SCOTUS on Gay Marriage

Arent some of those men wearing dresses?

It is important to see that there are two issues, not just one, involved in the recent US Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage: 1. whether gay marriage ought to be legal, and 2. whether it is a human right. Proposition 1 legalizes gay marriage. Proposition 2 makes it mandatory.

I see nothing wrong in principle with legalizing gay marriage; and I suspect most Christians would agree. It is in the public interest to encourage stable, long-term relationships. However, in embracing Proposition 2, the Supreme Court ruling becomes a significant concern, for reasons I will explain in a moment. And why do it? Homosexual marriage did not need the help: it was spreading across the nation at a pretty good clip in any event. Polls show a majority of Americans accept it, and so making it legal everywhere was probably only a matter of time.

Accordingly, the ruling did little for gays, or for gay marriage.

Some have argued that the ruling was undemocratic, taking the decision out of the hands of voters and legislators. Some have called it judicial overreach, or “legislating from the bench.” This in itself is a serious constitutional concern, a precedent that could lead bad places and be very difficult, even bloody, to undo. It moves in the direction of creating and empowering a ruling class.

But that, I fear, is only a part of the problem. Making homosexual sex a supposed human right also puts the doctrine of human rights at odds with all the major religious and moral traditions, all of which declare it immoral. This is a big problem for the effort to get universal recognition for the doctrine of human rights itself; it tends to discredit other human rights by association, in many foreign lands and quite possibly, eventually, in America itself. There is a good case to be made that al Qaeda, ISIL, and their ilk arose as a direct result of American promotion of feminism and gay rights.

If this were not enough, including a “right” rejected by religion makes the doctrine of human rights, in fact, self-contradictory. The doctrine of human rights is founded on religious assumptions. As the Declaration of Independence puts it, men are “endowed by their Creator” with their rights. John Locke based his claim of human equality on the premise that all are descended from Adam and Eve, with no “senior line” of ancestry. It is a moral equality, an equality of worth before God. By introducing a supposed human right at odds with religion, with our traditional and generally recognized covenants with God, the Court is undermining the concept of human rights altogether: if God can be wrong or superseded on A, he can also be wrong or superseded on B.

This self-contradiction is likely to become apparent over time. As Abraham Lincoln once noted, quoting the Bible, a house divided against itself cannot stand. And, as he also noted, you can't fool all of the people all of the time; such truths will out.

But wait; there's more. Homosexual marriage is an experiment. It has never been tried before, at least in any society remotely similar to our own. It is possible that it will not work; it is possible it will have unintended consequences. It is possible that all our ancestors were not idiots. If permitting it were simply a matter of law, this would not be too worrisome. We could try it in state A, and not in state B, and then compare what results. We could, after giving it a fair trial and discovering we do not like what results, repeal the law. But the Supreme Court ruling binds our hands tightly behind our back. We cannot repeal a human right, and we must recognize it immediately. A human right, by definition, is inalienable. All states must immediately recognize gay marriage, and it cannot be repealed no matter what. The fact that rescinding the right would now require a constitutional amendment is the least of it—in principle, human rights cannot be repealed even by the constitution. If the constitution is amended to do so, this is, per the Declaration of Independence, reason to overthrow the government. After all, if one human right can licitly be erased by legislation, they all can.

We are left to hope that all our ancestors were indeed idiots, God was wrong as we understood him, and there are no possible ill effects to the wider society from homosexual sex.

Michael Coren Swims the English Channel

That was then ...

The time has come, The Walrus says, to speak of Michael Coren. He has raised much fuss, in Canada and abroad, by recently converting from Catholicism to Anglicanism on the issue of homosexuality. He has now explained his position in The Walrus.

I know how he feels. He is a part of literary Toronto. It is, in the end, a small place, and it would be socially terribly difficult to maintain Catholic teaching on the matter, surrounded by gay friends and colleagues. This, I think, the call of the world, is Coren's bottom line, and it shows in the way he begins and ends his Walrus piece. He as much as admits it in so many words at one point, in a backhanded way: “A mingling of income, self-perception, and reputation made it difficult to say what I truly felt.” (Was that really then, or is that now?) I, too, have gay friends and colleagues, whom I dearly love—in, I guess I have to add, the true, non-sexual sense. It is a painful issue, in the current social climate.

But that is not, in the end, an excuse. We are all tempted by the world. We must not succumb, even if our social life, or indeed our livelihood, might suffer. And any of Coren's other justifications are unconvincing.

He begins with the profoundly non-Catholic argument that “times change.” Later, he refers to opposition to homosexual sex as “outdated.” As he must, as a former Catholic, know, that holds no holy water. Eternal truth, faith and morals, cannot change, or else it was never truth. As Coren himself has pointed out in a recent interview, the Catholic Church simply cannot change its teaching on homosexuality, for this reason.

What Coren really seems to be saying here is that the social costs of maintaining the Catholic teaching on homosexuality are getting too high.

His second argument is that fellow Catholics have been unkind to him over the issue. This is irrelevant for a couple of reasons. First, since it came after his conversion on gay marriage, it cannot be a reason for it. Second, it is ad hominem. Truth is truth, quite apart from whether the person saying it is rude or gentle about it.

His third argument is that Catholicism has elevated homosexuality to an importance it does not deserve.

... this is now.

This seems completely disingenuous. It is not the Catholic Church that has been saying for the past several decades that homosexuality is important. It is the homosexuals, along with the secular society. If you consult the Catechism of the Catholic Church, you find homosexuality listed there right along with masturbation, fornication, and adultery. No worse, and no better. All four are wrong. But probably all Catholics have good friends who are guilty of at least one of these things, given the great improbability that they are not guilty of them themselves. Pope Francis sought to make the same point in his famous “Who am I to judge?” interview. So who exactly is pulling homosexuality out of the mix as some sort of poster child, and why? It is not the Church. Looks like it is Coren, for one, in his current conversion.

In any case, Coren is guilty of a big honking non sequitor. The claim that homosexuality is a relatively minor sin, does not mean it is not a sin.

As I pointed out fairly recently on this blog, most Christians would have no problem with homosexual civil unions that gave homosexuals the same rights as married couples. Many would have no problem with gay marriage as a legal matter. I have myself been in favour of gay marriage for much longer than, say, Barack Obama. This is not the issue. The issue is saying that homosexual sex is morally okay. And, beyond that, not even permitting anyone to say it is not okay. That is where we are heading now. And, frankly, if its advocates really thought themselves that it was okay, they would not feel any need for this third, profoundly radical, demand.

Coren's next argument is that homosexual orientation is more central to the homosexual's identity than alcohol is to the alcoholic, or adultery to the adulterer, and therefore cannot be treated as parallel. But this is surely a straw man: the Church does not condemn homosexual identity, but only homosexual sex acts. It condemns it in the same way it condemns heterosexual sex outside of marriage, remembering that not all heterosexuals will ever marry, or heterosexual sex among the clergy. Is homosexuality then more a part of a homosexual's identity than heterosexuality is of a heterosexual's identity? Is that some new kind of equality?

His next claim is that homosexuals are “born that way.” He combines this with a jibe that Christians tend to deny this. Another straw man, surely. The Catholic Catechism points out, correctly, that we do not know the true roots of homosexuality—it does not deny the possibility that it is inborn. But that is of no relevance. Having a temptation to sin, inborn or otherwise, obviously does not absolve one of the sin. If there were no temptation, no one would ever sin.

To be fair, Coren's deeper point is that it is “theologically dubious” that God would create some people with an inborn tendency to sin. Yet how is this case any different from, say, causing some people to be born into a rich family, remembering that “blessed are the poor”? Or letting them, innocent, be born into an oppressive regime like Nazi Germany, or a libertine one like North American today, where temptations to sin are bound to be greater? We have here no more than one more formulation of the old Problem of Evil; we need not get into it here, for it has been addressed so often. It is remarkable if Coren has spent his entire spiritual life to now without having to deal with it.

Coren then accuses Catholics or Catholicism of “dishonesty” or “hypocrisy” because, he estimates, one third to one half of Catholic priests are gay, “and by no means are they all celibate.”

First, we can eliminate from his complaint any “gay” Catholic priests who remain celibate. In this case, being “gay” is of no consequence. So the “one third to one half” estimate is a red herring twice over. For the rest, no doubt there are some gay priests who violate their vows; does this discredit the Catholic Church? Has the Catholic Church declared somewhere that Catholics, lay or clergy, are sinless? Actually, just the reverse: Catholics say we are all sinners.

Coren then claims, tiresomely, that Bible scholars are coming to a “new understanding” of scripture suggesting that the prohibitions of homosexuality there found are not really prohibitions of homosexuality.

This is no doubt partly true; although on the evidence of Coren's own exegesis said new understandings do require a pretty supple imagination. In order for Protestant denominations to justify dropping their historical opposition to homosexual sex, after all, their theological supporters and operatives must indeed reinterpret scripture somehow. This is an ever-present temptation, in the face of our own perceived present wants and needs; notoriously, even the Devil can quote scripture to his purposes.

To prevent rationalizing one's way to any sort of immoral behaviour or theological error as convenience demands it, Catholicism precludes this gambit. You learn something in two thousand years or so. We are not free to reinterpret scripture at will. We are obliged to understand it broadly in the same way the Church has always understood it. We need to consult the church fathers. It is relevant, therefore, that, in addition to the obvious meaning of the actual words of the New Testament, theologians and Church councils all the way back to the Didache clearly understood homosexual sex to be forbidden. No fudge here, lads.

Coren's next claim is a familiar one, that “love” requires the acceptance of homosexual sex. This relies on a gross though common materialism, which equates love with the sex act. Enough said there.

In the end, if you will pardon the phrase—it seems impossible to avoid double entendres on this subject--I suspect that Coren has been terminally frightened by the very rapid success of the current and growing anti-Catholic pogroms. Can't blame him too much for that: he is right out there. Things are moving so quickly that, in just the past few days, we have seen the bizarre anomaly of a small private bakery in Northern Ireland being convicted and fined for refusing to bake a cake expressly celebrating gay marriage--in a jurisdiction in which gay marriage is illegal.

They are coming for the Catholics. Coren sees this. He does not want to be home on that dark night when the knock comes on the door. 

The Denial of Service to Gays

In all the excitement and outrage about the Indiana RFR Act, and the deeply troubling possibility that gays might find themselves constrained in their choice of wedding caterer, nobody seems to have noticed that a far more serious and consequential form of anti-gay discrimination is still raging unchecked--both far more widespread and far more painful to LBGTs than the conceivable denial of prompt pizza delivery for their nuptials.

It is the endemic denial of sexual services.

It has come to our horrified attention that the great majority of men--in fact, by some estimates, ninety-nine percent—actually will, when asked politely, refuse to have sex with gay men; and the same might be said, if it were permissible to criticise women, of most women with regards to their lesbian sisters.

Painful as it doubtless must be to have to phone twice to find a wedding planner, there really is no comparison here. The denial of love—actual love—must have real and almost daily consequences for the average gay. Given that only one percent of men will agree to gay sex--let alone gay marriage—the LBGT choice of love partners is obviously severely constrained, as is their chance at joys and pleasures of life that straight people can simply take for granted.

I hope that those who truly care about human rights and human equality will not rest on their laurels with this current victory in forcing Indiana to blot out previously recognized rights of conscience, but will get right on the far greater problem, and swiftly frame legislation everywhere that will oblige us all not to discriminate in this regard, on religious grounds or for any other spurious and dishonourable reason. Human dignity and human equality demands it; and, after all, freedom of association and freedom of conscience having now been utterly dispensed with in US law, there is nothing any longer to stop us. We have no excuse.

Mozilla CEO Resigns

Cristero victims on display for passersby along the railroad.

I’ve been pondering whether to say anything about the recent resignation of Mozilla’s CEO on the grounds that he once supported a ballot proposition to prevent the legal recognition of gay marriage. On the one hand, I find it appalling that someone should lose their job for their politics, but on the other hand, I do feel it is the right of a business to hire whomever they want.

Ruins of Guernica, Spanish Civil War.

Vox Populi has fewer reservations, and has issued a war cry. I cannot endorse the idea of a battle between religious and constitutional rights, in part because I believe the two are inseparable and cannot in the end really be in conflict; in part because I believe fervently in both. But he does speak some worldly wisdom: if the government and/or the left really wants to fight religion, it is going to get nasty, and in the end they will not win. The Cristero War in Mexico gives one indication of how this will go. The Spanish Civil War gives another.

The proper and probably most effective way to ensure that this kind of thing does not happen again--and perhaps to fend off something worse--is the boycott. As a consumer, if the forced resignation of Eich concerns you, avoid using Mozilla products like FireFox. Free Canuckistan has a list of alternatives.