Philip Zodhiates is still in prison

[See update in the next post.]

I have been wanting to say something about Philip Zodhiates for some time, because he is still in federal prison, a true prisoner of conscience, and because I now have more readers of my work who are probably completely unaware of the case. People are often shocked when I describe it.

Check out the tag, here, for more posts. But briefly, here is a summary:

More than eighteen years ago, Lisa Miller entered into a civil union with Janet Jenkins in Vermont. (Please remember this story next time someone advocates civil unions as not as "bad" from a conservative p.o.v. as gay "marriage." They're legally identical.)

During this civil union, Miller conceived and bore a child by using a sperm donor. The little girl, Isabella, was only eighteen months old when Miller left the relationship and formally broke it up legally. Miller converted to Christianity, left the homosexual lifestyle behind her, and fled to Virginia to keep her child away from Jenkins, who represented all that she had repented of and was now leaving behind. Jenkins, let us bear in mind, is not in any way related to Isabella and has not lived with her since she was eighteen months old.

Vermont courts, to whom the custody decision was ultimately given, treated the unrelated lesbian Jenkins as Isabella's "other mother" and insisted on unsupervised visitation, even though Jenkins was, from Isabella's perspective, a stranger. Isabella made some of these visits but was so upset by them (and alleged that Jenkins had bathed with her naked) that Miller refused to allow any more such visits with Jenkins, who had neither any natural claim on Isabella whatsoever nor any relationship with her. Miller became so concerned by Isabella's statements and by her bizarre behaviors at such a young age (including the sudden onset of open masturbation and saying she wanted to kill herself) that she eventually refused to allow unsupervised visits. The Vermont judge and Jenkins refused to compromise (e.g., to limit Jenkins only to supervised, non-overnight visits). Miller exhausted all her legal options. Eventually the judge was poised to order full custoy to Jenkins to punish Miller for denying Jenkins unsupervised "parental" visits (even though she was not in any sense at all the child's parent).

At that point, Miller fled the country with her little girl. (My understanding is that at the time of her flight she still had official legal custody of Isabella.) She apparently fled successfully to Nicaragua. In doing so she had help to drive across state lines from Philip Zodhiates and help with arranging her flight from Mennonite Pastor Kenneth Miller (no relation). Mennonite missionary Timothy Miller (also no relation) helped her in Nicaragua.

Many years have passed now. Isabella has recently turned eighteen, wherever she is. Lisa is still technically a fugitive from "justice." You see, the U.S. federal government declared this an international kidnapping, and it set out to punish Lisa and everyone who had helped her.

Kenneth Miller has served a several-year federal prison sentence. Philip Zodhiates is currently serving a three-year prison sentence. Timothy Miller was extradited from Nicaragua (even though Nicaragua technically has no extradition agreement with the U.S.) and before being shipped back was literally kept in a Nicaraguan dungeon in very rough conditions. He has since had his sentence commuted to probation but must stay in the U.S. and as far as I know is still in that situation.

Nor will these men's ordeal be over after they are done serving prison time. Not only is Zodhiates at least (and possibly Kenneth Miller?) many thousands of dollars in debt for legal fees, but Janet Jenkins, like some bizarre Inspector Javert, is attempting to ruin them yet furtehr and anyone who was Lisa's lawyer back at the time via a civil lawsuit for depriving her of Isabella's company. That lawsuit is moving at the speed of molasses, which I suppose is a good thing in a way, but it is supposed to gear back up this spring some time.

Zodhiates sought a compassionate release as a non-violent prisoner during Covid (that did happen for various people even in federal prison), but since "international kidnapping" is deemed a violent crime by definition, he was denied. Naturally, when The Orange One was issuing pardons and clemencies all over the place in his last days, these folks were not among those pardoned. This could also have been done earlier in his term. In fairness, it's possible that no one had his ear to bring the cases before him.

Philip Zodhiates keeps his spirits up via his faith in God. He and all of these men, to my mind, exemplify to an astonishing extent the injunction to be "blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world" (Philippians 2:15).

Zodhiates has a prison blog that is mostly musings about Scripture and faith. It's found here. For a long time it wasn't being updated, even though (via an e-mail list) I knew that he was writing entries. I made some inquiries, and since then a few of his entries since August, 2020, have been posted. Here is the crowdfunding site for him. Here was Pastor Ken Miller's blog during his imprisonment, which has stopped being updated since he was released. I find that one is likely to get e-mail updates if one joins the crowdfunding effort for Zodhiates.

It is interesting to me that things are getting so much worse now in America, in terms of censorship. (Focus on the Family was just bumped from Twitter for saying that a man cannot turn into a woman. Hate speech, y'know.) And yet this case goes back ten years!

I find that many people are shocked to learn that men have served and one is still serving time in federal prison for the "crime" of helping an ex-lesbian who repented escape with her daughter so that her young daughter would not be turned over to her former lesbian lover. The case is not much talked about or known, even among those who continue to be conservative or remotely sane on these issues.

I am grateful that it seems that these men have been protected physically in prison. Pray for Philip Zodhiates and also for the others who will be targeted by the civil lawsuit. Also, pray that Zodhiates will be able to find new lawyers. His previous lawyers were apparently offended when he made an appeal for his sentence to be vacated on the grounds that his lawyers refused at his trial to bring up the concerns that he had about sexual abuse which were a part of his motivation for driving Lisa to New York as part of her escape. So now he needs new lawyers, not to mention needing money to hire them. I have a feeling he's going to find a lot of his fellow Christians shockingly weak-willed when he gets out of prison, having been through the fire and having been involved in prison ministry from the inside.

Why do the heathen rage?

Sweet Cakes By Melissa has officially announced that it is closed for good, just a few days ago on the bakery's Facebook page. See here and here.

Around the same time the New York Times decided to run this story, following up on an elderly Christian couple forced out of the wedding venue and B & B business by the homosexual mafia. Do they really have the slightest genuine sympathy for them? They manage to create a sympathetic-sounding story, but it's the Times, so they'd probably run them out of business again if necessary. Nothing personal. Just a matter of business.

Meanwhile, I can get no further information about Mennonite missionary to Nicaragua Timothy Miller, about whom I wrote here. Is he still held there in limbo? We can only pray.

Psalm 2

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,

Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

Psalm 37

Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.

For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.

Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.

Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.

Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.

For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.

For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.

But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.

The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming.

The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation.

Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.

[snip]

I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.

Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.

But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.

But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord: he is their strength in the time of trouble.

And the Lord shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.

Inflammatory language, perversions, and the church

This new push to downplay pedophilia was shared with appropriate outrage on Facebook lately.

What I want to point out here is the danger that this sort of talk poses specifically to those, including Christians, who have leaned in the wrong way on the act-orientation distinction concerning homosexuality. It is entirely possible that we will be asked, to be consistent, to apply the act-orientation distinction in the same way to pedophilia, and I'm afraid that some won't know how to reply and will be sitting ducks for what is, in effect, a partial normalization and, at a minimum, a desensitization.

Many Christians have been so concerned about the charge of homophobia and so eager to show love toward homosexual individuals that they have applied the act-orientation distinction in a confused way. I'm not saying that there is no such distinction nor that it is never relevant to bring up. But I think the contexts in which it makes a big difference to our actions are fewer and narrower than some may think. If you are a pastor or priest advising someone in private on whether he's sinning, then it is relevant and appropriate to tell him that having temptations and inclinations toward homosexuality is not in and of itself a sin, as though he sins just by breathing in and out. At the same time, there is a delicate matter even there concerning fantasies, entertaining thoughts, self-identity, and so forth, so it's still not cut and dried. The homosexual, even the Christian, who goes around loudly proclaiming his problem and demanding that everybody must accept him and complaining about how he's not sufficiently accepted is, most likely, sinning in thought with some frequency. So a non-naive pastor counseling such a person shouldn't just keep telling him over and over again that his orientation isn't a sin. But, okay, the act-orientation distinction is relevant there.

It's not nearly so obviously relevant to issues of discrimination, and especially not if the person is "out." There are all sorts of issues of discretion, morale, normalization, and so forth that are created by an "out" homosexual, especially one with a chip on his shoulder, especially in a business or non-profit that aims for a high moral tone. And there are direct practical issues in a residential context, such as a college, camp, retreat, and traveling. Who even can be the appropriate roommate, with all the loss of privacy that entails, of a person with same-sex attraction disorder? So already when Christians (and, I'm sorry to say, the catechism of the Catholic Church) go on about how baaad discrimination is on the basis of sexual orientation, they are doing a disservice to clarity of thought.

But there's even more. Here are two false implications of an overuse and misguided use of the act-orientation distinction that will come back to haunt us as the push for "understanding" pedophilia starts to ramp up:

1) The false implication that all sins are equal. No, they are not. Scripture never teaches that all sins are equally bad, it teaches the contrary, and common sense teaches us that all sins are not equally destructive in a social context. Hence, the temptation to all sins is not an equal problem. The fact that a man is tempted to a sexual perversion ought to create more complexities in which jobs he can hold, how to arrange for his accommodations when he travels, and in many other areas, than the fact that a man is tempted to gluttony. That's just how it is. But saying that "the orientation isn't sinful, and we're all sinners and tempted to sin in many different ways" glosses over these practical and moral facts.

2) The false implication that disgust is an inappropriate feeling for normal people to have in response to finding out about a "mere" orientation. The idea seems to be that if the "mere" orientation isn't a sin, we shouldn't feel disgusted when we learn about it, because that is "phobic" and unloving. Baloney. Pedophilia is an obvious counterexample, and we're going to have big problems if we continue on this path that says we're not supposed to feel, act, or convey disgust about anything as long as it's "just" an orientation.

It's a tragedy that there are people who have same-sex attraction disorder and who are upset and don't want it. For that matter, it's a worse tragedy, in a different way, that there are homosexuals who are proud of their orientation and their acts. But what even those who resist and don't act are tempted toward, what they are oriented toward, is a perversion. It was a mistake for Christians to stop saying that. I think we said to ourselves, "What possible value could there be in using inflammatory language such as 'pervert'? That just looks unloving. We don't want to look like those Westboro Baptist types" (always a useful comparison for getting as much compliance and apology as possible from Christians). "It's just a pointless insult." Well, no. To say that someone is a sexual pervert by orientation, even if he does not act on it, is to retain the knowledge of the unnaturalness of what he is inclined toward. It is to remind ourselves and those to whom we speak that his temptation is not merely contrary to God's law but also contrary to nature, and that this matters. But errors #1 and #2 tell us that we aren't supposed to know this, that we are supposed to elide it. So much of our language becomes conciliatory and deliberately erases all references to disordered affections and perversion: "The LGBT community," "God loves gay people very much," and the like.

These two errors are going to turn on us when it comes to pedophilia. Because frankly, if #1 and #2 are true, then why not try to eradicate disgust from our thought and language concerning people who "merely" have a pedophile orientation? If it is a settled doctrine that all sins are equal, then "all" presumably means "all" without exception, so this one should be included. If disgust is generally a wrong feeling to have concerning any "mere" orientation, then that's it. The principle is set.

If we should try as hard as we can not to "discriminate" on the basis of a "mere" orientation, then presumably we should try as hard as we can to accommodate even an "out" pedophile in as many activities as possible, even if we have to restrict him, for safety reasons, from some activities involving children. Anything like broader avoidance on the part of, say, people with children would be cruel, right? Notice that in the interview linked above the woman "researcher" is very uncomfortable when the interviewer suggests that he should in general try to keep his children away from pedophiles. She never agrees with him on this principle. Instead she turns the question to "child pedophiles," with the obvious implication that keeping such children away from other children would be wrong, so "we" have to find some other way to deal with them. In the Salon article last year garnering sympathy for non-offending pedophiles, the author explicitly states that there are pedophiles he would "trust with" his own children, if he had any.

Moreover, if there is no shame in being "out" about one's inclinations to sexual perversions, because then one can "get help" and because then we as Christians have a chance to show our love and kindness, then why should "coming out" as a pedophile be TMI when coming out as "gay" isn't TMI? The whole idea about discretion and not telling the whole world about your sexual perversions has been abandoned wholesale in the Christian community, even among conservative Christians, with the support groups for homosexuals and the praise for coming out. How are we ever going to reclaim the notion of discretion and the condemnation of TMI, how are we ever going to affirm again that there could be something good about being "in the closet," at least as far as the general community is concerned? We've pretty much tossed those ideas out, and we'll just have to say that "it's different this time" when it comes to some new perversion for which our compassion and support are being urged. To be consistent, I think we will need to back up and say that, after all, it isn't such a great thing for homosexuals to be coming out either, that we don't all need to know about that, and that if you really recognize that what you are experiencing is a desire contrary both to the law of God and to the law of nature, you will understand (except in unusual situations) that you need to exercise discretion and discuss this only with specific people who need to know. And voluntarily exclude yourself from activities inappropriate to you given your problem. Once these principles are established again in our minds, and once we as social conservatives and Christians don't feel ashamed of ourselves for having such principles, we can think more clearly about how to apply them in various situations and to other perversions.

We will also be in a position to recognize the extremely fine line between encouraging people to be "out" about something and abandoning opposition to it. This has come up again and again and again in "support groups" for homosexuals in churches and Christian colleges. Repeatedly the deliberate eradication of shame in being out, the hugging and kissing and support, the frantic urge to assure everyone that we are not phobic, and the formation of open groups explicitly oriented (pun intended) to something so vague as the "support" of people with certain perversions, have resulted in the erosion of opposition to the acts, just as these practices have involved a deliberate erasure of disgust at the outset. After all, how bad can it really be if everybody is telling you all the time that they have this problem? How bad can it be if we are all urged not to discriminate on the basis of someone's having this problem (as long as he doesn't "act on it")? How bad can it really be if the main message we are hearing is that we as Christians need to be kinder, more accepting, less ostracizing, more supportive, and so forth?

Once we admit that it was a mistake to have "support groups" connected with Christian organizations and churches, a mistake to encourage general coming out, a mistake to abandon the "inflammatory" language of disorder and perversion, and a mistake to try so hard to be upbeat and sentimental as part of being loving, we will be able to apply those lessons learned to worse things.

Sometimes you can't go forward without going back. The church's treatment of perversion is one such area.

The courage of Ken Miller

I am not up to expressing eloquently how much Pastor Ken Miller should humble us, his fellow Christians. Here is his first update from federal prison. He is there for helping a woman and her little girl to escape the country when the little girl was going to be turned over, full custody, to an unrelated lesbian who used to be in a sexual relationship with the girl's repentant mother. The U.S. federal government has pursued him and finally has him in federal prison for two years. He is in the deepest sense a prisoner of conscience. I would go so far as to call him a political prisoner in the U.S.

His gentleness and holiness through this ordeal are deeply moving.

By the way, there is a "donate" button at the site for helping Pastor Miller's church to support his large family while he is in prison. Consider clicking on it.

Kim Davis, metaphysics, and the public square

I don't need to link to them. You can find them everywhere--in the blogosphere, among the pundits, on your Facebook feed. Some friends you are surprised at, too. Even people who said that Obergefell was a disastrously wrong decision, even people who oppose homosexual "marriage" (some of them). Now Kim Davis, Kentucky county clerk, has actually acted on the premise that Obergefell was a lawless, made-up, unconstitutional farce, that marriage literally cannot exist between two men or two women, and these people are shocked, shocked to find a person who stands on principle against a court order. Now she has allegedly placed herself against "the rule of law," as though Obergefell had anything whatsoever to do with the rule of law. As though the postmodern, lawless bloviatings of Justice Kennedy were not as far as possible from the rule of law. And then the smug talk: If she won't "do her job" she should resign. Should, mind you. Not just could resign. Not, "resigning would be an option." No, according to these people, she should resign. It's her duty. She must make way for others who will issue licenses to two men to carry out their ersatz unions and give them the name of marriage.

What is all of this? Is it not clear that Kim Davis is being consistent--legally, morally, and metaphysically? If Obergefell is a lawless farce, then Kentucky's marriage protection amendment is the law, and Kim Davis, unlike the Supreme Court, is actually upholding the rule of law. If homosexual unions are not only immoral but also metaphysically unable to be marriages--yes, even civil marriages--then to refuse to give them the name of marriage, as an official of the state of Kentucky, is simply to refuse to lie about reality. It is faithfully to carry out the duties of a clerk whose job it is to give out real marriage licenses.

At this point, it seems that no reductio will do, since homosexual "marriage" is already a reductio. But think: Would it make sense to say that she must resign if she were ordered to call a union between a man and a sheep a marriage and refused? Would it make sense to say that she must resign if she were ordered to call a union between a woman and a tree a marriage and refused?

What it comes to is that such simple-minded thunderings against Kim Davis are nominalist to their core, and in two ways. First, those who say such things are being nominalists about marriage, and by extension, about everything on which the positive law touches. Apparently, if the Supreme Court (whom they absurdly claim to be capable of making law) or some legislature were to declare that the value of pi is three, then everyone would be obliged, in all legal transactions, to treat the value of pi as three, whatever the consequences. If SCOTUS or a legislature (and SCOTUS wins if it disagrees with a legislature, just so you know the rules) were to declare an amoeba to be a person, entitled to all the legal protections of the 14th amendment, then all public officials would be in duty bound to treat it as such--to make out adoption papers for amoebae, to consider their best interests in legal proceedings, to consider an amoeba equal in value to a child, or to quit if they won't "do their job" and help those amoebae to their personhood rights.

And here's an interesting thought experiment: Suppose that SCOTUS were to declare that parents have a 14th amendment right to have their children up to one year old post-birth killed, that such children are not persons, does it then become the case that they are not persons? Must the police and other officials all cease to prosecute those who kill children under one year, or else resign in favor of those who will cease to prosecute? Must the police hold back any person who attempts to rescue an 11-month-old as his father prepares to throw him off a bridge? After all, SCOTUS has spoken on a matter of metaphysics, and it is now the LAW OF THE LAND that an 11-month-old is not a person. If not prepared to abide by the LAW OF THE LAND, the police must all quit their jobs. They must move aside and make way for those who will protect the killers of these new non-persons rather than protecting the (supposed) non-persons.

You see, society cannot afford radical nominalism in practice. Sure, there are some perfectly legitimate legal fictions. One can even say that in a sense adoption is a legal fiction. Those adopting are declared to be the child's parents when they have no biological connection to him. And there are some rules that are arbitrary matters of prudence and even aesthetics. How far back from the street must buildings be constructed in the downtown area? But we cannot run a society if everything, every matter of fact, every truth and falsehood, every matter of nature, is treated as if it is subject to the whims of positive law or court order. Nature will have her revenge. If you declare pi equal to three and act accordingly, you're going to have some funny-shaped train wheels.

Once we admit that you cannot create reality in all areas by judicial or legislative fiat, the question arises whether marriage, civil marriage, is one of the things that is just a matter of legal fiat. Is it just like the driving or voting age--last year it was one thing, this year it's another? Or is it more like the value of pi? Or like personhood? Well, it won't surprise my readers that I think civil marriage has an essence, a real nature, and that male-male and female-female relationships don't fall within that nature, any more than human-animal relationships fall within it. (And frankly, I don't give a plug nickel if someone says, "Gasp!" [Swoon, faint!] "Lydia McGrew made some kind of comparison between homosexuality and bestiality! How insensitive!" Yep. Very. Moving on...)

The point is that some things really do have natures, and marriage is one of them. To say that homosexual marriage ("marriage") is now THE LAW OF THE LAND is to assume without argument that civil marriage is so malleable that SCOTUS can just wave its magic wand, abracadabra, and now two men or two women really can be married to one another, and therefore Kim Davis needs to get with the program or move aside for someone else who will. If one disagrees with that metaphysical assessment, one will have a different assessment of Kim Davis. Kim Davis was being told by a judge to lie about the reality of marriage, which wasn't part of the job description she was elected to fulfill. Therefore, she isn't required either to lie about marriage or resign.

There is a second way in which the condemnation of Kim Davis, the smirking or pompous insistence that she must "do her job or resign," is nominalist, and that concerns the nature of jobs. Is there nothing like at least a quasi-essence of being a doctor, a policeman, or even a county clerk? Let's go back to the example of the 11-month-old declared by a court to be a non-person. What does it mean to be a policeman? All the more so if you signed up to be a policeman before this court order came down, the nature of the job as both you and society understood it involved protecting babies from being thrown off of bridges by their parents, not facilitating the baby-throwing. So if the police force decides to ignore the court's evil and insane redefinition of the child as a non-person and stop the baby-thrower, those police are not only doing the right thing but also, to coin a word, the policeman-y thing. Suppose that SCOTUS declares it to be a violation of 14th amendment rights to refuse to let registered sex offenders adopt. (I owe this example to David Bradshaw.) If an adoption officer nonetheless refuses to issue adoption papers to a registered sex offender, he's doing his job. It's utterly backwards to say that he's not doing his job. His job includes protecting children and seeking their best interests, not turning them over to sex offenders. If a doctor refuses to refer someone for an abortion or refuses to administer a lethal injection, he's being a real doctor. Will the people who condemn Kim Davis say the same about doctors in Australia who refuse to be complicit in abortion? Because now being complicit in abortion "is their job"? The medical association of Canada appears poised to require all doctors there to administer lethal injections for suicide or refer to those who will. Will that then become "part of their job"? Whence comes this idea that there is nothing that it means to fill a particular role in society? And how far could this be taken? If one fine year the Canadian Medical Association (or the American Medical Association) requires all doctors, as a condition of licensing, to have sex with their patients as therapy, will that also become part of the job? To torture some patients at the behest of others who are deemed to own them? To run about naked in the streets as a symbol of something or other? Can absolutely anything be made "part of the job"--part of any job, anywhere, any time?

One might think that the position of county clerk is not a good candidate for a job with an essence. But, given that it involves certifying civil marriages, which do have an essence, the possibility arises that the job of county clerk itself is more than just a sheer creature of positive law.

See, here's the thing: In order for society to function--at all, much less well--we need good people doing a good job at good jobs. If all or even most of the important jobs in society, the jobs that keep things running, are deeply corrupted, literally defined in such a way that to fill them you are required to be complicit in grave evil, and if it is literally a duty to quit all such jobs if you refuse to be complicit in grave evil, then society is going to collapse. Slowly or quickly, though the speed seems to be picking up. Do we really want all our doctors to be murderers, our teachers to be corrupters of the youth, and our minor public officials to be liars about the nature of reality? Keep on telling all the good people, all the people with a noble conception of their jobs, that they have a duty either to do evil or to quit and that's exactly what you'll get.

Since most of these jobs, when society was functioning better, were not defined in such a horrible way but were understood to be jobs one could take pride in, jobs that a good person could fill with a good conscience, it is therefore an honorable act, an attempt to hold back the collapse of human civilization, to continue to fulfill those roles in their honorable senses rather than either quit or be complicit in grave evil. It remains a prudential question whether that is the best course to take for any particular person in any particular situations. One can imagine situations where one might be able to spend one's energy better in some other way. But to say that one must always resign when one has conscientious objections to the newly declared "duties" of one's job is to say that we have to give up all of the important roles in society to people who are willing to do evil. I see no such principle anywhere--not in Scripture, not in tradition, not in reason. In fact, if there were enough people willing to refuse the corruption of their professions (see my above example about a unified police force), a lot of good could be done. In this case, if we had enough Kim Davises, enough staunch state governors, and enough deputies who refused to put any of them in prison, then we'd have a lot fewer lies told about sodomite simulacra of marriage and maybe even an outpouring of honorable self-government in America, all of which would be a good thing.

The idea of staying in a job and trying to carry it out according to the earlier, nobler conception of it on the basis of which you entered the profession has its difficulties. It is particularly difficult in the case of a position like that of federal judge. On an originalist understanding, the job of a federal judge is to "say what the law means" and apply it to concrete cases in accordance with that original meaning. I don't mean to introduce a huge philosophy of law debate, but it should be clear that, on that understanding of the job (which is not new), there might simply be an evil, unjust statutory law, duly passed by the relevant legislative body, which one would be called upon to apply to some concrete case. When that is the job and always has been--saying what the law means and applying it--there is far less room for remaining in the job while refusing to abet evil, if the people making some positive law one is called upon to interpret and apply become bound and determined to do evil. One might, however, be able to recuse oneself merely from particular cases, in that case, while staying on the job to prevent interpretive liars on the other side from striking down good laws. But there are a great many important jobs that aren't in any way limited to expounding other people's laws. Even a family law judge, for example, usually has as his mandate to do what is "in the best interests of the child," which obviously has much wider ramifications.

I've argued that the claim that Kim Davis has a duty either to issue homosexual "marriage" licenses or to resign is nominalist in two ways--as regards the nature of the institution of marriage and as regards the nature of her job. A resistance to this sort of nominalism is applicable in a variety of legal contexts. In Kim Davis's case, it is not (in my view) actually true to say that she is breaking the law (for the reasons mentioned above concerning the lawlessness of Obergefell and the most recent relevant law in Kentucky), though she is committing civil disobedience in the sense that she is defying a court order.

But the recognition that both things and jobs have essences may in other scenarios lead a person in a private or public job actually to ignore or disobey a positive law, passed by the legislature or other civil authority. A legislature could enact homosexual "marriage" or any of the absurd and wicked things mentioned above--adoption rights for sex offenders, a requirement for doctors to perform or refer for abortion, and so forth. In this latter case an interesting question arises concerning public civil servants: When are they carrying out their jobs within the legal system in which they originally took office, and when do they cross over into using their position in a more or less revolutionary or subversive way to undermine or counteract a corrupt system that has emerged subsequently? Imagine, for example, a railroad official who altered documents somehow in Nazi Germany so that trains would go somewhere other than Auschwitz and so that the prisoners might be rescued. I have no idea whether such a thing would even have been possible, but there is an obvious sense in which such a person is working against "the system" as it has come to be, secretly using his authority within the system. On the other hand, if we imagine the "rebellious" local police force pictured above that thumbs its collective nose at the courts and goes on stopping parents who wish to fling their children off of cliffs, that does not seem to me like even a remotely subversive act. Nor does it seem like a revolutionary behavior for a doctor quietly to go on taking out tonsils and treating pneumonia while saying, "No," when asked to perform or refer for abortion. Where precisely the difference lies (does it have anything to do with forging papers in one case but not in the others?) I'm not entirely prepared to say. My point here is merely that opposition to an attempt to twist one's job to the service of evil may take a variety of forms, and legal geeks may have fun (rather grim fun) sorting them out from one another.

Anyone who cares about truth and reality should care about Kim Davis's case. Anyone who cares about the fundamental nature of government and the polis has that much more reason to care about her case. And anyone who thinks that no one sane will be called to suffer in the culture war that is now upon us should look at her case and wake up before it is too late and he finds that he has moved, almost without realizing he was moving, to the wrong side.

I close with some well-chosen words from my Internet friend Jeff Culbreath, who wrote them on Facebook and gave me permission to use them:

There are well-intentioned people who oppose same-sex "marriage", and who recognize that Obergefell was lawless and unconstitutional, but who nevertheless hold that Kim Davis should submit and issue faux marriage licenses anyway because the SCOTUS ruling is now "the law of the land." 

In Catholic moral theology, it is not enough to avoid committing a specific sin - let's say, the sin of entering into a pretend marriage to gain public acceptance for one's immoral acts. One must also avoid being an "accessory to another's sin". To be an accessory to another's sin is to commit a sin. Traditionally, there are nine ways to be an accessory to another's sin:

 I. By counsel
II. By command
III. By consent
IV. By provocation
V. By praise or flattery
VI. By concealment
VII. By partaking
VIII. By silence
IX. By defense of the ill done

 If Kim Davis were to issue same-sex "marriage" licenses, she would become an accessory by counsel, command, and consent. Therefore it is unjust for any employer -- particularly a government employer -- to demand this of her or of any employee. She has every right to resist this injustice in precisely the way she has. 

There is another reason for her not to resign, and that is simply to prevent her office from being complicit in evil acts to the best of her ability. In so doing she is doing what we are all obliged to do: advance and preserve the goodness in the world. 

A final reason for her not to resign is to bring attention to the appalling consequences of Obergefell: Christians who are willing to live by their traditional beliefs are now excluded from government employment in this capacity. This realization should have the effect of shocking Americans out of their complacency.

A CHI decides celibacy isn't necessary after all

Since I've posted about the Christian Homosexual Identifiers (who allegedly advocate celibacy for those who are same-sex attracted but think homosexuality is a positive identity) on this blog before, here is a link to my latest post at What's Wrong With the World on Julie Rodgers. She was Wheaton's resident CHI and has just made it clear that she no longer advocates celibacy for homosexuals. The only good part of the story is that she isn't at Wheaton anymore. The fate of Refuge (silly name), Wheaton's LGBTQR@XLT, etc., student club, which she was guiding, remains unstated.

Evangelical watcher news

A couple of developments for watchers of the Baptist and evangelical scene, with regard to the topic that one can't seem to stop talking about these days, unfortunately.

The ERLC of the Southern Baptists has put out a disturbingly insufficient statement about the recent Supreme Court ruling, and Robert Gagnon has some trenchant criticisms here. I especially want to emphasize Gagnon's points I, II, and IV. (Which is not to denigrate his points III and V.) This whole, "Outrage is out of place" approach is plain wrong.

Also, as point IV says, it is disturbing that the Southern Baptists have increasingly adopted the "LGBT" nomenclature and have adopted uncritically the language of loving, respecting, etc., "LGBT persons" without clarifying what that means. For example, does it mean that parents have to subsidize their adult children's homosexual lifestyles? Moore's recent thunderings in various venues about parents who kick out their young adult children for "coming out," without any apparent discussion of the complexities of these situations, might indicate so. If your 20-year-old "comes out," that doesn't mean you have to let him use your home as a hotel from which he goes out and engages in homosexual acts. Nor do you have to continue subsidizing his college education so that he can have sex at college. But all the outrage against parents suggests that Moore might think continuing to do so is part of showing "dignity and respect" to homosexuals.

Gagnon's points are well taken. I also want to stress that I'm quite certain, as Gagnon says, that many of the signatories of the statement did not mean to endorse its flaws but only its good points. So I would not blame someone for signing it (though I would want to point out the flaws). Whoever wrote the statement is responsible for its problems. I haven't, unfortunately, heard any news to the effect that the ERLC has taken Gagnon's criticisms to heart.

In other news, readers who are interested or concerned are invited to look at the public Facebook status of evangelical scholar and author Michael Licona, and the comments beneath, where he raises an extremely easily answered "question" asked by one of his Facebook friends who appears to be an advocate of homosexual civil "marriage." Unfortunately, Licona indicates that this question is a real poser, and even more unfortunately, when people (including yours truly) gave the sensible and obvious answers, Licona said he was unconvinced that these answered this really good question. Even more unfortunately, after having raised this "question" and having endorsed it so far as to say, and repeat, statements such as that it is a "great question," he indicated that he doesn't have the time even to read someone like Ryan Anderson, Robert P. George, or Robert Gagnon in order to clarify and strengthen his own position on the nature and proper goods of civil marriage, which would dissolve this "great question." (Hint: The question had to do with comparing homosexual civil "marriage" to the recognition that Islam is a religion and giving religious liberty to Muslims.) This is all in the thread. Feel free to read through. I submit my characterization here to the judgement of the fair-minded who read the exchange for themselves. Steve at Triablogue has blogged a bit about this and has been accused of gross misrepresentation, so I have summarized the circumstances of the exchange at somewhat more length, making it clear that this was a matter of raising as a "good question" someone else's question, etc., and I encourage anyone interested in getting the facts to read the thread for himself. (It is unfortunate that Facebook now has sub-threaded comments. I have tried to draw attention by the link above to one of the most relevant sub-threads, beyond the early first-level comments on the status.) Speaking for myself, I found this development extremely discouraging and disappointing. Those with influence in the evangelical world should be well-informed enough about this urgent and timely issue that they are able to answer such shallow, slanted questions with one hand tied behind their backs, just to make it fair, not be so arrested by them as to tell the whole world and especially their 5,000 Facebook "friends" what a tough, good question this is. And if you wake up one day and find yourself thrown by such a question, and you are such an evangelical writer and scholar, you should for goodness' sake take the time to read a couple of articles by Ryan Anderson and co. and give it some thought, clarifying your own ideas about what, precisely, civil marriage is, what its purpose and goods are, and whether homosexual "marriage" can be a variety thereof, before you raise these doubts in other people's minds. To first raise such a "question" and then retreat to, "It's not my role to research this further. I'm busy, there are only 24 hours in a day, and I have other research interests" is, quite frankly, gravely irresponsible.

Finally, a small house-keeping question. If you ever comment on this blog, have you run into a problem with your comment utterly disappearing when you press "publish," without any indication that the comment has gone to moderation? I ask, because I've realized that some blogger blogs have the following problem: If you try to publish a comment before logging in, e.g., with a Blogger account, the comment disappears entirely. It does not go to moderation. It just disappears. Then Blogger presents the commenter with a new, empty combox, with the drop-down menu below showing that he is now logged in. If he repeats the comment after this happens, it goes through. I have full moderation enabled, and it may be that this is preventing this problem here at Extra Thoughts.

The CHIs, crazier the more you learn about them

I have written a number of posts about those I call the CHIs--Christian Homosexual Identifiers. These are people like Eve Tushnet and others who claim to support the teaching of celibacy for homosexuals but who consider their homosexual inclinations to be a positive identity. 

It appears (this is new news) that Wheaton College has put a CHI staff member (this is an employee of the school) in charge of their LGBT club after an outcry about its supporting homosexuality. In the beginning they had someone who was (as far as I can discern) in favor of homosexual acts completely, so this is the administration's sop to their base (probably their donating base) to keep up the foolish pretense that this has nothing to do with endorsing homosexual acts. Which is telling ourselves lies, as I pointed out here.

So CHIs are becoming important in the Christian world, both Catholic and evangelical. I argued against their perspective here and pointed out here that Tushnet appeared in a (theologically) revolting video by a group openly and explicitly opposing the celibacy position of the Catholic Church. Tushnet herself in the video said that the Bible uses "same-sex love" to model the relationship of God and the soul. As I said, if she could do all of that, she really doesn't think that homosexual acts are all that bad.

Here is Tushnet's extremely lame explanation for her appearing in the video made by the group that opposes what she allegedly stands for (you know, celibacy?). I'll leave aside the nonsense about her pretty much always trying to say "yes" when anybody asks her to appear in anything. Really? How stupid! I'll go right to her flirtation with the most outrageous and blatantly heterodox aspects of the propaganda video:

I will say that the other participants in the film also raise questions the Church needs to grapple with. What are the best pastoral responses to people who come from the other perspectives expressed in the film?

When I entered the Church I was fairly willing to trust Her as a teacher and obey, or at least try to obey. (Or at least try to try!) It was a relief to trust and surrender to Jesus and act as a child of His Church in all areas, even though I was not thrilled that “all areas” included sexual ethics.

But lots of people who are genuinely drawn to some aspect of the Catholic faith face much greater challenges than I did: For example, they may have had much worse experiences in Christian communities, which makes trusting the Church on this issue exceptionally difficult (not solely for emotional reasons–anti-gay attitudes in the Church also raise epistemological problems, since they make it seem like the most obvious explanation for Church teaching is that it’s the result of bigotry or ignorance); they may not be as naturally attracted to obedience as an aesthetic category as I am; or they may not see any possibilities for fruitful celibate lgbt life, and know that Jesus didn’t call anyone to a life without love. They may have done a lot of reading and investigation and concluded that they reject Church teaching. They may feel like rejection of Church teaching in this area is simple common sense. I’m sure a lot of other reasons and starting-points will be articulated in the full “Owning Our Faith” film.

How could your parish both welcome and shepherd people who are coming from those places? There isn’t only one right answer. This post offers some of my initial thoughts on the question, but it’s only a beginning. Still, I don’t think the best answer is, “Well, they can come back when they’re ready to do as they’re told.”

Here is an overtly rebellious group telling the Catholic Church that it needs to change its views, propagandizing for full acceptance of homosexual acts and homosexual "marriage," and Tushnet's response is to wonder how the Catholic Church can "shepherd" these overt rebels and activists. Which is partly why she appeared in their video and appeared to endorse their project. Because they're asking such good questions, y'know. How can we "shepherd" these people? (I notice that Tushnet does not even attempt to explain her pervy statement about same-sex "love" as an image of divine and human love in the Bible.)

On the question of "shepherding" those who are living in unrepentant sin and actively promoting sin to the world at large, there is really only one coherent, Catholic answer. (I know this, and I'm not Catholic.) It would be heinous sacrilege for them to take the Sacrament, because they are habitually living in or seeking to live in sin, and they are blatantly promoting sin, so there's no good way to shepherd that type of person, because these so-called sheep are insisting on running away from the Shepherd to destruction.

There is no other answer. As far as telling them to "come back when they're ready to do as they're told," with regard to taking the Blessed Sacrament, that is absolutely what they should be told. As far as being in any sense members in good standing of any Christian church, that is absolutely what they have to be told. (Ever hear of church discipline, Eve? Try reading I Corinthians 5 sometime and you will see what the Bible says about "shepherding" a person who is living in unrepentant sin.)  As far as attending without being members or in good standing or receiving Communion, that depends on their behavior. If their behavior is disruptive (homosexual displays of affection), if they are using their visits to the church to promote their agenda (recruiting and propagandizing at church functions), then they should be asked to tone it down or not show up. If they just come in quietly, observe the services, and don't try to press their agenda, then you preach the Gospel and hope to lead them to repentance and grace and to know Jesus as their Savior. Sorry for the evangelical language, but Eve and co. could use a sense of sin and the wrath of God and the need for repentance.

And of course, in this lame response there is precisely zero concern for the scandal that this group is causing or for the scandal Tushnet herself causes by being associated with it. Because Tushnet really doesn't care about that. What she cares about is being nice to the poor, poor (rebellious, unrepentant) homosexual activists, not making their feelings feel bad, making them feel welcome, and "shepherding" them, though she has no coherent theory of how that can be done consistently with church teaching and without scandalizing others and normalizing their behavior in the eyes of everybody in the church, including the young.

Moving on (or moving back), I'm still playing catch-up on learning about the CHIs' various crazy ideas. I just haven't had time yet to post about an idea endorsed by Tushnet in this article and apparently in her book. That idea is that homosexual "couples" should carry out formal commitment ceremonies in which they make vows to each other, but that this should mean nothing about intending to have sex. It's just promising to love and take care of each other forever, or something like that.

She argues, pace historian Alan Bray’s 2003 account of friendship in the Christian tradition, The Friend, that Christians should consider a return to a more medieval conception of friendship, one complete with vows and affirmation ceremonies for dedicated companions. Taken seriously, Tushnet imagines, institutionally affirmed friendship could answer the emotional needs of those who would otherwise be engaged in same-sex romantic relationships or desperately lonely. Her historical analysis tracks Bray’s work closely, and it includes moving excerpts from courtly accounts of friendly love and commitment, as well as some monastic and liturgical remarks upon close companions.

Yet Tushnet doesn’t leave her meditation of friendship on a rosily sentimental note. It’s all well and good, one imagines, to propose a more prominent position for friendship in modern Christian life—but what this would really look like is fraught and complicated, which Tushnet acknowledges. Could an avowed pair of same-sex friends with acknowledged homosexual feelings cohabitate without giving the appearance of scandal? Tushnet hesitates: “the danger,” she admits, “is real.” Could these tightly intimate friendships coalesce into sexually realized relationships? It could happen, but for Tushnet “the preventative measure of avoiding intimate same-sex friendship entirely is even worse.”

(Aside: I don't think "pace" means what the article author thinks it means! Can't TAC get basic usage correct? Editor!)

So Tushnet literally believes that people who are sexually attracted to each other but should never have sexual relations should make lifelong vows to each other and even (apparently) maybe live together as an "avowed" couple, and that the "dangers" this poses are less than the alleged "dangers" of, er, something. The dangers of not doing this. Because not doing this is just so horribly dangerous in some way or other. Presumably dangerous because homosexuals would feel lonely. So their loneliness should be addressed by encouraging them to pair up in couples and to make vows to each other to love each other forever and be permanently related and connected to each other as "avowed friends," maybe even to live together, though they are never supposed to be engaging in sexual acts. And these avowed homosexual "friendships" are supposed to receive institutional recognition, too, from the church!

This is insanity on stilts. Such relationships would of course be connected to romantic feelings in these cases, not just to friendship. In fact, the whole reason that friendship can be intense between two members of the same sex and can be a good and positive thing is because it is friendship as opposed to sexual attraction. Tushnet clearly doesn't get this and thinks it's a cool idea to blur the distinction between non-erotic friendship and erotic friendship. Moreover, taking a vow would mean that the homosexual person who decided that this was a very bad idea and that he was being constantly led (at least) to impure thoughts and causing scandal in this way would think that God would disapprove of his severing the connection. Because he took a vow! Thus he would develop a false conscience about avoiding the occasion of sin and scandal. (So much for "make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." [Romans 13:14] I really do not think Tushnet knows her Bible well at all.) Is she totally crazy?

Read the rest of the article for the ad hoc moves needed to rule out "avowed friendship" between a married man and a woman other than his wife whom he can never marry. Wouldn't it just be loverly for a husband to have an "avowed friendship" with a woman other than his wife? What about a husband who has same-sex attraction and who has both a wife and an "avowed" same-sex friend? Tushnet's answer, apparently, is that it is perfectly okay for a person who suffers from same-sex attraction but has married a member of the opposite sex to have, in addition to his vows to his spouse, vows to a same-sex "friend." But it's never okay for an opposite-sex-attracted person to have an avowed friend (with whom he is never supposed to have sexual relations) of the opposite sex. Because reasons. Got that?

A person who is same-sex attracted and attempts to carry out a normal, opposite-sex marriage is already in an extremely difficult position. Tushnet's idea that he might be justified in further complicating this by also having a same-sex "friend" (who might also be sexually attracted to him) to whom he has taken vows which might compete with the duties implied by the vows to his wife is a recipe for disaster. Her smug answer is telling:

Won’t avowed friendships infringe upon one friend’s marital or familial obligations at times? Probably, Tushnet submits, advising empathy and noting that medieval ballads concerning committed friends often reported conflicts in that vein—many of which did not turn out in the favor of the wife and children. 

To which I reply: a) Medieval ballads are not authoritative sources of moral instruction, and if a medieval ballad is telling you that it's okay for you to keep some sort of commitment to your same-sex friend that harms or slights your God-recognized relationship with your wife and/or your responsibilities to your children, then the medieval ballad is giving pernicious moral advice. This is true even when we assume that the friendships involved have no aspect of sexual attraction to them. b) Tushnet is (as far as my knowledge extends) interpreting medieval literature in a typically perverse way if she thinks the friendships therein are between same-sex attracted people. Taking a vow to continue to be connected forever to a person you are sexually attracted to which might conflict with your commitment to your wife and children is so wildly imprudent that "imprudent" doesn't even begin to cover it.

The CHIs' ideas are more pernicious and dangerous the more one learns about them. If you have any influence, be sure to spread this information around and make sure that your Christian institutions shun their ideas and their influence.

Update: Re-reading this post I realized that I should clarify one point: The person who was previously the leader of Wheaton's GLBT club was a student, not a staff member. He was hoping to found a "gay-straight alliance" at Wheaton and feels that the administration's taking control of the club and putting a CHI staff member in charge is a step backwards. But I did not mean to give the impression that he himself was a staff member.

The Generation Gap

We were driving home from church today and passed a greenhouse with a Christian Easter message on its board: "Because He lives, I can face tomorrow." I drew the family's attention to it. Youngest Daughter exclaimed solemnly, "Wow, that's really good, that he's being so bold."

I was struck.

I cannot imagine making a similar remark to my own Christian family in childhood. I'm not saying we never heard anything about Christians being mocked for their faith in America--usually in public schools, which I did not attend. But the idea that a businessman would have been "bold" in the 1970's to put up a quotation from a Christian Easter song would never have crossed our minds. In those days businessmen still occasionally pretended Christianity to make themselves look good!

I'm not going to say that Youngest Daughter's ideas about the Christian's need for boldness in 2015 have been formed entirely independently. Without giving her the lurid details, I have definitely conveyed the fact that Christian businessmen are sometimes targets of those who hate our faith and who attempt to "get them in trouble."

It's true, isn't it? The culture has changed, and boldness is needed. Our community is probably one of the better ones, but it is still entirely possible that someone would target a business in our area for "discrimination" against certain "identities." In fact, shortly after our region passed a "gender identity" ordinance, the story came back of a Christian girl working at a local clothing store who had to deal with two cross-dressing men, one of whom demanded to try on clothes in the women's dressing room and then flabbergasted the young lady by asking, "How do I look?" after putting on a skirt. I would like to think that she put on her driest face and tone and said, "I don't think it's your color," but I'm sure she didn't have that much savoir faire.

So we can't say, "It would never happen here." A greenhouse, unlike a florist, does not celebrate events, so that helps, but any business that employs people can be the target of an employment discrimination "sting" by the shrieking harpies of tolerance.

There is a generation gap. The temptation is great to keep a low profile, and when it comes to young people with a place to find still in the world, maybe that's good advice. But I'm glad that Youngest Daughter's first thought was to admire the greenhouse owner who is displaying the words to "Because He Lives."

The new generation needs people to admire, and a bold Christian greenhouse owner is a good one to start with.

So, what's Eve Tushnet been up to lately?

In this post at What's Wrong With the World, I criticized the ideas of the group some have called the New Homophiles. I dubbed them CHIs--Christian Homosexual Identifiers.

One of the most prominent of the CHIs is Eve Tushnet. In her explicit statements, Tushnet affirms that homosexual acts are morally wrong. She is therefore said to affirm the Roman Catholic Church's position on sexuality. However, she insists that homosexual "eros" ("eros" is the term she uses) is not wrong and that it can be channeled to good ends.

Recently, Tushnet has, to my mind, made it clear that, if she regards homosexual acts as wrong at all (as she claims), she doesn't regard them as all that wrong. Here are the two new items that have come to light:

First, Tushnet has unequivocally stated that she would attend a lesbian "wedding" in order to celebrate the positive aspects of the relationship. Here is the quote:

This decision about attendance is easier for me, because I believe God calls some people to devoted, sacrificial love of another person of the same sex. Let me be clear: I don’t think that that love should be expressed sexually. But some people who marry a same-sex partner are doing so out of a call to love, even though they misinterpret the nature of that love. We should support as much as we can. When a woman forgives offenses and humbly apologizes for her own wrongdoing, cares for children, listens, comforts, and learns to put others’ needs above her own preferences, those are acts of love—which do not become worthless or loveless when they take place within a lesbian relationship.

This is an absurd argument. Why should we "support as much as we can" the celebration of the sexual aspect of their relationship? And why should we tell ourselves lies that a wedding isn't, inter alia, a celebration of a sexual relationship? Answer to both: We shouldn't.

If you've ever attended a wedding in your life, you know quite well that the sexual nature of the relationship is made clear, even though this needn't be and often isn't done in crude ways. The glasses are clinked at the reception so that the couple will kiss. The couple kisses at the altar. There is not the slightest doubt that the people are there to celebrate this couple qua sexual-romantic pair. Is Eve Tushnet going to clap at the reception when the lesbians kiss? Because after all, I'm sure they're doing lots of selfless things, and those don't become worthless, blah, blah.

No one who thinks that homosexual sexual intercourse is all that wrong is going to make this kind of lame excuse for attending a homosexual "wedding" and celebrating lesbianism's alleged "positive aspects."

But it gets worse. If you have the stomach for it, watch this video. (It's about fourteen minutes long.) The video is openly celebrating homosexual sex from beginning to end. One of the men interviewed states in so many words that it is "inherently discriminatory" for the church to call upon homosexuals to be celibate. It also endorses homosexual "marriage" and transgender transitions. It is completely heretical. It makes not the slightest pretense to be anything but a celebration of homosexual sex.

Eve Tushnet is featured in the video. She sits about smiling with other participants. She makes various comments about what it feels like to be a lesbian in the Catholic Church. And she even informs us that she was very pleased to learn that the Bible uses "same-sex love" along with heterosexual love as "models and mirrors of God and the human soul" (minute 3:34).

That is a disgustingly false statement. At no point, anywhere, in the Bible is homoerotic emotion (even aside from actions) used as a metaphor for the love of God and the soul. Men are, of course, called upon to love God, and God is portrayed as masculine. But there is no place whatsoever where "same-sex love" is used as a "model and mirror of God and the human soul." That is some sort of Queer Theory perversion of Scripture and deserves to be anathematized. I don't, frankly, even want to know what passages Tushnet thinks she is talking about.

It is quite impossible that Tushnet does not know what this video is about and what it is promoting. On her blog she promoted the video herself just four days ago. The only thing she distances herself from is the title--"Owning our Faith." I don't even know why. She says, "I did not name this." But she in no way indicates any distance between herself and the pro-sex content of the video or the blatantly, openly pro-sex agenda of the group who has made it. She just makes a joke about how she needs a haircut. Ha ha.

It would be impossible for anyone who takes with any real degree of intellectual seriousness the immorality of homosexual acts to lend the slightest appearance of approval to this video. The video is utterly rebellious against traditional moral teaching on homosexual acts.

I therefore conclude that, her protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, Eve Tushnet does not take with any real degree of intellectual seriousness the immorality of homosexual acts.

At this point, anyone who wants to point to Eve Tushnet as an example of homosexual orthodoxy within the Roman Catholic Church needs to do some serious reevaluation.

"Deconstruct Heterosexuality"? Say what?

This extremely poor post at First Things blog ought to require no response, just because it is so very, very wrongheaded. It ought to suffice to say that the author, one Michael Hannon, suggests (I hesitate to say "argues") that we should "deconstruct heterosexuality," that is to say, that we should cease to believe that being heterosexual, which most of us would call having normal attraction to the opposite sex, is a real part of individual human identity at all, much less that it is per se healthy and normative. His suggestions are festooned about with many silly statements about the history of mankind, apparently garnered from academic "queer theory." Shouldn't that brief synopsis (if you must read it, I think you will see that it is accurate) be enough to cause at least any Christian conservative to conclude that the article is completely confused and not worth his time? You would like to think. Unfortunately, one of my at least somewhat conservative Facebook friends linked to the piece with apparent approval while another on-line conservative friend sent the link to me by e-mail with explicit approval. Talk about "deceiving even the elect"! I would have ignored it after the first, but I was rather shocked by the second incident of approval. And hey, I wrote so much to the second person in e-mail that I figured it was a good opportunity to put up my criticisms here on my somewhat neglected personal blog. With additions. Because this article is so bad, so wrongheaded, that I keep thinking of more things to say.

Now, I've not really had a lot of respect for the First Things blog qua entity for a long time. They have a huge stable of writers who say all kinds of things and are all over the map--the good, the bad, and the ugly. They've become rather enamored lately of what is known as the "new homophile" movement, which would have been enough to lose my respect all by itself. Blogger Joshua Gonnerman is an example. The idea of that movement, speaking broadly, is that homosexual identity is somehow a good thing, a kind of gift, really, bestowing special insights and stuff on those who have it, as long as you are chaste and don't lust. And that people who so identify shouldn't be asked to give up their identity or think of it as "identifying themselves with their temptations to sin." Even though the "new homophiles" are mostly (all?) Roman Catholic, they get pretty uneasy when one uses the Catholic Church's designation of "intrinsically disordered" for their desires.

In that context, one might regard this piece by Hannon as a kind of counterweight. Hannon is explicit in rejecting homosexuality as an identity, and one of his reasons is that very reason--namely, that we shouldn't identify ourselves with our inclinations to sin. Hannon is also concerned about the fact that young people agonize (as they shouldn't have to) over what their sexual identity is, whether they might "be gay." He is bothered by the fact that homosexual identity is treated as innate and immutable and that young people are now nervous about developing close friendships with members of the same sex lest this mean that they "are gay." With all of these concerns I agree, and that's probably the last good thing you'll see me say here about Hannon's piece, because that's all that is good about it.

The concerns about exposing young people to the idea that they "might be gay" and the harm that this does to them, including to their friendships, have been explored far more eloquently by Anthony Esolen, here, for instance. Esolen has also trenchantly answered the "new homophiles" here without any trendy nonsense about deconstructing anything, and certainly not deconstructing heterosexuality, of all things!

Hannon, either because his head has been addled by reading queer theory or because he wants to be even-handed, or maybe both, is not willing to stop at saying that homosexuality should not be regarded as a part of personal identity. He must go on (as the title of his post attests) to say that neither should heterosexuality. In fact, he informs us quite seriously that the concept of heterosexuality was invented in the late 1800's. In the 1860's, to be exact. As an historical thesis, this has all the virtues that "things fall up" has as a scientific thesis. (Hannon apparently got the claim from Michel Foucault, that fount of accurate, unbiased historical information and model of intellectual rigor and clarity.) Let's not quibble about words. I make no etymological claims about when the word "heterosexuality" was invented, because I don't know. I'm pretty sure I'd never heard the word before my own adulthood, which was long after the 1860's. But the concept that it is normal and healthy for men to desire women and for women to desire men, that, indeed, these normal and healthy desires are part of the very cement of all human society, and that part of being a normal man or a normal woman is having an "orientation," a telic attraction, toward the opposite sex, making that orientation part of one's normal individual identity, is as old as mankind, as old as the day when the Lord God said, "It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him an helpmeet."

Or listen to St. Paul:

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. (Romans 1:26-27)

See that part about "vile affections" and what is "against nature" as opposed to the "natural use of the woman"? That, my friends, is the "gay-straight divide" which Hannon tells us was an invention of the 1860's. The "natural use of the woman" is what a sexually healthy man desires. That which is "against nature" is what homosexuals desire. It's really very simple. And it wasn't invented in the 1860's.

St. Paul's identification of heterosexual intercourse as being natural looks like the sort of "heteronormativity" that Hannon wants us to reject. Perhaps Hannon should lecture St. Paul to the effect that such heteronormativity creates "pride" and "pathetically uncritical and unmerited self-assurance." But all such sophistical rhetoric does nothing to change the one paralyzing fact: Homosexual desires and acts are not only contrary to chastity, they are also contrary to nature. Normal heterosexual intercourse may well be (in specific instances) a sin against chastity but is not a sin against nature. No amount of talk-talk and worry about heterosexual "pride" can change the fact that there is a fundamental asymmetry between heterosexuality and homosexuality. The former is a gift, God's created engine for the perpetuation of the human race and for the generation of much love and beauty. The latter is a perverted and tragic disorder.

And what pernicious nonsense Hannon talks about pride and heterosexuality:

But heterosexuality, in its pretensions to act as the norm for assessing our sexual customs, is marked by something even worse: pride, which St. Thomas Aquinas classifies as the queen of all vices.

Please. So imagine a mother whose daughters have always, since childhood, noticed handsome and/or charming men. Imagine a father whose son has blushed over the beauty of women. Suppose that this mother and this father regard their children's inclinations as part of a beautiful, natural, God-given plan for the world. Suppose that they regard themselves as stewards whose job it is to guide these natural, powerful, God-given instincts in the right direction, their job to bestow, in fear and trembling and with God's help, wisdom and guidance upon these budding young women and young men. Is this pride? Is it pride for the children themselves to believe these things about the naturalness of their own feelings? Far from it.

Imagine that we were beset with a dirt-eating activist contingent in our society who tried to make out that eating dirt is normal. Would it be anything other than nonsense on stilts to chide those who say, "The desire to eat food is normal. The desire to eat dirt is deviant and disordered" for fostering pride by such declarations of obvious truth?

Now, someone might say, Hannon wants us to emphasize married sexuality rather than heterosexuality as the norm. What could be the problem with that? Since it is set expressly in opposition to the normalizing of heterosexual desire, lots and lots. First of all, if we ditch the very concept of heterosexuality as a natural, telic orientation in anyone who isn't married, how is anybody ever going to get married? Call me over-literalistic if you will, but it's important to remember as one reads heady talk like Hannon's about "deconstructing heterosexuality" and about how "heterosexuality blinds us to sin" that if unmarried people didn't have heterosexual desires they would never become married people! If churches and other organizations didn't regard heterosexuality as normal and natural, they would have no reason to provide, for example, opportunities for young people to get to know each other and hopefully meet mates and get married.

Girls need to be given a picture of themselves as girls and boys as boys during their whole lives, from long before they are actually married, and part of that picture is the understanding and expectation that, in due time, they will be attracted to members of the opposite sex and that this is perfectly natural. Nor is this sort of gradual heterosexual self-awareness appropriate solely in relation to the one and only one person they will actually marry. It need not be a case of lust for young women to notice men, including men they know they are never going to marry, and to recognize that they find those men attractive or unattractive, to evaluate and even analyze those instinctive attractions, to decide, for example, when they are wise or unwise. And the same mutatis mutandis for young men. To hold, as Hannon urges us to hold, that attraction to the opposite sex should not be considered an important part of one's normal and innate identity any more than same-sex attraction is is a psychologically dangerous thesis. Adopting it would be utterly disastrous for parenthood. For this reason alone it is to be hoped that Christian parents completely reject Hannon's misguided advice if they should happen to read it. The solution to the tragedy of children who agonize over their sexual identity is not the deconstruction of heterosexuality but rather a "heteronormativity" so absolute as to be beyond doubt or question, a "heteronormativity" that gives children a secure background against which to set themselves and in which to grow up.

Here is another point: In general the relations of the sexes are part of what makes the world beautiful and interesting. When a gentleman holds a door for a lady or even compliments her respectfully on her appearance or when a lady dresses nicely because there will be gentlemen present at some meeting, this is all entirely good and appropriate as far as it goes. The parties need not be married to one another at all. Certainly such recognition of the presence of members of the opposite sex and appreciation of them, even of their physical attractiveness, can descend into crudity and lust, but it need not do so. None of us should want to live in an androgynous world. Nor should we be reacting to our own pornified world by trying to turn all male-female interactions into androgynous interactions unless they are between people actually married to one another. So, no: Gender identity and even sexual identity cannot and should not be confined solely to "married identity," and heterosexual identity in these areas is normal whereas homosexual identity is not. That is one of the places where the "new homophiles" err. They want to create some space, for homosexuals, for a category such as I have just described for innocent heterosexual appreciation. There is no such space, however, precisely because homosexuality is intrinsically disordered.

A central fallacy of Hannon's post consists in the strenuous attempt to treat homosexual inclinations and heterosexual inclinations as on a par. In this Hannon actually agrees with the "new homophiles." They, like him, want to treat homosexual desires in a similar way (as much as possible) to the way one treats heterosexual desires. Their solution is to treat homosexual desires as, somehow, a positive thing, a gift, and part of one's identity. That puts them to some degree (except that they must not be acted upon) on a par with heterosexual desires. Hannon, too, wants to treat the two even-handedly, yet his solution is to say that neither is a normal part of identity and that any identification of oneself in connection with one's sexuality merely blinds one to sin. What neither group is willing to do is to recognize the absolutely fundamental asymmetry between heterosexual and homosexual desires. The reason that the former are a normal part of identity is because they are really part of nature, really part of God's design for the world. Masculinity and feminity are important aspects of reality, and our recognition and celebration of them is an important part of being human. The reason that homosexual desires are an unhealthy source of identity is because they are disordered. Identifying oneself as intrinsically "a homosexual" really is identifying oneself with one's inclinations to sin. This is not so for being heterosexual.

It may be replied to all of this that I am just out of touch with the world of 2014 and don't understand the extreme perversions of "heterosexuality" that many people are being exposed to and developing a horrible taste for--e.g., via pornography. This ain't the 1950's, so maybe we shouldn't celebrate heterosexual desire. No, dear reader, I assure you. Though I do indeed try to follow the injunction of Philippians 4:8 to think on whatsoever things are pure, lovely, and of good report, I am indeed aware that people can be inclined to genuine perversions which happen to be carried out with members of the opposite sex. Even without going into any lurid detail, one can see this merely by considering that a pedophile man may desire little girls.

What, then? Is the solution to this to reject or deny the beauty of natural attraction between the sexes and of the natural recognition of the attractiveness of the opposite sex? God forbid. If anything, we need more and more attempts to resurrect that old world and that old vision. Hence, my deliberately dated references above to relations between ladies and gentlemen in public situations.

Moreover, to go back to Hannon's post, how does the existence of sexual perversions involving males with females support Hannon's thesis that heterosexuality should be "deconstructed" and that its "deconstruction" is an "opportunity" for Christians? In short, it doesn't support it one smidgen. Since God did indeed make men and women and did indeed intend them for one another, since normal heterosexual desires are indeed natural, Hannon's denial of "heteronormativity" is just flat wrong. No amount of twisting or perversion of the sexual instinct on the part of (some of) those who are not homosexuals can possibly change the fact that he is wrong. It simply does not follow from the fact that there are unhealthy urges and acts involving members of the opposite sex that there are no healthy urges and acts. Indeed, the only healthy human sexual urges and acts are between two people who are members of opposite sexes. If Hannon thinks it is "prideful" to point that out and to recognize it in society, then he just has a war on with reality.

I would go so far as to say that for Christians, who have both general and special revelation at their disposal, to join in "deconstructing heterosexuality" as Hannon suggests is so badly confused and so wildly irresponsible as to be actually sinful. Such a "deconstruction" can only do harm, not good. Let us join in promoting "heteronormativity" in every venue where we can, and most of all in our homes.