Hastings and Supreme Court Ideology

Kevin, you don’t get it. Like so many people who want to push aside constitutional protections when it produces a result THEY LIKE, the consequences of this decision will have implications that far exceed those of this specific case.Some commentators have posted of the possibility of “infiltration”: that students who disagree – perhaps vehemently – with the views or philosophies of a particular recognized student organization – will join in large numbers, in order to “push” the group’s philosophy toward something that is completely counter to its foundational principles. Of course, that is the POINT, with THIS particular decision – it’s “let’s surround those poor dumb Christians with more enlightened folk who understand how homosexuality is like eye color, and then they’ll change. Or we’ll marginalize them, and maybe they’ll just go away.”I submit that “infiltration” is really a minimal threat. Students – like most people – want to create and join specialized associations for particular purposes with others who share their viewpoints on particular issues. Devoted vegans probably won’t join the same culinary group with individuals who think that cuisine doesn’t get any better than a half-pound hamburger or a Kansas City prime rib.They shouldn’t have to, and our Constitution doesn’t require them to. (But – insofar as this decision is concerned – that’s only because “we” haven’t decided yet that being a vegan is “better” than eating meat. Give it time.) The law is no longer being used as an unbiased protector of all persons, but a tool to push people toward viewpoints that certain self-appointed elites have decided are preferable, and to punish those who think differently.This is dangerous, and it runs completely counter to the intended purpose of our Constitution. Hastings’ decision – to “de-recognize” this PARTICULAR group, sends the message that this particular viewpoint is disapproved of. NEWSFLASH: the CLS students already KNOW that. They live in 21st century America and understand that their views on sexuality – not just homosexuality – are not popular with others.But, far from producing the rainbows and harmony that you seem to think will be forthcoming, Hastings’ policy – and now, the Supreme Court’s decision – will have the precise opposite effect among believing Christians, who already feel increasingly persecuted for their faith. They are being asked, no longer for “tolerance” of homosexuality, but endorsement of it, and among the consequences of not doing so for them, is ostracization. Nor will there be any “tolerance” for their views, even when all they are asking to do is to be able to meet like other student groups. This decision will have the perverse but predictable effect of galvanizing Christians. So be it.(And can we PLEASE skip the “I hate black people” analogy, which is intellectually lame and factually inapplicable? What IS discriminatory is to equate religious belief – particularly Christian religious belief – with hate. Christianity advocates hate for NO ONE, which anyone with two brain cells to rub together ought to know. Read Christ’s words sometime – NOWHERE does he say, “Now GO and hate anyone who disagrees with us.” One of the reasons that cultural discourse in this country is so bereft of seriousness is because the supposed most educated people respond to a critique of behavior with, “Ooh, you are a HATER! That’s HATE speech! That’s a HATE crime” There is a world of difference between criticism of behavior, and HATE. Nor is it persuasive to argue that some very bad things have been done by religious people. Some very bad things have been done by areligious people, including the communists that Leftists in this country fantacize about all day long.)like other efforts at mindthink, it won’t stop here. The Supreme Court’s decision is now a club with which any educational institution can bludgeon any student group which they want to discourage or dissuade from existing. One of these days, a lower federal court will conclude that the group isn’t really “open to all comers” unless “all comers” are actually IN the group. (Think of it as the student group version of “disparate impact”: it’s hard to prove to the courts that you DON’T “discriminate” against a particular group when NO MEMBERS of that group are there.)So, ultimately, it won’t be enough for the Black Law Students Association to say, “Of course other races are welcome” (even if in fact, they’re not). Precedent being what it is, some self-pitying student with a gadfly constitutional lawyer somewhere will make that argument that, “If there are no whites/Hispanics/Asians in your group, it is de facto (if not de jure) discrimination, and that is forbidden.” Some school administration somewhere will enforce it, and some lower federal court somewhere will uphold it. And so, what should have been a simple matter of joining the student group you want to belong to, it now becomes – LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS COUNTRY – more grist for the litigation mill.Of course, once it is certain LIBERAL political sacred cows which are being gored, than all the fair-weather freedom of association types will come out of the woodwork again, brandishing the arguments they pooh-poohed here (as you so blithely dismissed Justice Alito’s dissent). Because for the Left (and, regrettably, that describes about 80% of academia), constitutional protections only extend to the people, the viewpoints, and the political positions they LIKE, and everyone else can go take a flying leap.I guess we’re just lucky that none of you are referees at the Super Bowl, or umps at the World Series.

Dank 48 (2), Jesus didn’t have much to say about lukemia either. That doesn’t allow us to assume He approved of it. Or would have had he known about it. He didn’t have much to say about leprosy either, although according to the Gospels the latter He did heal when lepers came to Him.

Colleges are highly discriminatory; they discriminate against people with low SAT scores (it’s really not their fault, some people are just not all that bright). Once we create this unreal utopia, we can pretend to be non-discriminatory. I wonder if the group would be denied funding if they refused to accept homeless people who smell bad. None of this is real, it’s about the fake world that has been created inside the ivory tower. Discrimination means to distinguish, to tell the difference – it will never, ever be erradicated in the real world.

Precisely my point. Jesus didn’t say anything about homosexuality. So what?

I disagree with the premise of the original post: It is not so much about homosexuality as it is about whether an officially recognized and insititutionally funded student organization can exclude some students from membership while those very students are compelled to contribute to the funding of the organization. In addition to LGBT students, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish students were likewise excluded. Or do Mr. Carey, Supertatie, dank48 and others sharing the view that this case is all about homosexuality believe that non-Christians have no stake in this?

Morning Goxewu, Rise to your bait in your last but one * I wont. I’m not even that kind of fish. My (3) wasnt necessarily about what the historical Jesus–what little we know of Him– literally said or did but rather was in response to Dank 48′s implication in (2) that the absence in the gospels of any mention of disapproval of homosexuality might be construed as approval. There is simply no record or reference in the Gospels of homosexuality’s having come up, so there is no “direct” evidence at all, even considering the gospel (canonical or not) as “direct” evidence, a very loose use of the notion by our modern rules of evidence. Regarding your second *, there’s actually been a lot of anthropological investigation of the nature of warfare, population pressure and control, protein deficiencies, and the like. (Marvin Harris, Roy Rappaport, Napoleon Chagnon, among others.) Warfare is nearly unknown at the level of foraging bands, but common among horticultural, marine-aquatic, or pastoral tribal societies. In these male:female birth rates are close to 1:1, slightly more males than females, like in nearly all societies. But among 10 – 14 year olds or so, the balance is heavily male. That means of course that there is considerable female infanticide. What female infanticide does is limit the number of females who attain child-bearing age. Remember, it only takes one rooster per chicken yard. So an adult male’s not parrticipating in procreation does not appreciably affect the population rate but an adult female’s does. What the men are needed for is some of the heavy work and for combat, because warfare in tribal societies can and often does become endemic. And it is combat deaths of males that again somewhat evens the sex ratios among adults, although women and children too may in some cases be the casualties of raids. Interestingly enough, in some tribal societies, some role and measure of tolerance if not approval is sometimes found for homosexuals and / or transvestites. It was so institutionalized on the North American Plains that there was a name for such a person — the _berdache_. There is one portrayed among the Cheyenne in the movie _Little Big Man_. In sum, the population danger in tribal societies is not insufficiency but rather superabundance. And as long as i’m here, you are correct in your observations that the trend of things in Western societies is to regard homosexuality as innate, like eye color. The research that supports this is, so far as I am aware, not nearly so strong nor conclusive as that about eye color. But let’s suppose that it gets even stronger support and it turns out to be the case that homosexuality is completely, or is in considerable signficant measure, genetically determined. Societies, clucluding both religious and areligious members, will still have to choose and may differ in their choices of how to deal with that. It is for instance fairly clear that some kinds of diabetes are significantly genetic, and in those cases and kinds, a diabetic could not have chosen whether to be a diabetic or not. Our society then regards that kind of diabetes as a genetic disease or disorder which ought be cured. Meantime, a diabetic can choose whether or not to eat too many candy bars.

Sorry. Re #11.

Re your 1st *, no. It could easily mean that it was so uncommon, or so unthinkable, that it never came up. It could even be that it came up but the early church “suppressed” the story. In Admiralty Law we do have certain presumptions pertaining to uncalled critical witnesses or unproduced logbooks, I don’t think we can here howevermake either adverse or supportive assumptions — there are simply no known critical witnesses. There’s also in Admiralty Law the “positive~negative rule” — i.e. positive evidence that something occurred (a light was seen .e.g.) will generally outweigh testimony from an otherwise equally credible witness that it didn’t occur (a light was not seen.). But here we simply have no event to evaluate testimony about. Re 2nd *, my simple answer is, I don’t know. I believe that in ancient Greek and a couple of Arabic groups, hs activity was sort of a stage, or phase (neither intended to refer to the psychological notions) or a kind of liminal period. I.e. most people who did it were actually heterosexual. But I’m not on top of that so could be wrong. Human reproduction IS heterosexual, but that’s a fact about all human populations so it won’t of itself account for the variation in social reaction to hs-ality nor even necessarily the opposition of most societies. One thing that has happened in recent times in Western societies is a push to socially normalize homosexuality, i.e. making it a “big deal”. I.e., it may not in much of the past have been as big an issue generally as it has become today. Re 3rd *, No, I don’t think diabetes, especially Type I, can be curred by therapy. It may be someday possible to cure, or “fix” it through some sort of genetic repair, but isn’t now. Nor can it be cured by refraining from candy bars. It can however be controlled and it’s adverse effects somewhat mitigated through certain positive behaviors and avoidive restraints. It’s possible therapy may help some in control of the adverse behaviors, but I know of no evidence that it is theraputically curable.

Re #14:Slick. Put Foucault and, say, James Dobson on the same side because they both believe homosexuality is essentially “performative.” Get a little farther over on the Continental Thinker oooo-WEEE-ooo! side, and you get people who believe that everything–from being a mammal, to being a human, to being of whatever race, to being straight or gay–is “performative.” Can’t quite see, though, Foucault saying that homosexuals should just admit their sins and come to Jesus for forgiveness. Nice try, cute move, but dank48′s still right.Re #15:I doubt, given everything else Prof. Foster has to say, and given the nature of the gospels, that their “no comment” on homosexuality means that is was “so uncommon, or so unthinkable that it never came up.” And I thought Admirality Law’s relevance to anything outside of batten down the hatches went out with “Master and Commander” and the like.

Re (17′s re 15) Admiralty Law is still a specialty in legal training (cf Tulane University of New Orleans for instance). It was adduced above not because the gospels have Simon Peter’s boat colliding with a shipload of practicing homosexuals on the Sea of Galilee but because it can help us think clearly about evidence or lack thereof. Goxewu can doubt whether the question of homosexuality ever came up or not but there is nothing in the canonical or apocrophyal, noncanonical, gospels that supports an inference that it did or allows us to infer on what Jesus thought about it. Even the feminist “new theogiennes” who claim that the church surpressed stories and thereby interfered with their career, control, and course of ritual aspirations do not to my knowledge claim that the suppressed “gospels” indicate Jesus approved (or disapproved) of the practice of homosexuality. Maybe the closest thing to it, and it’s not particularly close, was the case of the adultress brought to him. To make a short story shorter, he told her that since those condemning her had gone away, neither did he condemn her. But then, so the gospel story goes, he told her to go and sin no more.

I can agree with your first paragraph in 20. Why it wasn’t a “big enough deal to mention” will remain undetermined. As to most of the rest of your (20), I haven’t gone there yet in this thread and am not going to now. But do bear in mind re your last paragraph that for the people you are talking about, they may not care whether you call them “bigots” or not.

Bruce Bawer, A Place at the Table, is really worth reading. Bawer is a truly fine, intelligent writer, in the first place, and his work would convince anyone whose mind is even the slightest bit open that a person can be Christian, conservative, and gay. Not that it’s likely to happen, but if thoughtful members of Christian groups practicing gay-exclusion were to read this book, then either those groups would find themselves getting inclusionary pdq or they’d find their membership leaving to form groups that would let in gays, not to mention publicans and tax-collectors.

Re #24:OK, here in the apparently required “Fun with Dick & Jane” straightforwardness is my point in #17 –1. Kevin Carey’s comment (#8) said that homosexuality is as biologically determined as having blue eyes, and that people who didn’t accept that were “unenlightened.”2. mercy_otis_warren replied (#14) by asking “Like Michel Foucault, you mean?” The tacked-on little sideways happy face icon–:)–is a “gotcha” because with Foucault we have an “enlightened” person (a heavy-duty radical French thinker) who didn’t accept that homosexuality was as biologically determined as having blue eyes.3. I replied that mercy_otis_warren was being pretty slick and cute, i.e., disingenuous, in bringing up Foucault because a) Foucault’s radicality posited that a whole lot of stuff most of us take as biologically caused are in fact performative. I said that James Dobson, for example, also believes that homosexuality is performative. I figurered that mercy_otis_warren would know without me spelling it out that Dobson’s reasons are 180 degrees different from Foucault’s; to Dobson and his ilk, homosexuality is the conscious choice of a sinful lifestyle which does not deserve any civil rights protection under the law.4. The point of that point is threefold: a) scientific consensus is that one’s sexual orientation is biologically driven and not chosen or a case of arrested development (e.g., the old clichés of the weak father and domineering mother), b) that still thinking it’s not is indeed “unenlightened,” and c) positing somebody who disagreed with practically every consensus as an example of homosexuality-isn’t-biologically driven is nothing more than a rhetorical “gotcha.” It’s but one step short of saying that women are women because they “perform as a women” (“performative gender” in the parlance) and if they’re relegated to shoeless pregnancy in the kitchen well, hey, they chose to perform that gender role. Besides, Foucault died 26 years ago, and the evidence that homosexuality is indeed as biologically determined as having blue eyes has mounted considerably since then.5. I made a mistake in attributing in my mind Mr. Carey’s comment on his own OP to dank48. But dank48′s don’t seem to be at all opposed to the idea of homosexuality as biologically driven. Could be wrong.Note: mercy_otis_warren did not “visibly enter [my] heated fray about Jesus and the religious right.” That concerned jffoster and the issue of the gospel not mentioning homosexuality.Note: If mercy_otis_warren is “once again” puzzled by my alleged “failure” “to read others’ posts,” that means I fail repeatedly. If I fail repeatedly, then I can’t be “usually incisive and careful,” can I? mercy_otis_warren giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other.