In a recent issue of Crisis Magazine, Jennifer Roback Morse gave three reasons why religious liberty arguments do not seem to be working for conservatives in their battle to save traditional marriage. First, many people no longer believe in God, and thus simply don’t care much about religious liberty. Second, we are asking people to … Read more
In a recent Crisis magazine column, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse—a valued leader in the pro-marriage and family movement—contends that “religious liberty arguments aren’t working” in the effort to retain marriage as the union of one man and one woman. In fact, she says the religious liberty argument in the marriage arena “weakens our case.” Instead, Dr. Morse … Read more
We have won the argument over marriage. We have won 34 statewide elections where traditional marriage was on the ballot. We did this even though the polls showed us losing most of them, perhaps all of them, prior to the vote. We won even in liberal states like California. We won even during Democratic primaries … Read more
I am a very committed, very public advocate of marriage as a gender-based institution. Many of my fellow proponents of man/woman marriage cite religious liberty as an argument against redefining marriage. While I have great respect for those who promote this view, I must respectfully disagree with their assessment. The uproar over the Indiana Religious … Read more
In February, the journal Social Currents published a survey that purports to show the motivations that drive the overwhelming majority of those opposed to same-sex “marriage.” According to the research, “Nearly all respondents (90 percent) who strongly oppose same-sex marriage also believe that ‘sexual relations between two adults of the same sex’ is ‘always wrong.’” On the other … Read more
Given the media attention to Indiana’s religious liberty kerfuffle, someone should have noticed by now that the conservative and liberal parties are talking past one another. Orthodox Christians, following millennia-old beliefs about the natural purposes and sacred significance of sexuality and marriage held by many millions of Christians and non-Christians around the world, are concerned … Read more
Democracy is dead. I say so not because I have ceased to believe in it. I retain a half guilty affection for that worst of all forms of government, except for most of the rest. I say so because everyone else has ceased to believe in it. Yesterday I asked my students what … Read more
There has been some discussion of news reports that Pope Francis plans to write an encyclical letter on ecology and the environment. In anticipation of a possible papal letter on those subjects, two recent articles struck my attention. Robb Willer, in the New York Times opines that one reason for the divergent political responses over how … Read more
The controversy about the Indiana religious liberty statute is a textbook example of the increasing timidity of leading Republican politicians in the face of the homosexualist movement. It is an exposè of how they just can’t get past the politics of the moment—which they often poorly analyze—to see the civilizational questions that confront us in … Read more
Just once wouldn’t you like to see some gay guy ask a Muslim baker to make a sheet cake with an image of Mohammed—Peace Be Upon Him? Gay guys are awfully brave when they bully meek Christian bakers with the full force of the federal and state governments behind them. But let them belly up … Read more
The Left does not like the idea of human nature. It tells them they are not free to do what they want. From a factual perspective, it tells them people do not change much, so the way things were in the past is mostly how they will be in the future. From a moral perspective, … Read more
If ISIS is defeated in Iraq and Syria, it’s likely that the Western world will breathe a collective sigh of relief. Many will assume that with the defeat of the supposedly un-Islamic Islamic State, things will return to normal—or, at least, to what passes for normal in the Middle East. As long as the beheadings, … Read more
To all appearances, everyday life is becoming ever more at odds with the Catholic vision of what it should be. It’s becoming less like life as traditionally conceived, a network of relationships, loyalties, and purposes, many of which are natural or transcendent and therefore enduring. Instead, it’s becoming more like eBay, Facebook, a government office, … Read more
I do not normally read the New York Times. No normal person normally does. But every once in a while I make an exception. Which is also a normal thing to do. The article I read astonished me, especially the following passage: America had a great political idea, but it had a small religious idea. … Read more
The New York Times was abuzz March 5. The board of trustees of South Carolina’s Erskine College—a small, liberal arts college historically associated with the Presbyterian church—had issued a statement declaring that the school considered “all sexual activity outside the covenant of marriage [as] sinful and therefore ultimately destructive of the parties involved.” Not only did … Read more
A man I know was a top executive at a major American media company, one of the biggest and most influential in the world. A young man came into his office one day asking to display a rainbow sticker with the words “safe space.” This was a decade ago and this man, a faithful Catholic, … Read more
Three homosexual men have “married” each other in Thailand in what is being billed as the world’s first three-way same-sex “marriage.” This was, of course, inevitable. It’s inevitable in every country that redefines marriage as anything but one man and one woman. When the culture’s only standard for “marriage” is that the parties love each … Read more
Four Catholic publications—two liberal and two conservative—issued a joint statement last week calling for the abolition of the death penalty. Even though the statement generated much unproductive controversy in the Catholic blogosphere, it also presents an opportunity for all sides to unite against a growing threat to innocent human life. Shea and Fisher React to Statement … Read more
The statement signed by prominent public intellectuals and published in First Things is a well-intentioned effort to avert same-sex “marriage.” In it the authors declare same-sex “marriage” a more serious matter than divorce or cohabitation. This claim should not be invoked lightly since it reflects a serious failure of leadership. This is not what Christian leaders … Read more
Christendom may have begun with an edict from Milan; now, in the waning days of Christendom, another voice from Milan, Angelo Cardinal Scola, in his little book Let’s Not Forget God: Freedom of Faith, Culture, and Politics, “brings back to our attention the issue, more relevant than ever, of religious freedom.” Initially a speech celebrating … Read more