Nick Baumann at Mother Jones links to a few others and makes his own good point about the new Ugandan law that calls for executing gays:

Part of what I was trying to get at in my post is that one reason conservative writers might be reluctant to make detailed arguments against the Ugandan law is that doing so would force them to confront the more unpleasant parts of their coalition. It’s not good politics (or particularly pleasant) to be seen associating with people who need to be convinced that gays shouldn’t be executed or that slavery is bad.

That’s true, but I think we can carry that a step further. There are significant number of people opposed to gay rights who believe that, for example, gay men are-literally-trying to convert American youth to homosexuality, by “preying” on and recruiting boys with gay sex. To them, “gay” and “pedophile” are synonymous. As with the other paranoid fantasies of the American right, the enemy’s goals are framed in radical and apocalyptic terms. Some of this is opportunism by people who are opposed to gay rights, but don’t literally believe that gay men want to have sex with children. But some people do believe it, literally. So when you characterize the “gay agenda” as a threat to America’s children, who wouldn’t believe that extreme action, and perhaps even violence, are the appropriate response? Fortunately civil society in our nation is developed to an extent where killing someone you are opposed to politically is an exceptional act, even (mostly) amongst those who hold hardened opinions. But it’s fair to say that Ugandan civil society is not as highly developed (if I may use a word that implies judgment) as ours. So if you, an American evangelical, run over to Uganda and start telling people that gays, already maligned in Ugandan society, are trying to recruit children with gay sex and want to run roughshod over the rights of people who aren’t gay, what do you imagine the response will be? It will be to react to that threat in a direct and forceful manner, a manner that is logically related to the dire nature of the threat.

So what we have is a logical disconnect between the apocalyptic picture that the anti-gay movement presents, and the action that they call for in response. Anyone who believes, literally, that gays are a threat to American children should probably react the same way that conservative Ugandans have. The reason that anti-gay conservatives can’t attack the Ugandan legislation forcefully is because it would require them to say to people who believe these apocalyptic arguments, essentially, “Well see, all of these dire threats are true…but it’s still wrong to kill people.” And that just doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense. So now they find themselves in the position of either attacking the Ugandan legislation and thus implicitly undermining the beliefs sincerely held my millions of conservative Americans, or remaining (mostly) silent in the face of this travesty. A travesty which, by the way, probably doesn’t bother people who believe, literally, that the gay agenda is a giant conspiracy to convert children to homosexuality.

The other day I dismissed this puff piece in the NY Times about Robert George, the “big thinker” of the Christian right. Today Andrew Sullivan has more to say about George’s “new” natural law approach to homosexuality, which seems awfully similar to the old “it’s gross” approach to homosexuality:

On marriage, it seems to me that George is right about something: heterosexual intercourse within marriage that begets children is a vital, sacred, wondrous and central fact of human life. I’ve never doubted that. I’ve never even argued that the sacrament of matrimony in Catholic tradition could be anything but heterosexual. Where I differ most from George is how one approaches the diversity of nature around this central – and largely civil – human institution.

George is selectively flexible on this (for an online discussion, see Jon Rowe’s post here). He can see oral sex, for example, as okay even if it is not procreative, as long as it is somehow integrated into the procreative, i.e. foreplay. He is even prepared to endorse the sex lives of the infertile or post-menopausal, although both groups obviously have no natural way to procreate by sex. Why? Because they are engaging in something he calls “procreative in form,” as long as he is on top and rubber-free. If it looks like heterosexual procreation, even if it actually isn’t, it’s kosher. Maybe if a man and a man had sex with one dressed as a woman and retained rigid gender roles, they might squeak through George’s “procreative in form” loophole. But one suspects the loophole is there not to express compassion for the straight but to retain an iron-clad exclusion for the gay.

If the whole thing sounds like convenient sophistry to you, you’re not alone.

In fact, it is very hard to see what George’s argument means unless it can be reduced to the idea that sex for the infertile is moral merely because they are heterosexual, and that sex and love for homosexuals is immoral merely because they are homosexuals. So sexual orientation is the critical category here, not procreation or nature as it is actually found, and the result is to retain a stigma and legal discrimination against homosexuals – simply because they are what they are.

Well yes, that’s what all arguments against homosexuality boil down to. It’s wrong…because it’s wrong. This is why the argument against gay marriage, and gay rights in general, is ultimately a losing argument. And thank Robert George’s God for that.

Last month I wrote about the “Manhattan Declaration”, wherein a unified front of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox leaders got together to petulantly whine that nobody pays enough attention to abortion and who’s sleeping with who anymore. This NY Times Magazine article profiles Robert George, a Princeton professor who was one of the lead authors of that declaration and is touted as the “conservative Christian big-thinker” by the article (that’s actually the title of the article.) What challenging and novel ideas does George bring to the table?

Last spring, George was invited to address an audience that included many bishops at a conference in Washington. He told them with typical bluntness that they should stop talking so much about the many policy issues they have taken up in the name of social justice. They should concentrate their authority on “the moral social” issues like abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex marriage, where, he argued, the natural law and Gospel principles were clear. To be sure, he said, he had no objections to bishops’ “making utter nuisances of themselves” about poverty and injustice, like the Old Testament prophets, as long as they did not advocate specific remedies. They should stop lobbying for detailed economic policies like progressive tax rates, higher minimum wage and, presumably, the expansion of health care — “matters of public policy upon which Gospel principles by themselves do not resolve differences of opinion among reasonable and well-informed people of good will,” as George put it.

In the American culture wars, George wants to redraw the lines. It is the liberals, he argues, who are slaves to a faith-based “secularist orthodoxy” of “feminism, multiculturalism, gay liberationism and lifestyle liberalism.” Conservatives, in contrast, speak from the high ground of nonsectarian public reason. George is the leading voice for a group of Catholic scholars known as the new natural lawyers. He argues for the enforcement of a moral code as strictly traditional as that of a religious fundamentalist. What makes his natural law “new” is that it disavows dependence on divine revelation or biblical Scripture — or even history and anthropology. Instead, George rests his ethics on a foundation of “practical reason”: “invoking no authority beyond the authority of reason itself,” as he put it in one essay.

Huh. Well, it seems to me like this guy isn’t so much a “big-thinker” as he’s the smartest guy who thinks the same stupid, moralizing and paternalistic crap as people like James Dobson. Different road, same result I guess, only everybody thinks you’re smarty-pants if you constantly refer to “natural law” and name drop Aquinas.  Here’s the always-worthy-of-a-read Fred Clark on this “doctrine” and it’s proponents:

Their own awesomeness is a topic the authors address with relentless relish. Everything else in the document is merely a foil for this central subject. The threat of The Gay is grave, ominous and potentially world-altering, they warn, repeatedly, before reassuring us that their heroic resolve and moral superiority will save the day. Even the passages in which they luxuriate in their own massive humility are saturated with this swaggering self-regard.

This all-consuming self-absorption coupled with an utter lack of self-awareness plays like something from a Christopher Guest movie. I’m only half-convinced at this point that Robert George is even a real person and not a Fred Willard improv run amok. The authors possess that same remarkable knack for straight-faced seriousness while making uproariously ridiculous assertions.

And at one level it’s impossible to view these pretentious peacocks, these Malvolios grimacing and strutting in their yellow stockings, without succumbing to the derisive laughter they deserve. Such self-inflation demands deflation. And anyway it can’t be helped. I mean, just listen to them:

We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.

The whole thing is like that — like a bad parody of the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V. Except of course that Henry was outnumbered. Here instead we have a group of powerful elites, men at the center of political, cultural, academic and ecclesiastical privilege bemoaning their oppression at the hands of the homosexuals and religious minorities they claim run the world. They are overlords posing as underdogs. (It’s hard out there for a pope.)

[...]

So ultimately, even though we’re being treated to grand examples of the Blowhard Fool — a comic type that dates back before Plautus — this isn’t funny. And formally, structurally, we’re dealing with tragedy. There is no resolution, no reconciliation, no marriage. (Shakespearean shorthand: Tragedy means everyone dies; comedy means everyone gets married.) Indeed, the whole production here is an explicit rejection of the possibility of reconciliation and an adamant denial of marriage. So this isn’t comedy. We can’t help but laugh at these tragic clowns, but the laughter has a bitter aftertaste.

The important thing here, though, is to recognize why these buffoons have embraced this buffoonery. Their silliness is not a sideshow. The pompousness is the purpose. The fatuousness is the function. This is, as the kids on the Internets like to say, a feature, not a bug.

The anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-religious minority Manhattan Declaration is not primarily about opposing any of those things. That’s all just collateral damage. The primary purpose of the Manhattan Declaration, its raison d’etre, is to help the authors and signatories convince themselves that they’re better than everyone else. The ridiculous, overweening pride is what it’s for.

Chuck Colson, Robert George and Timothy George are blitzed out of their minds on the drug of smug. They’re hard-core umbrage junkies, snorting offendedness, mainlining grievance, freebasing uncut self-righteousness.

Big thinker indeed.

I can only shake my head at this sort of nonsense (via DougJ.) Well, shake my head and blog about it! Apparently, Focus on the Family has a website that rates how “Christmas-Friendly” retailers are, wherein right-wing Christians are apparently invited to offer feedback on their holiday shopping experiences, approval being given only when staff at these retailers affirmatively wish a “Merry Christmas” to the shopper…and nothing else! Examples of reviews:

At check-out the clerk wished me Happy Holiday and I said Merry Christmas. And she repeated Happy Holidays again and I said can you not say Merry Christmas? And she said they want to be respectful of everyone and she went through some of the different “holidays” this time of the year. And I said but it Christmas! She looked afraid to say Merry Christmas, very sad.

[...]

I was so thrilled to hear true Christmas Carols being played in the store. I mentioned it to several other shoppers and they were equally pleased. I happily did a large amount of shopping at this store because I was so thrilled with the Christmas atmosphere. Thank you for not giving into ridiculous political correctness and having a backbone.

[...]

Staff was friendly and helpful, but no mention of Christmas. When I said Merry Christmas, they said same to you.

So not only is saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” offensive, but failing to say anything is considered “Christmas-Negligent” and even playing the wrong kinds of Christmas carols is “political correctness!” Now like me, you may be puzzled to find that these Christians believe that not only does Christ belong in Christmas, but he apparently also belongs in most major retailers as well.

Nothing encapsulates the problem with right-wing Christianity more than this ridiculous effort to force people working retailers to say “Merry Christmas” instead of whatever they want, or nothing at all. I happen to think that many of the ancestors of these Christian thought police would be appalled by what the celebration of the holiday has become. It is essentially a month-long orgy of stress, consumerism and cheap sentimentality. Naturally these right-wing Christians would blame that one the over-secularization of the holiday…while posting to websites complaints about all the retailers they are spending they’re money in. Is the irony not obvious enough?

Inspired by the example of Martin Luther King Jr., Christian culture warriors declare that they will stand together as one in an attempt to suppress the rights of those whose conduct they do not condone:

…45 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.

“We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence,” it says.

The manifesto, to be released on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, is an effort to rejuvenate the political alliance of conservative Catholics and evangelicals that dominated the religious debate during the administration of President George W. Bush. The signers include nine Roman Catholic archbishops and the primate of the Orthodox Church in America.

They want to signal to the Obama administration and to Congress that they are still a formidable force that will not compromise on abortion, stem-cell research or gay marriage. They hope to influence current debates over health care reform, the same-sex marriage bill in Washington, D.C., and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

They say they also want to speak to younger Christians who have become engaged in issues like climate change and global poverty, and who are more accepting of homosexuality than their elders. They say they want to remind them that abortion, homosexuality and religious freedom are still paramount issues.

“We argue that there is a hierarchy of issues,” said Charles Colson, a prominent evangelical who founded Prison Fellowship after serving time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. “A lot of the younger evangelicals say they’re all alike. We’re hoping to educate them that these are the three most important issues.”

Don’t forget kids, millions may live in poverty or die of hunger, the global economy is a wreck, climate change threatens all of nations, but the real issues of consequence are the sexual practices of a minority of Americans!

Ira C. Lupu, a law professor at George Washington University Law School, said it was “fear-mongering” to suggest that religious institutions would be forced to do any of those things. He said they are protected by the First Amendment, and by conscience clauses that allow medical professionals and hospitals to opt out of performing certain procedures, and religious exemptions written into same-sex marriage bills.

Well right, but you can’t get anybody’s attention or sympathy (or votes) be moralizing at them, at least not openly. Far better to pretend you are the oppressed minority, so as to shield your bigory and more grand-standing in the guise of religious tolerance! A technique which, by the way, only works when most people actually agree with your intolerance.

This excerpt, from an otherwise okay article about the (literal)  evolution of religious belief, irkes me:

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

For believers, it may seem threatening to think that the mind has been shaped to believe in gods, since the actual existence of the divine may then seem less likely.

This is just wrong. Atheists are elated at the news that religious belief may be hard-wired, because it undermines the argument of faith, the bedrock of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Atheists are delighted to tell believers that their faith may be programmed into them.

This is an attempt to build equivalence into the story where there is none. This story does not provide an equal boost (or detriment) to the arguments of atheists and believers; it almost unequivocally backs a standard atheist arguments, that faith is a biological construct. Would it have been offensive to say as much?