Some gay rights organizations have stood up for the right of associations to make their own membership decisions, even if not everyone approves of those decisions. Hopefully more organizations will see the danger to group identity posed by the sweeping expansion and application of anti-discrimination norms, now that the focus is on the Gay Softball World Series, not the Boy Scouts. (HT: David Bernstein)
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Freedom of association: Not just for Boy Scouts anymore . . .
Happy Earth Day!
Apparently Earth Day is big business now, but I'm the last person who should be judging others about the corruption of the day. On certain occasions -- such as the annual post-Christmas-present-unwrapping stupor or the periodic realization that I carry my own Great Pacific Garbage Vortex in the back of my minivan -- I have a sinking feeling that my family's carbon footprint is more akin to a carbon crater or canyon. I gladly spend ten minutes a week sorting our recyclables, but an environmental friendly lifestyle only extends about as far as my personal sense of convenience will carry it. That's my problem, not the government's, but my own sense of environmental ineptitude is exacerbated by the political discourse, which has made environmental causes another Rorschach test for one's overarching worldview. Are "drill baby drill!" and "Earth First!" the only options? While I'm not sure how one is supposed to celebrate Earth Day, I do think it is an occasion for us to reflect on our care for the planet, and Catholics should be at the front of the line when it comes to taking environmental stewardship seriously.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Obama's new rule on hospital visitation
Other than federalism concerns, is there any reason for Catholic legal theorists to object to President Obama's instruction to HHS to promulgate a rule requiring any hospital participating in Medicare or Medicaid to allow patients to designate hospital visitors, including same-sex partners? This strikes me as one area of longstanding concern to gays and lesbians that is (or should be) relatively uncontroversial -- i.e., does anyone oppose allowing patients to designate a hospital visitor of their choice, rather than categorically limiting visitors to immediate family members?
Will the public support a pro-life pharmacy?
In my new book (remember, nothing says "Happy Spring!" to a loved one like a book exploring the relational dimension of conscience), I urge both sides in the conscience debate to spend less time trying to win the zero-sum legal battle over conscience, and more time building morally distinct venues for conscience in the marketplace. As such, when I read that a pro-life pharmacy has failed to attract enough customer support to stay in business, I'm disappointed on a couple of levels: I'm sad that the moral claims of the pharmacy did not resonate enough within the pro-life community to achieve economic viability, and more selfishly, I'm protective of my thesis. I still maintain that, if our society is serious about protecting conscience, it is infinitely preferable for a pro-life pharmacy to fail in the marketplace than to be prohibited by law. It doesn't help, of course, when the market failure is met with a combination of glee and snark by observers.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
What explains the frequent tone deaf comments by Church leaders?
The media coverage of the Church's response to sexual abuse by priests has not always been fair, but Church leaders sure aren't helping matters. Blaming pedophilia on homosexuality seems irresponsible, at best. This is an area that is so inflammatory, so prone to bigotry and perceptions of scapegoating, that if the Church is going to make causal pronouncements about the underlying incidents of abuse, those statements need to be careful, restrained, and backed up by evidence. A coordinated Vatican response would be helpful (and would have been more helpful a few weeks ago). If this is the coordinated response, then there is even more cause for concern.
Why has it been so difficult for Church leaders to respond to the sexual abuse media coverage in a way that does not come off as self-pitying, overly defensive, or shifting the blame? Is this a consequence of Church leaders operating largely beyond the reach of public criticism for so many years? Have the anti-Christian strains in today's culture created an unhealthy "circle the wagons" mentality among Church leaders that is difficult to escape? Is there a perception that admitting mistakes by Church leadership -- including the pope -- will cause believers to stumble in the faith, and thus such admissions should be avoided at all costs? Is it the media's failure to report the responses that are actually and appropriately humble and remorseful? Something else?
Who knew Catholic legal theory would be so "sticky?"
We may not be at the top of the blogosphere when it comes to overall traffic, but we are second only to Volokh when it comes to "stickiness" -- i.e., the length of the average visit. Paul Caron has the details.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Islamic Law and Constitutional Liberty at St. Thomas
Today at St. Thomas we're hosting a symposium on Islamic Law and Constitutional Liberty. Participants include Noah Feldman, MoJer Russ Powell, Haider ala Hamoudi, Ali Khan, Clark Lombardi, John Bowen, Joel Nichols, and Rep. Keith Ellison (the first practicing Muslim elected to Congress), among others. I've only been able to make it to a couple of sessions, but they were interesting: Noah Feldman had an interesting analysis of the three levels of relationship between Sharia law and constitutional liberty (political, philosophical, and institutional), and Russ Powell used the example of Turkey to caution against "essentializing" Islamic law.
One talk that I found especially fascinating was by Clark Lombardi, who told the story of Alvin Robert Cornelius, a devout Catholic who served as the chief justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court during the 1960s. Surprisingly (to me anyway), Justice Cornelius was also a major proponent of the Islamization of the Pakistani legal system, arguing that there is a plausible version of Islamic law that is fundamentally liberal, and that the public would accept judges as authoritative intepreters of Islamic law. Prof. Lombardi suggests that Cornelius may have been more correct that we assume, and that some degree of Islamization may be necessary for the rule of law in majority-Muslim countries.
Friday, April 9, 2010
No more Protestants on the Supreme Court -- should we care?
With Justice Stevens retiring, should we care that there might not be any Protestants on the Supreme Court? According to Rick -- via Nina Totenberg -- the more relevant divide is "religious-secular." Over at the Law Religion Ethics blog, I've posed some questions in response (and opened comments). Put simply, does the particular religious identity of a Supreme Court justice matter? Should it?
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The Church as Victim in Abuse Scandal
I agree with Peggy Noonan that the Church should be thankful for the media coverage that provided the motivation to take the priest sexual abuse crisis seriously -- indeed, perhaps even to begin viewing it as a "crisis" in the first place. I also agree with observers who point out that at least some of the media coverage is shaped by a not-too-subtle desire to discredit the Church. Witness, for example, Get Religion's helpful comparison of the AP report of an Indian priest's alleged sexual abuse in Minnesota with the New York Times' coverage of the same allegations. It has been troubling, though, that at least some Church leaders seem to be focusing their concern on the unfair media coverage, rather than on the events that put the Church in the position of having to deal with unfair media coverage. It gives support to critics who say that the primary objective of Church leaders has always been defending the public perception of the Church, and that this mindset, as seen in the "blame the media" strategy, also contributed to the scandal itself.
Now to jump into some murky ecclesiological waters that are undoubtedly over my head, one of my concerns when I became Catholic was the extent to which my Catholic friends sometimes struggled to talk about their relationship with God, rather than their relationship with the institutional Church. There are different dynamics going on here, I know, but I wonder if they stem from a common tendency to view the Church as the ultimate end of the Christian life, rather than as a body that "places herself concretely at the service of the Kingdom of God." (Compendium para. 50) If Church leaders began with the questions, "What is the mission of the Church, and how have the Church's failings compromised that mission?," I wonder if the conversation would be any different than it is today.
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