Evidence for God

I did not need more evidence for God;
And God yet more abundantly gives sign.
To his existence yours does gently nod;
Your voice the angel choir brings to mind.

Our story is a gospel told of love,
A parable of providence and truth,
A song so beautiful heard from above,
Poetic verses shared from age to youth.

Your smile, no mere mortal visage, shows
A window to a day of hopes fulfilled.
Your words imbue my heart with warmer glows,
Of faith and strength to confidently build

The castle of our home and family, too;
A sacrament of love for God and you.

Boiling it Down

Conservatives need a new language on same-sex marriage. The case against government-redefinition is too heady, too philosophical, and too abstract. And it will lose, because though it is true, it is not good propaganda.

The point of this post is not to engage in propaganda, but to figure out how to allow some truth to be heard by a public whose ear is deaf to much else.

First, let's discuss language. Here are the top three bad terms and phrases used by conservatives, and how they need to revise their language:

• Avoid "traditional marriage" - First of all, dear Republicans, please understand that Americans have a deep, white-hot hatred of "tradition" as an argument for the status quo. Using the 'T' word is sounding the death-knell for your cause.
  
  Look. I get it. "Tradition" comes from roots meaning roughly "what has been given to us." That's great. So far it goes, I'm all for "traditional marriage."
  
  But the people listening to you have only two mental categories: (1) artificial, changeable things, and (2) absolute, unchangeable things. And the word "tradition" always belongs in the first one.
  
  Instead, say: "Marriage." Seriously. Stake your rightful claim. When you must clarify, you may use the mouthful "sexually complementary marriage," but at the risk of coining neologisms, I like the phrase "original marriage". "Original" carries some of the same denotation as "traditional"--however, unlike the latter word, it includes a reference to marriage's origins, which thus constitute its content.
  
• Avoid "natural" - It's sad that this word will never be heard with its intended meaning--see my previous post. When liberals hear "natural" they knee-jerk into diatribes about monkeys and the animal kingdom.
  
  What conservatives mean when they say "natural" is that, among humans, marriage is a natural outgrowth of our sexual complementarity, fertility, intellect, and social qualities. Marriage is coextensive with human societies, and thus it is not an institution in the same vein as "baseball" or "political parties"--which exist solely at society's pleasure.
  
  Similarly, avoid "biological" - If "natural" conjures inappropriate zoology, "biological" invokes inappropriate anatomy. The science of biology, in isolation, can never serve as the basis of law. Biology's method and logic is atomistic and value-neutral. Biology never asks about the meaning of organs; and strictly speaking, biology cannot even definitely discuss their purpose.
  
  There's nothing wrong with the science of biology; but it is thoroughly out of its scope in the politics of marriage.
  
  Instead, say: "Organic;" or else pair "organic, spontaneous". "Organic" isn't just marketing buzz-language; it is also, in marriage politics, absolutely applicable. The word taps into a non-partisan hunger for things that are as un-meddled-with, or as little-meddled-with as possible. It unveils marriage's link to our organism and hence our very being--a link that same-sex relationships have nothing to do with.
  
• Avoid "between one man and one woman" - I'm all for monogamy, but stressing it right now complicates the issue. Nobody's debating monogamy. It doesn't help that the accepted number of people in a marriage is historically fluid. Liberals will be keen to point this out as evidence that every aspect of marriage is up for grabs.
  
  Of course, monogamy and sexual complementarity are two very different things in this regard. As common as polygamy has been in history, same sex marriage has been the opposite. But liberals won't address this and will instead repeat their previous argument louder.
  
  Instead, say: "between a man and a woman". Just soften it a little. Or avoid the trite phrasing altogether and get on board the "sexual complementarity" train. SC is necessary for marriage. It's good for families and it's good for society. It's an objective, organic fact; and securing its unique status is not a bigotry.

Now let's boil the issue down to the most basic talking points:

1. Same sex marriage is government madness. Government redefining marriage is not so much an evil thing as much as it is bonkers. Marriage wasn't invented by government. Government doesn't institute marriage any more than it institutes puppies or trees. Ultimately, redefining marriage makes as much sense as redefining puppies or trees. Two men equals a marriage like kittens equal puppies and like utility poles equal trees.
   
   Ultimately this means that governments can say anything they please, but non-insane people will know better--that the government is being silly. There will be a giant disconnect between enforced public policy and social belief. Schools and institutions will have the "new math" rammed down their throats. And as the HHS mandate has taught us, religious schools and institutions are no exception.
   
   Liberal counter: "But marriage is an institution. Government has the right and responsibility to regulate it."
   
   Conservative response: Two things. (1) Marriage is a universal organic and spontaneous human fact before it is an institution. As such, marriage does not derive its definition or constitution from policies, but out of its own essence. (2) Governments regulate lots of things without redefining them. There are laws controlling trees and puppies. There are no laws saying that utility poles are trees, or that kittens are puppies.
   
2. People who understand marriage aren't bigots. Government redefining marriage doesn't just create a new kind of married people. It also creates a new class of bigot. It doesn't just redefine marriage, it redefines hate. Your grandparents were bigots. Your parents are bigots. And you're a bigot too, if you don't follow the new math.
   
   The problem is that most people who know what marriage is aren't bigots. Many of them don't have a hateful bone in their body. The propaganda promoting same-sex marriage is inherently antagonistic and it is bound up with the policy itself. Redefining marriage becomes a legally sanctioned public condemnation against people who haven't lost their common-sense.
   
   Notice that the reverse is not true. Government keeping marriage what it is does not produce a condemnation against people who disagree. Liberal institutions are not forced to violate their consciences or their sanity (whatever sanity they have left anyway).
   
   Liberal counter: "There is nothing hostile about same-sex marriage. We just want to marry who we love! It's people who hate us who want to keep us from equality."
   
   Conservative response: Of course same-sex marriage isn't hostile. It's madness (see #1) but it's not hostile. The hostility doesn't come from the movement's goal directly. It comes from the false narrative of civil rights.
   
   Legally, nobody is advocating for extending a right from one class of citizen to another. Redefining marriage takes a legal recognition already available to all people (including gay people), and appends a new legal recognition also available to all people (nothing stops two straight women from marrying, e.g.). It is meant as an accommodation to an urgently felt desire of some people. But there is no civil right to marry your own sex (see #3).
   
   By adopting civil rights language, the political left has turned everybody who disagrees into bigots. This is not about hurt feelings. This is about a new foundation for policy that will target innocent people and institutions with the charge of hate. The Catholic Church, the LDS, and all individuals who "get" marriage, are now to be classed with holocaust deniers, the KKK, and the extreme right.
   
   The second that the gay lobby used the word "hate" to describe the conservative position, it forsook all claims not to be a hostile movement. Make no mistake: governments and societies that go down this road will not tolerate the conservative position operating publicly within their borders. 
   
   It didn't have to be this way. If the left had advocated for redefined marriage without reinventing it as a "civil right," it might have allowed a space where conservatives could continue to live as they please. But that opportunity is long past us now.

Getting to the bottom of the same-sex marriage quarrel

It's difficult not to say something, since it's everywhere on the news.

I lament that the left is gearing up for a civil-rights battle and all I can see is civilization shipwrecking logic onto political correctness.

What is the debate really about? The left says it's about rights and fairness. Some on the right say that it's about God and religion.

These are both incorrect. The two sides cannot agree on what the debate is about, so they never debate. The lack of real debate means that the outcome will be decided completely by who has the more successful propaganda. That will probably be the left, in time.

The debate is really about the nature of marriage, the scope of government, and as a tangent, religious freedom. But 99% of the language in the popular discourse is garbage.

There is a marriage tug-of-war, but it is not about who has the right to marry. Both parties agree that everybody has the right to marry. Strictly and legally, government redefinition of marriage is not an expansion of rights from one class of people to another. It is a novel option that technically becomes available to everybody (nothing prevents two straight males from marrying).

But this is an aside. The real wedge has nothing to do with rights. It affects rights, but in itself it's a different animal.

Let's bring back my cumbersome phrase from a previous post: sexual complementarity, or SC for short. So, when it comes to marriage, is SC integral to marriage or is it optional?

I would be happier if only the discussion focussed more on these or similar terms. However, even this question is superficial relative to the matters involved. As soon as activists begin laying out their reasons for one side or another, it becomes clear that they already have vastly different functioning definitions of marriage--deeper than arguing about "who gets to marry".

Suppose we grant that same-sex marriage is possible. We can deduce a couple presuppositions from this:

• Marriage is a human institution and wholly subject to the will of society.
• The ultimate authority in defining the boundaries of marriage is the government.

Perhaps same-sex marriage advocates will disagree or quibble with or wish to refine parts of these, but they can hardly reject them completely. Note, of course, that these are not ridiculous claims. There are arguments to be made in favor of social relativism in the sphere of marriage. Moreover, it would be invalid to suggest (as conservatives might) that such an understanding results necessarily in the annihilation of marriage, or other "ridiculous" possibilities (marrying animals, children, or inanimate objects). Relativism presupposes social norms, impermanent though they may be.

But the presuppositions behind the conservative position are so different that their lack of mention in the public sphere baffles.

• Marriage is a natural phenomenon integral to human society.
• Certain characteristics of marriage are permanently outside of human authority to redefine.

The mention of "nature" by conservatives usually provokes remarks about the animal kingdom that miss the point. However there is a kernel of truth to the remarks. Marriage is exclusive to humans, and conservatives don't deny that it is an institution. 

This presents a problem. In most minds, "natural" and "institutional" are opposed. The left does not deny there is something natural about marriage, but their only reference for what "natural" means is the animal kingdom (and perhaps the more bestial examples of human history). There remains a prejudice that "natural" means "untouched by human intellect" and in the context of marriage is reduced to "sexual intercourse". Thus the liberal model of marriage divides it into two sharply distinct parts: the institutional component, whose norms are decided by the government; and the natural component, which anyway should be modeled on the animal kingdom (i.e. have no model at all) where it doesn't conflict with social norms.

The conservative mind has a vastly different conception of nature. A list of differences:

• Conservatives retain a category of "nature" that is distinctively human. There is no need for conservatives to refer to the animal kingdom to derive content for their understanding of "nature". In any case, elephant nature is different from crocodile nature, so conservatives do not understand the eagerness to apply bestial standards to humans.
• Human nature necessarily includes the intellect, which means that "natural" and "institutional" are not bifurcated for conservatives in the way that they are for the left. For conservatives there are true "natural institutions" which are both integral to homo-sapiens identity and subject to reasoned judgment.
• Human nature is not different or separate from humanity itself. In other words, one can no sooner  abolish marriage than they could abolish arms or toes. It is not only that nature has normative moral force. Rather it is that the definition of the homo sapiens goes beyond the biological, into the pre-existent anthropological forces that determine micro and macro society. For example: language. Language deprivation experiments, aka "the forbidden experiment," result in psychosis or death. Thus, some institutions are special because they safeguard phenomena that are what we are.

These conceptions, along with a cursory history of marriage, converge to make marriage a very different thing for conservatives than it is for the left. Whereas for the left, marriage is analagous to any other institution upheld for human satisfaction--say, baseball, or live theatre; for the right, marriage is more analogous to pre-existent things, like trees or biology.

The tree, in this case, is a solid metaphor, and I will always return to it. Trees are natural but they are undeniably also a human institution. Laws govern them. Humans use them. We plant, prune, regulate, harvest, chop down, carve, admire, decorate, preserve and care for them. There is a vast history of human interaction with trees that has taken almost every imaginable shape.

I predict now, cautiously, that there will never be a movement to broaden the definition of a tree to include utility poles; but I quiver that a similar logic now prevails in the same-sex marriage quarrel. Photosynthesis is not important, argue my imaginary activists. What is important is that they are tall, and that they are wooden, and birds make nests in them, and they are very useful to us. Tree laws have changed throughout the century, after all. And ultimately, even photosynthesis is not a problem--we can graft artificial leaves onto them.

If such a movement took shape,  the conservative arguments would be much the same: You are forgetting that the identity of trees precedes us and we have neither the right nor the ability to change it. Including utility poles demeans treeness and makes a mockery of forests, preservation reserves, and tree-houses.

If the government ignored these warnings and moved forward anyway, it would create a new class of social pariah, the discontents who would not accept the state's broader definition. It would penalize the park districts who planted no utility poles, fine textbook publishers and schools who did not revise their curricula, and populate the airwaves with new-standard-friendly language.

This is the challenge conservatives have in front of them today. I am afraid that it is a challenge they will lose. They will say, the purpose of marriage is to create an environment healthy for the couple's children, and this is constant. The left will say: "What about infertile couples"? And the right will not reply as they should: Even a sick tree is still a tree--it does not therefore become a utility pole, and neither, therefore, will a utility pole be considered a tree.

Romney's latest gaffe

Not a Romney fan. In fact I'm rooting for whichever Republican candidate is most likely to fail.

But I don't like the way his latest gaffe (and it was a gaffe) is being taken out of context.

In fact, I was heartened by the other side of what he was saying. Remember, he said "I'm not concerned about the very rich. They're doing just fine." Now that part of his quote is remarkable for two reasons. First of all, he broke the Fox News rule of calling the rich "job creators". That's huge. Republicans almost never call the rich and wealthy, rich and wealthy. I thought it was a nice piece of plain-talk on Romney's part.

And second of all, contrary to many Repubs who cry "class warfare" when a middle class American so much as scratches an itch, he publicly acknowledged that some classes are faring better than others.

Now if only Romney wasn't lying about not caring about the rich.

The contraception debate

Up until now, the government has not had much problem supporting non-church Catholic institutions that provided public services, with few if any strings attached.

The Obama administration is enforcing the HHS rule that artificial contraceptives are "preventive medicine" and therefore must be covered by insurance provided by all institutions.

I can point to three problems this presents:

(1) the rule includes the "morning-after pill", which is an abortifacent--it flushes the fertilized egg (which has its own unique DNA, different from the mother's, and is already growing) down the toilet.

(2) classifying artificial contraceptives as preventive medicine is an abuse of language. Pregnancy is not an illness. Contraceptives do not prevent a malady. There is no analogy between the Pill and the chicken-pox vaccine. Yes, there are statistics roughly correlating contraceptive use with some macro-level health benefits. But this data can't logically be the sole basis for classifying some drugs as "preventive medicine". Under the same logic, Medicare should pay for fish dinners because their omega-3 content is loosely "preventive" of mental problems.

And (3) this is a slippery slope to more strings tied to government funding that will threaten more and more Catholic institutions with the dilemma of complicity or closure.

I see the arguments of the left and I am not going to call their position a "war" or "malicious". I do not think it is any of those things. This is mostly our fault as a Catholic community for failing to evangelize ourselves on the spiritual and health benefits of natural family planning. If 98% of Catholic women use artificial means of contraception, why would Obama believe he is attacking anyone of importance? Those women will still vote for him regardless.

A line needs to be drawn, but where do we draw it? The left wants religious institutions to tow a secular moral doctrine or get out of the pool. The right wants the government to tow a religious moral doctrine or get out of DC.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I regret that I have lost a great deal of work on this essay.

The ultimate point I wanted to make is that the government generally does not, and should not, use considerations of religious belief to make choices regarding the NPOs that it funds.

As a hypothetical example: suppose the FDA was looking to contract out responsibility for testing various food products, and a non-profit organization with proven credentials asked for a grant. The only catch is that this NPO, a Jewish one, refused to handle pork products of any kind. To be denied the grant on this grounds alone would be tantamount to illegal discrimination.

The government has shown that it has no problem making accommodations for the religious beliefs of individuals who serve the country in good faith.

Except in cases where an NPOs beliefs are directly complicit in criminal behavior, the government should not pick fights with NPOs on the basis of beliefs, or contract only with organizations who tow the line on its secular humanistic moral ideology.

What is a story?

A story is a probing exploration into a corner of human existence. It stretches a character out uncomfortably in a certain direction, watching it squirm but never break, until new truths about humanity are unveiled. These truths may be exotic or they may be beautiful or they may be poignant.

A little bit about capital punishment

The Catechism of the Catholic Church should ideally provide some reference in each of its teachings to Scripture and Tradition.

The section on the death penalty (2267) doesn't do this.

So, in lieu of Catechism footnotes, let me direct interested parties to the First Things article by Avery Cardinal Dulles, Catholicism and Capital Punishment

I've always had a quibble with capital punishment, since it has never seemed to jibe well with Catholicism's reverence for natural law. But in reading Dulles' article, I see that the justification for the death penalty is not that it is consonant with natural law, but rather that it is not, properly speaking, the act of men.

God alone is judge and God alone is Lord of life and death. But there is a bridge between God's lordship and human action, and that bridge is Biblical doctrine. Civil authorities (no matter their personal creed or model of government) are bequeathed God's authority for the sake of maintaining public order. This is not the "divine right of kings"--it is rather an acknowledgement that earthly power, whether acknowledged or not, comes from God.

Entering into Catholic faith is sometimes a process of letting go of deeply rooted assumptions. Modern sympathies, my own included, are to regard civil authorities with quasi-contempt: hardly divine, scarcely sometimes even human.

Yet deference to civil authority is so deeply ingrained in Catholic tradition that it cannot be disposed of without heterodoxy. I just never imagined before that it would reach such a height as to elevate the State above the proscription against killing. But the more I understand Catholic faith, the more I begin to see how all of creation (not only nature but society) is shot through with the divine.

My soft heart is happy that the Holy See views the death penalty as scarcely ever justified in developed nations. But my intellect does grasp that civil authorities are regarded as no more artificial or disposable than the human family, and that each of these entities has certain powers and duties that transcend the individual, making them more than the sum of their parts.