First, let me dispel any rumors that MoJ crashed last night because of the sheer volume of reaction to my posts on the GLBT curriculum (though I cannot rule out that it crashed a sign of divine disapproval). Second, for those who remain interested in this conversation, here are two more thoughtful responses.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
More reaction on GLBT curriculum
Religious legal theory
Seton Hall law prof David Opderbeck informs me that he has started a Religious Legal Theory email discussion group. Here's his description:
This is an email list for the scholarly discussion of religious legal theory. The list is open to law professors, practicing lawyers, judges, students, and others who are interested in relating religious perspectives to legal theory. All religious perspectives are welcome. We hope to foster productive discussion of how religious perspectives can inform and find a voice in contemporary legal theory, engage in respectful conversation about law and legal theory across religious traditions, and encourage appreciation for the rich historical tradition of theological reflection on law and legal institutions.
You can sign up to join the conversation here.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Responses re GLBT curriculum
Several readers have written thoughtful responses to my two posts (here and here) on the GLBT curriculum in my daughter's school district.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
"American lives" vs. "hardened terrorists"
We talk a lot on MoJ about the law's pedagogical function. There is also, I would suggest, a powerful pedagogical dimension to this veto.
Friday, March 7, 2008
GLBT curriculum (cont'd)
Well, the day started with a woman handing me a flyer about a proposed GLBT curriculum, and it ended with my comments at a public forum being part of the lead story on our local news tonight. I've received several emails wondering whether I am being too quick to embrace these new lessons, so I'll clarify my earlier post by pointing out reasons to be cautious, which are the same points I shared at the public forum tonight.
My earlier post focused on whether I should be objecting to the substantive values being taught by the proposed curriculum, not on the means by which they are being taught. To be clear, there are very troubling paths by which schools might be tempted to engage these issues. I support the inclusion of positive portrayals of non-traditional families within the school curriculum, which will (hopefully) help overcome harmful stereotypes by casting the members of such families in a more familiar light. They are not the threatening, unknown "other" -- they are our neighbors, friends, and classmates. However, to the extent that schools take a more aggressive stance in pushing students to affirmatively embrace certain conclusions about other family arrangements and reject their previous beliefs about family, there is a two-fold risk. First, if the school directly criticizes traditional teachings about family, the student (especially young students) are led to question not only the validity of that particular teaching, but the credibility of the authority figures responsible for that teaching. Second, by portraying other views as illegitimate in comparison to the "truth" espoused by this curriculum, students are led to view the school as the source of moral truth.
Admittedly, these risks will always be present to some degree when the school enters the debate over contested moral issues, but a stance of moral humility (not moral agnosticism or apathy) can lessen the risk. The school principal tonight reported that, out of 62 incidents of bullying this year, 30 have involved name-calling and harassment over (perceived) sexual orientation issues. There is a problem, and public schools cannot remain neutral. But they should remain humble.
For those who disagree, what stance should the public schools take on these issues? Should schools be neutral? (And what does neutrality look like in this context?) Should they remain silent? Should they teach that families headed by same-sex couples are not legitimate? not ideal? Or are these questions moot given that Christian famllies, to paraphrase James Dobson, should have fled the public schools by now?
Thursday, March 6, 2008
My daughter's "controversial GLBT curriculum"
This morning when I dropped my daughter off at school, a woman handed me a flyer alerting me that a "controversial GLBT curriculum" is coming to the Minneapolis public schools next year, and that I need to make my voice heard at a meeting scheduled for tonight. The curriculum, the flyer informs me, is designed to develop "new understandings of the diversity of families," to teach students that there are no "wrong" families, to facilitate discussion of the harmful effects of stereotyping about sexual orientation and gender roles, and to help students gain an awareness of families with two moms or two dads.
As a Catholic parent, am I supposed to object to this curriculum and if so, on what basis? My children do not believe -- nor would I want them to believe -- that there are "wrong" families. There are some family structures that are more conducive to the flourishing of children (two-parent, namely), but does that reality mean that we shouldn't teach our children to be welcoming toward single-parent or same-sex-parent families? And does anyone dispute that stereotypes about sexual orientation and gender have harmful effects?
More fundamentally, though, my daughters would not blink twice at the notion that families headed by same-sex couples can be healthy and nurturing. Their own life experience confirms as much, as same-sex couples have been part of their lives for as long as they can remember, and they have seen up close how those parent-child relationships function. For me to suggest to them that Susie's family is "wrong" because Susie has two moms would be much more troubling and jolting for them than to read a book portraying a same-sex couple in positive terms.
I'd compare it to our debates about race in this country. I had never heard my second-grader refer to a person's race until the last few weeks when she picked up on conversations about Barack Obama being the first African-American President. Until then, race wasn't even on her radar screen. Her schools and friendships have always been racially diverse, and so her perception of race's relevance is shaped by her relationships with real people. In the same way, her perception of sexual orientation's relevance is shaped by her relationships with real people. It hasn't been an issue for her. Not having a school curriculum reflecting her experience of the world would be more jolting, I would think, than having a "controversial GLBT curriculum." And I imagine that will be the case for more and more children as gays and lesbians become more open and more prominent in our society.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Soft-core atheism
John Haught criticizes the spate of recent "God is evil/dead/non-existent" books for espousing a much softer, blander atheism than the bold atheist frameworks of the past:
[T]he recent atheist authors want atheism to prevail at the least possible expense to the agreeable socioeconomic circumstances out of which they sermonize. They would have the God-religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—simply disappear, after which we should be able go on enjoying the same lifestyle as before. People would then continue to cultivate essentially the same values as before, including altruism, but they would do it without inspired books and divine commandments. Educators would teach science without intrusions from creationists, and students would learn that evolution rather than divine creativity is the ultimate explanation of why we are the kind of organisms we are. Only propositions based on evidence would be tolerated, but the satisfaction of knowing the truth about nature by way of science would compensate for any ethical constraints we would still have to put on our animal instincts.
This, of course, is precisely the kind of atheism that nauseated Nietzsche and made Camus and Sartre cringe. For them, atheism of this sort is nothing more than the persistence of life-numbing religiosity—it is religiosity in a new guise. These more muscular critics of religion were at least smart enough to realize that a full acceptance of the death of God would require an asceticism completely missing in the new atheistic formulas.
The blandness of the new soft-core atheism lies ironically in its willingness to compromise with the politically and culturally insipid kind of theism it claims to be ousting. Such a pale brand of atheism uncritically permits the same old values and meanings to hang around, only now they can become sanctified by an ethically and politically conservative Darwinian orthodoxy. If the new atheists' wishes are ever fulfilled, we need anticipate little in the way of cultural reform aside from turning the world's places of worship into museums, discos and coffee shops.
He makes a good point. When I compare the worldview of Christopher Hitchens, for example, with the worldview expressed by the actions of Islamic militants, I'm tempted to believe that the naked public square is not such a bad thing, and that a future in which cultural norms are grounded more firmly in a collective agnosticism about God's existence (or at least relevance) appears much rosier than the alternative. But then I catch myself, remembering that Islamic militants are not inescapably the sole occupants of the religion-friendly public square, and that the world in which Hitchens provides such wonderful conversation-starters may look quite different if his worldview ultimately holds sway.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Stuntz v. Sunstein (?)
Last week we discussed Bill Stuntz's recent essay, in which he asserts that "[c]ultures are powerful and mysterious things; the idea that laws and politicians can direct their paths is, to say the least, lacking in empirical support." In a separate context, I brought up Cass Sunstein's work emphasizing the government's important role in the shaping and management of norms. Randy Heinig observes:
Don't many of the objections to Stuntz's piece grow out of a line of thinking related to the Sunstein [thesis]? Isn't norm management what the legal angle on the culture wars (including, say, Philip Johnsons' work) is all about - the recognition that law sets some important cultural and social parameters? To what extent is Stuntz trying to push Christians (and particularly evangelicals) out of the business of using law to manage/create/instill/sustain moral norms? Would Stuntz and Sunstein disagree?
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Norm management and sex-ed licenses
Dan Markel offers this response to my comment on his sex-ed license proposal:
Rob is right that there are definitely norm-management issues involved, but consider whether the same concerns exist regarding gambling, alcohol, and tobacco. Why do norms against abusing these exist even though their use is permitted by law? Maybe, one could respond that these three things are restricted to adults, so it's easier to manage the messages we send to minors about these things. But to my mind, that still begs the question regarding how we're able to create norms against abuse while still allowing the law to permit them for adults.
For what it's worth, I am much less troubled by the message that this license says: "go get some action," than the injustice and inefficiency of punishing purely consensual relations between mature and informed individuals. But I should note that I'd be fine if the sex-ed license focused on the consequences of sex so it served a bit like a "scared straight" movie. Maybe a condition for the license would also require everyone to watch Knocked Up and Juno too...
A couple of quick follow-up comments: first, I'm not sure that norms against abusing alcohol exist among adolescents (at least among the adolescents I ran around with anyway), though I'm not sure whether the 21-as-rite-of-passage laws have anything to do with that. Second, and this is probably a more fundamental disagreement, I'm not ready to put the same weight on the consensual nature of the 14 year-old's sexual relationship with the 34 year-old as Dan appears to be. I believe that society has a legitimate interest in discouraging sexual activity among adolescents categorically, regardless of the answers any particular 14 year-old gives on whatever emotional maturity test the state comes up with. I don't know how to articulate the needed standard of "maturity" when it comes to giving the state's seal of approval on the 14 year-old's readiness for sex, much less measure it. If it amounts to "she knows the risks and willingly accepts those risks," that doesn't do much to persuade me to back away from my embrace of the more categorical approach.
The Sex-Ed License
Dan Markel proposes a "sex-ed license," through which:
minors above a certain age (e.g., above 14, 15, or 16?) wishing to have consensual sexual relations with other minors above that age or with adults should have to take a sex-ed course whose completion gives them a license to have sexual relations and possession of the license would, in conjunction with other conditions, work as an affirmative defense against prosecutions for statutory rape. This sex-ed license would cover information about safe sex, the risks of pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and genetic defects arising from consanguineous relations.
The three other conditions that would apply (or that could be made to apply) include: a) a ban on sex between asymmetrical dependents when one is a minor; b) a ban on such relations when the minor and the other person(s) i) live in the same residence or ii) exist in a relationship of unequal authority, e.g., one person occupies a supervisorial or custodial role to the other;
I also like the idea of requiring the persons involved to register a joint consent form indicating intent to have sexual relations with a designated public official before the activity happens. Obviously this implicates privacy concerns, but this wouldn’t apply to persons over the age of majority, so some state paternalism seems cautiously warranted if it’s going to increase opportunities for mature individuals to have sex.
Dan also likens the sex-ed license to a driver's license, as both are designed to promote safe norms and practices involving risky activity.
I'm not sure how to articulate all of my grounds of discomfort with this proposal, but here's one: the driver's license has become a rite of passage for American teenagers. Even if you do not need to drive for purposes of your daily existence, your entitlement to drive is sought-after goal, a sign of maturity and enhanced independence. As Cass Sunstein has pointed out, one of the government's central roles is norm management. In this regard, state action designed to prevent harm from risky behavior that we know is going to occur can easily begin to shape the norms that influence future behavior. I don't have a problem with state regulation contributing to the centrality of driving to the adolescent experience, but what if we're talking about the centrality of sexual autonomy to the adolescent experience? A city's free condom program has become a government message (literally) telling us all to "get some," and I'm wary as to the message of a "sex-ed license" for minors.
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