UT Austin Anscombe Society: April 2013

Tuesday 30 April 2013

Kermit Gosnell: the Back Alley Abortionist Roe Ensconced

But that’s giving away one of the punchlines of a very lengthy, gut-wrenching, soul-searching article in the Wall Street Journal the other day that, taken together with the commentaries and articles linked within it, is filled with punches to the gut. It may be the best handling of the worst abortion news we’ve heard publicly since the news that the Supreme Court made abortion legal with itsRoe decision.

The headline on James Taranto’s article in the WSJ was succinct and apt: From Roe to Gosnell. There is a direct line if you follow the logic of abortion.

This pull quote pretty well sums up the article:

“The reductio ad absurdum of the pro-abortion side is Kermit Gosnell. That is why the Gosnell case has crystallized our view that the current regime of abortion on demand in America is a grave evil that ought to be abolished. It is murderous, if not categorically then at least in its extreme manifestations. Maintaining it requires an assault on language and logic that has taken on a totalitarian character. And it is politically poisonous.”

Don’t think this is some pro-life screed of triumphalism using the horrors committed by notorious Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell as a launching point to vent nearly 40 years worth of pent up angst over fighting the pro-abortion movement.

It’s an alarm bell set off by a former “pro-choice libertarian” journalist from what he himself calls “the mushy middle” on abortion issues. A journalist who’s been making the transition for many years from one position to another, although one who sees the full pro-life position as “a bridge too far” but found in the Gosnell case and subsequent trial the most damning evidence that Roe was really wrong all along.

Using the editorial ‘we’, he explains:

Our path was more cerebral and less visceral. It started with our education in constitutional law. Although we thought abortion on demand was a good policy, we knew how to read, and the Constitution had nothing to say about the matter. We came to view Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that declared otherwise, as a gross abuse of power by the Supreme Court, notwithstanding that it was in the service of a cause we agreed with.

A funny thing happens when you dissent from Roe v. Wade: You come to see that there’s not much else by way of intellectual content to the case for abortion on demand. Roe predates our own political consciousness, so we have to assume there were once stronger arguments. But these days the appeal to the authority of Roe is pretty much all there is apart from sloganeering, name-calling, appeals to self-interest and an emphasis on difficult and unusual cases such as pregnancy due to rape.

Vater, Vater, Mutter, Mutter, Kind

The Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (“West German General Newspaper” or WAZ), Germany’s self-professed “largest regional newspaper” covering the Ruhr area from the paper’s headquarters in Essen, reported April 24, 2013, on the unique personal life of one lawmaker in the German Bundestag or parliament. This thoroughly modern homosexual living arrangement of a national politician indicates just what troubling implications a society’s adoption of same-sex “marriage” (SSM) entails. Individuals in the United States and elsewhere considering SSM should take note.

The 45-year-old MP in question, Michael Kauch, is a member of the small, libertarian-leaning Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei or FDP) and its spokesman on, among others, homosexual and environmental issues. He was recently elected as president of GLOBE Europe, the European chapter of the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment. His pro-business party is in Germany’s governing coalition with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) -- despite the resistance of those two parties to what gay activists call full equality for same-sex couples.

As WAZ reports, Kauch has the “rather unusual” family situation of becoming a father while being “married with a man since 2009.” He announced his paternity on Tuesday, April 23, via his Facebook page following the birth the previous Saturday. The Facebook entry stated that the “mother and child are well,” the mother being a lesbian woman in her own homosexual relationship. “Together with her wife and my husband,” Kauch wrote, he and this woman “rejoiced in their wonderful daughter.” WAZ described Kauch’s “new family situation” as “father, father, mother, mother, child.”

The MP explained to WAZ that he “had long considered” becoming a father. “At first it was only my theme, then also my husband’s.” With his subsequent approval, Kauch became a progenitor with a woman from a “befriended lesbian pair that also had a wish for a child.”

The child’s future WAZ described under the subtitle “All Four are going to Care for the Child.” The two homosexual couples, the paper vaguely indicated, had “laid the legal basis” for collective custody of the child. It added, “At the moment the child is with the mother—this, however, is supposed to change.”

Prof Threatened over Lecture Questioning the Political Correctness of the Term ‘Sexual Assault’

A professor at SUNY Geneseo is facing threats for announcing plans to deliver a lecture on the rhetoric surrounding sexual assault awareness. One such threat is a suggestion that someone should sexually assault him.

A wall painted on the SUNY Geneseo campus for Sexual Assault Awareness Week.

“I think Dr. Theodore Fuckhead Everett should be assaulted sexually, then see how he feels about it,” reads a blog post requesting signatures for the petition, obtained in an email to Campus Reform.

The target professor, Dr. Theodore Everett, explained in a statement to13WHAM News that his lecture, titled "Against 'Sexual' 'Assault' 'Awareness,’” “of course” does not mean he is “against sexual assault awareness.”

“That’s precisely why the title has those three words separately in quotes,” he said. “My central concern is that the sexual assault awareness movement counts too many borderline cases, (for example, badgering somebody into letting you give them a kiss) as a true sexual assault ... This diverts attention away from the truly damaging core cases of rape that everybody cares about and toward borderline cases that no one believes are equally important, even though they also should not happen.”

Gay Marriage: 10 Little Things We Are Not Ready to Forget.

Well, that’s it! With Tuesday’s solemn vote on same-sex marriage law, France has fully entered modernity. Finally! Up until now, it had stagnated with some 175 medieval countries, (of the 200 that make up the planet), that stupidly reserve marriage to male-female couples. Now, France has joined the avant-garde group of countries that are not afraid to walk "with history" (such an important concept that it never needs to be defined).

Let the trumpets resound! Let the outpouring begin! May national union be restored! Now, homophobia will be banned from the country, for the socialist state will now educate children so that they are spared the dumb prejudices of their parents (such fascists!). From now on, equality will reign everywhere. Same rights for all! Until, finally, fathers will obtain the right to breastfeed. Because it is outrageous and backward to save this right for mothers. And those who think otherwise are just dirty breastfeedingfathers-ophobes!

From now on, homosexual couples are just counting the days that separate them from the intoxicating right to assisted reproduction and surrogacy. Do not worry, gay buddies. It is a matter of months. At worst, of a couple of years. But you will get there, I promise. Anyway, the left has always been like that: they drive a wedge. They swear that it will stop there. And five years later, they drive the nail in a climate of general indifference, taking advantage of the stupidity of the masses subjugated by Nabila.

From now on, especially, President Hollande has held one of his promises. And even if it was made to a few tens of thousands of people. Unemployment can wait! When the polls show 25% favorable rating, when the crisis is all over the place, when factories close their doors, when insecurity explodes, it really is time to divide the country with such a fundamental issue.

In any case, what is good is that we took notes throughout the debate on gay marriage. We observed postures, we remember everything. And there are ten things that we are not ready to forget. Are you ready? Let's go!

Tasmania’s Intimidating Abortion Bill

It’s official. The Australian state of Tasmania is a basket case. According to arecent report from CommSec about state economies, it runs last in economic growth, retail spending, equipment investment, construction work, population growth, housing finance and dwelling commencements. The brightest light shines over the unemployment figures -- where it placed second last.

Tasmania stands on the edge of an economic precipice.

But there is one area in which the Labor-Green government under Premier Lara Giddings gets a gold star – suppressing dissent. Politicians who were once arrested for protesting against logging Tasmania’s pristine wilderness are backing arrests for protesting against abortion.

Earlier this month Tasmania’s lower house passed the Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill. This bill is said to remove abortion from the criminal code. But it actually retains key provisions criminalizing certain abortions. It allows terminations up to the 16th week of pregnancy with no requirement for women to prove any risk of injury to their physical or mental health. After 16 weeks, two doctors have to certify that continuation of the pregnancy would result in a greater risk to the woman’s health than termination due to “current and future physical, psychological, economic and social circumstances”.

So, basically any circumstances at all, including abortion for sex selection.

Legislation enabling abortion is common enough. But the Tasmanian law could be the first in the world to penalise doctors, counsellors and protesters with draconian fines and even jail sentences if they oppose abortion. Health minister Michelle O’Byrne says that the bill has been modelled on 2008 legislation in the nearby state of Victoria. But she also seems to have been inspired by the peculiar interpretation of democracy invoked by Vladimir Putin when the Russian government jailed the punk rock group Pussy Riot.

Group Shows Covert Video of a Bronx Abortion Clinic

An anti-abortion group that previously released several videotapes of undercover visits to abortion clinics released another video on Sunday of a staff member at a Bronx clinic describing late-term abortion procedures. The group likened the practices to those at the clinic ofDr. Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia doctor charged with killing viable fetuses.

Lila Rose, president of Live Action, said the group would release more videos as part of its campaign against late-term abortions. Sunday’s video was shot at the Dr. Emily Women’s Health Center on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx. The release comes as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, has thrown his support behind legislation that will guarantee a woman’s right to an abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy, if her health is in danger or if the fetus is not viable. The current law permits abortion after 24 weeks only if a woman’s life is in danger, although it is not enforced because federal court rulings have allowed less restrictive late-term abortions.

“The gruesome and inhuman practices exposed in Gosnell’s ‘House of Horrors’ are business as usual for the abortion industry in America,” Ms. Rose said in a statement, calling on the New York State Health Department to investigate Dr. Emily and other clinics performing late-term abortions. Both the Health Department and Dr. Emily center did not respond to requests for comment.

Live Action, based in Arlington, Va., has previously made covert videos at several Planned Parenthood clinics in New York and other states in an effort to cut off the organization’s government financing. On Sunday, the group posted two versions of its latest video, one condensed and one a few hours long.

When a pregnant woman posing as a patient asked what happens if the fetus accidentally “comes out” at home before the final procedure, a staff member replied, “If it comes out, it comes out. Flush it.”

European Parliament Member Promotes Pedophilia as Part of the Sexual Revolution

April 29, 2013 (C-FAM) - Is there any country in the world where a prominent politician could publicly boast his sexual experiences with children aged six years and less, and still stay in office? Probably not – but the European Parliament seems to have rules of its own.

The politician is Daniel Cohn-Bendit, once upon a time a protagonist of the 1968 student revolt and the Cultural Revolution that ensued, and today the leader of the “Greens/European Free Alliance” in the European Parliament.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit

In this function, Cohn-Bendit has for many years aspired to a role similar to that played by Maximilien de Robespierre during the French Revolution, holding everyone accountable for everything – including Czech President Vaclav Klaus for his euroscepticism, or Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for having given to his country a new Constitution that protects the family, defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and (the worst of all imaginable actions against “European values”) mentions God(!).

These days, however, we were once again reminded that Mr. Cohn-Bendit’s own code of moral values is not one that is commonly shared. The left-liberal Theodor-Heuss-Foundation (named after a former President of Germany) had decided to award a prize to him for his political achievements – but the President of the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), Andreas Vosskuhle declined the invitation to deliver a speech in Mr. Cohn-Bendit’s honor, saying that he did not want to create the impression that the Constitutional Court approved of Mr. Cohn-Bendit’s utterances regarding pedophilia.

The fact has been well known for many years, but somehow nobody seemed to care. Back in the early 1970s Cohn-Bendit, who had been declared persona non grata in France and sent back to Germany as a consequence of his involvement in hooliganism and rioting, worked as an educator in a day care centre for children that had been set up to make experiments with “anti-authoritarian” education. An essential tenet of the “anti-authoritarian” concept apparently was to confront the children, who were at the time five or six years old, with unbridled sexuality, in order to overcome traditional morality.

Ladies, We are what we Cook

ext time you find yourself terrifyingly bored at some de rigeur gathering – I’m talking bridal and baby showers, children’s birthday parties, Tupperware or the like – I’ve got just the thing to light a fire under the other ladies, guaranteed to instantly banish your boredom.

(Ah, you say. Now, this is dangerous line of thought. Who wants to talk about sex, politics or even sexual politics with a group of people whose ideas are likely informed by the crones on “The View”?)

Not a bit of it. I’m talking about food. What you eat. What you can’t eat. What you are allergic to. What makes you fat. What you love, hate or fear about food. What food meant in your family when you were growing up. The list is seemingly endless…

I predict you will find that many women in America spend a great deal of time obsessing about what they put in their mouths. I don’t know why this is, but this phenomenon is a fairly recent one.

In my childhood in the 1960s, my immigrant family hardly ever talked about food. Instead, they cooked. I live in Europe these days, where morbid obesity is still unusual, and most women are not noticeably overweight. And, they cook.

Read more at Regina Magazine.

The President needs a History Lesson

In the spring of 1983, President Ronald Reagan did something highly unusual for a sitting president. He wrote and published an unsolicited article in The Human Life Review, titled “Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation.” In it, he denounced the “raw judicial power” by which the Supreme Court had dispossessed the unborn of their inalienable right to life in the Roe v. Wade decision, and mourned the some 15 million lives that had been snuffed out by abortion by that time.

On April 26, 2013, President Barack Obama did something equally extraordinary. He became the first president to address a Planned Parenthood conference. Planned Parenthood is the foremost provider of abortions in the United States. In his speech, Mr Obama celebrated the “quality healthcare to women” that this organization purportedly provides without once mentioning the service for which they are best known – abortion.

President Obama also lauded the organization for its near century of service since “the first health clinic of what later would become Planned Parenthood opened its doors to women in Brooklyn.” Curiously, he neglected to say much else about the origins of the group, except that “for nearly a century now, one core principle has guided everything all of you do – that women should be allowed to make their own decisions about their own health. It’s a simple principle.”

Actually, that’s not quite accurate. The real founding principle behind the group from which Planned Parenthood sprang was purely eugenicist, deriving from Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.” Perhaps it is best to let founder Margaret Sanger (1883-1966) speak in her own words at length (so as to avoid their being taken out of context).

In Women and the New Race (1920), she wrote that

“Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So, in compliance with nature’s working plan, we must permit womanhood its full development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman. Then and then only can the mother cease to be an incubator and be a mother indeed. Then only can she transmit to her sons and daughters the qualities which make strong individuals and, collectively, a strong race.”

Read more at Mercator.Net.

Monday 29 April 2013

‘Gosnell is not alone’: Undercover video reveals gruesome details of late-term abortions at Bronx clinic

A pro-life organization Sunday released undercover video of a counselor at a Bronx abortion facility offering graphic details about what happens to a baby who survives an attempted late-term abortion.

In the film, created by the pro-life organization Live Action, an abortion counselor at the Dr. Emily Women’s Health Center in the Bronx explains the gruesome late-term process to an undercover Live Action investigator seeking an abortion at 23 weeks (abortion is legal in New York State until the 24th week.)

In the video the counselor describes how the “fully grown” fetus will be sucked out with a “sucking tool that they hold, and it sucks it in” and how the fetus will come out in pieces because it will “start falling apart.”

If the fetus comes out in one piece, however, they put it “in a jar — a container, with solution,” the counselor explains — adding that everything that comes out in an abortion has “to go to the lab” to be disposed of.

‘Tinder Got Me Laid’ – College Hook-up Culture Goes Viral

College kids don’t need bars or frat parties to find one-night stands anymore – that’s so last century.

Tinder, the latest technology-driven flirting crutch, has transferred the collegiate hook-up scene to cyberspace, where today’s 20-somethings – raised in a culture with “participation trophies” and “there’s no wrong answers” – can find possibilities for meaningless sex without fear of rejection.

“Tinder eliminates the hurt of getting turned down,” the company’s spokeswoman, Alexa Manteen, is oft-quoted as saying.

These Tinder-fueled one-night stands, which epitomize romance upon college campuses, have become incredibly popular. Launched in October at USC, the smart-phone application has since been “downloaded by millions of millennials” and “helped make more than 20 million matches,” theLos Angeles Times reported in March.

I’ve heard it once, and I’ve heard it again: “Tinder got me laid.”

Here’s the way it works: Tinder is a smart-phone application, and users download it and form a Tinder account with pictures taken from their Facebook profile. Next they elect a radius of 10 to 100 miles from which potential “matches” can be pulled.

Then the game begins.

Pictures of other Tinder users located within the radius appear on the phone screen. The application displays the potential match’s first name, age, and the number of shared Facebook interests in addition to photos. The Tinder player proceeds to tap a green heart button to “hot” the individual, or hits a red X to “not.” A new match appears, and the cycle repeats. When two Tinder users “hot” each other, the application notifies each of them that they are a match, and allows them to message each other. If the “hotted” individual doesn’t reciprocate the sentiment, the secret is safe with Tinder.

That Tinder is currently going viral on college campuses nationwide speaks to the appeal of such a trivial application. Tinder removes the risk of being painfully rejected, providing users only with ego-boosting affirmations of physical appearance. And because it’s based upon nothing more than “hotting” a photo, Tinder doesn’t suggest any form of commitment — catering to the commitment-phobia that runs rampant in college “hookup” cultures. It’s unsurprising that such an application is striking such a chord.

The End of Meaningless Sex

April 29th, 2013

Donna Freitas’s new book on the hookup culture rightly encourages students to see its harms, but fails to give them moral reasons for opting out of it.

College life has long been seen as a kind of debauch: “To understand all is to forgive all,” an intoxicated Etonian tells Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited, and in Animal House John Belushi’s monosyllables echo agreement. Yet these days, something new is taking place. Scholars and journalists offer their takes on the hookup culture: the deflowering of American youth that takes place every weekend (and many weeknights) on university campuses.

With the exception of Hannah Rosin—whose The End of Men argued that hooking up empowers women—these writers largely agree that the hookup culture hurts those who participate in it. In 2008, Donna Freitas, then an assistant professor of religion at Boston University, published Sex & The Soul. She described how students at secular, Catholic, and evangelical universities understand their faith, their sexual mores, and the reconciliation (or lack thereof) between the two. The book was based on many interviews with students, as well as Freitas’s own time in the classroom, and offered concrete suggestions to parents, faculty, and clergy for helping students think about sex in a healthier and more meaningful—even spiritual—way.

Over the course of five years, Freitas—no longer a full-time professor—has lectured extensively and expanded her research. The result is The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy. Aimed more at popular audiences, this book leaves aside the soul and focuses on the sex. Specifically, it examines the hookup culture at secular and Catholic universities, the roles that culture trains men and women to play, and how students can opt out of hooking up.

Does sex still sell? Apparently not

Does sex still sell? Apparently not, to young women in 2013.

Australian young women's magazine Cleo has dropped sex from the cover of its magazine, due to its readership being more conservative than previous generations.

In this day and age? All the sex we are sold would tell us the contrary.

But according to research done by Bauer Media, sex isn't a selling point for young women anymore.

1500 girls aged 14-26 were interviewed across Australia over a three-month period, through video diaries and focus groups. Results from the study found that 69% per cent are living at home with their parents, 41% of total respondents have not had sex and only 7% per cent have had a one-night stand in the past six months. 66% per cent of participants are single.

This has a lot to do with finances - increasing rents and costs of living mean that young people are living with their parents for longer. Drug, alcohol and cigarette use is down since 2010 (drugs were 16% in 2010, now 2%; alcohol was 73%, now 61%; cigarettes were 24%, now 14%) while the consumption of fast food has risen 4% since 2010. Many young women are saving, where perhaps previous generations were more about having fun - 97% want to buy a property by the time they’re 27 years old.

Sunday 28 April 2013

Teachers should give lessons in pornography and tell pupils 'it's not all bad'

Teachers have been encouraged to introduce pornography into the classroom, using sex education lessons to explain that porn is 'not all bad' and 'hugely diverse'. The recommendations, included in an educational guide, suggest that teachers confront 'myths' about porn and inform children as young as five about sexualisation. The guidance could have significant influence in British schools after the Government's decision to keep sex education lessons voluntary, leaving schools to devise their own ways of teaching the subject.

Guidance from the Sex Education Forum, whose members include the NSPCC and Barnardo's, encourages teachers to introduce pornography into the classroom

The Daily Mail has led a long-running campaign to introduce measures to protect young people from the growing influence of porn. But the guidance, produced by a coalition of charities, encourages dialogue in the classroom about all aspects of pornography. Issued by the Sex Education Forum, whose members include the NSPCC and Barnardo's, the guidance encourages teachers to inform children over the age of 11 about subjects such as sexting, whereby sexually explicit images and pictures are sent in text messages. Critics said that parents would be 'horrified' by the possible introduction of pornography into classroom lessons. Under a section titled 'We want teachers to know', the guide includes advice that 'that porn is hugely diverse – it's not necessarily all bad'.

Inhuman: Undercover in America’s Late-Term Abortion Industry

From Kermit Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” to the “meat-market style of assembly-line abortions” in Delaware, America’s abortion industry has come under a spotlight it’s long struggled to avoid. To see how prevalent the horrifying conditions and practices now hitting the airwaves are, Live Action went undercover in late-term abortion clinics across the country.

From the most notorious abortionists in America, in cities in every corner of the nation, the testimony our investigators captured shocked even us. Now, it’s our duty to show the world how bad it really is out there. This is Inhuman: Undercover in America’s Late-Term Abortion Industry.

Inhuman is a project of Live Action. To learn more about Live Action, go to liveaction.org/about.

Friday 26 April 2013

Justice with Michael Sandel - CCCB: Bioethics: Designer children

Should parents be able to "design" their children based on genetic preferences? What are the dangers of turning children into commodities and childbearing into an extension of the consumer society? From a lecture at the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona, as edited for broadcast on Spanish television (Soy Camara).

We Hate to Say ‘we told you so’: Same-sex Marriage & Polygamy

April 25, 2013 (Breakpoint.org) - In a scene from Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm, the mathematician skeptical about whether the park is a good idea, watches the T-Rex burst out of its enclosure and says, “I hate being right all the time.”

'I hate being right all the time.' Indeed.

Princeton Professor Robert George and other defenders of traditional marriage understand these sentiments. For years, they’ve warned that redefining marriage beyond the union of one man and one woman wouldn’t—indeed couldn’t—stop with same-sex unions. The same reasoning that extends marriage to same-sex couples would easily be applied to polygamy and polyamory also.

The standard response to these concerns was scoffing and accusations of fear-mongering.

Well, the fences are down and the beast is loose.

On Valentines’s Day, the Scientific American published an article claiming that polyamorists could “teach us a thing or two about love,” and the only reason to oppose it was bigotry because of outdated views about love and sexuality. As I said on my Point commentary about the article, the flow of the argument sounded far too familiar.

The Pressure of Proposing

I, like most girls, love a good proposal story. And, also like most girls, I have an idea of what I’d like mine to be like. Personally, I wouldn’t want it to be cliché (think fancy restaurant with violins in the background), or too casual (“Honey, wanna get hitched sometime?”), but I’d like it to be personal, definitely original, and maybe reflect some aspect or anecdote of our relationship. Got that, future husband?

That might seem specific but compared to what I’ve heard from other women, I’ll be a breeze to propose to (my sister for example, wants incorporation of the floating lanterns in the sky as seen in the movie Tangled). Somewhere along the way, proposals have become almost bigger and more important than the engagement (and dare I say, marriage?) itself! A topic I’ve been thinking of writing about, it became reinforced today when I read an article titled “Are proposals the new weddings?”

They’re all over social media - flash mobs like this, or movie trailer proposals like this. It’s beautiful to see the amount of effort that has gone into the planning, but also interesting to see this aspect of culture. When did proposals become almost a public declaration, rather than an intimate moment between two people?

Why France's Gay Marriage Debate has Started to look like a Revolution

Paris: Revolutions are often sparked by an unexpected shock to an already weakened regime. As commentators in France remark not only on the crisis engulfing François Hollande’s government but also on the apparent death-rattle of the country’s entire political system, it could be that his flagship policy of legalising gay marriage — or rather, the gigantic public reaction against it, unique in Europe — will be the last straw that breaks the Fifth -Republic’s back.

Opposition to the bill has electrified the middle classes, the young and much of provincial France. On Sunday 24 March, in the freezing cold, the 4km stretch from the Arche de la Défense to the Arc de Triomphe was full of people protesting against the bill. On 13 January, also chilly, the Champ de Mars was similarly crammed. When Johnny Hallyday or the World Cup got crowds like that, people talked of two million. But the police, evidently acting under political orders, have claimed that both demonstrations — which are without doubt the largest public movements in French history — garnered a few hundred thousand at most. Credible accusations surfaced in Le Figaro on Monday night that the film taken from police helicopters on 24 March and released by the Prefecture has been manipulated to reduce the apparent numbers of demonstrators.

Such lies are the sign of a rotten regime. Outbursts such as that of Elie Peillon, the son of the Minister of Education, who on 13 January tweeted that ‘those gits’ demonstrating should be publicly hanged, make Marie-Antoinette’s seem delicate by comparison. Had the mobilisation in Paris taken place in Tahrir Square, the world’s media would be unanimous that a ‘French spring’ was about to sweep away an outdated power structure, especially since the demonstrations (including the daily ones held throughout last week, which culminated in a massive impromptu rally of 270,000 people on Sunday afternoon) are attended by an overwhelming number of people in their late teens and early twenties.

Thursday 25 April 2013

Remember ‘Minority Rights’ in Marriage Debate? Neither Do They

by Bruce Hausknecht

It was just a few years ago that gay activists argued for same-sex marriage via court rulings by claiming that majority rule (i.e., one man, one woman marriage amendments) should not defeat “minority rights” to same-sex marriage.

Times have changed, and so has the rhetoric. Take Washington State, for example. The legislature there has passed both same-sex “marriage” as well as sexual orientation non-discrimination laws. By majority votes. The net result? One Christian-owned small business has been targeted for daring to resist the new order of things.

Not one, but two lawsuits have been filed thus far against the Christian owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Washington for refusing to create floral arrangements for a gay wedding. First the state Attorney General filed suit, asking the court to grant an injunction ordering the florist to stop discriminating. And, oh yes, for her to pay the “reasonable attorneys’ fees” that the AG’s office incurs in enforcing the state law against the florist. How “reasonable” do you guess lawyer fees are these days? Not very.

French police assault a priest protesting gay marriage. This debate is bigger and uglier than the mainstream media admits

Tear gas is used to break up a crowd of anti-gay marriage protesters

In Britain, same sex marriage has largely been a “meh” issue. Much of the opposition seems to be inspired by frustration at the misplaced priorities of our political elite; people are less against it than they can’t see the point of it – beyond making David Cameron look a little less nasty. And so it has passed us by with little more than a dull debate in the Commons and the comic outing of a Cardinal who was hitherto “homosceptic”. It’s all been so very British.

Not so in France, where it’s turned incredibly French. It’s surprising to discover that, in a country with a proud tradition of secularism and political liberalism, only a slight majority of Frenchmen support the bill to legalise gay marriage that faces the National Assembly on Tuesday – and opinion is evenly split on a parallel bill to let gay people adopt children. More remarkable still has been the scale of the opposition's street protests: the largest drew 340,000 to Paris in a demonstration of popular will normally associated with the Left. This has received very limited coverage in the European and American mainstream media, where there also seems to be a veritable blackout about the state’s violent response.

A video surfaced yesterday of a confrontation between police and Catholic protestors that began when the latter refused to vacate the space they were using for their demonstration. Around 4 minutes in a young man is thrown to the ground. A priest appears to come to his aid and refuses to let go of him. The cops drag the couple apart and pull the priest towards their vans. Around 4.41 you can clearly see one of the policemen kick the cleric in the head. Blink and you’ll miss it, but I’m sure he felt it all the same. Sadly, this scene has not been unique. This newspaper has reported the use of tear gas on crowds and I’ve received anecdotal reports of children maced and protesters beaten. Much of it can only be found on Catholic blogs and ultra conservative websites –but it’s there in blood red for all to see.

Violent Protests In Paris After Same-Sex Marriage Law Passes

Protesters took to the streets of Paris on Tueday after parliament gave its final OK to a law legalizing same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples.

Yoan Valat /EPA /LANDOV

"Clashes broke out between protesters and riot police near France's lower house of parliament late on Tuesday just hours after the country legalized gay marriage, with opponents of the law hurling projectiles at police, who responded with tear gas," France 24 reports.

From Paris, NPR correspondent Eleanor Beardsley tells our Newscast Desk that French President Francois Hollande has called for calm. He's again made the case that the new law, which gives same-sex couples the legal right to marry and to adopt, is about equality and does not take away anyone else's rights.

"But those opposing the measure," Eleanor reports, "say it destroys the family structure and is dangerous for children because it deprives them of the right to a mother and father."

They're vowing to continue raising objections to the new law, which got got the French Parliament's approval Tuesday.

France 24 adds:

"Legions of officers stayed late into the night, and a protest against the measure turned violent near the Invalides complex of museums and monuments. Protesters threw glass bottles, cans and metal bars at police, who responded with tear gas."

With the law, France is now the 14th country to make same-sex marriage legal nationwide.

Proposition 8 and Discrimination: Marriage on Trial at the Supreme Court

The point is that while discrimination against gays and lesbians as persons is inappropriate, discrimination against same-sex couplings may be entirely appropriate if the coupling does not meet the necessary conditions of marriage. If reasonable distinctions are found between a same-sex coupling and a marital union, such that the coupling does not qualify to enter matrimony, then Prop 8 does not discriminate unfairly.

Of course, to make a coherent case that Prop 8 does not discriminate wrongly requires us to consider further the definition of marriage. Walker regards marriage as something malleable—something that has evolved over time such that “gender is no longer relevant” and “no longer forms an essential part of marriage.”

But if that’s true, then, as Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and Robert George have argued persuasively, we may rightly ask just what remains relevant in marriage if gender is no longer relevant. In this view marriage is a social convention; there is nothing intrinsically valuable in it beyond its construction by human beings at any point in history.

By contrast, in the historical view of marriage, it is a pre-political institution, an intrinsically valuable, basic human good rooted in human nature, not human will. As the Court said in Baker v. Nelson, “[t]he institution of marriage as a union of man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family, is as old as the book of Genesis.”

Indeed, Aristotle noted that the very foundation of the polis is the coming together of man and woman to create a family—the first fruits of society. Conversely, he was highly critical of homosexual conduct, believing it to be harmful to individuals and to the public good.

Among the late classical pagan writers, Plutarch perhaps expresses best the intrinsic goodness of marriage. In the Solon, he notes the public good of marriage and has high praise for laws that encourage love, honor, equality, and chastity between the spouses. And in his Erotikos (Dialogue on Love), he elevates the qualities of marital love: the heterosexual reciprocity, the equal status of the spouses, and the unitary aspects of the marital union.

It should not be lost that the ancients in no way regarded marriage as a social convention. They recognized marriage as the cornerstone of civilization. Greg Koukl states it well: “The truth is, it is not culture that constructs marriages or the families that marriages begin. Rather, it is the other way around: Marriage and family construct culture. As the building blocks of civilization, families are logically prior to society as the parts are to the whole.”

What is prior to society, then, cannot be changed, reinvented, or redefined by society. Walker may view same-sex unions as a social construct, but his view of marriage as a social convention is at odds with history.

Read more at Public Discourse.

The Infertility Argument for Same-Sex Marriage

The issue is not whether same-sex marriage is moral, but whether it ought to be legally recognized as marriage. That quibble aside, Saletan's piece suggests the following argument:

1. Homosexual couples are infertile just like infertile heterosexual couples are infertile: there is no difference in point of infertility.
2. Infertile heterosexual couples are allowed by law to marry.
3. Like cases ought to be treated in a like manner.
Therefore
4. Homosexual couples ought to be allowed by law to marry.

One can see why people would be tempted to accept this argument, but it is unsound: the first premise is false.

To show this I will first concede something that perhaps ought not be conceded, namely, that the predicate 'infertile' can be correctly applied to same-sex couples. Justification for this concession would be the proposition that anything not F, even if it cannot be F, is non-F. Thus anything not fertile, even if not possibly fertile, is infertile. So same-sex couples are infertile in the same way that numbers and ball bearings and thoughts are infertile.

But even given this concession, there is an important difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples. The former are essentially infertile while the opposite-sex infertile couples are only accidentally infertile. What the latter means is that there is nothing in the nature of opposite-sex unions to rule out the possibility of procreation. But in the case of same-sex unions, the very nature of the union rules out the possibility of procreation. So (1) in the argument above is false. Homosexual couples are not infertile in the same way that infertile heterosexual couples are. The former are infertile by their very nature, while the latter are not. This difference is what justifies a difference in treatment.

We must of course treat like cases in a like manner. What I have just shown, however, is that the two cases are not alike.

The point is even more clear if we take the view that 'fertile' and 'infertile' are predicates that can be meaningfully applied only to that whose nature includes the power to procreate. Accordingly, same-sex couples are no more infertile than hammers and nails are dead.