Here is an excellent op-ed by Harrisburg, PA's Bishop Joseph McFadden:
Social justice flows from human dignity. To establish justice, our society must provide the conditions that allow people to obtain what is their due, including an education that prepares them to be productive citizens. Education is a basic human right. Our secular system of laws supports this principle, as every Pennsylvania child is guaranteed an education.
For parents, providing an education for their children is a moral obligation. When we look across the education landscape in Pennsylvania, however, we see that some parents, especially low-income families, have no choice but to send their children to a school that is not helping them reach their potential. This is why the bishops of Pennsylvania see school choice as a defining social justice issue for our time. . . .
Yesterday I had the privilege to speak to state legislators in Michigan, where an anti-Sharia bill has been introduced. Perhaps learning a lesson from the Oklahoma debacle -- a case in which the statute is explicitly discriminatory -- the Michigan bill is more stealthy, providing that a court or administrative agency "shall not enforce a foreign law if doing so would violate a right guaranteed by the constitution of this state or the United States." "Foreign law" is defined as "any law, legal code, or system of a jurisdiction" outside the United States. The bill has more than forty co-sponsors, but the primary proponent makes clear that it aims at Muslim litigants who "do not want to be under our law."
At first glance, I don't think this law would change anything. If the bill aims to ensure that American courts don’t enforce a foreign court’s order if the foreign procedures are not fundamentally fair or otherwise violate basic due process, I’m not sure why we need such a provision. American courts are already focused on that. And I’m not sure how concerns about Sharia law contribute to our understanding of this issue. If a contract is entered under duress or through coercion, or if a foreign court order is entered without a party having the chance to contest it, our courts won’t enforce the contract or the order, regardless of the source of the substantive norms embodied in the contract or order. The unenforceability has nothing to do with Sharia.
If the bill aims at preventing private parties from waiving constitutional rights when the source of the agreement's norms are found in a jurisdiction outside the United States, that sweeps very broadly, and is not just limited to contracts founded in Sharia. I don't know how it threatens the rule of law to permit religious believers to order their lives consistently with the tenets of their faith traditions. When bankruptcy courts apply canon law in determining property rights for a diocese, or when courts enforce arbitration agreements based on biblical principles pursuant to widely invoked rules of "Christian conciliation," or when couples invoke their faith as the basis for the terms of their prenuptial agreements, that raises very few eyebrows. In the dozens of states where anti-Sharia legislation is being proposed, we're erecting a double standard. No one is asking for a court to adopt the sort of penal code that is found in some Islamic countries; they are asking for space to live out their faith commitments. In most cases, these disputes crop up because Sharia provides the terms for the contract that comprises the litigants' marriage (in Islam, the contract does not precede a marriage; the contract is the marriage). The disputed terms usually pertain to the distribution of property upon marriage and in the event of divorce or the husband's death. Whether or not such contracts are enforceable should turn on whether they go beyond what would be tolerable in any other marital contract.
If we keep insisting that Sharia is the enemy of our legal system, Christians are treading on very thin ice. Americans are free to enter into contracts that reflect their own commitments to a host of causes, whether it's PETA, or the PTA, or NARAL. Religious believers should not be precluded from doing the same. I hope Catholics continue to speak out against clearly unjust laws like Oklahoma's, as well as the more subtle but wholly unnecessary versions cropping up around the country. Even if these versions don't actually change the way courts operate, their passage still sends a very troubling message to our Muslim friends and neighbors.
Professor Melissa Murray (Berkeley) has published Marriage as Punishment in the forthcoming pages of the Columbia Law Review, a paper which aims to show a number of things. First, it describes how marriage was used historically not only as a kind of escape valve for the crime of seduction but also as a "punishment" for that crime. Second, it takes very seriously the metaphor of "the old ball and chain" to show how "marriage figured prominently in the operation of the criminal justice system." Third, it wishes to resuscitate what it claims to be an older view of marriage as something more than the "unvarnished good" which, it again claims, it is described as today by those seeking same-sex marriage rights. Fourth, it injects a caution about the way in which same-sex marriage proponents make their claims about the good of marriage. Marriage is a discipline, the author claims -- a discipline at times enforced by the state -- and as such it is in many ways inimical to achieving full "liberty and autonomy for sex, whether in marriage or not." (107) What we really need if we are after "greater sexual liberty" is to be skeptical of the "disciplinary force" of marriage (no less than of criminal sanction) -- in order to create "a place for sex and sexuality beyond the disciplinary domains of the state." (107-108) I wish Philip Rieff were still with us to offer his thoughts.
I think Robby is correct that views on cohabitation may break down along some of the same demographic lines as views on SSM. I should have been more precise, though, in explaining what I mean by noting the "fear-based terms" that I've observed in some (though by no means all) of my conversations about SSM with the 50+ crowd. Often the fear is focused not so much on SSM, but on gays and lesbians themselves. This distinguishes it from views on cohabitation, I think. I don't know anyone who fears the people who engage in the act of extramarital cohabitation, though I know plenty of folks (count me as one) who fear the consequences of widespread normalization of extramarital cohabitation. I do know folks -- and most of them are over 50 -- who fear the harmful effects that gays and lesbians themselves might have on their children or grandchildren, quite apart from SSM. That fear underlies part of the opposition to SSM. For younger generations, they are less likely to associate SSM with "homosexuals" as an ominous category, and more likely to associate SSM with specific friends that they have who happen to be homosexual. They are not afraid of their friends, and thus that component of the fear-based opposition evaporates. I think that's different than the dynamic with cohabitation.
There are rational arguments against SSM that have nothing to do with fear of gays and lesbians, and Robby, Maggie Gallagher, and others are making them. The primary challenge for SSM opponents, as I see it, is to separate one's opposition to SSM from one's views on gays and lesbians. For many voters, my guess is that, as the latter improves, the former tends to weaken.
Let's suppose we did a poll in Minnesota on the question of whether non-marital sexual cohabitation is morally wrong. Would anyone be surprised if the results were something like the following?
Age 18-34: 33%
Age 65+: 70%
No college: 60%
College grad: 32%
Twin Cities metro: 40%
Rest of State: 59%
I wouldn't be in the least surprised by results such as these. In fact, I'd be surprised if the results were strongly at variance with them. Now, if that's right, how would we explain it? Perhaps we would say that part of the disparity is explained by whether a person has personal friends who are in cohabitating relationships. Would we be tempted to say that the people who have moral objections to cohabitation "tend to speak in more fear-based terms"? Of course, people who do have those objections (I'm one) "fear" (entirely reasonably) that cohabitation tends to undermine the marriage culture. And they "fear" (entirely reasonably) the social consequences of the erosion of the marriage culture. Does that make their opinions "fear-based"? In a sense, yes---but referring to their concerns simply as "fear-based" hardly does justice to their view.
Now, would we say of younger people, "the fear theme tends not to be as readily discernible"? Perhaps we would, since rightly or wrongly (I say wrongly) fewer young people "fear" the social consequences of widespread cohabitation (or out-of-wedlock childbearing, or unilateral divorce). But then, might we say of those young people who do not have moral objections to cohabitation that they "tend to speak in more relativism-based terms"? One might very well say that, especially if one has taught introductory moral philosophy to college students.
One thing I certainly don't think would be warranted is any suggestion that those who do not object to cohabitation are likely to have a truly rational basis for their views, while those who do object are probably motivated by irrational or purely emotional factors ("fear"). (I don't think Rob was making such a suggestion in the case of polling in Minnesota about the amendment defining marriage, though perhaps others would make it.)
The Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University School of Law (for more information, come to CLR Forum) is pleased to announce an exciting new seminar for Spring 2012, Colloquium in Law: Law and Religion.
This course invites leading law and religion scholars to make presentations to a small audience of students and faculty. The following speakers have confirmed:
January 30: Philip Hamburger (Columbia University School of Law)
February 13: M. Cathleen Kaveny (Notre Dame Law School)
March 5: Joseph Weiler (NYU Law School)
March 19: Michael McConnell (Stanford Law School)
April 2: Justice Antonin Scalia
April 16: Ayelet Shachar (University of Toronto Faculty of Law)
Topics will be announced shortly.
Each session of the Colloquium will run from 4:00 to 6:00 in the third-floor faculty library. Interested faculty members in the New York area and beyond are invited to attend and participate.
Please email the Colloquium’s co-organizers, Marc DeGirolami ([email protected]) or Mark Movsesian ([email protected]), if you would like to attend.
The Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies, at Catholic University, is hosting a single-day conference on the CUA campus dedicated to "Tuition Tax Credits: A Catholic Schools Perspective." More information (including registration info) is available here. Speakers include Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington; Marie Powell, Executive Director for Catholic Education USCCB; John Carr, Executive Director for Peace, Justice and Human Development USCCB; and many others.
Here is an address delivered last night at the University of Pennsylvania by Philadelphia's (still relatively new) Archbishop Charles Chaput on human dignity. Drawing on, among others, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Hans Jonas, and the American Founders, Archbishop Chaput makes the argument that there is nothing distinctly (properly understood) Catholic about the respect for human dignity.
In November 2012, we'll be voting in Minnesota on a constitutional amendment allowing marriage only between a man and a woman. Today's Star Tribune carries the results of a survey showing that the state's residents are evenly split on the question, but there are interesting generational, educational, and geographical divides:
Age 18-34: 33% favor the amendment
Age 65+: 70% favor the amendment
No college: 60% favor the amendment
College grad: 32% favor the amendment
Twin Cities metro: 40% favor the amendment
Rest of state: 59% favor the amendment
I'm not exactly sure what this means for the way the debate about SSM should unfold here or elsewhere. I would guess that part of the disparity is explained by a person's exposure to, and friendship with, gays and lesbians. In my experience, for example, older voters tend to speak in more fear-based terms when talking about SSM. For younger voters, the fear theme tends not to be as readily discernible. This does not mean that a campaign to persuade the 18-34 crowd to support the amendment cannot be effective; it just means the campaign needs to begin from a different premise than it would for older generations. My colleagues Mark Osler and Teresa Collett contributed to the debate here with a point/counterpoint in the Star Tribune.
In 2011, Oklahoma has experienced two blizzards, tornadoes, the hottest July of any state in the nation's history, and now an earthquate. We are waiting for the hurricane and volcano! St. Gregory's University, one of the best kept secrets in Catholic higher education, experienced significant damage to its main building in the recent earthquake. Thankfully no one was hurt. St. Gregory pray for the university bearing your name.
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