we should understand that they’re mostly just sheep who would chant pretty much anything they were told to chant, just because that’s what the others are doing. (Some have criticized the chant as mindless behaviour, which is correct, but keep in mind that most frosh week activities consist of mindless behaviour.) As for the chant itself, people who think that this is a matter of sexism are not thinking clearly. If someone thinks it is okay to rape women, his (or her) problem is not that he (or she) thinks it is okay to discriminate against women. Using that kind of (stupid) reasoning, you could just as well say that someone who thought that consensual sex with women was okay was sexist. The problem is with the attitude towards rape; the sex of the victim is not morally relevant. If someone who raped only women was thereby sexist, then someone who raped only men – or even just mostly men – would likewise thereby be sexist, and the non-sexist course of action would be to ensure that half of one's rape victims were male and half female (and one should very occasionally rape an inter-sex person, if possible). Which is, of course, utter nonsense. (Think about it, if you need to. Some (many? - most?) feminists seem to think that the main evil in the world is sexism, so whenever they see some evil they instinctively try to classify it as a form of sexism. If you’re interested in understanding the truth and living in reality, this is a stupid thing to do.)

Secondly, this kind of disgusting, brain-dead trash – this chant, that is – is precisely what our wonderful public education system naturally gives rise to. I’ve had perfectly nice, ordinary, not-racist-or-homophobic kids – i.e., high school graduates, university students – in  my moral reasoning class who can quite blandly say stuff like, “The Holocaust was wrong from our perspective; but maybe it was right for them, for the Germans seventy years ago – who are we to judge?” Does anybody think that kids are just NATURALLY that dumb? No, that kind of stupidity is the result of indoctrination – that is, a corrupt education. These masses of publicly-educated – i.e., semi-educated – moral imbeciles are simply the wretched products of the massive influence of the education system – including the mass media, and especially entertainment media – that produced them. They’re not awful people. They’ve just been constantly taught that there is no truth in questions of morality; that sex is fun and healthy, so go ahead be creative, do whatever feels good – just wear a condom, you’ll be fine; that we all know you’ll have sex anyway, regardless of what anyone says, so again, have some more condoms. Of course the truth about such matters is also readily available (if not equally so to all), at least to anyone who actually cares to look for it (which is to say, very few people). But when you’ve got this army of clever, cool, progressive, rich, beautiful, sexy, successful adults telling teenagers, go for it, there are no moral issues here; just do what you want, whatever feels good to you; remember: it’s bad to judge others’ behaviour – progressive, fun, tolerant, GOOD people don’t judge; well, isn’t it a big surprise when some kids – in fact, most of them – actually decide to buy into the lies? Is it a surprise when they end up thinking, “No one has a right to judge me, I can do, think, say whatever I want if it makes me feel good... (oh, also: vote for me! – next mayor of NY!)”? Once you get kids (who do become adults, even if they never become mature) to start thinking like that, guess what? It doesn’t really matter what politically correct lines you try to draw in the sand after the fact; you have already so destroyed their basic powers of judging the truth that such ‘relatively-moral’ lines can never exercise any genuine – that is, moral, rational, properly human – constraint upon their thinking, saying, and acting. All you’re left with to constrain behaviour are arbitrary exercises of techniques of social coercion – public shaming, enforced ‘sensitivity training’ (i.e., more BS ideological indoctrination) – which always ignore and sometimes exacerbate the roots of the problem.