Overthe last month, I (here), Rick Garnett (here), and others on Mirror of Justice have protested the news media's virtual black-out in covering the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, accused of murdering newborn babies who survived late-term abortions, as well as causing the death of women in his fraudulent medical practice.
Shamed into introspection, more or less candidly acknowledged, the news media have begun covering the horrific trial in Philadelphia. Now that attention finally is being paid, what will come of it?
Journalist Carl Cannon writes on realclearpolitics.com about "reproductive rights" as one of journalism's most "sacred cows," and then offers these thoughts on attention being drawn to the reality of abortion as a "procedure":
Gosnell’s actions pull back the curtain on this procedure and allow
Americans to contemplate a disquieting prospect: that abortion itself is
an inherently violent act, the grisly details of which remain hidden
even from the patients in the operating room -- and that if those
specifics were truly understood, public support for it would wane.
Let us so hope! To read more from Mr. Cannon, see here.
Masha Gessen is a talented writer. Her widely praised (and sharply critical) biography of Vladimir Putin is only the most recent of her books across a range of subjects from Russian history, to mathematics, to the social implications of modern genetics. On top of her exertions as an author, she has served as Director of the Russian service of the U.S. government funded Radio Liberty. She is a self-identified lesbian and a leading activist in the U.S. and Russia. (She holds citizenship in both countries.) Although she is anything but a fringe figure within the movement, she is notable for her candor in discussing its beliefs and goals. At last year's meeting of the Sydney Writers Festival (audio here: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/why-get-married/4058506 ) she spoke plainly:
“It’s a no-brainer that (homosexuals) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. . . . Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.
The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life. That’s sort of not what I had in mind when I came out thirty years ago.
I have three kids who have five parents, more or less, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have five parents legally. . . . I met my new partner, and she had just had a baby, and that baby’s biological father is my brother, and my daughter’s biological father is a man who lives in Russia, and my adopted son also considers him his father. So the five parents break down into two groups of three. . . . And really, I would like to live in a legal system that is capable of reflecting that reality, and I don’t think that’s compatible with the institution of marriage."
Just imagine the uproar had, say, Rick Santorum said "Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what [they] are going to do with marriage when [they] get there — because [they] lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie." But, of course, you don't have to take it from Rick Santorum or other defenders of marriage as a conjugal union. Masha Gessen will tell you the same thing.
Although Gessen's willingness to put the matter in terms of "lying" is startlingly frank, it is no longer uncommon for advocates of redefining marriage to acknowledge that the effect---for them an entirely desirable effect---of redefinition will be the radical transformation of the institution. The objective is not merely to expand the pool of people eligible to participate in it, as was long claimed. In conceding (and celebrating the fact) that redefining marriage will fundamentally alter the institution, transform its social role and meaning, and undermine its structuring norms of monogamy, exclusivity, etc., Gessen is far from out of step with other leading figures in the movement. She joins influential NYU sociologist Judith Stacey, Arizona State University professor Elizabeth Brake, "It Gets Better" founder Dan Savage, writer Victoria Brownworth, journalist E.J. Graff, activist Michelangelo Signorile, and countless other important scholars and activists.
Moreover, there seem to be very few prominent scholars and activists in the movement to redefine marriage who are criticizing Masha Gessen, Judith Stacey, Elizabeth Brake, and the others, and speaking out for the norms of monogamy and fidelity and other traditional marital and familial ideals. Many are quiet, but few actually deny that the abandonment of the conjugal understanding of marriage will have the transformative institutional and social effects that Gessen, Stacey, Brake and the others (approvingly) say it will have.
Further to the immediately preceding post, and precisely twenty-four hours after the terrible event that occasioned it, it emerges that many engaged in yesterday's marathon, upon learning of the blasts that took lives and maimed bodies, immediately altered their routes to run straight to locations where they could give blood. The solidaristic and sacrament-resonant significance of this gesture will not, one assumes, have gone unnoticed.
What a remarkable species we are, to be capable both of such giving, and of such acts as give rise to the need of such giving.
And here too is one thing, in keeping with last night's expression of hope, that some of us might do to assist our maimed siblings right now.
As many of our readers will now know, a bit over 14 hours ago, at 2.50pm Wednesday, the 15th of April, two crude bombs detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. At the time of this writing, it is known that three people have perished, while 113 are wounded.
Within mere seconds of the bombs' detonations, scores, then hundreds of people rushed straight to the sites without hesitation, pulling away iron barricades, tearing at yellow police tape, all to bring aid to those felled, injured, and in some cases dismembered or killed. Along the street where this was all happening, flags from all nations flew atop poles alongside one another, representing the multitude of nations there likewise represented by a miraculously diverse array of runners. As it happens, moreover, hundreds of these runners ran not for themselves or their nations alone, but for cause after cause to which donors had agreed to contribute in proportion to miles run.
We really all are, it would seem, in this together. The fact of it came across also - along now with understated competence and no-nonsense resolve - in the words, faces, and comportments of those officials addressing the inevitable media queries. The Governor of Massachusetts, the Chief of Police, and sundry additional federal, state, and local authorities all took questions together, all knowing precisely to whom among all in each case to direct the question - as if they all constituted one orchestra with a respected conductor. A trauma surgeon at Mass General Hospital, though alone, handled questions exhaustively and with likewise quiet confidence.
Experiencing all of this, you can't help but marvel at the solidarism and Stoicism of these great people of Boston, whether they be citizens for life or citizens for a day. These are people worth not only praying for, but directly assisting as well, in any way we are able.
"No one is arguing for the legal recognition of polygamous or polyamorous relationships as marriages!"
"Recognizing same-sex partnerships does NOT open the door to changing fundamental marital norms! It will NOT change the nature of marriage as a monogamous and exclusive union--it will simply make marriage as we've always understood it available to more people."
That was then; this is now. Have a look at the article by Jillian Keenan in the perfectly mainstream on-line liberal magazine Slate.
Money quote:
"The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less “correct” than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults. Though polygamists are a minority—a tiny minority, in fact—freedom has no value unless it extends to even the smallest and most marginalized groups among us. So let’s fight for marriage equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States—and then let’s keep fighting. We’re not done yet."
I will be accepting "I have to admit it: you told me so, Robby" messages at [email protected]. (See here: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/20/opinion/george-gay-marriage. While I'm at it, I'll hazard another prediction, though I'd love to be wrong: The Slate article will not produce a single serious critique by a major scholar or activist in the SSM movement arguing that marriage is not completely plastic, and identifying a principled ground for rejecting the legal redefinition of marriage to include mjultiple-partner sexual relationionships.)
My colleague Michael Moreland just made the following very welcome announcement to the Villanova Law community:
I am pleased to announce that the 37th annual Giannella Lecture will be delivered by Susan Stabile, the Robert and Marion Short Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) School of Law. Professor Stabile is one of the nation's leading employee benefits and pensions scholars as well as a noted author in the area of Catholic social thought and law. In addition to editing the leading casebook Pension and Employee Benefit Law, 5th ed. (Foundation Press, 2010), Professor Stabile recently published Growing in Love and Wisdom: Tibetan Buddhist Sources for Christian Meditation (Oxford University Press, 2012). Professor Stabile received her BA from Georgetown University and her JD from New York University School of Law, where she was editor-in-chief of the NYU Law Review. After graduation from law school, she was associated in New York and Hong Kong with the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton, where she practiced corporate and securities law and later specialized in employee benefits and executive compensation matters. Prior to joining the St. Thomas faculty, Professor Stabile was the Dean George W. Matheson Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law. We look forward to welcoming Professor Stabile back to Villanova next year.
Michael Davies (and others) said it long ago: the documents of Vatican II are riddled with intended confusion. Now Walter Cardinal Kasper is saying what traditionalists knew all along. Can there be any wonder, then, that the "new spring time" of Vatican II feels so consistently wintry?
As I argue in a forthcoming paper, given last fall at a conference on the "The Liberty of the Church" sponsored by the Institute for Law and Religion at USD (thanks to Steve Smith and Larry Alexander), Dignitatis Humanae is Exhibit A for this intended confusion. While frequently celebrated for "developing doctrine," and while in parts *seeming* to do just that, Dignitatis *begins* by affirming that it "leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine" (integram relinquit traditionalem doctrinam Catholicam). Hence the endless debate about which "hermeneutic" to apply to the Council's documents.
Corey Brettschneider has an interesting book out, called When the State Speaks, What Should it Say? How Democracies Can Protect Expression and Promote Equality. As I hinted at in this paper, there is a lot to welcome and embrace in Brettschneider's book, but there are also a lot of places where I'd have to disagree. In any event, Paul Horwitz has a characteristically thoughtful and charitable post up, at Concurring Opinions, in which he poses a laundry list of questions about the book. Definitely check out his post, which gives voice to (and better expresses than I would have) many of my own reservations.
Here is just one (of 13!) of Paul's detailed questions:
1) Much of Brettschneider’s book argues that the state has an obligation to publicize “the justification for those rights protected by law–namely, their basis in the values of free and equal citizenship.” Elsewhere, he refers to “reasons” for rights, which seems to indicate there might be several, but the overall emphasis seems to be on the idea that there is a particular correct view of the justifications underlying rights. Is it sensible or advisable to argue on the basis that there is a single best justification for rights, and that promoting that particular justification–and arguing against viewpoints that contradict that single justification–is an obligation of the state and of individual citizens and state officials? Most people, I should think, believe (correctly) that rights are subject to a variety of overlapping justifications, including religious ones. Why are we better off starting with a monist approach to rights justifications rather than with a pluralist view that rights are subject to a variety of potential justifications, and that much of the consensus around the importance of rights stems precisely from incompletely theorized agreements about rights from a variety of perspectives? If the justifications for rights are importantly plural, would that not affect the kinds of policy recommendations Brettschneider makes, and perhaps chasten the nuanced but strong recommendations that he offers for a more active, non-viewpoint-neutral state? In particular, why should citizens who, in Brettschneider’s view, have an obligation to engage in a “persuasive response” to speech that undermines free and equal citizenship be obliged to offer what he thinks is the “correct” view of free and equal citizenship and the way in which it supports rights? Wouldn’t it be better if they advanced a variety of views about why rights are right, so to speak, and why hateful and discriminatory views are wrong?
Here is an additional wrinkle: If Michael Perry and others are right (and I think they are, about this) then the best (and maybe the only) "reason for rights" -- that is, the only reason why it is true that the claims rights-talk makes about persons are plausible -- are "religious" . . . then the modern liberal state -- if it is supposed to publicize the "reasons for rights" -- is kind of in a bind.
Paul's follow-up post -- which focuses on the implications of Brettschneider's arguments for religion and religious liberty, is also a must-read, and is available here.
Here is a review, by Patrick and John Garry, of Bruce Ledewitz's Church, State, and the Crisis in American Secularism. The abstract:
Reading a book with which one agrees on the basic assumptions and goals can be a reaffirming and educational experience. However, reading a book with which one disagrees about some of its basic assumptions and goals can be a stimulating and even enlightening experience, particularly if the book presents a logical argument, a compelling and laudable vision, and an openness to opposing views. For this reviewer, Professor Bruce Ledewitz has written just such a book.
I've been a little uncomfortable with the uproar against the Albany teacher who assigned his students to write a persuasive essay from the Nazi perspective that Jews are evil. Yes, given our history, the particular conclusion assigned was bound to shed more heat than light no matter how noble the teacher's intentions were, with foreseeable harm to members of the community. And more broadly, any such assignment is very problematic if not done in a context where the objectives were obvious and there were an entire series of projects through which the students were asked to assume counterintuitive positions. I also have doubts as to whether such an assignment could be pulled off smoothly with such a young age group. However, I also agree with Ken Kersh's point that simply asking students to adopt a moral conclusion:
deprives students of a deep understanding of how it is that people can actually hold those views, and still go to church and sleep well at night -- to understand themselves to be doing the right thing. Besides making students shallower people where it comes to understanding history and political and social thought, it make them shallower in the understanding of themselves: only by seeing how odious and unjust ideas issue from sophisticated and powerful logics (typically in conjunction with intense emotions), can they begin to feel the necessity of continually examining themselves, asking how in their own time and place they might be following similar logics and scripts, both time-tested and new. Learning how others think –- including badly -- is a critical part of learning to think effectively themselves.
When I teach our Foundations of Justice course, I ask students to argue both sides of the abortion issue -- not because I want them to conclude that moral truth is in the eye of the beholder, but because I believe that they will be better advocates when they have put themselves in the shoes of those who oppose their views. Now assigning to high schoolers a proposition that demonizes a religious minority is a much different notion than a case law-driven exercise in advocacy for law students, and so I agree with those who question the high school teacher's prudence in selecting that particular topic, but I'm leery of any emerging tendency to equate categorically the assigned content with the pedagogical objective.
