Gay opposition to same-sex marriage

There is no homogeneity among gays about same-sex marriage.  Some support it because they see it as a good for individuals and society and believe same-sex couples should have equal access to it.  Others support it because they see marriage as harmful for individuals and society and believe that extending marriage to gays undermines marriage as a social institution.  Some apparently smaller number oppose same-sex marriage because they see the arguments for it as contradictory and in principle misguided (e.g., if favorable public opinion is an argument for same -sex marriage, was public opposition to the idea until a decade or two ago a good argument against it throughout history?).  


They oppose it for the same reason that some advocates of SSM support it, that the whole concept of same-sex "marriage" negates marriage as it has been understood traditionally.  In that traditionally and, until yesterday, universally agreed definition understands marriage as socially approved sexual intercourse between a man and a woman such that any children that result from those conjugal relations belong - legally, emotionally, socially - to the two parents who made them.  From this perspective, the importance of marriage - and the state's interest in it as a public institution - is that it acknowledges the right of all children where possible to the care, support, and love of the two parents who made them.  Marriage is thus, and was always understood as society's most pro-child institution, deserving the recognition, support, and protection of the state for that reason.  It creates and sustains fatherhood as a social role with socially and legally recognized rights and responsibilities.  (Look at the plight of children and their mothers in communities where marriage has collapsed.)  It protects the best environment for children to grow up in - as evidenced by a mass of findings about educational and life prospects, health, mental health, delinquency, etc., even controlling for income and other selection effects.  And it respects the fundamental natural right of children to their own parents, as recognized in the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child.  


Marriage rests, as the above definition indicates, on a particular sexual act and was understood as not being valid unless and until consummated.  The point was understood to be that only one sexual act has in principle the capacity - not realized for contingent reasons every time or in every couple - to generate new life.  Not every sexual act or even every marriage produces a child, even though the necessary conjugal act is performed, but every child has two parents who did perform that act and generated new life thereby.  (Yes, there are cases of IVF and children deliberately deprived of their fathers by use of anonymous sperm donation, but these are outliers, not the central case that defines the institution.)


The column below, from MercatorNet's Conjugality site, does not make all these arguments, but it does recognize the fundamental move involved in same-sex "marriage" as in the sexual revolution more generally - the subordination of the interests and rights of children to the desires and freedoms of adults.  It is a recognition of truth that requires courage and integrity in face of the forward "march of an increasingly cavalier and triumphalist liberalism."

At risk: the right of a child to both a mother and a father

Michael Kirke | 23 Apr 2012 |

Intellectual dishonesty and shallowness in the arguments for bringing gay civil unions within the legal definition of marriage were laid bare last week in Dublin’s Irish Times by an opinion writer who professes same-sex orientation himself.  RichardGay opposition to same-sex marriage Waghorne, who also writes for the Daily Mail, took issue with “a number of self-contradictory or inaccurate arguments” advanced earlier in the week by Irish gay-campaigner, Kieran Rose. All of Ireland's main political parties have now adopted plans to legislatie for a redefinition of marriage laws to facilitate gay unions being recognised as such. However, the hurdle of Ireland's written constitution would have to be overcome by the legislature before any such changes could be enacted.

The first fallacy exposed by Waghorne was the resort to public opinion data showing majority support for the introduction of gay marriage. While he did not question the accuracy of the data he pointed out that public opinion is, however, no more conclusive a reason to legislate for gay marriage today than hostile opinion was good reason to delay law reform concerning homosexuality decades ago.

“Gay activists retrospectively give false legitimacy to the criminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland until 1993 by adducing opinion polling to a debate requiring resolution by reference to the common good. If majority opinion today is good cause to introduce gay marriage, it must have been similarly good cause for the profound imprudence of the law until two decades ago.

“That this is absurd betrays not only a shallowness discernible in the case for gay marriage but also what has to be identified as a degree of intellectual dishonesty.”

He also exposes the self-contradictory weakness in the gay lobby’s argument that the Irish public desires the introduction of gay marriage while at the same time moaning about the Irish public harbouring a dangerous degree of homophobia.

Waghorne adds his voice to a growing list of people with same-sex orientation – Ben Bradshaw and Matthew Parris in Britain, for example – who do not support this campaign. “As for claims raised in the name of the gay community,” he says, “I would prefer if someone with whom I share nothing but sexual orientation did not use that rather uninteresting fact to raise in my name political claims I and others do not share.”

The gay lobby, Waghorne says, is arguing the case for the right to marry on the basis of it being a “human right”. This is for him no more than an assertion - and a weak one at that.  He points out that  France’s supreme court has found that no discrimination is implied in the distinction between marriage and partnership provisions and that the European Court of Human Rights has found there is no right to gay marriage in the European Convention on Human Rights and this does not amount to discrimination.

“In considering gay marriage, it is essential to see treating different situations differently in no way constitutes discrimination”, he says. He then points out that the natural right of children far out-trumps, the recently invented rights of the liberal establishment.

“What is more fundamental here,” he writes, “is the co-option of human rights language by an increasingly hegemonic strain of intolerant liberalism. Whereas the ‘right to marriage’ as pertaining to couples of the same sex is a recent invention, the right of a child to both a mother and a father where possible is not.

“The reason for opposing the unnecessary elevation of civil partnerships to the notional status of marriage is that marriage then loses its nature as the one institution supported by society because it is the family form which on average gives a child the most advantageous upbringing.

“It is agreed by most that civil partnerships mostly suffice in practical terms for same-sex couples. Altering the focus of marriage from children to relationships disadvantages future generations to no more necessary end than the further march of an increasingly cavalier and triumphalist liberalism.”

God, democracy, and human rights

The puzzle of intolerant tolerance

Michael Casey | Sunday, 27 March 2011

How can liberal democracies justify prosecuting people who wear crosses or refuse to preside at same-sex marriages and still pride themselves on being tolerant?

One of the most puzzling features of contemporary Western society is that governments are prepared to act intolerantly in the name of tolerance. Australian sociologist Michael Casey explains how this has come about.

* * * * *

MercatorNet: You have written about the puzzle of “intolerant tolerance”. What is this all about?

Casey: Tolerance is essential to any sort of life in common, especially in complex democratic societies. Originally it was simply a practice, a way of living together and respecting the freedom of others. It has now become a value in its own right, perhaps the supreme value. Certainly it features high up on the list whenever people are asked to identify what the West stands for.

To create a tolerant society, however, democracies increasingly resort to intolerance. There is no question that a decent society must protect itself and vulnerable minorities from groups which refuse to respect the rights of other people. But intolerant tolerance is directed against groups which actually respect and defend the rights and freedoms of others.

Christians, for example, are treated as intolerant for maintaining legitimate distinctions between couples who can and cannot be married; for reasonably exercising a preference in employing staff for people who share their faith; and for defending the rights of the unborn and disabled. Intolerance means refusing to respect the rights of others, but in these cases it has been extended to something which is not a form of intolerance at all: the right we all have to refuse to validate choices with which we disagree and to say they are wrong. Intolerant tolerance means enforced validation of certain values and practices in the name of the tolerance.

MercatorNet: When did the modern notion of tolerance take shape? Whom do you regard as the touchstone of tolerance in Western history?

Casey: The earliest important source is the Roman writer Lactantius (c240-320 AD), a member of Constantine’s retinue and a significant influence on the concept of toleration Constantine practiced after he became Emperor. Lactantius’ major work is the Divine Institutes, which provides perhaps the first well-developed theory of religious toleration. He argues that religious devotion is genuine only if it is freely adopted. Coercion in religious matters should be rejected because it contradicts the very nature of religious belief. If there is to be punishment for following a false religion, it should be left to God. In short, respect for religion requires respect for freedom.

The major modern account of tolerance comes from Harvard University’s John Rawls (d. 2002). For Rawls, the state must be “neutral” towards different values, and dedicate itself to the project of creating and maintaining an equality of freedom and justice so everyone can live by their own beliefs. This sounds nice, but achieving this goal, especially for groups which suffer discrimination, inevitably involves the state in closer and closer supervision of society. The logic is that “discriminatory” beliefs are intolerant because, when acted on, they violate the rights of others. To preserve a tolerant society the freedom of people with discriminatory beliefs must be restricted. So the “neutral” state finds itself in the business of approving or vetoing values, depending on whether they meet whatever the current requirements of tolerance might be. Increasingly, those requirements now brand orthodox Christians as intolerant.

Putting Lactantius and Rawls side by side highlights an important point. There is a world of difference between the tolerance which has its beginning and end in respect for freedom (Lactantius), and the tolerance which operates as a means of bringing about a vision of a good or just society (Rawls). It is usually when tolerance is placed in the service of a particular project, like that of Rawls, that it is most likely to produce intolerance.

MercatorNet: The characteristic philosophy of our age is relativism. How does this affect the concept of tolerance?

Casey: Relativism seems to make tolerance essential. If different values are no more and no less than equally valid, and if truth—and therefore judgment between values—is impossible, tolerance becomes the only basis of social and political life.

But this is a very slender reed on which to build a life in common. The unstated fear seems to be that we will very quickly be at each other’s throats if we each insist on the truth of our own values over others, so tolerance becomes an article of faith which overrides all other values. For the sake of social harmony, everyone must believe in it, and where necessary it must to be enforced. This task naturally falls to the state.

Relativism reinforces the myth that in a tolerant society the state is neutral between different values. But life is not lived in neutrality. When relativism shapes the moral life of a society any consensual activity by adults which does not break the law becomes a “right” which cannot be resisted, regardless of the destructive effects it may have for individuals and the community. There is no neutrality when the good cannot be preferred to the bad. If you want a genuinely tolerant society you need truth as the foundation, not relativism.

MercatorNet: But how can you possibly be tolerant if you believe in truth? Aren’t you thereby committed to discriminating against people who don’t accept “your truth”?

Casey: That view explains why relativism is regarded as the only form of moral philosophy safe for democracy. Given the abundance of conflicting views, values and desires, and the adamant insistence on our own supremacy, truth appears to be not only implausible but tyrannical. When truth prevails, so the standard line goes, it narrows existence, constrains the possibilities of knowledge, and limits freedom and autonomy. Its ideas of “good and evil”, “true and false” cause division and intolerance.

The way forward is to move from a stubborn insistence that there is no such thing as truth, or that truth is dangerous, to conceding that perhaps truth is possible and available to us after all, and that in our own way we are all seeking it.

Conceding the possibility of truth, and that we all share a desire to find the truth and to live in its light, changes the situation completely. Nothing is lost from diversity, disagreement, skepticism and dispute, but they are re-located within a common journey which makes trust, openness and respect for each other in our different moral commitments stronger and easier. This is what real tolerance means.

Truth is not an answer in a box and it is not a cudgel. It is the unfolding of reality in which each of us takes part. Wherever our own search for the truth might lead us, the shared acceptance that it is the truth we are all seeking changes the game. It takes us out of the dead end of intolerant tolerance.

MercatorNet: A key element in your critique is “decisionism”. What is this? Why does it corrupt tolerance?

Casey: Decisionism is an ugly word for a very impoverished idea of authority. In its simplest form it means that, in the absence of truth, authority derives solely from the decision to assert one set of values over all others. It agrees with relativism that there are no values which are universally true, but completely rejects relativism’s conclusion that therefore all values must be treated as no more and no less than equally valid. Decisionism is a “solution” to relativism, with the decision—an act of will—taking the place of truth to justify one set of values as supreme over others.

In the way most Western governments currently work, the decision might be by majority vote or imposed by courts or government departments. But as long as the correct procedure has been followed, the decision is binding. It will be justified using the language of justice, rights and even truth, but the decision is what matters and to a significant extent determines what is “just” and “true” (or “tolerant”) in any particular case.

In the absence of truth it is success which validates, and a decision is successful only if it is the final word on a matter for everyone. If objections continue, especially from philosophical or religious convictions which reject relativism and argue for the truth, they call the whole show into question.

So, if Christians (for example) continue to maintain objections to certain decisions in defense of the dignity and freedom of the human person, in defense of human life from conception to natural death, in defense of marriage and the natural family, and in defense of religious freedom, conscience, human rights and social justice, they must be acted against to enforce what “the tolerant society” requires. The problems that relativism and decisionism cause for genuine tolerance explain how we end up with intolerant tolerance.

MercatorNet: How can we escape from “intolerant tolerance”?

Casey: We go wrong on most things when we go wrong on questions about the human person and transcendence. When tolerance ends by treating people who respect and defend the rights and freedoms of others as intolerant, it needs to be re-founded. One way of recovering the situation is to anchor tolerance in solidarity.

Tolerance, as we have come to practice it, assumes estrangement from each other. There is no common moral understanding, and even the idea of a common human nature is disputed. The only way of resolving the conflict of values is through the assertion of will. The relativism that underlies tolerance fosters suspicion, mistrust, fearfulness and lack of confidence in the world. It also encourages hardness and self-assertion in imposing one’s beliefs or defending them against the hostility of others. People either live alone with their convictions entrenched or come together with the like-minded, either aggressively or defensively.

Solidarity corrects this by re-establishing tolerance in the truth. All we have to do is concede that perhaps truth is possible after all, and might just be a better basis for our life together than the unexamined relativism from which we currently operate.

Solidarity assumes we belong to a single family. As in a good family, rather than simply putting up with each other with hardened hearts we should try to accept each other as friends, and be enriched by diversity rather than grudgingly enduring it. Solidarity treats human beings not as isolated atoms but as persons who depend on others for their fulfillment. We are autonomous, but our autonomy is shaped by reciprocity; by our ability to freely assume responsibility for each other, not just ourselves.

Intolerant tolerance has brought a presumption of enmity to democratic life. The way out is to replace this with the presumption which animates solidarity; the presumption of friendship.
_______
Michael Casey is a sociologist on the staff of the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia. He examines this issue in more detail in an article in the first issue of a new Australian journal, Solidarity: The Journal of Catholic Social Thought and Secular Ethics: Casey, Michael (2011) "The Puzzle of Intolerant Tolerance," Solidarity: The Journal of Catholic Social Thought and Secular Ethics: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/solidarity/vol1/iss1/1

Retrieved March 27, 2011 from http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_puzzle_of_intolerant_tolerance2/

What's wrong with the West?

Robert P. George and William L. Saunders February 2011

The following is a chapter by Robert P. George and William L. Saunders from Exiting a Dead End Road: a GPS for Christians in Public Discourse, a new book published by Kairos Publications in Vienna, and edited by Gudrun and Martin Kugler. The book can be ordered here: http://www.intoleranceagainstchristians.eu/index.php?id=243.

The West has faced many challenges in the past, many turning points, from the Asiatic invasions of the Dark Ages to the dark ages of Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin. And it faces one now -- the eclipse of its historical Christian identity.

In the past, when armies of aggression threatened our society, those threats were met with nerve and with steel. We pray God that steel will never be necessary again, but certainly it will require nerves of steel -- steely determination -- to meet what may be the greatest threat Christianity has faced in its history.

The threat is this: at just the moment when many Christians have lost self-confidence, ideologically doctrinaire secularists have launched a determined attack on all public vestiges of Christianity. They have chosen their moment well, but their attack need not succeed. If Christians will regain the confidence that comes from their Creed, they can arrest the assault being waged in the cause of secularist ideology. Courage was required in the past; it is required again.

Christians are well-equipped for this battle. Christianity enables man to use twin tools in engaging the world and its problems -- reason and faith. Other than the specially revealed truths of faith, all truths are accessible to unaided reason, and, thus, to all people of good will. When Christian citizens contend over issues of importance in the public square, they should be confident that they bring not a narrow sectarianism but an understanding based upon principles of reason -- natural justice, natural law -- in the interest of the common good.

The problem

To begin with, “the West” is not synonomous with Christianity. There have been great civilizations of the East in which Christriantiy played a vibrant part, remnants of which survive today in places like Syria, India and Ethiopia.

However, as writers such as Hilaire Belloc noted, Christianity achieved a synthesis with culture in the West, particularly in Europe, that is probably unmatched elsewhere. In fact, it may be said that Christianity, properly understood, is the synthesis of the intellectual and moral traditions of the Greeks with the moral and spiritual traditions of the Hebrews. Given birth during the Roman Empire, Christianity stamped its imprint as that Empire grew, matured, disintegrated and fell. The eastern part of that Empire was eventually submerged under Islam, and Christianity concentrated in western Europe.

As Pope Benedict XVI said at Regensburg in September 2006: “The inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance [for] world history... Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity... finally took its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: the convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.”

Western Europe, of course, sent its sons and daughters to America, many of whom were Protestants. There they established a society built upon the ethical monotheistic belief that “all men are created equal... endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Now societies on both sides of the Atlantic are under assault from an aggressive form of secularist ideology and seem to be teetering. Let us look at a few examples.

On November 3, 2009, the European Court of Human Rights announced its decision in Lautsi v Italy (30814/06 Eur. Ct. H.R.). The Court held that the crucifix -- the symbol of the suffering Christ -- could not be displayed in public school classrooms in Italy without subjecting the state to monetary damages for parents who complain. The decision provoked an uproar across the political spectrum in Italy, and has been appealed to the Grand Chamber. Many commentators noted that even Italian atheists supported the display of the crucifix, and concluded it had become “merely” a cultural symbol.

There is much to be remarked concerning this case, and though we will say more about it below, we do not have space to plumb its depths. However, we would note a few things about it.

First, the “institution” by which Christian symbols are being banished is a court. The role of the courts as agents serving a secularist elite that condemns Judaeo-Christian ethical principles will be addressed below. Further, on this general issue, note that there is a divide between popular and elite opinion on this matter. While we will say more on this too, we note that the theoretical basis of democracy is popular rule -- that, after all, is the point of counting votes. Further, the case in support of permitting cultural expressions of religious belief is strengthened when the votes of a majority in the present are combined with “the votes of the dead” (ie, those who, as G.K. Chesterton reminded us, created the very institutions and practices in the past that are under attack in the present).

However, we pause to spend a moment on the suggestion that the widespread Italian protest against the Court’s ruling was unimportant because it was “merely” cultural.

Christianity is by its nature culture-shaping; remove its symbols and the culture will lose its shape. While those Christians who are lapsed or relaxed in the practice of their faith may not realize it, those who oppose Chrisitanity are not content with the fact that many Christians are unconcerned whether Christianity has a role in public. Rather, these secularists seek what the great American Christian leader, Fr Richard John Neuhaus, called the “naked public square”. That is, they seek to “cleanse” (from their perspective) the public square of all references to Christianity, Judaism, or revealed religion of any type. An example from the United States is the effort to remove displays of the Ten Commandments from public spaces. The irony that this is pursuant to jurisprudence from a Supreme Court that itself sits in a chamber where the Ten Commandments is part of a ceiling frieze is lost on many.

A similar example from Europe concerns the text of the new Lisbon Treaty. It fails to mention Christianity, speaking instead vaguely of “inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe”. Granting the important contributions made, for example, by Greek philosophy and by Enlightenment ideas to the development of the full understanding of the concept of the human person, it is simply an historical fact that it is in Judaism and Christianity that the “indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity” (EU Charter) find their root. Judaism and Christianity teach that each and every human being, regardless of how weak, or poor, or despised, is made in the very image and likeness of the divine Creator and Ruler of the universe.

Hence, it was understood that all human beings are robed in immeasurable dignity. And, in the specifically Christian witness, it is God’s own example of selfless sacrifice that has inspired believers in turn to sacrifice for others -- the greatest humanitarian enterprises of Western history, from the hospital to the hospice to the orphanage to the Missionaries of Charity, spring from this “imitation of Christ”. To ignore that fact is to embrace cultural amnesia.
Christians in the West often believe neutral principles such as “the rule of law” will guarantee their just rights. However, given the vehemence of ideological secularism, that belief is naïve. Note, for example, a recent case decided by the United States Supreme Court.

In Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (130 S.Ct. 2971), on June 28, the last day of its 2010 term, the Supreme Court ruled that the US constitutional guarantee of freedom for an organization to choose its officers and members, and which applies to every other group on a college campus, does not apply to evangelical Christians. Why? Because the evangelical Christian group did not permit persons who, in violation of biblical moral teaching, choose to engage in homosexual conduct to become officers and members. That, stripped of the Court’s rhetoric, is the meaning of the decision. (A fuller discussion of this case by one of us can be found at www.thecatholicthing.com) This can be easily understood when one realizes the Court refused to apply legal precedent from the tumultuous 1960s which protected radical leftist student organizations (highly unpopular at the time) to the evangelical Christian group (highly unpopular now). The neutral legal principles that should have applied equally to each group did not.

The right to freedom of association, highly prized in all articulations of human rights, simply falls by the wayside in a contemporary courtroom if that right is asserted against the preferences of those who enjoy hegemony in universities and the dominant intellectual culture today. And no group is more highly out of favour on campus than evangelical Christians. Why is that? Evangelical Christians will not bend to the zeitgeist. They assert their understanding of Christianity in the face of a largely consumerist, materialist culture.

Their understanding of what Christianity requires of them is not limited to faith (dogma, doctrine), but extends to morals. (This is, of course, the same for faithful Catholics. See, eg, Lumen Gentium 25.) And morals are the one thing on which the dominant culture cannot yield, organized as it is around a commitment to individual freedom to pursue sexual adventure as one wishes. Reference to another recent American case should make this clear.

That case is Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 2010 (US Dist. LEXIS 78816). Decided August 6, 2010 and now on appeal to a higher court, the decision overturned a ballot initiative, popularly referred to as “Prop 8”. Under the law of the state of California, voters may amend the state constitution (which was, of course, originally adopted by the people, that is, the citizens) by ballot initiative. With Prop 8, the citizens of a very liberal state did just that -– they defined “marriage” for purposes of state law as “between one man and one woman.” This common sense view, supported by natural reason and reflected in human rights documents, and supported by social science research, was declared by the federal court to be utterly lacking in reason. The court declared that “gays” were harmed by these views, which it branded “religious”. (“The evidence shows conclusively that moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples.”) In other words, for this court, and it is quite representative of the opinion of Western elites on all matters sexual, any opposing view is “religious,” and hence “irrational.” Thus, such a view can be dismissed as unworthy of legal respect.

Let us be clear: the drive to legitimate practices deemed, not just by Christians, as deviant throughout human history has led to a cultural confrontation with organized, traditional (observant) Christianity. Institutionally, it is Christianity that is by far the most significant opponent to this “liberationist” agenda.

And that agenda’s fiercest proponents will use any tactic, including the subversion of “the rule of law” and “democracy” itself, to advance their agenda and to defeat their opponents. This last aspect cannot be overemphasized –- they mean to break Christianity if they can, for it has a spiritual and moral world view that they cannot accept or even tolerate. In other words, from the point of view of the most aggressive of the contemporary secularists, this is “the moral equivalent of war.” And one thing that is wrong with the West is that while traditional Christians are dominant in terms of numbers of persons, they are quiescent, lulled to sleep by a luxurious materialism (available only to emperors and kings in the past) and by beguiling rhetoric about “human rights” and “fairness”, in the service of causes (secularism and materialism) that, in the end, will undermine those very concepts.

The causes

Neither desires nor preferences are rights. To have a “right” means to have a claim upon another that the other is obligated to grant. No one, however, is obligated to grant the desires of another simply because the other desires it.

This basic misunderstanding of rights and desires lies behind many of the conflicts over “rights” in our societies today. However, the distinction was well understood in the West until quite recently, as we can see from an examination of the West’s fundamental human rights documents, adopted in the middle of the last century.

For instance, while it is sometimes claimed that marriage cannot be “limited” to “opposite sex” couples, and that to do so is “discriminatory” and violates “basic human rights,” a look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (hereafter, the “Universal Declaration” or the “Declaration”), the lodestar of human rights in the West, reveals the opposite is true.

Article 16 deals with “the right to marry.” That right is guaranteed to “men and women of full age.” And no limitation on this right may be based on “race, nationality, or religion”. But that clearly means that the right can be limited on other bases. Thus, note that on one of the most contentious issues of modern politics -– same sex marriage –- there is little within human rights standards on which to base such a purported “right”. Similarly, “homosexual rights” are sometimes claimed to be so important that the state can require religious organizations to honor them in their teaching.

This has recently been asserted by the Spanish government and is, to some degree, reflected in the Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching about Religion in Public Schools. It must be noted that this claim is at variance with human rights standards. Unlike, for example, homosexual rights or abortion, religious freedom is an enumerated right within the basic human rights documents. See, for example, Article 18 of the Universal Declaration. Further, it is such an important right that it is one of the very few which cannot be limited even during wartime.
See Article 4-2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (hereafter, the “Covenant”). Finally, the logic of Article 18 of both the Declaration and the Covenant indicate it could only possibly be limited if it is in conflict with another enumerated right, which neither abortion nor homosexual conduct is. (For instance, under Section 3 of Article 18 of the Covenant, “fundamental rights” logically must be ones mentioned in the Covenant, i.e. since they are fundamental, they would by necessity be mentioned in a document setting forth fundamental rights.) Thus, there is little ground to contend that religion or religious teaching must conform itself to the dictates of new conceptions of “human rights.”

Note that Lautsi, discussed above, misunderstands a similar provision in the European Convention on Human Rights. Lautsi proposes that since freedom to manifest one’s religion is subject to “such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others” (Convention, article 9-2), religion must yield to “democratic values” which it defines as “pluralism,” and essentially, as “secularism”. However, 9-2, which differs from article 18-3 of the Covenant basically by the addition of the words “in a democratic society,” cannot mean that. If it did, the exception would destroy the rule; that is, religious freedom would not be “fundamental” at all, but would be subject to whatever laws were passed in a democracy.)

Importantly, the same principle is operative when it comes to education. Parents have a right to direct the religious and moral education of their children “in conformity with their own convictions.” See Article 18 of the Covenant. (In Lautsi, the court held that the rights of minority parents and children meant that the crucifix could not be displayed, relying on a similar provision to article 18. However, this is clearly a misreading of that requirement. The important thing is that there be no coercion. {See 18-2 of the Covenant: “no one shall be subject to coercion... ” Also compare Dignitatis Humanae below.} So long as minority children are able to attend other schools, at state expense, that comport with their parents’ beliefs, or the state undertakes other measures to eliminate coercion, there is nothing wrong with the state having crucifixes in classrooms.

In other words, a secularist solution is not required... The examples could be multiplied, but the basic point is clear. Human rights standards protect, inter alia, marriage, education and religious freedom are generally in accordance with traditional understandings. The burden is squarely upon those who wish to assert other, conflicting rights to justify them. They may not do so by simply claiming them to be “human rights.” As Aristotle taught us, the law itself is a teacher. Laws do not determine behavior, but they play a crucial role in shaping it. Thus, in order to advance purported rights such as abortion and same sex marriage, proponents need to change the law. However, here they run into a problem -– as we have seen in the United States regarding marriage, most people oppose such things. Thus, while they can certainly sometimes advance such things by democratic means, proponents have increasingly resorted to unelected and electoral unaccountable judges to do their bidding. Ignoring the Biblical parable of the perils of pouring new wine into old wineskins, they allege “new” or “evolving” understandings of established rights (such as equality and fair process). In case after case (some noted above), we have seen this in the United States. The most infamous example is Roe v. Wade (1973) under which the Supreme Court invented a right to abortion under a “privacy right” nowhere mentioned in our Constitution.

Europe seems poised to suffer a similar fate. While the European Convention on Human Rights is designed to leave social issues to the member states of the Council of Europe under the “margin of appreciation,” the European Court of Human Rights seems to be edging into expanding rights to abortion and same sex relationships [under Tysiac v Poland (2007) and Schalk & Kopf v. Austria (2010) respectively] despite the lack of any language on these subjects in the Convention. (Furthermore, ABC v Ireland, challenging Ireland’s pro-life constitution, is currently pending before that Court).

Whatever the specifics, the point is this: fundamental institutions of democracy –- courts -– are being harnessed in an effort to advance social policies many, if not most, citizens oppose. Fundamental aspects of democracy, such as “the rule of law” (ie, an impartial judiciary; equality before the law of all citizens), are at risk.

Tactically, these proponents need an enemy, and the common, convenient enemy is “religion” (as we saw above, for example with the Prop 8 case). The reason is that they see “Christian morality” as the problem. As noted, they are mistaken to see it as exclusively “Christian,” for it is the common heritage of mankind, accessible to reason. Still they are determined to root out “god” from modern life.

(In America, secularists have gone so far as to “air-brush” historical events to remove references to “under God.” See, for example, the American Constitution Society’s misrepresentation of President Abraham Lincoln’s famous address at the Gettysburg battlefield during the American Civil War, as recounted by one of us at www.firstthings.com) In a sense this is all a continuation of the long struggle of Christianity with modernity, a struggle carried on by every pope since Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum.

It has never been a struggle against modernity as such, though it must be admitted that sometimes the Church’s actions and pronouncements have given this impression. Rather, it has been a struggle against inaccurate, harmful ideas, ideas that are false, about the human person and harmful to the common good. One of the most insidious is the confusion about the meaning of “conscience.” Once understood as the responsibility of the individual before God, it became the individual’s right to do as he wished, subject to no authority beyond his own preferences. As we saw above, this is sadly mistaken and has no relation to true “human rights”. The Church clarified the matter in Gaudium et spes 43, where it pointed out that one had an obligation to inform one’s conscience before exercising it.

Gaudium et spes was of course one of the documents of the Church’s most comprehensive engagement with modernity, Vatican Ecumenical Council II, which sifted through modernity’s ideas and trends, affirmed what was true, opposed what was false. That Council gave us, inter alia, the great declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae.

Dignitatis Humanae was a ringing call against coercion in religion. At the same time, and less remarked upon, it was an insistence upon the freedom of the Church to evangelize. Though often interpreted to the contrary, it was resolutely against indifferentism in religion; rather, it called upon men to seek the truth. It also insisted upon the right to manifest one’s religious beliefs. In this, it opposed those individuals and institutions who demand that religion be privatized.

But in insisting upon the right to manifest belief, it was in line with the foundational human rights documents -– see, e.g., article 18 of the Declaration: “Everyone has the right..., in public and in private, to manifest his religion”.

Thus, we see that Catholic teaching is firmly aligned with human rights doctrine. Why? Because both are true. Thus, Catholics in the West should be inspired to more firmly grasp the sure teaching of the Church, confident that it does not contradict reason; rather it reinforces it.

Yet, one cause of the West’s problems is that many ordinary Catholics do not understand this. They have failed to read the documents of Vatican II, and many others have failed to heed them. One thing is certain: through its Declaration on the Laity and otherwise, Vatican II demanded an end to clericalism. In doing so it reaffirmed the vocation of the laity, and made a clear, proper separation between the lay and clerical roles. Absorbing this has not been easy for laity or clergy. The laity must take up their tools and work “in the world”. But they do so inspired by the teaching of the Church, and the exhortations of her priests and bishops. The role of the clergy is to announce what the Magisterium proclaims firmly and often, while leaving it to the laity to discern, through prudence, how best to implement those principles in ordinary political life.

Catholics should be aware the Magisterium has not been reticent; it has provided clear guidance on the moral principles. To use again the example of marriage, the Church has made it clear that nothing other than a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman can licitly be recognized as “marriage”. (John Paul II, Letter to Families (1994).) Further, non-marital relationships of whatever type “must not be placed on the same level as marriage duly contracted.” (The Holy See, Charter of the Rights of the Family, Article 1-c (Oct. 22, 1983). Further, Catholics may not ignore important public issues such as the protection to be accorded marriage. For example, “families should be the first to take steps to see that the laws and institutions of the State not only do not offend, but support and positively defend the rights and duties of the family. Along these lines, families should grow in awareness of being ‘protagonists’ of what is known as ‘family politics’ and assume responsibility for transforming society.” (John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio (1981).)

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, and William L. Saunders is Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs at Americans United for Life, a lawyer, and columnist.

Retrieved February 17, 2011 from http://www.mercatornet.com/Newsletterv0810/view_txt/whats_wrong_with_the_west/

Orwellian pressure on Costa Rica to define right to life as violation of human rights

This story offers another example of how international bodies, staffed by lawyers and bureaucrats who adhere to a secularist-liberal-feminist orthodoxy of the kind described by Robert George in The Clash of Orthodoxies seek to coerce the will of sovereign peoples and governments. Go Costa Rica!

International pressure to force Costa Rica to legalise IVF
by Michael Cook | 18 Dec 2010 |

Activists are determined to haul Costa Rica before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights to force the Central American country to legalise IVF. In 2000, its Supreme Court declared that IVF violated the right to life of surplus embryos. This effectively made IVF procedures impossible.

Subsequently, according to a report in the IPS news service, 10 Costa Rican couples appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), arguing that the ban violated their right to form a family. In August the IACHR agreed and told the Costa Rican government to revise the law to conform to international conventions.

The government has fought back by introducing a bill on IVF which declares that every IVF embryo must be used, which effectively makes storing frozen embryos impossible. The bill also requires a special psychological test for couples wishing to undergo IVF.

The IACHR has declared that if there is "insufficient or no will" on the part of the government, it will refer the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The Court and the Commission are bodies set up by the Organization of American States to uphold basic rights and freedoms in the American hemisphere. Member states have to agree to submit to their adjudicaton. The Commmission is based in Washington DC and the Court in – ironically – Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose. ~ IPS News, Dec 17

Retrieved December 19, 2010 from http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/9356/

Dignity and Worth of the Person, Pt. 2

Paul Adams

Gilbert Meilaender has an insightful little book on human and personal dignity (Neither Beast nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person. New York: New Atlantis/Encounter Books, 2009). He argues that we need to distinguish two radically different senses of dignity. One is "human dignity," which refers to the dignity we share as members of a species that has the potential for various kinds of excellence or human flourishing. In achievement of this potential, we vary and are in this sense unequal. We flourish to different degrees as human beings depending on health, disabilities, aptitudes, circumstances, effort, and so forth.

But there is a second sense of dignity, that of the human person, which affirms our radical equality as unique individuals. This personal dignity recognizes that all human beings are of equal value and no individual or group is less worthy or deserving of being treated with dignity--whether sick or well, disabled or physically or mentally able, janitor or scientist, peasant or president, close to birth or death, and so forth. It is the intrinsic dignity of all human persons that informs the U.N. Declaration of Universal Human Rights of 1948--in part a recoil from the opposite view and its consequences under Nazism and the eugenics movement for whom some lives are more worth living than others.

Jacques Maritain, according to the author, was astonished that people of radically different ideologies and cultures could nevertheless agree on a list of such rights. "Yes," they said, "we agree about the rights but on condition that no one asks us why." In social work there is also agreement on the "dignity and worth of the human person" as a core social work value. The value is implicit in social work's commitment to those who are valued less highly according to the first definition of human dignity--the poor, oppressed, vulnerable, disabled, frail, those who are less able to flourish as individuals or in society.

But why do we hold this view of intrinsic human worth and dignity inherent in every person regardless of their state of life and health, achievement and social status? Meilaender suggests that this view derives from and is probably incoherent without the Jewish and Christian understanding of human beings as equally distant from (or close to) God. Inherent in this view too is a rejection of the dualism that sees humans as selves or gods that happen to inhabit bodies or as beasts who are reducible to their physical dimension. We are neither beast nor god.

In this way, the book challenges us to think more deeply and respectfully of our Jewish and Christian heritage, so easily dismissed by those in the academy who think they have risen above it. It reminds us--although this is not its explicit point--of the horrors wrought in the last century by atheist and anti-Jewish, anti-Christian regimes that rejected the notion of the intrinsic dignity of the person.

It is important to realize that Meilaender's (along with the UN Declaration's and Pope John Paul II's) understanding of the person and the equal intrinsic personal dignity of all is just the opposite of the view that speaks of personhood as something some have and others do not. The point of that view, of course, is to deprive some human beings of the dignity of persons. "It is used to deny rather than affirm our fundamental equality." It is that view, which Meilaender contests, that opens the door to euthanasia, assisted suicide, eugenics, racial genocide, and abortion, all of which treat some individuals and lives as of lower value and dignity than others.