Did Obergefell just rewrite the First Amendment?

That is, with respect to the free exercise clause, has Kennedy and the majority just left us now with a Bill of Rights containing, in order, a 3/4th Amendment, a Second Amendment, a Third Amendment, etc? A lot of people fainting onto their blogging couches today seem to think so, finding evidence for it both in Kennedy's reference to religious liberty and even in the words of the four dissenting Justices.

But Obergefell simply wasn't about the First Amendment or religious liberty, it was about a federal right to gay marriage. Like many badly built thought structures - ::coughObamacarecough:: - Obergefell almost certainly contains deformative logic bombs which will continue to detonate at later times, more likely unpredictably than predictably, and, as I continue to argue, very, very likely with predictable consequence to Obergefell itself as a legal precedent.

But while, of course, Obergefell has immediately set up imminent clashes with religious liberty protections under the First Amendment - duh...that's what legal logic bombs do - that is patently not the same thing as a claim that the former has now effectively trumped and subordinated the latter (I had originally written "not the same thing as suggesting that", but that is patently what it is: mere suggestion, preying upon suggestibility).

Still, like my grocery list (ribeye steaks, Macallan 12,...), First Amendment constitutional protections of religious liberty remain just words on a piece of paper until someone acts on them one way or another. I usually find that, if I don't make it a point to buy my groceries myself, those words just continue to lie there and I don't get to enjoy their promise.

If you believe Obergefell has immediately and directly threatened or curtailed your separate First Amendment religious rights, let's hear about it.

And if you think, as I do, that religious liberty questions will always be their own, separate and distinct battles, let's hear your arguments as well.

UPDATE (as they say): Unifying marriage, or fun with logic bombs.

This is entirely tangential to the thrust of this post, but I'm sticking this addendum here anyway. The question is, if the courts can unify marriage federally with respect to gender, on what basis could any state still argue its primacy with respect to any other discriminating marital provision such as blood tests, waiting periods, expiration of marriage licences, etc?

UPDATE 2 (also a non-sequitur):

Q: Why are people terrified of doing to Scientologists what they'll cheerfully do to Christians?

A: Because they know that Scientologists will legally tear your legs off and beat you to death with them for trying while Christians will simply take it.

A question that interests me in the wake of Obergefell

Rather than hang another comment on Pik's post where it would be diversionary anyway, I'm just going to start a new thread to focus on it. I picked this excerpt from Chief Justice Roberts' dissent from Ann Althouse's blog (she favors SSM). The empasis is mine.

The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same-sex couples, or to retain the historic definition.

This is obviously 10th Amendment territory. But my specific question is this. Let's say a state - Alabama might be the likeliest candidate - just says, yeah, we agree with Roberts. We're just going to keep our historic definition. Not sue, mind you, simply ignore Obergefell entirely. Terrible precedent, to be sure, and Roy Moore could expect some absolutely devastating Tweets.

But, really, what happens next? Paratroopers? Hardly. Economic sanctions? What? Against whom or what?

In short, what could a state actually suffer for simply ignoring Obergefell and not recognizing SSM?

It's worse than you think

Keith invited my comments on the Obergefell decision today over at his fine post on King v. Burwell (RTWT, as they say).  Because my take on this SSM decision will be too long to comfortably fit in a comment, tho -- it'll have to be in this new post.  But as I said, read Keith's post too.

As indicated in the title, my take on the Supreme Court decision regarding SSM is that it is worse, far worse, than you might be lead to believe from the media reports.  All you need to know about the majority holding is contained in its first sentence:

The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity*.

The holding then invokes the previously-tried much-reviled doctrine of "substantive due process", by which those fundamental rights as identified by the "reasoned judgment" of the courts as "so fundamental that the State must accord them its respect" are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment -- i.e., protected by the imposition of state laws that impinge on those rights. This approach of "substantive due process" was used in Dred Scott (which C.J. Roberts reminds us was "overruled on the battlefields of the Civil War"), and in the reviled, overruled, and now (by this case) resurrected Lochner case.  But history doesn't slow down Justice Kennedy --- not when his "reasoned judgment" can rewrite it by claiming that the Framers intended this result:

The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.

Like Hell they did.

Anyhoo, then the obvious bootstrapping of same-sex marriage into such a fundamental right then occurs, and voila: same-sex marriage is a fundamental right that must be granted by each state, and honored across state lines.  End of analysis.

All of the four dissents are strong, and do not shy from pointing out the damage that is done by the majority opinion.  All citizens should read all four of them.  Roberts points out Dred Scott and Lochner, and the evils those cases inflicted, as noted above.  Scalia rightfully rails against the "naked judicial claim to ... super-legislative power, a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government".  Justice Thomas gives a lesson on the meaning of liberty, with this lead-in:

[T]he majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a "liberty" that the Framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea -- captured in our Declaration of Independence -- that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion of our Constituion not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic.

And Justice Alito wraps up the larger effect at the end of his dissent:

If a bare majority of Justices can invent a new right and impose that right on the rest of the country, the only real limit on what future majorities will be able to do is their own sense of what those with political power and cultural influence are willing to tolerate.... 

... I do not doubt that my colleagues in the majority sincerely see in the Constitution a vision of liberty that happens to coincide with their own.  But this sincerity is cause for concern, not comfort.  What it evidences is the deep and perhaps irremediable corruption of our legal culture's conception of constitutional interpretation.

Yeah, it's that bad.

Keith makes the point that the states make "cohabitation licenses" available to all comers, without discrimination, and that whatever the rest of us want to call it is up to us.  That might have been a response had the Supreme Court applied "equal protection" analysis -- but it most certainly is not a valid response given this decision.  We now have Supreme Court law that says that marriage is a fundamental right that must be granted by the state to any pair (for now) of humans (for now) who want it.  Discrimination has nothing to do with it -- marriage itself, as defined by the Court today and by courts in the future, is itself a fundamental right because of the dignity that it allegedly confers. So sorry, Keith, that ship has sailed.

And contrary to Flambeaux's point (while granting that this die may have been cast long ago -- but not as long ago as Justice Kennedy says), this case will in fact cause incalculable damage beyond its specific holding today.  Just like Roe v. Wade, much of the populace will interpret this "right" to same-sex marriage as a public good -- "gee, if the state can't prevent me from getting (an abortion; married to another guy), it must be a good thing for me to do."  This case is worse than Roe, though, because at least in Roe the Court allowed room for some limitations, regulations, etc. in its out-of-the-blue trimester analysis.  There's no such room here -- this one is carved in stone totally, and completely.

Of course, this was the goal of the gay political agenda all along -- to require the Nation to agree that gay is just as good as hetero, and that it is immoral to think, much less say, otherwise.  You especially can't say otherwise in this current age of bigotry witch hunts, in which one evil racist nut acts out his own bigotry, meaning of course  good-bye to Lake Calhoun.

Legally, we'll now be in the realm of clashing rights:  same-sex marriage vs. religious freedom.  One would think that the judge-invented SSM right would lose to the express First Amendment free exercise right, but all you have to do is look at the abortion counseling cases to see how that often doesn't matter.

Courage and action (not BOp "strategic retreat") will be required in this new age. A price will be exacted for one's convictions.  Parochial schools and universities may well have to do without federal and state funding. Murray Option actions will be required.  And states and communities that want to resist may well have to suffer the inevitable corporate embargos.

Freedom is not free.

* Any in the class have any ideas as to what current hot topic might fall within "defining and expressing their identity"? Bueller?  Bruce (I mean) Kaitlyn?

My thoughts on the recent Supreme Court rulings

First and foremost, with respect to the first ruling in King v. Burwell, I owe Pik an apology. I had defended Chief Justice Roberts way back when for taking a strategic long view with an eye to setting up Obamacare for the kill later on. But Roberts' arguments in King now clearly show he sees the Court's role as one of providing a legislative rehabilitative salvation for the law rather than ruling on the text of it. That, and getting more Likes on Facebook.

He, at least I think Roberts is the one who made passing reference to this, is right on one point, though. It's fully in the hands of Congress to repeal and/or replace Obamacare as it sees fit. This is entirely as it should be. We shouldn't be hoping SCOTUS will do our difficult work for us any more than we should be hoping Roberts will shoot our dog for us to spare us the unpleasantness of the task. Now the situation is crystal clear: elect a Republican Congress with spine and a Republican President to sign their work into law and handle this whole matter the right way, as the writers of the Constitution intended.

Now, with respect to today's opinion in Obergefell there is one enormous question that immediately eclipses everything else: who will be the third and greatest fool in the Greater Fool Theory of Publishing to sign up to lose money on Rod Dreher's BO book? Dreher has been positively leaving a trail of bodily fluids the last several days in eager anticipation of today's ruling coming down as it did, because what's bad for Christian conservatives is good for anyone wanting to push a snake oil cure for what just hit them.

Aside from some unknown publisher's as yet unbooked losses, though, let's work through what today's Obergefell ruling really means.

First, if you're Rod Dreher or Ace at AOSHQ and you're reprising Bill Paxton's "Game over, man!" (NSFW) scene from Aliens, here's what's really going through your head: "Okay, I'm bent over this stump, I've dropped my pants, oh, my, what will happen to me next? Will they use a lube? Oh, it would be so much more terrible if they didn't use a lube, wouldn't it? It would! It would! I can hardly wait!"

Since I myself am not stump broke like Rod Dreher, here is, alternatively, what is going through my head.

A cohabitation license issued by the State must be available to all comers in order not to discriminate, which carries this interesting little clusterbomb implicit within it. Nothing in Obergefell mandates for two-person marriages or against triad or larger unions, plus, this is no longer the States' problem, not even the Feds' - it effectively rebounds right back to SCOTUS as soon as it arises.

Whether you wish to call two guys cohabiting for butt sex marriage or a dog show remains entirely up to you. If you whine, "but they'll make me call it marriage!", see stump broke, above.

If your church recognizes gay unions, consider getting another church that does not. Those that do not do so voluntarily can not and will not be forced to do so.

As for federal funding, if you can be bribed, please send your name and the particular favors, skills, goods, or elite access you are willing to barter for money to Keith care of EQE so that I may consider whether I have a need to buy you and use you for my own ends in some capacity.

In the meantime, the betting pool is now open on the publisher even more stupid than Judith Regan turned out to be.

Answers for Kemetica

In a previous thread, our new commenter Kemetica posed a few questions:

My point was that those who oppose SSM must be very clear on what it is that they want:
Just to be allowed to dissent (e.g. a clerk doesn't have to file an SSM marriage license) because of conscience?
To be allowed to refuse gays service for arguably expressive activities (e.g. cakes and photos and flowers)?
To be allowed to reject any service to gays in any context (e.g. housing)? 
To eventually be able to ban SSM?
To eventually be able to ban domestic partnerships? 
To eventually be able to reinstitute the closet?

My answers are a bit too long to be conveyed in a comment in that thread, not to mention that the comments are taking off in a different direction from Keith's original post, so I'm answering them in this new post.

But to answer fairly, I'll need to reframe the questions differently. Actually, they fall into two separate questions.

1.  "To eventually be able to ban SSM?" 

The short answer is:  unquestionably yes.

As I discussed here, IMO and under current equal protection law, a State can have a perfectly rational basis for establishing a special status for one-woman-one-man committed relationships (i.e. marriages).  To rehash briefly, biology matters in that men and women are different in ways that complement each other -- and that complementarity not only results in procreation, but indeed has shown through history to be the basis of stable and prosperous societies.  A State can (and should) recognize the importance of these facts, as based in biology, by favoring such arrangements.

Secondly, under our constitutional system, a State may, through its duly elected legislature, choose to define marriage to extend to same sex arrangements.  I don't think they should, but under our system they can. But the electorate and their representatives ought to be permitted to work out this question one way or the other, so that those who are disappointed by the result can at least respect the process. But if the Supreme Court rules that a State cannot define marriage as one-woman-one-man, that process is taken away from the electorate -- rather than settling the question, preventing the question from being settled  See the political effects of Roe v. Wade if you don't believe me.

2.  Why should you not be compelled, under penalty of law, to offer services to those selected by the State?

On the questions about "rejecting service" and the like, your questions are framed incorrectly IMO.  What you are asking is why the State shouldn't compel any business to offer their services to those identified by the State.

Here's where I'll earn some libertarian points, maybe.  IMO, the starting point should be:  no person shall be compelled, under threat of law, to perform services to anyone who he or she do not want to, unless there is a damn good reason.

As I mentioned here, race is a damn good reason.  We fought a Civil War in which hundreds of thousands of our citizens lost their lives over this issue, and we have express constitutional amendments on this issue.  And MLK showed us why racial discrimination is contrary to reason and God's laws.

I would pose that there are few other "damn good reasons" to compel businesses, under penalty of law. Preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation falls short of a damn good reason, IMO.  And as Keith mentioned, the market and social stigma can provide excellent motivations in this regard.  Few businesses will turn away willing customers -- and if some do for illegitimate reasons as judged by the consuming public, competition will take care of the issue.

But in any case, the law should never require one to violate one's religious tenets (facilitating sin) in order to comply with the law.  We must not entertain a regime, as we have now with Obamacare and in the Indiana situation, in which the approach is to enact and enforce such a law, with the possibility that waivers or exemptions may be granted for religious reasons.  No -- a law requiring compliance by violation of religious tenets is an unjust law, and "an unjust law is no law at all" (St. Augustine).

Does this mean that a homeowner renting out a room or half of a duplex via AirBnB can choose not to rent to practicing homosexuals so as not to facilitate sin?  Of course.  Does this mean that a Muslim restaurant can require men and women to sit in separate rooms if required by their flavor of Islam?  Sorry, but it means that too.

There you go.  Have at it. Convince me of my error.

Some questions as the Supreme Court hears arguments on gay marriage this morning

What is the State - and here I'm including state governments as well as the federal government - actually doing by claiming any dominion over any sort of marriage, and what right does it have to make any such sort of claim? Is it actually addressing what marriage is or is not, or is it only really addressing marriage to the extent that marriage occupies a place as a gateway to a number of political rights and financial benefits? In other words, should the State actually be addressing the rights and benefits that attach to marriage directly rather than using marriage as a convenient catch-all means of doing so and thus, in doing so, leave the kernel "marriage" at the center of these various rights and responsibilities alone entirely?

For just one example of this, could the State forbid medical institutions from granting or forbidding visitation rights based on marital status, thus addressing visitation rights while stepping over and leaving marriage untouched as a point of action entirely? It certainly does so on race already: medical visitation can't be granted or forbidden on the basis of race, and the State doesn't enumerate which races are valid visitors and which are not. It simply commands hands off race as a deciding factor.

Can the State establish a definition of marriage - any definition - without running afoul of the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment? How, or how not? For example, to establish a Catholic (or Methodist or Muslim) definition of marriage as a law of the land, federal or state, would seem to be a clear violation of the EC. But if so, what are we really left with talking about if the State claims a right to establish a secular, non-religious alternative: how can the State even realistically describe the boundaries of that definition without implicitly invoking a prior, religious definition? Or, again, is it the case that, rather than dealing with any sort of marriage, the State is instead merely expediently seizing upon a collective placeholder for a radiating series of rights and benefits it should more properly be compelled to address individually and directly?

In other words, ever since the pluralistic secular constitutional republic American State necessarily let go of a religious definition of marriage it has really only been gliding in free fall, holding on to a now-empty husk of the past. Constitutionally, it cannot return to any religious standard, but, at least logically, it seems to me, it can ultimately be forced to release its grip even on the husk it's still grasping by forcing it to define exactly what the remnant it's asserting a claim to is. Anything it attempts, it seems to me, can immediately be argued as constitutionally discriminatory from one standpoint or another.

This seems to be the ultimate terminal logic of marriage within a secular constitutional republic to me as groups other than heterosexual couples rise to claim benefits radiating from it: if any one standard for State-sanctioned marriage proves to be unconstitutional, then all - that is, State-sanctioned marriage itself - must ultimately prove to be unconstitutional, thus jettisoning the kernel junction "marriage" itself from the grip of the State entirely and back into its myriad private niches. Rights and benefits previously coupled to marriage must necessarily and subsequently be de-coupled: medical visitation, adoption, financial benefits, etc., etc, and addressed individually, separately, and discretely on their individual, separate, and discrete constitutional and legal merits.

Could some practical collective State property-inheritance-child harboring license subsequently re-evolve? It almost certainly would, but when it does it would (if conservatives insisted upon it) no longer have any connection with now entirely private marriage.

Thus, for conservatives and Christians, life will probably change, but not at all necessarily in the ways envisioned, and almost certainly not in the ways exploitative doomsaying parasites would want it to.

The implications of this to me are that, should conservatives assert themselves on these matters, and contra the completely bizarre cult of personal weakness and submission Rod Dreher is desperately attempting to inculcate in and cultivate among others solely in order to promote his book sales, the whole gay marriage issue might very well prove to be that turning point at which the modern pluralistic constitutional republic American State, at least, was ultimately forced to abandon any direct claims upon marriage entirely.

Even short of this, though, to what extent does whatever the State claim with respect to any version of what it chooses to recognize as marriage bind or even implicate conservatives? I can see one consequence: even threading the needle between accommodation laws (can't discriminate against gays as gays) and compelled speech (conservatives can't be compelled to celebrate SSM), the percentage of conservatives involved in wedding commerce might decline, primarily voluntarily at the hands of conservative vendors themselves. Beyond that, though, what actual compulsions could the State possibly level against conservatives? I've already argued extensively that the idiosyncratic personal and moral cowardice of Rod Dreher should be recognized as the worst touchstone possible for engagement in the public square. For just one example, the State can no more compel conservatives to call gay marriage marriage than it can compel pro-life advocates to call unborn babies fetuses. And whether conservatives refer to gay marriages as marriages remains entirely up to them. The only question becomes the courage of one's convictions. Rod Dreher is God's loud and public gift to us all of an example of what having none looks like.

In short, when I try to look at this whole thing closer up a whole host of crevices seem to open up to me through which conservatives can pursue action immediately serving our interests, at least so long as we don't allow ourselves to be seduced by self-appointed gurus of doom.

I'm sure other questions would come to me, but that's enough from me. Maybe some of you have some others of your own.

BTW, the SCOTUSblog coverage of this morning's arguments can be followed here.

Andrew Sullivan is for gay marriage. Rod Dreher isn't sure.

But he is still very vocal and agitated about something.

Rod concludes his latest outreach in the mutual titty twister he and Sullivan are currently engaged in by nailing these theses to the bathhouse door:

I am glad we don’t live in that world anymore. We don’t live in that world anymore because people like Andrew insisted that gay lives had more dignity than the majority of Americans believed. Again, they did us all a favor by awakening us morally to what it is like to live in a country where what matters the most to you is treated in custom and in law as anathema. But I do not look forward to the world Andrew and his righteous allies are building for those religious people who do not conform. They will demonize dissent, and pat themselves on the back for their moral courage the whole time.

This perplexes conservative commenter Joseph Dooley, who writes

Not sure why Dreher comes out in favor of civil unions and tolerance of homosexuality. It’s a middle ground that is merely a transition stage between hedonism and Judeo-Christian civil society.

Conservative commenter Thursday is more direct:

I honestly do think America is a better place for what they’ve done, on the whole, because it has made us more tolerant and understanding.

I’ll be blunt: this is insane.

If a movement promoting gay sex (however monogamously practiced, or not, as the case may be) has somehow resulted in making American society morally superior to what it was before, then logically gay sex can’t really be that big of a deal. I mean it clearly has to be less of a sin than intolerance for that to be the case. And, if that’s true, then why exactly are we opposing gay marriage?

I mean really, if gay sex isn’t an utter abomination against nature, then what the hell are we doing making gay people suffer by denying them the ability to find love and get married? Are we opposing this for something we truly believe to be noble and pure, or just to be obstinate a**holes?

And if we give every indication that we don’t really believe gay sex to be a terrible sin, why shouldn’t gay rights people take our protests to the contrary all that seriously. Really, why shouldn’t they put the pressure on us to change? It does kind of look like we’re doing this out of pure bigotry.

P.S. A lot this post sounds like Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve said it before, the soft message sends out the impression that we don’t really believe what we say we believe, and so it may actually encourage more pressure and persecution.

Stockholm Syndrome. Now that's a really interesting take.

The liberal commenters in favor of SSM are just as befuddled by Dreher's fey coyness:

Beyond says:
 

[NFR: "Valid" = the state has the right to pass such laws;

Can you explain why the state has a right to regulate what you and your wife do in bed?

[NFR: Yes, I can explain it, but no, I don't care to get into this with you. -- RD]

BWAHAHA...WHAT kind of infantalism is THIS?

 'Yes I can explain superstring theory complete with full mathematical proofs, but no, I don't care to get into this with you.'

'Yes I can explain what advice I offered Obama and Putin in our three-way conference call, but no, I don't care to get into this with you.'

'Yes I can build a Boeing 777 Dreamliner using nothing but coffee cans, but no, I don't care to get into this with you.'

Chekhovian says:
 

[NFR: Yes, I can explain it, but no, I don't care to get into this with you. -- RD]

That’s disappointing. This is something I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on.

Beyond will do anything to get Dreher to say what he means about anything:

[NFR: Yes, I can explain it, but no, I don't care to get into this with you. -- RD]

If you do a thread about it, I promise I won’t comment. Others might find it fascinating.

Finally brought to heel like a small dog on a leash by Thursday
 

Judging by these bizarre Stockholm Syndrome-ish responses from the likes of our host here and Ross Douthat, I suspect that ordinary Christians are just going to have to have to show that we really do believe what we believe by suffering for it. That is something we can do for God, for God himself suffered far more for us.

Dreher moonwalks back, rolls over, belly up, and becomes even more passive, if that's even possible without simply imploding into his own orifices and vanishing entirely, now wanting to claim that he has just been an irenicist cruelly exploited as a useful idiot:

[NFR: You call it Stockholm Syndrome, but I really have known and loved, as friends, gay people for all my adult life. My oldest and closest friend is gay (and chaste; he's a believing Catholic). I believe gays have been badly mistreated; some still are. As a Christian, I genuinely want to be more compassionate in my dealings with them. It's not a suck-up or a put-on. What's happening, though, is that the militancy of the pro-SSM side makes people like Douthat and me look like suckers, and ends up empowering people who believe as you do, because you aren't fooled about what's coming. I don't agree with you about what a just outcome would be, but I'm becoming convinced now that relatively irenic Christians like me were and are useful idiots. -- RD]

Which, if nothing else, lays a whole bunch of chips on Thursday's Stockholm Syndrome theory.

So what in the world is going on here with Dreher? Why can't he find some gravitational ground, any ground, to plant his boots on with respect to gay marriage instead of flitting from one evanescent dewdrop to another like Tinker Bell?

Because he wants to be Andrew Sullivan - or at least, he wants to be the blogger Andrew Sullivan is.

(In the vernacular of the gay culture Sullivan inhabits Sullivan's known as a "top" - which means just what you think it means - while Dreher, well we've all read Dreher, and, really, Dreher could only be the complement to a "top", a "bottom". So Dreher can't really be Andrew Sullivan.)

Maybe Dreher doesn't really want Sullivan to hold him and stroke his hair gently, but he does want to write on the same things, to the same (including gay) people that Sullivan does, in the same way with only minor aesthetic twists (like avoiding anything which might pin him down).

For Pete's sake, he directly ripped off Sullivan's "View From Your Window" and repurposed it as his own "View From Your Table" (which we, in turn, have repurposed as "View From the Hood of Your Car". Speaking of which: after the Blue Rhino incident, we're going to need a new meetup place).

So, at the end of the day, he can't really hold to anything much different from Sullivan. That could only leave him contravening his own essence.

Or maybe all these parallels between Dreher and Sullivan are just me overthinking things once again, and the problem is that all we've been hearing from Dreher all along on this SSM thing is really no more than the outgassing of some sort of mock-Christian-flavored outrage porn, all show, no substance, and certainly no Christian principles.

In which case Sullivan calling out Dreher as an imitation "Christianist" instead of a true Christian may really be more honestly accurate and less of an insult than we first thought.

Andrew Sullivan calls Rod Dreher a coward

And Rod won’t do it because someone might say something mean at the office!

And of course he's right.

Sully, though, is a day late and a dollar short. Rod's own commenters already know he's a sniveling moral coward, as we already discussed previously here.

Somehow in his morally paralyzed state of terror Dreher also forgets that even if he gets pushback against his beliefs at the office, he's first in line for protection under EEOC laws, laws that make it clear who the party in the wrong actually is: the firm tolerating any such anti-Christian discrimination.

Not some vague Zeitgeist, you quaking, gibbering jellyfish.

So let's review:

• Christ died on the Cross to bring Christianity


• Numerous saints, Catholic, Orthodox and probably a whole bunch of others I'm ignorant of suffered torture and died professing and standing up for their faith.


• Ordinary Christians across America, genuinely seated in their faith, also gladly shape their lives to profess and support that faith every day, although because in America we really don't allow torture and murder anymore, they take whatever occasional frownies or passed up opportunities for friendship they might get and shrug them off - like grown adults do

But pudgy little Rod Dreher of St. Francisville, LA, who struts around in life in a cloud of every hipster affectation of exotic religion he can think to muster (fashionably scraggly beard optionally included), who makes his living online acting out a Vegas-worthy performance art of religiosity that would make even Jimmy Swaggart weep, who somehow thinks life outside his Mam's belly should be a protected cozy corner, prepared for him by women and moderated like his blog, is too terrified of losing the gay audience for his blog and books he craves to even point out his own standing in a federally protected class, much less to actually ever have the spine to take any sort of direct moral stance against homosexuality on his TAC blog.

Man, oh, man, Mam and Paw Dreher, do I ever feel for you.

Your namesake Ray Dreher, Jr., only son and heir, is publicly whining and petulantly pleading why some vaguely referenced others should leave him alone to not have to be more of a stand-up Christian man than a depraved homosexual who likes to have butt sex with other men.

That's about as close to the incarnate definition of mangina as you can get.

Natives agree: Emperor Dreher wearing no conservative pants

Our anonymous commenter Anonymous and I aren't the only ones who see that Rod Dreher's dramatic, pearl-clutching resignation to SSM is nothing more than a phony, cynical pose to drive hits to his blog. Several of his most loyal commenters see right through his pose, too.

Read through the comments on this post and you will see jaws drop, stutterings of incredulity, direct challenges like "Let’s be clear here Rod – would you or would you not have supported the passage of the Arizona bill?", smirking recognition of Dreher's overly flamboyant vogueing - "The blogger doth protest too much, methinks.", and this devastaing exposition from one of Dreher's most loyal followers:

Rod’s been saying for years that socons need to fight for carve-outs for religious freedom. Then when the Arizona bill comes out, he not only refuses to discuss its actual contents, but says he hasn’t even read it because it would just get vetoed, anyway. That’s a staggering cop-out which sounds more than a bit petulant. I mean, he’s been constantly pushing for carve-outs, but keeps it kind of vague what exactly that means, and then when something specific comes down the pike, he refuses to discuss it. Even if it were un-passable (as it was), it would be interesting to discuss its merits and demerits. Right?

I’ve said this before: Rod seems extremely conflicted and I think he knows that he wants to have his cake and eat it, too.

I think "conflicted" probably expresses Dreher's whole problem in this area in the most face-saving way possible.

But the jig is up.

Dreher's no conservative, clearly no anti-SSM conservative, and despite all the loud chatter and the self-medicating, therapeutic performance art he devotes to his impressive collection of religions to date, he really doesn't seem at heart a very religious persom either.

What he is publicly, though, unequivocally, is an enthusiastic food hedonist, ferociously interested in odd sex wherever he can dig it up to blog about it, who opportunistically writes in whatever niche won't actually drive him out - hence his current home in the dog's breakfast that The American Conservative has become.

Let's wrap this up with a final commenter quote that expresses this whole sorry exposure best:

Again? Seriously? Isn’t it time for an installment of “View From Your Table” about now?

Just give up the pretenses to social conservatism, Dreher. Just quit. Leave the space for real social conservatives flying true colors.

Instead, put your energies into getting yourself a cooking show snuggled between gay designers on Bravo or somewhere, somewhere you can finally be true to yourself.

Somewhere you can finally be happy, kick your drug addiction, and get an honest night's sleep for once in your life.