Just saying
Here's a guy who supports so-called Same-sex Marriage and Arizona SB 1062. Reading through it, it seems like he lives in Happytown, USA where we can all just git along fine, garsh-dangit, if we just try real hard. But he makes good points. And it's interesting to me that a Cato Institute dude like Ilya Shapiro, i.e. probably not a social conservative, can have a supportive view of a bill supporting religious freedom instead of grumpily ceding the argument like Douthat and others. Is this because some of these people like the concepts of religion and morality but wince at the word freedom? And are these types only focusing on how freedom may be misused instead of how it makes a good people great by allowing them to practice religion without fear?
"Tolerance, civility, and equal rights in a pluralistic society are all two-way streets."
ReplyDeleteSo are intolerance, incivility, and and other sorts of bad traffic as practiced in these high visibility demonstration suits against religious vendors, which is what makes all this flamboyant whining by Dreher and Douthat completely suspect concern trolling.
Anyone who deserves any sort of liberty needs to be able to take a punch - and then punch back. If any of these made-for-media suits are really about equality, there's plenty of money out there to both rally around the defendants and support both their legal defense and loss of business and also, and just as importantly, file some counter-demonstration suits in turn against high-profileable gay concerns raising the same principle of conscience.
The only way this situation gets resolved back into the common-sense, free-market two way street Ben Domenech lays out here is to show clearly what one-way, bullying streets look like in contrast to true equality and pluralistic tolerance. Bringing a potato salad to a gunfight just never seems to work.
What Dreher and Douthat do instead of joining a clearly defensible battle is to demagogue commiseratingly with their flocks on the slave docks as they helpfully load their naive wards into the westbound ships.
Keith
Let the Lenten pledge drive begin.
ReplyDeleteThe Forbes guy just doesn't get it, with two of his points:
ReplyDelete5. This isn’t the Jim Crow South. There are plenty of wedding photographers—over 100 in Albuquerque alone—and bakeries who would be willing to do business regardless of sexual orientation and no state is enforcing segregation laws (or has police officers moonlighting as Klansmen).
6. It may be a different case if there’s only one photographer for hundreds of miles—let alone one restaurant or hotel—but I wonder how many gay weddings happen in such isolated hamlets. And anyway, that extreme hypothetical shouldn’t be used as the basis for establishing general principle. As they say, hard cases make bad law.
The reason that he doesn't get the point is that he doesn't understand the militancy of the current gay movement. The point of the movement has little to do with "marriage", and it has even less to do with ensuring that gay people are served by businesses. IMO, the gay movement has all to do with thought control -- the objective is to convince us all that gay sex is as normal, well-ordered, and just-as-good as hetero-sex in a traditional marriage. IOW, tolerance is not enough -- there must be acceptance, with nary heard a discouraging word.
The problem with the Arizona bill is that it took away the tactic of the gays going to the Christian baker or whomever, not being served, and then making a huge stink over it -- thereby shaming the baker into "right-thinking". There's loads of bakers down the street who would love the business -- but it is not about getting a cake, it's about making a scene. If the Arizona bill gave a safe harbor, then that very powerful tactic goes away -- and we can't have that.
Think of the Canadian case in which the lesbians surreptitiously hired the Knights of Columbus hall, the Knights found out and gracefully backed out (paying extra to cover expenses) -- resulting in a lawsuit, of course. Of course the lesbian couple knew in advance what the Knights and the Church stood for -- but the point was to either raise a stink about it, or to actually have the reception there and then rub everyone's nose in it.
The Forbes guy is naive. These safe harbors are not only necessary, they are essential.
To Keith's point, I don't think that counter-suits are an effective answer. A common (and likely correct) result would be that both plaintiffs lose. But the original suit isn't about recovery -- it's about making a stink and making a point. 24 hour nonstop Nancy Grace point-counterpoint about the lawsuits wears people down. What is needed is either judges with spine who toss the frivolous suits on their own (fat chance of that), or statutes that make them do so.
P.S. And just as certain, if a small concession is given in the face of an enemy's demand, slavery to the enemy soon follows. We all remember the Boy Scouts of America giving in to the Gay Gestapo last year, in allowing gay scouts. Of course, that's not enough. Nothing short of complete submission and worship at the altar will be enough.
Pik, the counter-suit idea isn't about recovery either. It's completely an expenditure of legal ammo solely to expose, by doing exactly the same thing, what these demonstrative gay lawsuits are doing. And in the near term to make it unnerving for their fellow gays to continue.
DeleteIn the longer term the outcome is just as you suggest, to force, by appealing as necessary and forcing them getting overruled on appeal, judges either to look like bought and paid for tools if they allow one faction's suits but not the others, or to start disallowing the judiciary to be hijacked for social engineering at all.
But I can promise that those like Dreher and Douthat who won't fight at all will always lose.
What's happening now is one side is suing to get Christian bakers to cater gay weddings and the other side is tut-tutting, "What if gays had to bake "God hates fag cakes? Nobody wants that."
So one side tut-tuts to themselves and the other side sues and wins. Reminds me a whole lot of Putin vs. Obama & Crimea.
Now if a group did start approaching gay bakers and forcing some "God Hates Fags" catering upon threat of suit and capturing the results either way on video, the sooner the whole gambit by all parties will be seen publicly for the strong-arm action it is and a truce becomes possible. Better than "GHF" of course would be a serious moral verse from the Bible on the subject, but you get my point.
As it stands now, one side is declaring "I'm taking what I want" and the other side is exclaiming "We're all losers".
Not hard under those circumstances for the second side to look to the public like they're losing because they deserve to.
Keith
But I can promise that those like Dreher and Douthat who won't fight at all will always lose.
DeleteI don't read Douthat enough to have an opinion on him (but, in response to the linked piece of his, I'd add that the continuing debate and fight over Roe v. Wade is a notable counterexample -- little surrender there.)
In Dreher's case, he won't fight because that's not his vocation. His vocation is to be the token conservative among a liberal consensus -- to put up the feeble fight (to exactly zero effect) so that the liberals can feel good about "hearing" the "other side" of issues while never being seriously challenged. The SSM issue is the perfect example, in which Dreher constantly uses the weakest possible argument (to liberal ears, anyway).
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DeleteKeith -- now I understand what counter-suits you're talking about. I thought you were talking about countersuits in the same case (counterclaims for civil rights violations), like Mark Steyn's counterclaims.
DeleteSo your fighting back is a possible approach. But the problem is that the media treats every dispute to favor the desired result. That's why we see newspaper columns screeching about people boycotting Girl Scout cookies because it's mean to the poor girls, but crickets in years past when Boy Scouts were barred from this-that-and-the-other (which was just as mean, if not more so, to the boys).
So to your idea, we'd see applications of the double standards -- Christian bakers lose because they're mean to gays, and H8Rs lose because they're mean to gay bakers.
(reposted so as not to be embarrassingly illiterate)
Pik, "the media" is whoever reports on what, and there's enough conservative and centrist media out there to intelligently parse the legal goings on. We're already quoting them here.
DeleteBut until there's actually some real pushback to report on - as opposed to Dreher and Douthat's mere capitulative blogging about a future that hasn't even arrived yet - there won't be anything to report on except early victories by one side.
This raises an interesting and reasonable question: is Roe still on the burner because more people cared? Is gay wedding baking not because fewer people do?
It's the ultimate dishonesty (which is why it's Dreher's stock in trade) to blame others for one's own disinterest or feebleness.
My own thinking is that people somehow thought there was some sort of automatic mechanism already in place to protect them. Now they're finding they may actually have to get up on their hind legs and do something to create one, and that's apparently a bridge too far for D&D and company.
Keith
I think the difference here plays into what Breitbart used to preach: culture is upstream from politics. We lost control of the culture (movies, TV, music, arts, media) long ago, and so now you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a gay plot line or subtheme.
DeleteIn the case of Roe, the cultural groundwork hadn't been done as well by the time of the decision, nor has it yet.
To change the politics, the culture has to be gained back.
Dreher just made a Mardi Gras post about anal lube. How latent / blatant can you be?
ReplyDeleteAnd then he exhumes his poor sister for yet another parade on his blog.
ReplyDelete