To prevent their opinion section from appearing - God forbid - too liberal (the same "liberal" editorial page that called for Bill Clinton to step down during his sham impeachment trial), the Philadelphia Inquirer goes out of its way to ensure that conservative columnists get equal time.
Usually this is comic gold, since the conservative view is often presented by such national asshats as Jonah Goldberg and Linda Chavez. Once in a while you even get some local economist who still pines for St. Reagan's Voodoo Economics and writes up a piece on why kicking puppies is good for the economy. Sometimes I think the Inquirer is in on the joke - you want conservatives? sure, we'll give you conservatives - the dumbest conservatives we can find! ahhh, ha, ha, ha, ha!
The Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last, though, has been given a somewhat permanent Sunday opinion column that acts as the counterpoint to a liberal point-of-view - usually written by an Inquirer staff writer. This often gives him a bigger stage than the usual syndicated nutcase. His columns are hard to avoid in the Sunday Op-Ed section, try as I might.
Today, in a piece entitled, "Conservatives Must Regroup," Last lets us know that those dirty libruls may have won the gay marriage debate, but when they come for his "religious freedoms" they'll have to rip them from his cold dead hands, or something to that effect.
Existing law is well-suited to be used against religious groups that object to gay marriage. Consider a church (or mosque or synagogue) that declines to marry a gay couple, or extend extra-ecclesiastical services (such as camps, counseling or adoption) to gay couples.
If such a group receives government funding, it will lose it. And groups that do not receive direct funds could lose their tax-exempt status.
So that's the gist of the story - Last looks past the fact that you can find words in the Bible to back almost any belief, no matter how misguided, and thinks that "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" should be part of our Constitution.
In the most troubling case, the Boston chapter of Catholic Charities ceased its work in aiding adoptions last March. In 2003, the organization stopped placing children with same-sex couples in accordance with new church doctrine. This brought it into conflict with the state's recently imposed gay-marriage law. Catholic Charities takes no money from Massachusetts taxpayers - in fact, it saves them money. In order to offer adoption services, organizations must be licensed by the state government.
But because the church would not recognize gay marriage, its license was not renewed. In Boston, the Catholic Church is now out of the adoption business.
So a diocese hides their discrimination behind their "belief system" and pays for it. If the diocese cannot come up with a logical reason for why it won't allow gay couples in their program - other than "because we say so" - than maybe they shouldn't be in the adoption business. Again, there's far too many ways to justify all sorts of crazy ideas with the Bible - have you listened to Pat Robertson lately? - to allow any organization to hide behind it.
Here are the article's best parts:
Conservatives are right on the substance of the issue: Gay marriage is a sympathetic cause, the proximate effects of which would likely be good for society, but the unintended consequences of altering a 5,000-year-old institution will be enormous - and likely very bad for society. [emphasis mine]
Wait, stop. I have never, ever, ever, heard any conservative say that "gay marriage is a sympathetic cause" or that it "would likely be good for society." I would love to see where Last saw or heard that.
Let's continue:
Look at the Netherlands, which went from legalizing gay marriage in 2000 to debating the merits of "plural marriage" in the blink of an eye. Last month, a Dutch political party formed around the goal of decriminalizing pedophilia.
First off, the only people I've ever heard talking about legalizing "plural marriages" in the US are from Utah, not exactly a bastion of liberalism (Last's idea of allowing a Church to legally follow any of their beliefs would most likely, in Utah at least, bring back those dreaded plural marriages). Secondly, I am truly amazed that it took Last until almost the end of his column to bring out the ol' pedophilia argument.
When conservatives bring up pedophilia and bestiality and incest as being the next stage of marriage protection battles, what their really saying is that they see homosexuals as being just as immoral as the worst sexual deviants. It shows that their whole argument has nothing to do with "protecting marriage," it's all about eradicating homosexuality. They see gayness as a crime, right up there with pedophilia. Never mind that gay marriages would require two consenting adults, unlike pedophilia and any other scary scenario the right try to bring up, it's all the same to them.
Despite what Last threatens, there already are people in America who believe that it should be legal to have sex with minors. I'm sure that there are people who think we should bring back slavery, too. That doesn't mean that logical people have to listen to them, and I seriously doubt their ideas are getting any traction in the weird old queer-loving Netherlands.
You know, I bet there's even a few priests right here in the US of A who don't see anything wrong with having sex with minors. Come to think of it, I think I heard something about that very thing happening in the Boston diocese. Isn't that the same diocese that thinks they're the best judges when it comes to protecting adopted children?
But the gay-marriage fight is already lost. Now is the time to dig the trenches around religious liberty. It will require modifying state antidiscrimination laws. And it will require passing a federal Church Amendment-style conscience-clause protection to guard the rights of religious groups against the inevitable.
God help us, no.
So, are you sending this fabulous rebuttal to the 'Letters to the Editor' section of the Inquirer?
Posted by: Janie | 2006.06.12 at 12:57 PM