Peter Leithart has an insightful piece at First Things explaining why gay marriage will ultimately fail. Because it owes to a culture-bound distortion created by heterosexuals (so-called “romantic marriage”), it will ultimately come to the same ruin. His conclusion is spot-on: Gay marriage may further damage marriage; but heterosexuals damaged marriage nearly beyond recognition all on our own. Read the rest here
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Why have some evangelicals turned against reparative therapy?
The Atlantic tweeted a link to an article this morning with this statement: “Why did Christian conservatives turn against gay conversion therapy?” It turns out that the article is by Jonathan Merritt, and it describes the shrinking fortunes of reparative therapy. As I mentioned last week, President Obama recently came out publicly against reparative therapy, and now Merritt is explaining how its influence has waned even among evangelicals. It’s a fascinating article, and you can read it here.
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Why can’t a father marry his adult son? A mother her adult daughter?
Nearly every experienced observer expects the Supreme Court to make gay marriage a constitutional right this June. Justice Kennedy will be the key figure in this decision, as he has been in all the precedents leading up to this point. And Kennedy has made it clear that the only possible reason for opposing legal gay marriage is irrational animus against gay people. Neither he nor the other justices have adequately considered that there might be a rational basis for defining marriage in connection with procreation. In a very helpful article at First Things today, Hadley Arkes observes that Kennedy has not considered other arguments because the Court’s conservative justices have…
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Marco Rubio’s faith: A circuitous route to Catholicism
Kudos to Sarah Pulliam Bailey for pulling together a short summary of the faith of Marco Rubio—who by the way announced that he is running for president today. In short, the story goes like this. He went from Mormon to Catholic to Evangelicalish and back to Catholic. In Bailey’s report, he says… “I immersed myself in LDS theology,” Rubio wrote. “I studied church literature and other sources of information to learn all I could about the church’s teachings.” By the time he was in sixth grade, his family had left the Mormon Church for Catholicism, and he had his First Communion on Christmas Day 1984. In 2007, Rubio told me…
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Why do reports conceal radicalism of the pro-choice side?
I noticed two separate articles this week about abortion that have a basic error of fact regarding abortion law in the United States. This wouldn’t be surprising if didn’t appear on the websites of our nation’s two leading newspapers—The New York Times and The Washington Post. What’s amazing is that the two reports make the identical error. NY Times – April 7, 2015: I came across this one earlier this week in The New York Times report on the new Kansas law restricting dismemberment abortions. Erick Eckholm and Frances Robles erroneously report that abortion rights in this country end at 24-weeks of pregnancy. Here’s a screenshot:
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President Obama denounces reparative therapy
Last night, President Obama released a statement calling for an end to what is sometimes called “conversion” or “reparative” therapy for LGBT youth. Written by Valerie Jarrett on behalf of the President, the statement is a response to a petition that appeared on the WhiteHouse.gov site after the suicide of the transgender teen Josh “Leelah” Alcorn late last year. Among other things, it says that “this Administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors.” The statement comes out in support of state legislation to outlaw the practice, and it invites the U. S. Congress to send similar legislation to the President for him to sign. The…
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Reflecting on the Indiana RFRA and a final question for the cultured despisers of religion
Our news cycle moves so fast that to bring up the Indiana RFRA law might already seem like yesterday’s news. Some readers already feel like saying, “C’mon, man. That is so last week.” Nevertheless, before the country moves on to its next diversion, I think it would be good for us to think about the meaning of last week’s dust-up over religious liberty. For starters, last week was more than a “dust-up” to those of us who belong to the religious minority known as evangelicalism. It wasn’t the apocalypse. Nor was it even worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as what happened to our brothers and sisters in…
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Gov. Mike Pence’s Dilemma. . . and ours
I watched Gov. Mike Pence’s press conference this morning with great interest. He is trying to face down an enormous backlash against Indiana’s recent Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which has been mischaracterized nationally as a license to discriminate against gay people. Nevertheless, he called a press conference and announced his intention to consider a legislative “fix” or “clarification” of the RFRA law. He did not explain what that legislative “fix” might consist of, but he said that something is coming. I like Gov. Pence, and I think that he has been trying to fight the good fight. But he has gotten himself into a dilemma that has no good…
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It’s the justices, stupid
Rod Dreher might be accused of being a “Debbie Downer” for his dire predictions about religious liberty, but I think his analysis is spot-on. In an essay posted this morning, he argues that the take-away from the Indiana RFRA is not the law itself, but the media “freak out” that happened in response. It reveals just how deep our nation’s indifference is to religious liberty and just how willing some of our elites are to stamp it out. And it won’t stop with RFRA’s. He says that churches that support traditional marriage will soon face attacks on their tax-exempt status. If you think this isn’t coming, you aren’t paying attention.
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Discrimination against gay people in Indiana?
I applaud Indiana Governor Mike Pence for taking a courageous stand in defense of our first freedom—religious liberty. Gov. Pence has been on the hot-seat ever since he signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) into Indiana law last week. Not only did he sign the bill into law, but he also had the moxie to go on national television to defend the law in the face of scurrilously unfair criticism (see video above).