Friday, October 07, 2005

The other side

This site might look like I am down on orthodox/rightist/conservative¹ Catholicism, posting mostly about The Document. But that's merely a function of having expectations of people. As much as it might subjectively sting to hear that "men" like myself are somehow not really men, it's objectively-speaking nothing compared to the proudly-hateful, anti-intellectual, butt-ignorant and frankly-psychotic attitudes toward Catholicism that *constitute the mainstream* at the progressive-left end of the spectrum. Every so often, it's good to be reminded of that.

Earlier today, I was searching GoogleNews for an AP link to the Document story and I got the Huffington Post, among others. As I sit down to write this, there are 65 comments to the Reuters article I linked to below. These are the samples from just the first 25:

When is this monolithic institution going to finally crumble under its own weight? Hopefully, taking with it, the non-thinking, non-feeling members it attracts to its cult(ure).
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You know what this means guys...
That’s right,
#1) no more penances for touching yourself.
#2) All good fags get go to heaven.
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Everyone remember: dense thinking comes in all religious flavors.
"Drink from the cup of hate and you end hating." Matthew 10:7
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In other words the Kingdom of God shall not be occupied by human beings. Sounds like a lousy place to end up, this 'Kingdom of God'. Good thing it's all just silly fantasy made up by angry impotent men who hate women.
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And just how does one 'prove' they've been celibate for three years?
Guess this underscores just how bad off the Catholic Church is these days in their efforts to recruit new perverts to fill the ranks of the clergy.
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I just think that the all the lace and robes that the pope wears looks an awful lot like drag to me.
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This is going to open up a whole new area of religious controversy, summed up by the question:'How many angels and devils will fit on the engorged head of a gay priest's erection?'
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I find it difficult to respect and give any credence to a fascist organization run by a Nazi. Pope Benedict XVI IS a Nazi. There is no doubt about it. Not only is he a Nazi but Joaquin Navarro Valls is a member of Opus Dei which was founded by a staunch supporter of Franco. The RC Church, thanks to the "good" JPII boo, is now in the hands of the good ol' New Spanish Inquisition (Opus Dei). The Vatican, as well as the city of Rome, is overrun with Opus Dei members, whose founder was placed on the VERY fast track to sainthood as now is JPII. I'm sure Christ is spinning where he is as is John XXIII.
So that "they" condemn homosexuality as an evil is beyond my comprehention coming from the devil's minions themselves.
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Vatican sounds a lot like the current White House administration--lies upon lies upon lies, then burying the truth so much (child-moleting priests) that their leaders forget why they joined "the club" in the first place!
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Does anyone else regard 'biblical scholarship' as an oxymoron? Such as the 'science of resurrection'? The 'physiology of virgin birth'? The 'intelligence of Robertson'? The 'wisdom of Dobson'? The 'knowledge of Falwell'? The 'competence of Bush'?

There is a difference between annoying and nauseatingly evil.


¹ Yeah, yeah ... none of these terms is perfect.

11 comments:

Darwin said...

Actually, CM, I'd taken your stance on the document to _be_ the orthodox/conservative one. Or at least, it's pretty much mind, and I tend to welcome both of those labels.

Darwin said...

should be "mine" not "mind"

CourageMan said...

RFM:

Thanks. And my apologies for responding in kind.


Darwin:

See, that's why all those three terms are problematic for me, at least in this context. They're not useless obviously because, well, we can use them and meaning will be conveyed. But they're all terms of convenience to describe certain tendencies of people in the Church, and all are inadequate.

But "right" and "conservative" are terms borrowed from politics, and all at least should be "orthodox," and so it's rather hard for someone to say "I'm down on orthodoxy." And while I think the statement "some men with same-sex attraction are nevertheless suitable priest candidates, if they can live chastely and uphold/believe Church teachings on sex" is the correct Catholic position, one nevertheless only sees it disputed among those who pride themselves on their orthodoxy.

CourageMan said...

How would one go about establishing that your position and that of Darwin is the indisputably orthodox one?

"Indisputably"? You probably can't.


Those who take the opposite position from you are often made to feel that they are just being mean and should be quiet.

Maybe others wouldn't take them that way if they didn't argue from visceral reactions to pictures of half-naked androgyny. Just suggesting.

(For the record, if the other person was accurately describing the picture, I would not be turned on by it at all. Feminine men do nothing for me at all. Not at all.)

CourageMan said...

I took the liberty of removing all traces of an insult war between myself and Radio Free Rome. Neither of us cloaked ourselves in glory. We apologized to each other, and I do not see any need to save the comments for posterior.

CourageMan said...

Yes, I know who Father Scalia's father is. Why would that be relevant to Padre's ministry with us?

I've even read Romer v. Evans. It's an atrocious decision, purporting to divine as justiciable fact the motivations of a voting populace (this would be considered an act of monumental arrogance except for all the other acts of arrogance in the court's last 40 years make it no longer monumental).

Justice Scalia's dissent is brilliant -- exposing the majority's decision as the act of raw secularist prejudice that it is.

CourageMan said...

CO-2 would have enabled the state to refuse homosexuals access from any public facility from a library to a hospital

If you actually believe this, then you have no knowledge of how anti-discrimination law works and I'm at a loss for words to adequately insult your ignorance.

Reading the amendment itself might actually help. The whole text of Amendment 2 is quite high in Justice Kennedy's opinion, and here are its nouns of denial -- homosexuals shall not have "any minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination."

Anti-discrimination laws merely set up protected classes and declare discrimination against that class as prima facie illegal, with some [increasingly] narrow exceptions on matters like business necessity (age discrimination laws don't affect pro-sports teams, e.g.) But they don't cover every discernible group and can't possibly be expected to -- Chicago Cubs fans, to cite Justice Scalia's example, are just as much a discernible, definable group as homosexuals, but they can be discriminated against in myriad ways. As can ugly people, Republicans, hippies, nudists, tennis-players, leather daddies, etc. A state's choice to cover Group X by anti-discrimination laws but not Group Y is an irreducibly moral one, based on the facts about X-ness and Y-ness, and merely asserting a group's identity doesn't, in itself, make that denial manifestly unjust.

That is all to say that to declare Group X as covered under anti-discrimination law is to say grant that group a special privilege. Anyone can refuse to associate with anyone else, for any reason or no reason (this is still a mostly free country). And so it absolutely asinine to say that denying a group a special privilege, i.e., making homosexuality the cause for actionable discrimination but not Cubs-fan-ness, is denying them equal protection of the law.

Further, if you really want to push it, all laws "discriminate" in the sense that they favor or disfavor certain conduct and then act toward individuals according to that classification. In other words, the law declares theft a wrong act and charitable giving a good act, and then treats people differently (imprisons them, gives them a tax break), i.e., the law discriminates. Proof that a law like Amendment 2 sets up a category for disfavor (or to be more accurate, stops cities from setting it up as a category for favor) does not, in and of itself, make it unjust. Waving the bloody shirt "discrimination," in other words, simply doesn't impress me.


while barring them from any recourse against this discrimination.

As even the Colorado state Supreme Court noted in a decision that actually struck it down (on another novel theory), Amendment 2 would not have done this because homosexuals would still be covered by other anti-discrimination categories (sex, race, religion, etc.) Homosexuals would only be denied access qua their homosexuality. In other words, it was homosexuality that was being disfavored by Amendment 2 (and being protected by Boulder's and Aspen's local laws), not homosexual persons.


It would have barred them access to the judicial, executive, and legislative processes.

How so? Homosexuals could not vote? How was this to have been enforced (did a Coloradan have to show a picture of boinking the opposite sex to get his voter-registration card?)

You really are out of depth as a legal thinker. Sorry, but that's the case. I actually know what HRC talking point you're repeating, and you (and they) are overstating quite technical legal matters of what level of government decides what issues. And implying a broad statement about homosexuals' citizenship. But all constitutional amendments do this (i.e., take certain public issues "off the table," as you yourself note below in re the 14th Amendment). Further the discriminated-against class in that sense were "persons who favor pro-gay discrimination laws," which is by no possible sense a protected class. (Again, all ballot-referendum losers have a cause for action if this is a serious argument.)


The fourteenth amendment, unless repealed, is not subject to the will of the populace or the tyranny of the majority.

Yes, but the 14th Amendment doesn't mention homosexuality or homosexual persons, so it doesn't, on its face, make "homosexuals" a protected category as it does freedmen/blacks.


they court didn't attribute that malice to the voters. It is rightly attributable to the groups of extremists

That's just fatuous. Amendment 2 passed with 54 percent of the vote, so you can't attribute it to "extremists," unless you're willing to say that most people are extremists (which is a contradiction in terms).


groups of extremists who campaigned for the amendment

Ohmigosh. The amendment was passed because people campaigned for it. (slaps forehead) How awful!!


while misrepresenting the legal consequences.

You mean by telling people that not having a particular protected status under anti-discrimination law makes you a nonperson, a second-class citizen and is mere "hate"?


I don't give two shits about Paul Cameron, except to note (1) that I don't accept the Southern Poverty Law Center has any claim to accurately characterize the positions of others; (2) what do have to say about the perjury committed by Martha Nussbaum at trial in Colorado; and (3) issues of the public good are not determined by ad hominems about who's on the other side. Or what would you say about David Duke's opposition to the Iraq war? (And no, I won't link to him from my site. Anybody can look it up.)

What I meant by "raw secularist prejudice" is Kennedy stating that "the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class it affects." Which that statement is.

CourageMan said...

Broken link in previous note. Go here for Martha Nussbaum academic-fraud article.

And here's an another interesting article on the same topic.

CourageMan said...

RFM:

Actually, I'm not a lawyer.

But no, Justice Kennedy's speculation on motive is at the very heart of his saying the amendment fails the "rational basis" test. (And you insult my ability to reason.) Read the decision again. Kennedy says about classifications that: "we will uphold the legislative classification so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate end." There whole last part of the decision, starting from the third-to-last paragraph of Kennedy's holding, starting "A second and related point ... " elaborating on this.

You're the first person I've ever heard to argue that Amendment 2 violates equal protection because it was phrased only to affect homosexuals, but doesn't mention breeders. Certainly, that's nowhere in Kennedy's opinion. Maybe mathematicians don't have to have a nodding acquaintance with literacy.**


** If you don't want me to make these kinds of comments about you, don't do it yourself.

CourageMan said...

RFM:

As for the "bullshit facile lie," again reading comprehension is your friend. Here is the link to Some Considerations Concerning the Catholic Response to Legislative Proposals on the Non-Discrimination of Homosexual Persons. The relevant paragraph is 14.

It says "generally not known ... as a rule (you see my name here) ... and hence" ... the conclusion you cite as a bullshit facile lie based on your personal experience in applying for a job that has atypically stringent moral-entry requirements. This is less than persuasive.

Further, at least in the situation and question as you have described it here, there was absolutely no reason you had to have said "yes." My confessor has told me explicitly that I have no obligation to pre-emptively spill the beans to a prospective employer. And I'm rather surprised that there were no questions regarding opposite-sex sexual improprieties in an NSA test. Adultery, e.g., and the catch-all "conduct unbecoming to the uniform" have been grounds from expulsion from the military (did you know that not until about 1982 did the military, in so many words, exclude homosexuals?) And they have been standard questions on security-clearance type jobs for decades.

CourageMan said...

Yes, I know what Amendment 2 says. But the fact you point out about only mentioning homosexuals et al, but not breeders is *nowhere* cited in Kennedy's decision. Nowhere.