Tag Archives: Topic: Culture

Garnett, Nicole Stelle, Are Charters Enough Choice? School Choice and the Future of Catholic Schools (January 19, 2012). Notre Dame Law Review, 2012; Notre Dame Legal Studies Paper No. 12-50. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1988467

This contribution to a Notre Dame Law Review symposium on “Law and Educational Innovation” critiques the oft-repeated assertion that private-school-choice programs, such as tuition vouchers or tax credits, are unnecessary because charter schools provide sufficient educational choices. Arguing that policy makers have failed to come to terms with the profound, unfortunate consequences of Catholic schools’ rapid disappearance from urban neighborhoods, the essay builds a case for a shift in education policy that embraces both charter schools and private-school-choice mechanisms.

William Becker, Jr. at American Thinker: When Tuesday (11/19/2012), United States District Court Judge Audrey B Collins delivered a 28-page ruling denying my client the right to continue a 59-year-old tradition of exhibiting Nativity scenes along Ocean Boulevard in the City of Santa Monica this Christmas season, another dagger plunged into the heart of America’s twilight customs and traditions. The sneered-at “war on Christmas” was effectively lost for good.

For all these reasons, conservatives would be ill-advised to abandon support for conjugal marriage even if it hadn’t won more support than Mitt Romney in every state where marriage was on the ballot. They certainly shouldn’t be duped into surrender by the circular argument that they’ve already lost. The ash-heap of history is filled with “inevitabilities.” Conservatives—triumphant against once-unstoppable social tides like Marxism—should know this best. “History” has no mind. The future isn’t fixed. It’s chosen. The Supreme Court should let the people choose; and we should choose marriage, conjugal marriage.

The Republic (Scripps Howard News Service): If the American public is truly changing its mind on marriage, then author George Weigel believes it is time for Catholics to draw a bright red line between the state’s secular ceremonies and the church’s rites of Holy Matrimony. — At least, that’s an option that Catholics, and by implication other religious traditionalists, must be willing to consider, according to the Ethics and Public Policy Center scholar, who is best known as the official biographer of the late Pope John Paul II.

The Atlantic: For Gay Catholics, an Alternative to the Collection Plate Still, the reality is this: Every time Catholics tithe at a local parish, they are not only helping to keep the lights on for Mass and to make sure …

Chad Griffin and Lynn Schusterman at the Washington Post: And yet, too often we turn a blind eye on faith communities that are neglecting these values. The dissonance is acutely felt among our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) friends, family members and colleagues, who are overwhelmingly less engaged in their faith communities than their heterosexual counterparts because they are unsure of where they are welcome. It is in our power and our interest to work together to change this norm. LGBT equality is the major civil rights issue of our time.

Church of England: The General Synod of the Church of England has voted to reject the draft legislation to allow women to become bishops.

Glenn Stanton at National Review Online: And only a few decades ago in certain developed Western nations did it become an identity — something someone was. And this was only after the American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying same-sex attraction as a mental disorder in 1973. Don’t think for a moment that this was done as a result of the careful scientific deliberation of the association. It is commonly known they acquiesced to the rambunctious and constant protest of gay activists. And this brings us to where we are today with the issue: People are just born that way, so accept it. Mark Steyn explains the implications of this social evolution: One can object to and even criminalize an act; one is obligated to be sympathetic toward a condition; but once it’s a fully fledged 24/7 identity, like being Hispanic or Inuit, anything less than wholehearted acceptance gets you marked down as a bigot.

Boston Globe: A Catholic advocacy group was delivering more than 5,000 petition signatures to the Knights of Columbus that ask the Catholic fraternal organization to stop funding divisive political issues, such as opposing same-sex marriage. Catholics United Education Fund planned to protest Tuesday outside the Knights’ New Haven headquarters.

Ruth Institute: Within the GOP there is a concerted frontal attack against those who oppose genderless marriage. The aim is to stifle real debate before it can take place. The strategy: marginalize opponents by finding high profile “conservatives” who can help fund and manufacture an illusory cascade of public opinion away from the definition of marriage as one man and one woman.

Lawrence Journal World: He said births to unmarried women nationwide have increased from around 30 percent in 1993 to 40 percent now. The poverty rate for children in female-headed households is 41 percent, while it is about 9 percent for married couples, he said.

LifeNews: Catholic Fordham University is coming under fire from pro-life advocates for rejecting a pro-life speaker but then deciding it is okay to bring pro-infanticide speaker Peter Singer to campus. Fordham University’s president Fr. Joseph McShane, S.J. determined conservative and pro-life author Ann Coulter was too “hateful and needlessly provocative” to speak on campus.

John B. Londegran at Public Discourse: A common trope in social policy debates is to claim that the public’s changing opinion on the policy at stake, rather than the policy’s moral or substantive justifications, merits changing the platform of one’s preferred political party. This notion seems recently to have taken root on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, and several commentators have reacted.

AP: A majority of the church’s governing General Synod is ready to say yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s all wrapped up. The vote needs a two-thirds majority in order to be approved, and an unlikely coalition of advocates and opponents of female bishops may have enough strength to derail the motion. Some voices on both sides argue that the church’s compromise asks them to concede too much.

Crisis Magazine: The success that the gay community has achieved in shedding the “deviant” label has relied upon convincing the heterosexual world that homosexual behavior is perfectly normal. The recent uproar over a social work course titled “Deviant Behavior” at Franciscan University of Steubenville—which lists homosexuality as a form of deviant behavior—demonstrates just how vigilant the gay community remains in confronting anyone who might suggest that homosexual behavior could be anything but normal. It also shows how difficult it is for faithful Catholic institutions to teach students what the Church says about the nature of homosexual acts.

WorldNetDaily: He noted he and a handful of other conservative leaders, including Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Gary Bauer and Gen. William Boykin, had met with the GOP candidate to encourage him to address social issues important to Christians across the nation. “We begged him to deal with eight issues. We listed first the sanctity of life, marriage, religious life, ‘Don’t Ask,’ ENDA, on it went,” Dobson said. “We said we really are not here to jump on you, but evangelicals are not excited about your candidacy, not energized. … You could connect if you’ll even mention these things. “He nodded and he smiled and he was gracious as he always is, and he went out and was silent,” Dobson said.

NY Times: Limbaugh echoed a Republican theme that was voiced before and after the election: Barack Obama has unleashed a coalition of Americans “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it — that that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them” — as Mitt Romney put it in his notorious commentary on the 47 percent. You can find this message almost everywhere on the right side of the spectrum . . . In fact, the 2011 Pew Research Center poll Bennett cites demonstrates that in many respects conservatives are right to be worried:

Jill Stanek at LifeSiteNews: The GOP is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy on the life issue, squandering an American pro-life majority as if it didn’t/doesn’t exist.

Sacramento Bee: The newly elected, 113th Congress includes the first Buddhist to serve in the Senate, the first Hindu to serve in either chamber and the first member of Congress to describe her religion as “none,” according to a new analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life of congressional data compiled primarily by CQ Roll Call.

Washington Post: Strong majorities of adults under age 30 support gay marriage and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and a majority supports legalizing small amounts of marijuana according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The fact that younger Americans are consistently more supportive of these measures than the oldest generation may signal change in the years to come. For those under age 30, about two thirds support gay marriage and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

NY Times: Mr. Obama’s more than three-to-one edge in exit polls among the 5 percent of voters who identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual was more than enough to give him the ultimate advantage, according to the study, by Gary J. Gates of the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, in conjunction with Gallup

Catholic Culture: “The mother did say that Bishop Michael Hoeppner of the Diocese of Crookston informed her that if Lennon stood before the church and denounced his support of same-sex marriage claims, he could be confirmed,” the Fargo Forum added.

AP: An Oregon woman will be the first openly lesbian lawmaker to lead a state legislative chamber in the U.S.

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence will be available for media interviews following his oral argument Monday in favor of a ruling that would allow churches and other faith groups to continue meeting for worship services in New York City public school buildings on weekends.

Mark J. Rozell and Clyde Wilcox at the Washington Post: The Democratic triumph of this year could certainly be followed by disaster for the party in 2014 or 2016. What the Christian Right learns from this election and how it reconstitutes itself going forward will have a big impact on its future and those of the major political parties. Indeed, it will not surprise us if observers declaring the death of the Christian Right today are marveling at its big comeback in two or four years.

Emily Newburger at Harvard Law School:  Michael Klarman’s scholarship has focused on the effect that court rulings have on social reform movements. He argues that when courts get ahead of public opinion, political backlash often follows. That’s what he found in an earlier book he wrote on race and the U.S. Supreme Court, and it is a phenomenon he has also observed in cases involving the death penalty and abortion. In his new book, “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage” (Oxford), the HLS professor explores whether the same effect has taken place when it comes to same-sex marriage litigation.

Ralph Z. Hallow at the Washington Times: Evangelicals are “fighting an uphill battle of demographics” on issues such as gay marriage, Focus on the Family President Jim Daly told the Los Angeles Times after the election.

Amy Ziettlow at Family Scholars: More than a century and a half ago Alexis de Tocqueville made the striking observation that an individualistic society depends on a communitarian institution like the family for its continued existence. The family cannot be constituted like the liberal state, nor can it be governed entirely by that state’s principles. Yet the family serves as the seedbed for the virtues required by a liberal state. The family is responsible for teaching lessons of independence, self-restraint, responsibility, and right conduct, which are essential to a free, democratic society. If the family fails in these tasks, then the entire experiment in democratic self-rule is jeopardized.

WorldNetDaily: he HRC ranks U.S. companies according to their support and non-support for “gay,” lesbian, bisexual and transgender causes. The scale is from zero to 100, with those closest to zero being firms that are not supportive of homosexual policies, and those nearest 100 being very “gay”-friendly . . . Here is the latest list of companies scoring 100 percent on the index . . .”

Baltimore Sun: Lori said he hopes the bishops can take better advantage of “the most persuasive argument of all” — the living example of “strong families with loving fathers, mothers and children” — and some of his colleagues suggested finding more positive terminology for their position, as they had in debates over abortion.

The Atlantic: “The United States is, perhaps other than India, maybe, the most religiously diverse country in the world,” said Rassbach. “It’s a recipe for societal strife to force people to try to conform to a particular ideal.” Despite Americans’ evolving views on marriage and the increasing legal recognition of marriage equality, the strife around the definition of marriage isn’t going anywhere. “Do you really think that we’re going to be quiet and go away?” Brown said. “Just because the state says it’s so, we’re never going to accept it.”

Paul Coleman at the Bell Towers: “A secular society is not an anti-religious one. Rather, it is one where fundamental beliefs that we disagree about – beliefs that provide strong motivation to some but mean little or nothing to those who do not hold them – are left aside in public debate about communal decisions.” So says the European Humanist Federation. Such a statement is no doubt intended to comfort the religiously minded that often hold the sneaking suspicion that the secular vision for society is, a contrario, anti-religion. But do the secularists really practice what they preach, and is secularism really neutral in matters of religion and belief, as it is claimed.

DailyCaller.com: By 6:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, more than 675,000 digital signatures appeared on 69 separate secession petitions covering all 50 states, according to a Daily Caller analysis of requests lodged with the White House’s “We the People” online petition system.

Alan Sears at the Alliance Defending Freedom: The occupant of the White House isn’t the only thing that hasn’t changed in the last two weeks. Many friends of Alliance Defending Freedom have expressed grave concern about how our work will continue, in the wake of President Barak Obama’s re-election. Although this ministry is committed to being apolitical, there is no denying that this administration has been the most openly and aggressively hostile in American history to religious freedom, to preserving marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and to the protection of life in the womb.

Mark Regnerus at National Review: This month yielded yet another published study — which received positive media attention — based on the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study. The NLLFS is about to enter its third decade of following the same 78 respondents, who were “planned” and born to lesbian mothers employing artificial reproductive technology; in nearly all the families studied, the children were being raised by their biological mother and her partner. While any sociologist worth his or her degree can appreciate the laborious task of keeping track of and reinterviewing the same group of people over many years, this particular data-collection effort probably ought to be retired. And yet it continues to appear in peer-reviewed journal articles in the health and social sciences. What exactly is the NLLFS and why do I say it should be retired?

Baptist Press: The survey by the Polling Company shows that 60 percent of voters in this year’s election agreed that “marriage is between one man and one woman.” Fifty-one percent agreed strongly. All total, 34 percent disagreed with the statement.

Cass Sunstein at Bloomberg: When politicians defer to “universal feeling,” they are often self-interested. Knowing that their electoral lives are on the line, they choose to live. Other politicians defer out of humility. Lacking confidence in their own views, they follow the judgments of their constituents. But in this context, Lincoln was being neither self-interested nor humble. Instead he was emphasizing democratic constraints on the achievement of clear moral imperatives. As he went on to say: “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.”

The Hill: On Friday morning, Louisiana Rep. John Fleming (R) issued a statement urging Boehner to “talk with House Republicans before making pledges on the national news.”

The Hill: Limbaugh played “Feliz Navidad” on his show Friday and argued Hispanics are moving to Democrats not because of immigration but because of the party’s positions on taxes and welfare. Allowing those in the United States illegally to stay wouldn’t help the party, he argued.

Charles Pope at the Archdiocese of Washington: It is rare that a respected segment of American life would become vilified and hated overnight. The usual transformation from respect to vilification goes in stages which grow in intensity. And hereby the Church, once a respected aspect of American life, along with the Protestant denominations has become increasingly marginalized and hated by many. It may help us to review these stages of persecution since it would seem that things are going to get more difficult for the Church in the years ahead. Generally there are distinguished five basic stages of persecution.

NY Times: Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide — especially on gay issues — has shifted against them.

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: It’s enough to make your head spin with the implications. What would a “divorce” look like? Can you divorce one partner but not others? What about child custody? For that matter, how many of the adults in the marriage have parental rights over the children? So we’re in a brave new world when it comes to the very definition of what we call a family. It will be interesting to see if all of these other proposed family units make Americans rethink whether we want to redefine the institution of marriage at all.

Alan Sears appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show. | MP3 audio 8:26 mins

Washington Post: He said that the question of gay marriage in his new global flock was a complicated issue “and not one to be handled today, off the cuff.” But he offered a definite olive branch to the gay community despite reaffirming his opposition to same-sex marriage. Welby pledged to re-examine his own thinking on homosexuality while speaking out against exclusion and homophobia

Michael J. New at First Things: However, I want to remind everyone that the abortion rate has fallen in every state—even deep blue states that have not passed any pro-life laws since 1990. Why is this? It is mostly because hearts and minds are changing.

Washington Times: My stepfather used threats against my mother to gain my complete surrender to him and his pedophile sex trafficking ring.

Reuters: France’s leading Roman Catholic prelate said on Saturday a government plan to legalize same-sex marriage would profoundly affect the equilibrium of French society, calling it a reform for the few not the many.

Wall Street Journal (access via Google): The U.S. Supreme Court may soon take up the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act or Prop 8. In the wake of Tuesday’s votes, gay activists are calling for the court to strike down both. The legal merits of those cases are for another editorial. But on the politics, Americans don’t need or want court orders. They’ve shown themselves more than capable of changing their views and the laws on gay marriage the democratic way.

Heather MacDonald at National Review: Hispanics will prove to be even more decisive in the victory of Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30, which raised upper-income taxes and the sales tax, than in the Obama election. And California is the wave of the future. A March 2011 poll by Moore Information found that Republican economic policies were a stronger turn-off for Hispanic voters in California than Republican positions on illegal immigration. Twenty-nine percent of Hispanic voters were suspicious of the Republican party on class-warfare grounds . . .

Jewish Press: France, which is home to an estimated six million Muslims, has the largest Muslim population in the European Union. There are now, in fact, more practicing Muslims in France than there are practicing Roman Catholics.

First Things — See the Chart.

Ted McAllister at Public Discourse: We are witnessing, I believe, the collapse of a great modern project. The goal of this project was to form a democratic public, led by the most talented leaders and administered by enlightened public servants, but constituted by a deeply informed, engaged, and public-spirited citizenry. To produce such citizens, journalists served an almost sacred role of supplying all the disparate members of the public with “disinterested” information. Without information and knowledge, democratic deliberations are impossible, and without such deliberations there is no substantive “public,” only congeries of individuals and groups.

AP: Prime Minister David Cameron’s office says it will shortly announce the name of the next archbishop of Canterbury.

Newsday: President Barack Obama captured 71 percent of the Hispanic vote as he won a second term, according to a national exit poll. That translated to a 44 percentage-point advantage over Republican challenger Mitt Romney, who won just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote — down from Republican shares of 31 percent in 2008, 44 percent in 2004 and 35 percent in 2000.

USNews.com: Looking at all 50 states, Obama won the youth vote 60 percent compared to 37 percent for Romney, according to exit polls.

Victor David Hanson at National Review: Conservatives are divided, acrimoniously so, over three schools of explaining The Defeat . . . 1. The Near Fatalists . . . 2. The Should’ve, Could’ve, Would’ve What If-ers . . . 3. The Big Tenters.

AP: A slim majority of Puerto Ricans sought to change their ties with the United States and become the 51st U.S. state in a non-binding referendum that would require final approval from Congress.

Alan Sears at the Alliance Defending Freedom Blog: Those results, and their impact, are in God’s hands, but this we know: like that beachfront pavilion in Ocean Grove … like the faithful Christians who have held to their faith in that case in the face of a legal hurricane … this ministry, by God’s grace, will still be standing for the Truth, for religious freedom, for the constitutionally protected rights of you and your children and grandchildren. Please join me in praying for His clear direction in all these things (John 15:5).

Kentucky.com: The testimony provided more evidence that the eastern parts of our commonwealth are suffering. Perhaps more important than any other ailment that affects the rough underside of the “holler shack” or the “sagging modular home” are the dysfunctional families who live in them.

Scott Yenor at the Ruth Institute Blog: Elizabeth Brake’s Minimizing Marriage breaks new ground in the contemporary liberal critique of traditional arrangements. The object of her critique is what she calls amatonormativity—the belief that society should value two-person, amorous love relationships. Even same-sex marriage (SSM) advocates are too restrictive for Brake in that they would confer benefits on two people alone; SSM advocates are unwitting amatonormativists.

Catholic Culture: Because politics is the place where competing moral visions of a society meet and struggle, our democracy depends on people of conviction fighting for what they believe in the public square, yet doing so with an abiding respect for one another. That struggle includes and depends on all of us, precisely as Catholics. For if we believe that a particular issue is gravely evil or that it will result in serious damage to society, then we have a duty, both as Catholics and as Americans, to hold political candidates accountable.

Pat Buchanan at Townhall: Yet whoever wins today, it is hard to be sanguine about the future. The demographic and economic realities do not permit it.

Regina Griggs and Peter Sprigg at the Christian Post: Voters in 32 out of the 32 states where it has appeared on the ballot have upheld marriage as the union of a woman and a man. Advocates of same-sex marriage are holding out hope that their long losing streak will end on Election Day in Minnesota, Washington, Maryland or Maine.

Piero Tozzi at the Bell Towers: Restoring dignity to the Office of President is not something to be taken lightly – character matters, and the President should be a role model. Integrity radiates from the top: as Confucius noted, the virtuous ruler is like the pole star, setting the standard for those around him. When those in high office act virtuously, people are inspired to virtue. And when that happens, young lads stop cussin’ around the house… Actually Confucius did not say that last bit, but of this much I am confident: there will be no more upending the ottoman in an effort to reach the remote in order to hit the mute button and prevent an assault on tender ears when a President Romney or his minions speak.

Laurie Shrage at NY Times: Marriage reform is typically part of a larger agenda for social change. In earlier eras, challenges to bans on interfaith and interracial marriage were tied to political movements promoting religious, ethnic and racial equality and social integration. In the Middle East, Africa and Asia today, marriage reformers often aim to expand the rights and liberty of girls and women, while in the Americas and Europe, their primary aim is to advance social equality and respect for lesbians and gay men.

Baptist Press: A majority of regular churchgoers say their pastor has discussed the importance of voting, while 29 percent say their pastor has taken sides, in sermons, in the presidential race, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.

Christian Newswire: The highest judicial commission of the Presbyterian Church (USA) published a final decision this week in an internal disciplinary case holding that the Rev. Laurie McNeill did not commit any offense by “marrying” her same-sex partner.

BBC: A mother and father in Pakistani-administered Kashmir have been arrested for murdering their 15-year-old daughter by dousing her with acid “in the name of an honour”, police say.

Christian Institute: Research shows 59% of youngsters wish they could spend more time with their mum and dad. The study from the Family and Parenting Institute also shows that one in eight parents admitted to only giving their children their full attention “once or twice a week.”

LA Times: The change appears to be partly driven by black pastors in Maryland urging their congregations to vote against the measure. During a sermon in October, pastor Harold L. Dugger of First Baptist Church in Prince George’s County, Md., asked his congregation to go to the polls to cast their votes against same-sex marriage.

Daniel Henninger at the Wall Street Journal: You’ve heard about Mitt Romney’s problems with the women’s vote, the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the union vote and the young Democrats vote. But there’s one major voting group that’s fallen off the map since the primaries. The evangelical vote.

William DiPuccio at Gatestone Institute: Islamists seem to be driven not only to establish the hegemony of Islam by supplanting secular governments and legal systems, but also by enforcing religious purity according to their own standards. Muslims in America – most of whom were undoubtedly fleeing abuse, not trying to bring it with them – should of course be treated with the same respect and deference extended to people of other religions But our civility should not blind us to the potential for extremism – a concern shared by 60% of Muslim Americans – or to the religious connections between Islam and terrorism.

The Church Report: Polling of Maryland voters a few weeks ago suggested black voters supported same-sex marriage but a poll conducted last week indicated the numbers tightened.

Erick Eckholm at the NY Times: Ex-gay men are often closeted, fearing ridicule from gay advocates who accuse them of self-deception and, at the same time, fearing rejection by their church communities as tainted oddities. Here in California, their sense of siege grew more intense in September when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law banning use of widely discredited sexual “conversion therapies” for minors — an assault on their own validity, some ex-gay men feel.

Mark Regnerus, Parental same-sex relationships, family instability, and subsequent life outcomes for adult children: Answering critics of the new family structures study with additional analyses | Volume 41, Issue 6, Social Science Research, November 2012, Pages 1367–1377