Secretary of State John Kerry began laying the groundwork today to justify a military strike against the Assad regime in Syria. As one would expect, the prospect of another war has become quite the controversy among politicos and the talking-head class. I read today about one Senator who said this: The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation… In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however,…
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Gay marriage as litmus test for acceptance in elite society
R. R. Reno offers some insight on why gay marriage has become the litmus test for acceptance in elite society. He writes: Same sex marriage has become the issue of our time… How did this come to pass? There’s no easy answer, which is not surprising. Same sex marriage is the issue because lots of different interests, concerns, and trends converge on it. The first thing to say is that the gay rights movement has been largely an upper middle class project. Thurgood Marshall attended Lincoln University, an all-black college in southeastern Pennsylvania, and then Howard University Law School. Gay activist Larry Kramer went to Yale. Judge Vaughn Walker went…
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Is opposing gay marriage like joining the Ku Klux Klan?
When Ben Carson was disinvited from offering the commencement address at Johns Hopkins University last Spring, Michael Kinsley used the occasion to describe our current cultural moment. He writes: But Carson didn’t murder millions of people. All he did was say on television that he opposes same-sex marriage—an idea that even its biggest current supporters had never even heard of a couple of decades ago. Does that automatically make you a homophobe and cast you into the outer darkness? It shouldn’t. But in some American subcultures—Hollywood, academia, Democratic politics—it apparently does. You may favor raising taxes on the rich, increasing support for the poor, nurturing the planet, and repealing Section…
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Gov. Chris Christie’s broadside against religious liberty
Governor Chris Christie has just made New Jersey the second state to prohibit licensed therapists from trying to change the sexual orientation of gay minors. Like recent legislation in California, the New Jersey law is a disaster at a number of levels. This bill not only prohibits “reparative therapy.” It prohibits any and all attempts by licensed counselors to change a child’s sexual orientation. And there’s more. The bill not only prohibits any and all efforts to change sexual orientation. It also prohibits any and all attempts to change sexual behavior in gay minors!
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Reactions to Zimmerman verdict split down racial and partisan lines
The Washington Post and ABC News have released a poll about the public’s reaction to the Zimmerman verdict. The results of the poll are not that surprising, but they are disappointing. The poll suggests a deeply divided country in which people’s perspective on the verdict is shaped largely by ideology and experience. Politico reports: Eighty-six percent of African-Americans disapproved of the not guilty verdict with just 9 percent approving… That’s compared with 51 percent of whites who supported the verdict and 31 percent who disapproved. Reactions to the verdict also split across party lines, with 22 percent of Democrats approving of the verdict and 62 percent disapproving, while 65 percent of…
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Gay marriage and the slippery slope to incest and polygamy
Kent Greenfield is a law professor at Boston College and a supporter of legal gay marriage. He has also written a compelling article admitting that the arguments in favor of legal gay marriage must also allow for incestuous and polygamous marriages as well. He writes, You know those opponents of marriage equality who said government approval of same-sex marriage might erode bans on polygamous and incestuous marriages? They’re right. As a matter of constitutional rationale, there is indeed a slippery slope between recognizing same-sex marriages and allowing marriages among more than two people and between consenting adults who are related. If we don’t want to go there, we need to…
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Hobby Lobby wins enormous victory in federal court
I have written previously about Hobby Lobby on this site and about the battle they are waging against Obamacare’s abortion mandate. Today the Christian-owned company has won an enormous victory. A federal court has issued an injunction so that Hobby Lobby will not be required to purchase insurance plans that provide abortion-inducing drugs to their employees. The Obamacare mandate would require them to purchase the coverage or face crippling fines. The federal court says otherwise. Specifically, the court’s ruling says that the owners’ “rights” are “substantially burdened by the contraceptive-coverage requirement” and that the mandate causes “an irreparable harm” to the company. “The tide has turned against the HHS mandate,”…
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Russell Moore on MSNBC earlier today
In case you missed it, Russell Moore appeared with Jonathan Capehart this afternoon on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.” You can watch the entire segment above.
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Christianity and “The Daily Show” Distortions
Last May a producer from “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” contacted me about being interviewed for the program. He said that he wanted me to talk about my perception of anti-Christian bias in the mainstream media as it relates to “homosexual marriage and gay acceptance in America.” It was to be a produced piece in which they interview people from different perspectives, and then after that Stewart would do his thing. From the get-go, I couldn’t see any upside to doing this. For starters, I had no interest in turning a serious topic into a laugh-line for Stewart’s show. Also, even though I am not a regular viewer of…
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The damning euphemism called “selective reduction”
The video above features a woman named Amy Richards telling her story about “selective reduction” (HT: @drmoore). If you are unfamiliar with the term, it’s a euphemism for killing one or more unborn babies when there are multiples in a womb. In Richards’ case, she found out that she was pregnant with triplets. In the video above, she describes her fateful decision to have two of her triplets killed. In a 2004 Op-Ed for The New York Times, she describes why she refused to allow all of her children to live: