Rod Dreher's Blog, page 635

The Value of Not Caring

Here’s a great Spiked interview with Roger Scruton. Excerpt:

While opposed to any discrimination against homosexuals today, he retains characteristically unfashionable attitudes. ‘What I say in my book Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation (1986), I still think. But it’s much more dangerous to say it now. My view then was that first of all – oh why not say it, you know, I’m old now – homosexuality is not one thing. Lesbianism is usually an attempt by a woman to find that committed love that she can’t get from men any more. Because men exploit women and move on. So it’s very often a reaction to that sort of disappointment. Whereas male homosexuality, because it’s not constrained by a woman’s need to fix a man down, is hugely promiscuous – the statistics are quite horrifying. And there’s also the obsession with the sexual organs rather than the relationship, this vector towards phallicism, the obsession with the young, all kinds of things like that, which mean that, as I see it, homosexual desire, especially between men, is not the same kind of thing as heterosexual desire, even though it’s not a perversion.

‘This doesn’t mean you’re condemning people or that they should be discriminated against. But nor should we old-fashioned, sad heterosexuals, minority interest though we might be, be deprived of those institutions that we have built out of our self-sacrificing forms of love. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say now between you and me, but it isn’t a perfectly reasonable thing to say or a possible thing to say in public any more.’ You do realise Roger, I remind him with a nod at my voice recorder, that you are saying it in public? ‘Yeah yeah, I don’t care any more.’

How refreshing is that? And how liberating? It’s not that I agree with Scruton’s theories on homosexuality (which sound very dated, at the least), but that I appreciate his willingness to say something controversial that he really believes, but that the rules of bien-pensant social discourse have ruled out of bounds. It’s the one and only thing I like about Donald Trump: that he just doesn’t give a rat’s rear end what anybody thinks.

Mind you, I believe that everyone ought to care to some degree about the good opinion of their neighbors. It’s part of being civilized. But we have gotten to the point now where far too many people are willing to see their institutions destroyed rather than speak up, for fear of causing offense.

The other day I heard from a friend who told a story about something outrageous happening at his church. Many in the congregation were upset about it, as well they ought to have been. This was the kind of thing that causes people to lose their faith.

“Did anybody speak out about it?” I asked my friend.

“No,” he said. “Nobody wanted to hurt the pastor’s feelings.” Not even my friend. They are willing to see their church slip away from them, bit by bit, rather than take the risk of speaking out.

Increasingly, I have no patience for this kind of thing. “Yeah, yeah, I don’t care anymore.” Good on you, Roger Scruton. Last year, I posted a blog entry on an interview with Scruton, an excerpt of which is here:

So much of modern political conservatism—and you see this in America, which has a quite articulate conservative movement compared with us—is phrased in elegiac terms. [It’s about] what we’ve lost—we’ve lost the traditional working-class family, the black family or whatever it might be. Now, all that is perfectly reasonable. But the most important question is what have we got, rather than what we’ve lost, and how do we keep it?

You have to start by speaking up in defense of what we have got. If we don’t — if you don’t — we won’t get to keep it.

 

 

If You Get Rich And Famous…

One of you readers suggested that I listen to a recent episode of This American Life in which Neil Drumming, a producer for the show and an old and close friend of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s, did a piece on how TNC’s wealth and fame, which has come very fast, has affected their friendship. So I listened to it today, and boy, I’m glad I did. It’s fascinating, and even though I can’t abide his cultural politics, it makes me like TNC more as a person.

In this excerpt from the transcript, TNC and Drumming are at a fancy hotel bar in New York, where TNC is staying while in town from Paris (where he and his family are living for a while) to give a talk. They start by joking about how TNC, who grew up in the West Baltimore ghetto, has become a snob:

Ta-Nehisi knew we were here to talk about his snobbery, and he wasted zero time getting into character. He told me a story about the other night when he’d had dinner in the restaurant of this very hotel.

Ta: And I was sitting at the bar. And the food was OK. It’s like one of these OK food restaurants. But it was decent. I was having a good time. And there was a couple like down the bar, and they had ordered this big-ass thing of oysters. It might have been 24 oysters. It was huge.

Neil Drumming (narration): Ta-Nehisi was fine with that. He loves oysters. It was what happened next that offended him.

Ta: Then the bartender started making drinks, right? And he makes the woman a sangria and the other dude some sweet something, some red, sweet something-or-other that no one should ever drink. And he took it over there, and I was like, you’re going to drink sangria and eat oysters? Like, we’re doing this now? Like, this is a thing you’re going to do? Oh, come on.

[LAUGHTER]

Ta: Come on. Just order a Hi-C. Get the Capri Sun. Just get the Capri Sun with your oysters.

Neil Drumming (narration): See, this is what I’m talking about.

I had to laugh, first because I’m so pleased to learn that TNC and I share a passion for both Paris and oysters (I have written him privately to urge him to go to Huîtrerie Régis, the happiest place on earth), but also because had I been sitting in his seat, this is exactly what I would have done — gotten all judgy of the couple drinking crap with their oysters. It’s like going to a fine steakhouse and putting ketchup all over your prime rib. Or like ordering a bourbon and coke, but asking the bartender to use Pappy Van Winkel.

But is that snobby? I say no. Any working-class guy in France would have been appalled to see that, because he knows that sweet red drinks would ruin the taste of the oysters. You want to drink crisp white wine with them, or possibly beer (for me, beer only with Gulf Coast oysters, which are flabby and need cocktail sauce to be at their best). If you learn to love oysters, you will also learn what tastes good to drink with them. The other night I was watching Anthony Bourdain’s Shanghai episode, and saw some Shanghai billionaire eating raw oysters that had been flown in from France, and served on the half shell with their liquor replaced by Champagne. That is just awful; anybody who eats oysters knows that their briny liquor makes them taste great. Replacing it with Champagne is what a real snob (as opposed to a connoisseur) would do.

More from that interview:

(Neil Drumming, narrating): During all those years, I honestly don’t recall fine dining being a big part of our lives, so it’s kind of bizarre to hear Ta-Nehisi go on about it now. The guy talks about food with almost as much passion and conviction as he writes scathing critiques of American institutionalized racism.

Ta: There’s this joint in Chicago called the Girl & the Goat, and they made this asparagus last time I was there, and I think about it. Like I actually think about the vegetables.

[LAUGHS]

Ta: I mean, what is this? [LAUGHS] Like sex or something. Like, I think about it. Like god, that was awesome. That was great.

Yep, that’s me, to the fingertips. Listening to this, I realized that if I ever became rich and famous like TNC, I would do pretty much what he’s doing, using my money in part to enjoy food even more than I do. He seems to have a great sense of humor about it all.

I felt even more of a kinship with him when he talked about how having money makes him uncomfortable. One more clip:

Ta: The money’s uncomfortable. Um– why is the money uncomfortable? Because you have the money, but like, in your mind, you haven’t changed. Like you still rock a hoodie.

Neil Drumming: Yeah, yeah.

Ta: The food is not uncomfortable. The food feels like some bringing to fruition of something that was always there.

That’s a good insight. Drumming goes on to say that TNC now gets invited to hang with celebrities and other important people, and that he (Drumming) has seen TNC blow these people off — though he has taken up their invitations as well. TNC, in the interview, distinguishes between snobs and “bougies,” short for “bourgeoises.” In his nomenclature, a “bougie” (pron. boo-zhee) is a snob who is a snob because he wants to impress other people, and wants to move in the “right” crowd.

It’s a useful distinction, actually. Someone once said that everyone’s a conservative about the thing they know well. I think it’s true that everyone is a snob in the same way. I don’t care much for gin; it all tastes the same to me. But I admire people who really love gin, and can distinguish what makes good gin from bad gin. Similarly, I have never been a clothes horse, but I enjoy listening to people who know what makes for quality clothing, talking about how to recognize a well-made suit, pair of shoes, and so forth. Connoisseurship is not the same thing as snobbery. I don’t think TNC is a snob at all for being a connoisseur of good oysters. It only becomes snobbery when you think you are a better human being because of your superior taste in oysters, liquor, clothes, and so forth. Don’t you think?

That line of TNC’s about how having money brought out something in him that was latent — a love of good food — strikes me as a basically good way to enjoy your money (unless, of course, it becomes gluttony). People who were raised poor, or who have struggled for a long time to get money, and who come into success — I think it’s great if they use some of it to enjoy things that they never would have been able to otherwise. Maybe you always wanted to go whitewater rafting, but never could have afforded it. Or maybe you have always been interested in working on antique cars, and can now afford to take that up as a hobby. Well and good. Money can also call forth and exacerbate latent character flaws, of course, but one hopes to be moderate and sensible about these things. It sounds like TNC is well on course.

About fame, though, that is something I don’t understand people desiring. To me, the best thing about being really rich would be the liberty to be completely anonymous. Unfortunately for TNC, the nature of his vocation and the source of his fortune means that he will always have to be in the public eye.

‘Please, Lord, make me rich enough to eat here at least once a year’

The Next Culture War Front

Libertarians have generally been quite supportive of gay rights and the same-sex marriage movement. But after spending last Thursday at the LGBT summit put on by The Atlantic magazine, Elizabeth Nolan Brown of Reason said it’s about time for libertarians and gay rights activists to sign divorce papers.

Brown writes that much of the day was taken up with endless politically correct disputation about whether this or that community was adequately represented. She relates a hysterical example that hugely delayed a panel discussion featuring EEOC commissioner Chai Feldblum, a lesbian and leading light of the gay rights movement. And then:

It was one of many mind-boggling moments during the summit, an event filled with both thought-provoking speakers and brain-numbing PC platitudes; heartwarming displays of how far society has come on LGBT issues mixed with troubling signs of where the wind is blowing. It’s important to note that the summit was organized by centrist publication The Atlantic and underwritten by big businesses such as Deloitte, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and the American Federation of Teachers. It featured federal employees, former and current legislators, and one Sex in the City star. Nothing about this event could be described as remotely “fringe.” [Emphasis mine. — RD]

Brown says that David Boaz and Andrew Sullivan, both gay men who have for years advocated for gay rights, stood out from most of the speakers because they defended religious liberty at the conference. They were alone. Reports Brown:

Again and again, people scoffed at the ideas of religious liberty and of furthering LGBT equality via non-governmental means.

In contrast, Boaz stated: “I think we have millions of small businesses, and I would like to leave the heavy hand of government out of their relationships with their customers and their employees as much as possible.”

Again and again, people scoffed at the ideas of religious liberty and of furthering LGBT equality via non-governmental means.

Feldblum, however, dismissed the idea that religious beliefs could ever justify discrimination. “When someone has not been educated [about tolerance of LGBT individuals] and wants to keep discriminating,” she said, “there is only one federal government, there is only one state government, one local government that can say: We will not tolerate this in our society.”

The EEOC just brought its first two cases alleging discrimination against a transgender person, she noted, and while one of the employers had already settled, the other, a funeral home, is fighting back.

With a religious exemption to non-discrimination laws, the funeral home owner “could say, ‘well, actually, we’re religiously based,'” said Feldblum, raising her arms high and rolling her eyes. “It’s a funeral home! We do not want to allow that and the only thing that can protect us is a law that doesn’t have [a religious] exemption.”

Chai Feldblum isn’t a minor figure. She is the head of the on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, having been appointed by President Obama, and will be in that post until her term expires in 2018. Long before she was elevated to the EEOC chairmanship, Feldblum was known for her view that there are almost no situations in which disputes between religious liberty and gay rights should be resolved in favor of religious liberty.

It fell to Andrew Sullivan (whose voice I miss more and more every week) to defend freedom to the crowd. You really should read the whole Reason report to hear what he had to say. It includes a link to Andrew’s presentation, in which he says that the LGBT-industrial complex needs to keep the bogeyman of Oppression alive (“These people’s lives and careers and incomes depend on the maintenance of discrimination and oppression”), and says that religious liberty is just about the most important American freedom.

The hard truth is that Andrew Sullivan, alas for us all, is irrelevant to the debate now. When I saw him this spring in Boston, he told me that he can’t go on some campuses now because the gay left hates him for speaking out for religious liberty, and in particular for Brendan Eich. Think about that: fewer than four years ago, the president of the United States was formally committed to maintaining traditional marriage in law. Now, we have Court-mandated gay marriage from coast to coast, and Andrew Sullivan, who has done as much or more than any single person to make that happen, is now regarded by the gay rights movement as some sort of reactionary because of his liberal views.

The Law of Merited Impossibility: It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.

On Friday, I posted a link to a story in The Column magazine (a piece that had been picked up by The New York Times) reporting on the handful of Christian colleges — less than one percent of the total number of colleges in the US — that had asked for a federal waiver regarding Title IX regulations having to do with LGBT matters.  According to the story, the Obama administration had granted most of them in the last year, and the others were pending. The piece quotes a lawyer and an activist who are either filing suit in court to overturn the administration’s ruling, or urging people to do so.

In the comments on that post, several progressives said, in effect, “Hey, the government gave Christian schools what they asked for, so what’s the problem?” Others said, “Hey, if the colleges want the right to discriminate, they don’t deserve federal money.” You see in those responses precisely the Law of Merited Impossibility. We have been to this rodeo so many times that religious and social conservatives who think the status quo will hold and these LGBT activists won’t get what they want, eventually, are fools. The next Democratic presidential administration will stack the relevant posts with Chai Feldblums. The next Republican administration, though unlikely to be as radical, will be, like the Congressional GOP, half-hearted and confused on this issue, and will just want it to go away.

When I was in DC this fall, I learned from knowledgeable sources that the Congressional Republicans will do nothing for religious liberty; for them, they only see down sides to engaging on the issue. When GOP presidential candidates like Marco Rubio say they’re going to appoint SCOTUS justices who will overturn Obergefell, don’t you believe them. It’s not going to happen. No GOP president is going to burn political capital on this cause, especially given that gay marriage is supported by an increasing majority of Americans. If there is hope for religious conservatives on this issue, it’s that actively or passively, a Republican administration and Republican Congress will slow the March Of Progress.

But it will march on, because the sexual progressives have captured the heights of the culture. I’ll give you two recent examples. This kind of thing, happening over and over in the news and entertainment media, is one of the main reasons we have gay marriage now. They’re doing it for transgenders, and they’re not going to stop.

The first example is a story that appeared as a centerpiece this weekend on The New York Times‘s website; I don’t know what its placement was in the print edition, but online, it was given the most important slot, indicative of the priority with which the Times crusades for LGBT issues. For readers who dismiss what the Times has to say on anything as a provincial New York point of view, you have to understand that just as you have to read the Wall Street Journal to get a sense of what the financial elites are thinking, you have to read the Times to get a sense of what the cultural elites (in media, government, law, academia, etc.) are thinking.

This weekend, the Times celebrated one Kricket Nimmons, an HIV-positive ex-con who is one of the first New Yorkers to have her sex-change operation paid for by Medicaid.  Excerpt:

Seizing the opportunity, Ms. Nimmons was about to become one of the first low-income New Yorkers to undergo a genital reconstruction paid for by Medicaid. In a few hours, if all went well, her body would be aligned with her identity for the first time, and she would no longer be “a chick with a wiener,” in her words, but “a woman in mind, body and soul, before the Lord and before the law.”

Peering under the sheet that draped her that early October morning at a hospital outside Philadelphia, Ms. Nimmons bade farewell to what she called “my friend” — that “extra part” for which she was pronounced male at birth. Tattooed on her right forearm was her birth name, “Jerome,” complete with quotation marks.

“When I lay down and when I wake up, I’ll be a whole new creature, a whole new being,” Ms. Nimmons declared. “Out with the old, in with the new.”

Over the course of this year, Ms. Nimmons has often said she never expected to make it to 40, much less to “complete” the long, lonely journey from Jerome through Meeka (her interim name) and Magnolia Thunderpussy (her drag name) to Kricket.

Life after vaginoplasty is filled with opportunity, she finds:

Shortly before her surgery, she had unexpectedly fallen into a relationship with a 24-year-old transgender man who, as Ms. Nimmons characterized it, was “still biologically female.” This confused her.

“I’ve never had a liking to women my whole life, but he’s special,” she said.

Magnolia Thunderpussy, culture-war gladiator.

You have to get it straight in your head that Magnolia Thunderpussy, aka Kricket Nimmons, really is a hero to the cultural left, and anyone who doubts her and fails to endorse her project are villains.

The next example is Ariel Levy’s fantastic New Yorker profile of Jill Soloway, creator of the TV series Transparent, in which Jeffrey Tambor portrays an elderly man who transitions into life as an elderly woman. Transparent is not a fringe show; this year, it had 11 Emmy nominations and five wins, making it one of the most honored programs in the industry. (And like they said about the Velvet Underground in its day, itThe profile is fantastic in that it is filled with rich details about how jaw-droppingly insane Soloway and her world are. Excerpts:

Sometimes, though, Soloway sounds not entirely unlike that women’s-studies professor she played. “A patriarchal society can’t really handle that there’s such a thing as a vagina,” she said. “The untrustworthy vagina that is discerning-receiving.” Soloway, who recently turned fifty, was wearing leggings and blue nail polish and a baseball cap that said “Mister.” She sped past a stretch of Craftsmen bungalows, whose front yards were studded with bicycles, jade plants, and toys. “So you can want sex, you can want to be entered, and then a minute later you can say, ‘Stop—changed my mind,’ ” she continued. “That is something that our society refuses to allow for. You don’t feel like it now? You’re shit out of luck. You know why? Because you have a pussy! To me, that is what’s underneath all this gender trouble: most of our laws are being formed by people with penises.”

Most of our entertainment, of course, has also been formed by people with penises, and Soloway is trying to change that: through her hiring practices, her choice of subject matter, and the way she thinks and acts at work.

This description of the show’s characters and how they behave; “Maura” is Tambor’s male-to-female character:

One consequence of rebirth is a second coming of age, and both Maura and her children act out with the heedless egocentrism of adolescents. The eldest sibling, Sarah, leaves her husband to pursue an affair with her college girlfriend, after they reunite at the school that their children attend. In the second season, their relationship moves from illicit to domestic, and Sarah finds herself trapped in her own escape plan, as restless and unmoored as ever. Her brother, Josh, keeps accidentally getting women pregnant and pitching fits: he throws a chair at his boss, and shrieks at other drivers from behind the wheel. Ali, the youngest, drifts between interests and lovers, experimenting with drugs, lesbianism, yellow eye shadow, and academia. (“You can not do anything!” Maura explodes at her.)

The upside of immaturity is guileless delight, and “Transparent” has a child’s sense of amazement about the world—especially secret places where different rules apply. Maura seems free for the first time at a sylvan cross-dressing camp, where she bikes along the dirt road wearing a purple dress. The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival—which ended this summer, after forty years, largely because of conflicts over whether trans women ought to be included—is re-created in the second season as a muddy, magical oasis where women receive visions by staring into bonfires. “I’m always trying to bring the concept of play into the female gaze,” Soloway told me.

There is even an innocence to the sex scenes, which are radical and plentiful. Sarah gets a spanking—but in the forest, with a grin on her face. In Season 2 (which will become available online on December 11th), Maura has sex for the first time since her transition, with an earth mother played by Anjelica Huston. She says aloud what so many virgins have said in their minds: “I don’t know what to do.”

And:

In the utopia that Soloway envisions, I suggested, there would be no need to transition, because there would be no gender in the first place. Soloway parsed it differently: “In a few years, we’re going to look back and say, ‘When we were little, we used to think that all women had vaginas and all men had penises, but now, of course, we know that’s not true.’ ”

Eventually we learn that Soloway has just left her husband and their seven-year-old son, and taken up with a lesbian poet, who is over the moon about how nothing binds our behavior except our own will. I urge you strongly to read the entire profile, because the ending will hit you like a thunderbolt, and tell you exactly what we are dealing with here. Trust me on this. Read it.

Yes, this stuff is deeply distasteful, but attention must be paid. I hate using some of this language on this blog, but the fact that it’s appearing at all in The New York Times reveals something about the state of our culture — and again, attention must be paid.

Jill Soloway is an increasingly influential culture creator — and she has powerful media institutions like The New York Times on her side. What’s going on in our culture is far, far beyond politics, but it will drive politics and law, and not in a direction that bodes well for religious liberty. At the very least. 

This is not primarily a culture war over political power. This is spiritual warfare, as the Soloway piece makes plain for those with eyes to see. A political response is necessary, but a political response alone is radically insufficient, in part because it’s nothing but a delaying action. This Weimar America madness has to run its course. We religious conservatives had all better do everything we can to protect our institutions and our families from it. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s not going to get any easier as the years go by, no matter who sits in the White House, and we had better prepare ourselves.

 

View From Your Table

Amiens, Picardie, France

The peerless James C. writes:

Here it is, the magnificent light show that reproduces the medieval polychromatic scheme on the jaw-dropping facade of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame d’Amiens. In person it is so much brighter and more awe-inspiring than photos can capture! The Light of the Middle Ages indeed. I’ve never seen anything quite like it—one of the most luminous—and numinous—sights my eyes have ever witnessed.

If God deigns in His mercy to receive me in paradise, one of the first requests I would like to make of Him is to show me a full-colour Chartres.

A very appropriate (and tasty) drink to accompany the display: a deep blue-coloured beer called Blue Reide, made locally by the Brasserie de la Somme. It is brewed with the famous l’Or Bleu de Picardie (‘Blue Gold of Picardy’), a plant whose flowers produce a pigment (waide in Picardy dialect—woad in English) that provided one of the very few sources for blue dye and painting during the Middle Ages. The burghers of Amiens grew very prosperous from the production and trade in this during the 12th and 13th centuries, which is why they were able to build such a cathedral to Our Lady (the largest in France, with nave vaults reaching almost 140 feet above the floor!). Of course, in Western art of the era, blue is the colour most  associated with the Virgin Mary.

Islam, Christianity, Secularism

Spengler wrote the other day critical of Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslim entry into the US. Excerpt:

I never thought the day would come when I would admonish Americans to show understanding and forbearance towards Islam. In fact, Islam is neither a religion of violence nor a religion of peace: it is an ambiguous set of doctrines from which Muslims may choose peace or violence as they will. To penalize all Muslims for the actions of those Muslims who choose violence is as morally misguided as it is strategically stupid: It repudiates those Muslims who explicitly embrace a peaceful interpretation, for example the president of the largest Arab country, Egypt’s president Fatah al-Sisi. Western countries in their own self-defense need to draw a bright line between peaceful and violent Islam.

With that in mind, consider Ross Douthat’s Sunday column, in which he ponders the fear and loathing many Americans have of Islam. He says that Islam, to Western eyes, presents a stark either-or: Either Islam, as many conservatives believe, is radically incompatible with Western liberal democracy, and can never be reconciled to it; or, as many liberals believe, it is capable of assimilating to become as tame and non-threatening as most forms of Christianity and Judaism in the West. The problem with the first, says Douthat, is that it sees religion as incapable of change; the problem with the second is that it would render religion as inert and as toothless as it has become in secular Europe. More:

The good news is that there is space between these two ideas. The bad news is that we in the West can’t seem to agree on what that space should be, or how Christianity and Judaism, let alone Islam, should fit into it.

Devout Muslims watching current Western debates, for instance, might notice that some of the same cosmopolitan liberals who think of themselves as Benevolent Foes of Islamophobia are also convinced that many conservative Christians are dangerous crypto-theocrats whose institutions and liberties must give way whenever they conflict with liberalism’s vision of enlightenment.

They also might notice that many of the same conservative Christians who fear that Islam is incompatible with democracy are wrestling with whether their own faith is compatible with the direction of modern liberalism, or whether Christianity needs to enter a kind of internal exile in the West.

Read the whole thing. (By the way, the “internal exile” hyperlink will take you to the “Benedict Option FAQ” page.) Douthat suggests that Evangelicalism may provide a model for Muslims in the West to bridge the gap, but renouncing violence must be done. Not sure how one does that given the central role jihad plays in Islam, but I hope Muslims can pull this off.

I very much sympathize with Muslims living in the West who do not want their children to secularize and become deracinated consumers, like so many Western Christians, or former Christians. Yet the secular establishment cannot bring itself to state plainly that the problem of religious violence in this time in the West has overwhelmingly to do with Islam. In the UK, the Cameron government’s “counter-extremism” plans will make the state an inspector of religious content in the all the nation’s religious out-of-school organizations, not just Islamic ones — and this has British Christians in an uproar:

[A white paper under consideration by the government] says that the plans [are] “not about regulating religion” but goes on to say inspectors would be on the lookout for “undesirable teaching” including anything deemed to go against “fundamental British values”.

Anyone judged to be promoting “extremism” would be banned from working with children.

The paper argues that the fact that schools and nurseries are registered and inspected “helps ensure that pupils are properly safeguarded, including from the risk of radicalisation”.

But because other groups are not regulated in the same way, children “may be more vulnerable to the risk of extremism and other types of harm”, it insists.

Christian groups emphasised that they strongly support countering extremism but said the sweeping approach to registration envisaged in the proposals could mean that church summer clubs, youth weekends, camps, bell ringing groups or even rehearsals for nativity plays would be included.

The Cameron proposals would requite out-of-school religiously affiliated groups that meet with young people aged 19 and under for more than six hours a week to be registered with the government, and subject to state inspection to make sure they aren’t teaching the kids un-British values, whatever that is. More:

In a letter to Mrs Morgan, Colin Hart, director of the Christian Institute, called for a “targeted, intelligence-led approach” to combating radicalisation instead.

“There is a serious risk that the universal approach suggested in the DfE consultation will capture vast numbers of moderate and mainstream religious activities such as traditional Sunday schools, confirmation classes, choir practice, bell ringing and performing nativity plays,” he said.

“All of these meet the department’s suggested criteria for what constitutes an ‘out-of-school’ educational setting.

“The church running these activities will pass the six-hour threshold cumulatively where they involve, as they often do, the same children.”

So legitimate fear of terrorism, and legitimate concern about radical Islam, is providing the government with a justification to extend the reach of the state massively into the lives of all religious people in the UK, to make sure religion teaches what the state wants it to.

Peter Hitchens notes the recent publication of a blue-ribbon panel studying religion in contemporary British public life, and is frustrated that it recommends further de-Christianization in Britain as a fact of living under secularism and multiculturalism. Hitchens writes:

Now, these modernisers have a point of view. I have a lot of time for atheists, humanists and members of other religions from my own. At least they’re interested in what seems to me, more and more, to be the most important question we face – what sort of universe is this? (Full disclosure: I am an old-fashioned Broad Church Anglican, 1662 Prayer Book, King James Bible and all.) But the idea that we should carry on adapting Britain and England to ideas and religions from elsewhere seems to me to be a mistake. All we have and are is based on the Christian faith, which has shaped law, government, morals, music, landscape and education here for a thousand years. Abandon it, and what holds up the trust which keeps us from chaos?

I accept that Christianity is dying fast in this country. I know that many schools teach religion badly, if at all, and that ignorance is everywhere. But there is more than one response to this. You could say, as this ‘report’ does, that we should accept that this isn’t a Christian country any more, and adapt it to become a sort of religious salad of all faiths and none.

You could give up trying to teach Christianity as a living faith, and instead get children to study it as a quaint, eccentric curiosity. Or – and the weeks around Christmas are a good time to say this – we could say that we still have a chance to rebuild and restore what has been lost.

Why do we so lack the confidence to do this, and readily abandon a heritage of such power and beauty, which has brought us so much good, for a multicultural wasteland in which a dozen competing faiths squabble in the ruins, and everyone else bows to the neon gods of consumerism?

Because non serviam.

And if Cameron’s “counter-extremism” plans go through, the government will now have its inspectors poking their noses into every religious group in the country, however innocuous, to make sure there is no exposure to thoughts and beliefs not approved of by the State.

These cosmopolitan liberals of the British establishment are going to use this against Christians, mark my words, on the grounds of fighting “extremism” and establishing “British values.” What constitutes “British values”? What if a church teaches that no one comes to God except through Jesus Christ? Is that un-British, because a violation of multicultural dogma?

We have a First Amendment in the US that offers us a lot more protection, but we face the same question being put to UK Christians (and all religious believers there) more strongly by their government. To paraphrase Douthat, “Is religious faith compatible with where modern liberalism is headed?”

My answer, as you will have guessed is that no, it is not — at least any religion that refuses to assimilate and thereby sign its own death warrant.

The Establishment — the state, the media, the academy, the law, corporations — will grow less and less tolerant as America becomes more secular, as is likely to happen given the stark falling-away from religion of the millennials. And then what will we Christians do? British Christians are facing this calamity because 70 percent of Britons say they have no religious belief, and therefore likely don’t see a problem with the government’s proposal, or even support it.

Now is the time to start thinking and talking about this, an acting on it. If you think voting Republican is going to solve this long-term problem, you are deluded. Politics has a role to play, but in the end, politics reflect the will of the people, and if a majority of the people lose their faith, and with it goes an appreciation for religious liberty, politics will avail us nothing.

Watch Your Back

Kobby Dagan / Shutterstock.com

Tonight we were sitting in a restaurant that had a big TV screen across the room. On TV was a rodeo event: bull-riding. We saw riders being bucked and thrashed violently. All I could think about was, “Their backs! Their backs!”

For me, this is new. As you may recall, I had a serious episode with my back going out in early September. The back got better, but in October, I re-injured my back much worse. It has mostly healed, but I’ve recently had a setback. The thing I’m learning is that when you have had a back injury, you walk around thinking that any small thing — a false step, a too-quick turn — will be the thing that makes the whole stack of vertebrae fall down. It’s an incredibly tense way to make it through the world, I’m finding. These days I’m walking like an old man, and understanding why old men walk in that stiff fashion. One is always aware of the pain, even if it’s at a low grade (as mine is right now), and always aware that things could get much worse instantly.

It has been a gift in one way, though. My wife suffers from degenerative discs in her neck, and has been in near-constant low level pain for 13 years (except on occasions when she’s in terrible pain). This is all new to me, and the upside of it is it has given me a lot more empathy for her.

My advice to everybody these days is: don’t do anything to screw up your back. It’s miserable. I can’t watch any athletic event on TV without analyzing it in terms of how badly the athletes are likely to screw up their backs.

What Cardinal Dolan Knew

The parishioners at St. Frances de Chantal Catholic Church in the Bronx have had it with their pastor, Fr. Peter Miqueli, who allegedly brought habits of gross misconduct from his previous parish on Roosevelt Island into St. Frances. The Bronx parishioners, along with some of Miqueli’s former flock on Roosevelt Island, have filed a $1 million lawsuit in an effort to get him ousted and defrocked. The NY Daily News reports:

Timothy Cardinal Dolan and the archdiocese are also named as defendants in the Manhattan court papers.

The lawsuit charges the church hierarchy, in an echo of the pedophilia scandal, with covering up for the pervert priest.

“We can’t understand it,” said Bronx parishioner Jack Lynch. “It seems they are going out of their way to protect him, and for years. We suspect a scandal behind the scandal.”

The Daily News reports that the ex-girlfriend of the priest’s alleged boy-toy-for-hire alerted Cardinal Timothy Dolan and other Archdiocese of New York officials earlier this year about what Father Miqueli was up to. The New York Post quotes at length from the e-mails in a story today. Be warned: this is sick, sick stuff. Excerpt:

The scorned ex-girlfriend of an S&M “master” to a Catholic priest went right to the top and sent Timothy Cardinal Dolan ­e-mails that were hardly suitable for church — laying out details of the romps that were allegedly funded with cash skimmed from the poor box.

Tatyana Gudin shared with The Post her message to the cardinal that recounted how the Rev. Peter Miqueli allegedly wore a locked Lucite chastity belt along with a dog collar during pricey sessions with his bodybuilder lover.

She also claimed to the pope’s right-hand man in America that Miqueli had an interfaith fantasy of being humiliated in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in front of a “nice Jewish girl.”

Miqueli, meanwhile, remained a pastor of St. Frances de Chantal in the Throggs Neck neighborhood of The Bronx on Friday.

More:

Gudin, Crist’s former girlfriend and confidante of 10 years, said she sounded the alarm about Miqueli in her e-mails to Dolan over the summer.

The first one began with, “I would like to tell you who your priest, Father Miqueli, really is.”

“Keith has been Father Miquelis gay, for-pay prostitute,” the e-mail reads.

“More specifically, Father Miqueli is Keith Crist’s toilet slave,” Gudin wrote Dolan.

“If you don’t know what that means, Cardinal, I will break it down for you . . . Keith Crist uses Father Miqueli as his toilet, [deleted passage — RD] during their weekly, 3 day get-togethers when they take off to Father Miquelis house in Brick, NJ, far away from prying eyes.”

Miqueli bought the white brick ranch house for $264,000 in embezzled cash in 2009, the lawsuit alleges.

The house features a hot tub in the back and a statue of the Virgin Mary out front.

“Father Miqueli has a full-blown dungeon in the house,” she wrote Dolan.

Read the whole thing here, if you can stand it. 

Joseph Zwilling, the spokesman for the Archdiocese, sent out this e-mail to parishioners on Friday. Excerpt:

First, I cannot and will not comment on the specifics of the lawsuit itself.  As this is a legal matter, I will let the lawyers handle that in court.

But, I can say that there are a group of individuals at St. Francis de Chantal parish who have made some serious allegations concerning Fr. Miqueli.  The archdiocese has, from the beginning, taken these allegations seriously, and has been investigating them, including conducting a forensic audit of the parish, which is still on-going. One of our auxiliary bishops, Bishop John Jenik, has met with the parishioners, in an effort to try to hear their concerns and reach a resolution, along with a distinguished group of legal professionals.

To date we have found nothing to substantiate the allegations that have been raised, and, in fact, with regard to the parish finances, we know that the allegation that Father Miqueli stole $1 million from each parish, as was alleged by the plantiffs’ attorney, is completely false.  We did find that Father Miqueli had deficient management and administrative practices, and have put forward several directives to remedy those deficiencies.

Here’s what I don’t get: if you are the Cardinal Archbishop of New York, and you are credibly told that one of your priests is in an extremely kinky relationship with a gay prostitute, don’t you call that priest into your office the very next day and give him the third degree? Or at least the next day? Or the day after that?

Leaving aside the financial mismanagement charges, there are three possibilities here:

1) the Archdiocese investigated these allegations of grotesque sexual misconduct and found them groundless;

2) the Archdiocese investigated, found these allegations true, but chose not to act on them; or

3) the Archdiocese never investigated the allegations

If these salacious allegations against Fr. Miqueli are false, the Archdiocese should say so unambiguously, and clear his name.

If the Archdiocese did not take the allegations seriously, it owes the people of the Archdiocese an explanation as to why not, especially in an era of so-called zero tolerance in the Church.

If the Archdiocese substantiated these allegations against Fr. Miqueli, but left him in parish ministry, it owes the people of the Archdiocese an explanation.

The website of the activist parishioners answers the Zwilling letter. Excerpt:

While Zwilling continues to protect our pastor, Fr. Peter Miqueli, there are elements of his defense that are utterly false. He says that “The archdiocese has, from the beginning, taken these allegations seriously,” but this is hardly true. Had they been taking us seriously, we would not have had to go to the media for them to listen to us. For the past three years we have reached out to them and have been stonewalled with the most minimal efforts of help.

​

​He says that a current forensic audit by the archdiocese is currently taking place. If the archdiocese is trying to protect itself, which as every time they issue a statement it is evident they are, the audit will be sloppy and not turn up any wrongdoing. Taking the audit into their own hands is suspicious and cannot be trusted.

​

One thing that Zwilling absolutely fails to comment on is Fr. Miqueli’s relationship with Keith Crist. This is a completely true, and sickening fact. There is no question about the two and their relations. The archdiocese has been well aware of the two being together and yet has done absolutely nothing, showing that they clearly approve of what is occurring.

Lastly, anything that has been said by our parish about Fr. Miquei is more true than anything the archdiocese has said or will say. The archdiocese is in the defense and is well experienced in covering things up. We as parishioners have gone to such lengths because of our convictions of Fr. Peter Miqueli. We have dealt with him and have personally witnessed his wrongdoing. The archdiocese has not. For them to try to understand the situation by staying in their offices and not really meeting with us to learn more about the situation, they cannot grasp the suffering we have been going through.

​In this situation, the archdiocese has something to lose. They have secrets they are protecting and Fr. Miqueli is a crucial element in them. If we did not stand firm in our attitude toward Fr. Miqueli, we would not have been fighting this for as long as we have been. The archdiocese, Cardinal Dolan, Zwilling, and Fr. Miqueli made this into the media circus that is has become. If the archdiocese had nothing to hide, and really cared about the issue at hand when first brought up three years ago, the extent to which this has escalated, would not have occurred.

This all bears watching. The sense among these activist parishioners is that a lavender mafia within the Archdiocesan administration has been protecting Miqueli. If true, what does Miqueli have on them?

After all these years, it is clear that the only way anything will change in these situations is if ordinary parishioners get sick and tired of being used and abused by the clericalist establishment, and fight back. The Catholic hierarchy has deeply damaged its own credibility. This is a problem entirely of its own making.

UPDATE: Cardinal Dolan says today that the ex-girlfriend didn’t show up at a meeting she agreed to, for the sake of discussing the e-mails, so he turned the e-mails over to the DA. He’s hurt that anybody thinks the Archdiocese would have been behaving in anything but a respectable way.

This makes little sense. For one, why would he have to meet with the woman to see evidence that she says she had already e-mailed him? For another, this sounds like a dodge by the cardinal. The DA doesn’t care about what a priest does with another consenting adult, however sordid it may be. This is not a hard case. Cardinal Dolan, if he cared to get to the bottom of the sexual allegations, could have and should have called Fr. Miqueli in on that first week to ask about them. He could have undertaken an investigation, and talked to parishioners. It does not appear that he has done that, even though he has known about the gay sadomasochistic romps for months.

UPDATE.2: Father Miqueli is out at St. Frances de Chantal. Out, as in “no longer the pastor there.” As for the rest of it, we’ll see.

Erroneous Christian Schools Have No Rights

Now that gay marriage is here, you didn’t think that would be the end of things, did you? The Column reports on colleges and universities that have sought, and in most cases received, religious exemptions from Title IX requirements. The story frames these schools as bigot colleges (“Training schools to discriminate”). Excerpts:

Nearly three dozen religious institutions of higher learning have asked the federal government to waive laws that protect LGBT students, according to government documents obtained by The Column. The schools are asking the U.S. Department of Education to waive portions of Title IX that might apply to students and staff who are transgender or who are in same-sex relationships. Twenty-seven schools have been granted a waiver from Title IX by the department in the last year, many with the help of conservative religious organizations. Another nine have applications pending.

When Title IX was passed in 1972 to combat discrimination based on sex, Congress added a small but powerful provision that states that an educational institution that is “controlled by a religious organization” does not have to comply if Title IX “would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization.”

These “right-to-discriminate” waivers were relatively rare until the last year. A handful were requested in the 1980s and 1990s, many by religious schools who wanted to ensure they could prevent women from being hired in leadership roles without running afoul of discrimination laws.

That changed in 2014 when the Obama administration issued guidance that the Title IX discrimination prohibition “extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity,” meaning that entities receiving federal funding could not discriminate against transgender and gender nonconforming people.

Which is why these traditionalist Christian schools are seeking the exemption. But according to LGBT activists, these religious colleges must not be allowed to get away with it:

“The trend of religiously affiliated, but publicly financed, colleges receiving exemptions from the U.S. Department of Education in order to discriminate against LGBTQ students and employees is disturbing,” attorney Paul Southwick told The Column. “While we are seeing increased protections for transgender, intersex and LGB students through Title IX, we are also seeing the protections of Title IX gutted at the very institutions where students need those protections the most.”

Southwick has represented students who have filed action against Christian schools after having been expelled for being LGBT.

For students that do find themselves being disciplined or expelled from a college or university simply because of their LGBT identity, there are actions those students can take.

“First, if there is still time, students should file an internal appeal of any decision to expel, suspend or discipline them,” he said. Most institutions have an appeal process, but Southwick notes that some students may want to hire a lawyer for assistance with appeals.

“Additionally, students should file a Title IX complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Southwick said. “This is important and should always be done. Even if their college has a religious exemption from Title IX, the exemption may not apply or it may not stick after being challenged.”

He also suggests that students file a complaint with accreditation institutions, and to check state and local nondiscrimination laws.

According to another LGBT activist:

“Discrimination is never okay,” Windmeyer told The Column. “For these schools to espouse that their religion sanctions discrimination against any young person is careless and life-threatening. This list needs to be made public every time a school files for a Title IX exemption. It is shameful and wrong.”

He said exposing schools that apply for the Title IX exemptions is important for families and prospective students. “Families deserve to know that this list of schools are not loving, safe spaces for any young person to live, learn and grow — and taxpayers should definitely not have to pay for a private college to openly discriminate against anyone.”

Read the whole thing. You had better, so you can know what’s coming.

Notice what’s happening here. That second activist describes attempts by religious colleges to continue to run their schools by the tenets of their religion as “life-threatening” — an outrageous piece of rhetoric that is par for the course with LGBT activists, who often claim that any resistance at all to whatever they’re asking for this week is tantamount to a death sentence.

Second, the activists quoted are not satisfied to live and let live. LGBT students have every right to know what the policies of various colleges are regarding their status, before they apply. And if they disagree with it, well, don’t go to school there. There are roughly 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States. The number that have asked for Title IX exemptions amount to .0075 .75 percent of the total. And yet, that is too much for these activists to tolerate.

Error has no rights. It is not enough for these bullies to win; every single one of their opponents, no matter how tiny and weak, must lose.

No realistic person expects a school that chooses to stand on traditional Christian teaching with regard to its LGBT policies to escape public criticism. But they ought to be left alone to live out their own religious vision — if the First Amendment matters, that is. If not, well, let’s get that learned.

I want every presidential candidate on the record about what he or she thinks about Title IX exemptions for religious schools and colleges. What they say tells us all something important about how much they respect religious liberty.

Remember our old friend the Law of Merited Impossibility (“It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it”)? Well, I told you so.

 

A Black Student Not Ready For Elite College

Here’s a very good short piece by Afi-Odelia Scruggs, who graduated from the University of Chicago in the 1970s, and earned a PhD in Slavic linguistics from Brown. She writes in response to Justice Scalia’s remark that black students who aren’t adequately prepared to do first-rank college work should not attend first-rank colleges, but lesser ones. Scruggs tells how she got into Chicago because of affirmative action, and it kicked her butt. But she worked really hard, graduated, and went on to great academic success. In the four years of grinding out her undergraduate degree at a place she was not ready for, Scruggs learned a few things. Among them:

How to advocate for myself: My teachers showed me subtly and overtly that they didn’t think I was smart enough to attend the university. I stopped trying to show them otherwise. My goal was to become a University of Chicago alumna. I found a mentor. I pulled all-nighters studying and writing papers. I raised the money to attend a summer language institute in Vermont. My teachers marveled when I returned speaking fluently. I knew then that my work had paid off.

How to become entitled: I watched the white kids around me with awe. If they wanted to drive across country, somehow they finagled a car, gas, and places to stay. If they decided to learn the blues, they ended up hanging out with the best guitarists on the South Side of Chicago. They took their good fortune in stride, as if it was the way of the world.

Until I came to college, I’d never lived intimately with people who assumed life would unfurl for them. My expectations swelled. I might have to yank at the knobs, but doors would open for me.

How culturally limited white people really can be: My dorm kitchen was the hangout, where we cooked and chatted. One evening a couple friends glanced at the vegetable I was chopping.

“What’re you fixing?” one asked.

“It’s a sweet potato,” I said, puzzled.

“A what?”

I was stunned. If sweet potatoes were foreign to them, what else was? More importantly, what did I know that they didn’t? Growing up in the South, I’d placed white folks on a pedestal. In college, I began to dismantle that throne.

There’s more here.  Scruggs’s piece doesn’t refute Scalia’s point, but it does provide a strong, if anecdotal, answer to it. Lots to think about there.

 

Hating the GOP Counterestablishment

A reader writes on the “Trump vs. the GOP Establishment” thread, in which I asked conservative and Republican readers if they hate the Republican establishment, and why:

What is the Establishment one is talking about? The Wall Stree/Silicon Valley money guys or movement conservatism? I’m not an insider by a long shot but I’ve tended to distinguish the two.

I think the leaders of both “groups” are sweating balls. And so be it. I’m a Moderate Republican who incessantly gets chided with the RINO epithete from ex-Democrats who tried to make the GOP into their own little Conservative chapel. As a I see it, Conservative Republicans are now getting served the über-version of what they’ve been peddling for the past 20 years or so on talk radio, on Fox, and in politics high and low. To the GOP’s Hubris, comes Trump whose true name is Nemesis.

That being said, I hope the best for the Republican Party.

The reader raises an interesting point that David Brooks takes on in his column today: that there are two Republican establishments. Brooks:

During the 1970s conservatives self-consciously built establishment institutions to counter the liberal establishment. But with the election of Ronald Reagan, the conservative establishment split into two. There was the regular conservative establishment, filled with mainstream conservatives who wanted to use the inside levers of power that Republicans now controlled.

But there was also a conservative counter-establishment. This was populated with people like Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, Brent Bozell and others who were temperamentally incapable of governance. Many of these Old Right people broke with Reagan because he wasn’t ideologically pure on this or that policy matter.

Today the conservative community still has at least two establishments, or three if you want to throw in the young Reform Conservatives. The mainstream establishment tends to side with party leaders like Paul Ryan and whoever the presidential nominee is. The Old Right Counter Conservative Establishment has grown in recent years. For example, the Heritage Foundation, which used to be more or less conservative establishment, has gone more Counter Establishment.

The difference is the establishment wants to use the levers of power to practically pass reforms. The Counter Establishment believes that Washington is pervasively corrupt and is implacably hostile to the G.O.P. leadership.

Brooks’s column is devoted to discussing Ted Cruz as an avatar of the Counterestablishment.

Are you a conservative and/or a Republican who hates the GOP Counterestablishment? If so, why?

It occurs to me that if I’m asking readers to put their cards on the table, I should do the same with mine. In my case, I don’t “hate” either one. I don’t care enough about politics any longer to hate any faction, even among the liberals and the Democrats. That’s not so much a virtue as it is the effect of sheer exhaustion turning into indifference.

I am a conservative who doesn’t care for the GOP Establishment primarily because I see it as far too militaristic, eager for war, and beholden to Wall Street’s interests over Main Street’s. I think they tend to see society as a market, not a family. The party’s leadership sees social and religious conservatives as its useful idiots — and it can do this because it knows we have nowhere else to go with our votes. I may end up voting for this kind of Republican by default, but I don’t like it.

But I am a conservative who doesn’t care for the GOP Counterestablishment either. It is far too ideologically driven, and conspicuously lacks the virtue of prudence. Brooks is right: it is temperamentally incapable of governance. True, you have some antiwar people like Ron Paul, but most of the Counterestablishment strikes me as being just as hawkish as the Establishment (for example, Ted Cruz promised to nuke the Middle East). It’s powered not by principled reason, but by the passions of talk radio. I may end up voting for this kind of Republican by default, but I don’t like it.

There is no home for conservatives like me in the Republican Party. This is why my conservatism is primarily social, cultural and religious, and seeks social, cultural and religious expression.

So, let me repeat: Are you a conservative and/or a Republican who hates the GOP Counterestablishment? If so, why?

I request that only Republicans and conservatives answer this one. And I request that Republicans and conservatives who do answer keep their opinions about David Brooks to themselves, and stick to the question.