Great post today over at the First Things blog.
It is odd that simply because of its “sexual freedom” our time should be considered extraordinarily physical. In fact, our “sexual revolution” is mostly an industrial phenomenon, in which the body is used as a idea of pleasure or a pleasure machine with the aim of “freeing” natural pleasure from natural consequence.
Like any other industrial enterprise, industrial sexuality seeks to conquer nature by exploiting it and ignoring the consequences, by denying any connection between nature and spirit or body and soul, and by evading social responsibility. The spiritual, physical, and economic costs of this “freedom” are immense, and are characteristically belittled or ignored. The diseases of sexual irresponsibility are regarded as a technological problem and an affront to liberty.
Industrial sex, characteristically, establishes its freeness and goodness by an industrial accounting, dutifully toting up numbers of sexual partners, orgasms, and so on, with the inevitable industrial implication Read more…
Ed Whelan at the NRO Bench Memos provides the best analysis of Judge Walker’s overreach in his overturn of Prop 8. Today, Ed discusses the significance of the Ninth Circuit’s Stay order in the case. In case you missed the news, Judge Walker had originally ordered that same sex marriages begin immediately. The Proponents of Prop 8 asked him for a “stay,” until the appeals process is completed. Judge Walker issued a stay for 6 days. When the Proponents appealled that decision, the Ninth Circuit agreed with them, and ordered a stay, and expedited the case. Oral arguments will begin the week of December 6th.
Here is some of what Ed has to say:
The Ninth Circuit’s grant of a stay of Judge Walker’s judgment pending appeal provides yet further compelling evidence that Walker has gone utterly bonkers in his egregious mishandling of this case. Walker’s denial of the stay threatened to dramatically alter the status quo before a higher court could even review his radical ruling. Read more…
Robert George is on the Hugh Hewitt show right now, with Timothy George and Chuck Colson, talking about the Prop 8 Overturn and the Manhattan Declaration.
Push the “Listen Live” button.
Fox News has a poll on the Prop 8 Overturn. It is worded in an odd way, to give opponents two ways to answer, thus possibly skewing the results.
Still, this very non-scientific poll creates the impression that no one cares about the Overturn and that same sex marriage is inevitable.
Go take it. suggest it to your friends.
I have been reading lots of disappointed commentary about the defense of Prop 8. “If only we had a better defense team, more witnesses, better witnesses, etc.” I have had people contact me telling me they wish I had testified. Others write to volunteer their services in Public Relations, Advertizing or even Lawyering.
What I take from all this is that a) people are frustrated and b) people want to Do Something to help.
I understand. Really I do. And I appreciate the confidence that people are showing in me by asking these questions, and suggesting that I would have done better on the stand.
But just as a matter of professional courtesy and Christian humility, I am unwilling to second guess the attorneys or the expert witnesses. After beginning to read Judge Walker’s opinion this morning, I am even less willing to second guess the Protect Marriage team. In particular, I have a renewed respect for David Blankenhorn, the one witness the Proponents of Prop 8 called to testify on the social purpose of marriage. Read more…
The End of Men recently published in the Atlantic, can’t decide whether the marginalization of men from the family, the economy and the academy, is a nightmare or a dream come true. Steve Baskerville takes on the questions no one else will and says what no one else will say. The End of Men is not a naturally occuring result of natural forces, but something aggressively constructed by committed ideologues:
While elite feminists did assume previously male occupations, many more women have entered the workforce in professionalized versions of traditional homemaker roles. This has transformed childrearing and other domestic tasks from private family matters into public, communal, and taxable activities, necessarily expanding the size and power of the state and leading to the creation of vast bureaucracies to oversee public education and social services. Read more…
MSNBC had this article on the lowering age of sexual maturity among girls. This article tracks an overall decline in the age of breast development. It reminded me of a series of papers I’ve read about the declining age of first menstruation. This MSNBC article doesn’t report on this, and the factors may be somewhat different. However, I have been following the decline in age at first menses because one of its strong correlates is the presence of an unrelated male in the household. By contrast, girls living with their biological fathers tend to have their first periods at a later age. There is a lively debate over the reasons for this correlation. But the correlation seems to be well-documented. Read more…
I am hearing this question alot. I don’t think they did, for this reason: they thought the issue was whether the constitution requires same sex marriage. The other side acted as if the issue was whether same sex marriage is good public policy. The Protect Marriage Lawyers thought all that stuff that took up so much media attention was a media sideshow, not relevant to the issue at hand.
The Dean of UC Davis law school explains that this may actually be correct.
But in the end, the big analytic moves in Walker’s ruling – that same-sex couples seek to invoke rather than alter the right to marriage, that incrementalism and cautiousness in public policy change are not inherently “rational” under the Constitution, that gays and lesbians need special judicial protection from discrimination – are all legal conclusions, and the Ninth Circuit will decide these questions for itself, without giving Walker’s determinations much formal deference.
In other words, Judge Walker’s “Findings of Fact” may not fool the Ninth Circuit into thinking that they cannot reopen any of the questions he labeled as established fact. The Ninth Circuit, (and the Supreme Court, if the case ends up there,) may just be annoyed at the high-handedness of Judge Walker, and along with the way he allowed his courtroom to be turned into a media circus.
We shall see.
Associate dean and professor at the UC Davis School of Law, Vikram Amar, predicts that Prop 8 will ultimately be decided in the Ninth Circuit, not at the Supreme Court:
If the Ninth Circuit reverses Judge Walker’s ruling and upholds Prop. 8, I think it improbable that the Supreme Court would grant the plaintiffs’ request to accept review. The two primary reasons the high court takes cases are:
– A disagreement among the lower courts on how to resolve a recurring legal question.
– An earth-shattering need to answer a major legal question right now.
Neither would apply here. There would be no conflict among the lower courts on the question of a federal right to gay marriage (no judge other than Walker has yet embraced one), and upholding Prop. 8 doesn’t change the world in the way that requires the court to weigh in immediately.
The Supreme Court justices (both conservatives and liberals) would, I suspect, be quite content to let the issue “percolate” in the lower courts – and state ballot boxes – for a while before deciding to address it.
The likelihood of Supreme Court review goes up a lot if the Ninth Circuit invalidates Prop. 8 on the broad grounds embraced by Walker – that all same-sex adult couples have a federal right to enter into marriage, period. Such a ruling would recognize a constitutional right in the western states (those covered by the Ninth Circuit – Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington) that hasn’t been recognized elsewhere; under those circumstances, the justices would have a hard time deferring the issue.
What are the odds of the Ninth Circuit reversing Walker? They did it twice already in motions leading up to the Prop 8. Reason for hope?
Pastor Jim Garlow’s personal and public statement on the Prop 8 Overturn includes this gem:
We would have wished the judge would have looked at the first three words of the U.S. Constitution, “We the People.” There’s a reason why that document does not begin with the words, “I the Judge.”
Whether you think same sex marriage is good policy or bad policy, judicial imposition can’t possibly be a good thing. The public policy aspects of same sex marriage were thoroughly vetted over the course of a very expensive campaign.
Before I sign off for the night, I have to quote my friend Fr. James Schall, prof of govt at Georgetown University, lo these many years. He has a marvelous essay on a recent conversation Pope Benedict had with a group of students.
“You asked me questions with great frankness and at the same time showed that you have firm points, convictions. And this is very important. You are young men and women who think, who question themselves, and who have a sense of truth and good. In other words, you know how to use your minds and your hearts, and that is no small thing.”
– Pope Benedict XVI, To Young People in the Cathedral in Sulmona, July 4, 2010 (L’Osservatore Romano, English, July 7, 2010.)
Both John Paul II and Benedict are at their best in youth audiences. Imagine anyone else in the world telling young men and women that it is”no small thing” to use their minds! Benedict adds:”I would say that it is the main thing in this world: to use the intelligence and wisdom that God has given to you properly.” This again is a theme that is typical of Catholicism at its best. It recognizes that our minds are not our own original creations. We are given them by God in the very being we have received, a being that does not originate with us. …
The students also asked the delicate question of “How we can be in the world but not of it?” Praying in our room, meditating, going to Mass, Benedict says, does not “remove” us from the world. It rather “helps us be ourselves,” not subject to pervasive forces
“Dear friends, faith and prayer do not solve problems but rather enable us to face them with fresh enlightenment and strength, in a way that is worthy of the human being and also more serenely and effectively.”
You will recall that I claimed in my AOL News article that the Essential Public Purpose of Marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. Some people dispute this by pointing to alternative purposes of marriage, or by discovering groups of individuals who seem not to be participating in this public purpose. I deal with some (but admittedly not all) of those cases in this podcast.
Here is the purpose of marriage as outlined in Judge Walker’s opinion. He quotes a Harvard historian, with approval, who offers this alternative understanding of the purpose of marriage:
marriage is “a couple’s choice to live with each other, to remain committed to one another, and to form a household based on their own feelings about one another, and their agreement to join in an economic partnership and support one another in terms of the material needs of life.”
I would issue this challenge to those who take issue with my characterization of the Essential Public Purpose of Marriage. How would this definition exclude college roommates? Read more…
A reader posted my AOL New article on her facebookpage and got this response from a friend:
I see multiple problems with her argument,
1. She does not mention divorce, which has already ‘redefined marriage.’ Divorce rates in our nation have been hovering around 50% for quite some time, and divorce can be very detrimental to children involved.
2. There are some heterosexual couples who are physically unable to bear children. As far as reproduction is concerned, they are in the same category as homosexual couples. Both of theses couples can adopt children, yet no one questions the ‘parental status’ of heterosexual parents who adopt.
3. There are many married couples who choose not to have children, so saying that the ‘essential purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children’ is an exaggeration that remains unsupported by empirical evidence.
4. In some cultures and ethnic groups, marriage rates are decreasing and couples choose to cohabit instead. These groups have already ‘gotten rid of marriage’ and they are not seeing an adverse effects.
I’m more inclined to agree with the comment on the article from Ken, and I’m very glad prop 8 was overruled; however, I do appreciate this woman’s attempt to provide non-religious argument against gay marriage…
I had a limit of 650 words for that column, so obviously I cannot deal with every possible objection. So let me briefly amplify my remarks, mostly to say that I have dealt with many of these issues multiple times.
1. On divorce. I write about divorce regularly. In fact, divorce was one of the first issues that got me into the study of marriage and family. I have a couple of recent podcasts, here and here. My books, Love and Economics, and Smart Sex, both deal with the whole range of marital breakdowns, without ever once refering to same sex marriage. Read more…
I am pleasantly surprised by this statement from Cardinal Mahoney of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Cardinal Mahoney is not usually known for making strong statements on what are usually considered “social conservative” issues. “Social justice” issues, yes. But life and marriage– not as much. So listen to this:
Today it was announced that U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker has ruled that Proposition 8 which was enacted by the People of California is unconstitutional. His decision fails to deal with the basic, underlying issue–rather he focused solely upon individual testimony on how Prop 8 affected them personally. Wrong focus. Read more…
Philosophy professor and prolific author Dr. Ed Feser has a lenghthy post on the Prop 8 overturn. I’m just picking out some highlights. I suggest you read the whole thing. The dialogue in the comments is worth looking at also.
1. Judge Walker’s decision, he tells us, is based on the principle that the state ought not to “enforce ‘profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles’” or to “mandate [its] own moral code.” But that is, of course, precisely what Walker himself has done. …What we’re seeing here is just one more application of the fraudulent principle of “liberal neutrality,” by which the conceit that liberal policy is neutral between the moral and metaphysical views competing within a pluralistic society provides a smokescreen for the imposition of a substantive liberal moral worldview, on all citizens, by force…. Read more…
Maggie Gallagher writes in the San Fran Chronicle:
Judge Walker’s ruling proves that the American people were and are right to fear that too many powerful judges do not respect their views, or the proper limits of judicial authority. … Judge Walker has added insult to injury by suggesting that support for marriage is somehow irrational bigotry, akin to racial animus. The majority of Americans are not bigots or haters for supporting the commonsense view that marriage is the union of husband and wife, because children need moms and dads.
Judge Walker’s view is truly a radical rejection of Americans’ rights, our history and our institutions that will only fuel a popular rebellion now taking place against elites who are more interested in remaking American institutions than respecting them.
If this ruling is upheld, millions of Americans will face for the first time a legal system that is committed to the view that our deeply held moral views on sex and marriage are unacceptable in the public square, the fruit of bigotry that should be discredited, stigmatized and repressed. Parents will find that, almost Soviet-style, their own children will be re-educated using their own tax dollars to disrespect their parents’ views and values. Read more…
AOL News was looking for someone on the natural marriage side of the argument to comment on Judge Walker’s overturn of Prop 8. They found me. Here is the link to the article. Here is a reprint. Forward to your friends! Go over to AOL and join in the comments section. RRR’s will see the usual complaints, and will know that we have answers to every one of them!
Thanks to all my Peeps, for your support, even those of you who disagree. I appreciate everyone’s visiting over here! Tell all your friends who read AOL that they should come over here too. They would have heard alot of this a long time ago!
The essential public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling overturning California’s Proposition 8 illustrates that he does not understand this basic point.
He replaces this public purpose with private purposes of adults’ feelings and desires. He approvingly quotes a historian who explains that marriage is “a couple’s choice to live with each other, to remain committed to one another, and to form a household based on their own feelings about one another, and their agreement to join in an economic partnership and support one another in terms of the material needs of life.”
Nothing about children. No understanding that marriage connects generations. By the time Judge Walker and his ilk are finished, there will be nothing left of marriage but a government registry of friendships. Read more…
I just posted a correction to my press release from yesterday, changing the modifier on Judge Walker from “openly gay,” to “widely reported to be gay.” As I noted, he has never denied the report, nor has he ever described himself as “gay.” I am willing to respect his self-understanding, and his privacy. Hence my amended press release.
However, this raises a question in my mind: what the heck do we mean by “gay” in the first place? Presumably, the statement “I am gay” means something to the person who utters it. But what does the term “gay” mean as a legal term? As of now, Judge Walker does not describe himself as “gay.” Is he entitled to consideration as a member of the class protected from sexual orientation discrimination? Can he define himself into that class if he decides he wants to?
This is no mere hair-splitting question. As we reported during the Prop 8 trial, one of the plaintiffs in the Perry case, Sandra Stier, was married to a man for 12 years. Did she become a lesbian because she decided to move in with a friend who happened to be female? Does she have to prove she is having sex with this friend in order to count as a lesbian?
We also reported on this issue in the Miller Jenkins disputed custody case. Lisa Miller had defined herself in and out of lesbianism. She rarely had sex with Janet Jenkins. In what sense does she count as a lesbian?
The point is simply this: the Gay Lobby is asking the government to create a protected class that a person can define themselves into and out of at their own discretion and convenience. This is unlike any other protected class. It is certainly unlike race. (This is one of the things that send African Americans ballistic about describing the movement for marriage redefinition as a “civil rights movement.” But that’s another blog post. )
The small army of LGBT lawyers may have an answer to this problem. But to the rest of us who are used to objective categories and rule of law, granting protected class status to a self-identification looks a lot like cheating.
This is why it makes far more sense to use existing legal categories and tools to solve the practical problems same sex couples face. Redefining marriage, and creating a new protected class, is certainly an unnecessary step too far.
Dr Jennifer Roback Morse, Foundress and President of the Ruth Institute, lamented the overturn of Proposition 8 by openly gay Judge Vaughn Walker, who is widely reported to be gay. “Judge Walker’s reasoning today in overturning Prop 8 illustrates that he does not understand the essential public purpose of marriage, which is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. He replaces this public purpose with private purposes of adults’ feelings and desires.”
Dr. Morse continued: “by the time Judge Walker and his ilk are finished, there will be nothing left of marriage but a government registry of friendships. The essential problem of attaching children to the mothers and fathers will be pushed aside, and will have to be solved some other way.”
Read more…
In my news release yesterday, I described Judge Vaughn Walker as “openly gay.” An AP reporter called me out (privately and politely: thx!) about that description. His question: “What is the attribution for that? I wasn’t aware that Walker had ever commented publicly on his sexual orientation.”
I clearly recall the San Francisco Chronicle reporting that Judge Walker was gay. This report came after the close of the Prop 8 trial, and created quite a stir. People talked about it all over the place. Judge Walker never denied it.
So, I ‘m thinking, and maybe you are too, that “openly gay” vs. “widely reported to be gay,” this is a distinction without a difference. But not necessarily. Could be a slanderous rumor and nothing more. Even “widely reported to be gay and never denied it,” isn’t exactly the same as “openly gay.”
In my world, those differences seem not so big because in my world, a person who isn’t openly gay, wouldn’t allow himself to be described as gay without attempting to set the record straight. (no pun intended.) In fact, the SF Chronicle story reported this exchange:
did he (meaning Judge Walker) have any concerns about being characterized as gay?
“No comment.”
Shortly after our conversation, we heard from a federal judge who counts himself as a friend and confidant of Walker’s. He said he had spoken with Walker and was concerned that “people will come to the conclusion that (Walker) wants to conceal his sexuality.”
But this is not my world. Among those who live with same sex attraction, in varying degrees of comfort, being “openly gay” means that you are willing to describe yourself as gay to anyone and everyone.
So in the interest of respect for the facts, and for Judge Walker’s self-definition, I hereby amend my press release. I am going to repost it, as “Amended” with the words “openly gay” changed to “widely reported to be gay,” and leave it at that.
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