In Canada, citizens have been much more successful in getting the government to correct the thoughts of political heretics. Moslem extremists and gay activists seem to be particularly keen in the use of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunals to cleanse Canada from impious speech, thought and action.
Although homosexual conduct is forbidden by my faith, just as it is forbidden for Christians, I have never heard a rabbi mention the topic in all my years as a congregant. I’m glad of this, because the unequivocal nature of the authentic Jewish teaching about this subject would make for a boring sermon. Better to hear from the pulpit words of inspiration or discussion of issues that are made more interesting by there being some sort of gray area.
There are people who are offended by my opinion. They are offended by my right and the right of my religious teachers to express that opinion, even if they almost always decline that right. They are offended even though homosexual conduct is one of many, many acts that are forbidden by my religion and even though homosexual conduct occupies no special place among the things forbidden by my beloved faith.
I have little doubt that the persecution of Stephen Boisson has had a chilling effect on the speech of Canadian clergy. This has to change. Religious people must act if they are not to lose their rights one piece at a time. They must defy the “enlightened” and “tolerant” forces that would oppose them.
The defiance doesn’t have to be hateful. It doesn’t have to be over-the-top. The simple, defiant declaration to conclude every sermon in the manner of Cato the Elder will suffice. “Furthermore, I feel it my duty to call your attention to Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13,” should be all that is necessary to stand up for free speech and to defy the bullies who would use the government to correct the thinking of its citizenry.
If enough clergy were to do so, it would be all the harder for Canada to trample on the rights of its citizens.
Illustrating an intellectual confusion common on campuses, Vanderbilt University says: To ensure “diversity of thought and opinion” we require certain student groups, including five religious ones, to conform to the university’s policy that forbids the groups from protecting their characteristics that contribute to diversity.
Last year, after a Christian fraternity allegedly expelled a gay undergraduate because of his sexual practices, Vanderbilt redoubled its efforts to make the more than 300 student organizations comply with its “long-standing nondiscrimination policy.” That policy, says a university official, does not allow the Christian Legal Society “to preclude someone from a leadership position based on religious belief.” So an organization formed to express religious beliefs, including the belief that homosexual activity is biblically forbidden, is itself effectively forbidden. There is much pertinent history.
[…][I]n 2010 the [Supreme] court held, 5 to 4, that a public law school in California did not abridge First Amendment rights when it denied the privileges associated with official recognition to just one student group — the Christian Legal Society chapter, because it limited voting membership and leadership positions to Christians who disavow “sexual conduct outside of marriage between a man and a woman.” Dissenting, Justice Samuel Alito said the court was embracing the principle that the right of expressive association is unprotected if the association departs from officially sanctioned orthodoxy.
In wiser moments, the court has held that “this freedom to gather in association . . . necessarily presupposes the freedom to identify the people who constitute the association and to limit the association to those people only.” In 1984, William Brennan, the court’s leading liberal of the last half-century, said:
“There can be no clearer example of an intrusion into the internal structure or affairs of an association than a regulation that forces the group to accept members it does not desire. Such a regulation may impair the ability of the original members to express only those views that brought them together. Freedom of association therefore plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate.”
As professor Michael McConnell of Stanford Law School says, “Not everything the government chooses to call discrimination is invidious; some of it is constitutionally protected First Amendment activity.” Whereas it is wrong for government to prefer one religion over another, when private persons and religious groups do so, this is the constitutionally protected free exercise of religion. So, McConnell says, “Preventing private groups from discriminating on the basis of shared beliefs is not only not a compelling governmental interest; it is not even a legitimate governmental interest.”
Here, however, is how progressivism limits freedom by abolishing the public-private distinction: First, a human right — to, say, engage in homosexual practices — is deemed so personal that government should have no jurisdiction over it. Next, this right breeds another right, to the support or approval of others. Finally, those who disapprove of it must be coerced.
Sound familiar? It should. First, abortion should be an individual’s choice. Then, abortion should be subsidized by government. Next, pro-life pharmacists who object to prescribing abortifacients should lose their licenses. Thus do rights shrink to privileges reserved for those with government-approved opinions.
The question, at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, should not be whether a particular viewpoint is right but whether an expressive association has a right to espouse it. Unfortunately, in the name of tolerance, what is tolerable is being defined ever more narrowly.
Although Vanderbilt is a private institution, its policy is congruent with “progressive” public policy, under which society shall be made to progress up from a multiplicity of viewpoints to a government-supervised harmony. Vanderbilt’s policy, formulated in the name of enlarging rights, is another skirmish in the progressives’ struggle to deny more and more social entities the right to deviate from government-promoted homogeneity of belief. Such compulsory conformity is, of course, enforced in the name of diversity.
I’m surprised by George Will. I always thought he was a moderate. But since I started writing this blog, I’ve been happy to see that he is a lot more conservative than people like Charles Krauthammer, Michael Barone, and other well-known moderate conservatives. I don’t require that he agree with me – I just want him to understand my views. And he does.
My Experience
When I’ve spent time talking to secular leftists in my office, they seem to have a horror of disagreements. They are desperate to make sure that everyone believes the same thing on every issue. The conversations typically proceed as follows:
They express their view on some subject and imply that it is the only intelligent view, since they learned it from their college professors. (Evolution is a fact)
I produce peer-reviewed experimental data that falsifies their view. (The synthesis of functional proteins by unintelligent forces is impossible)
They try desperately to find some area that we agree on that is unrelated to my evidence. (But you agree that the Earth is older than 6,000 years, right?)
This is what the left means by diversity of opinion. Everyone has to agree, even if no one can prove that what is agreed to is actually true. They believe that rent controls doesn’t result in a shortage of affordable apartments, even though this is not what has been observed. They believe it because it sounds nice, and it makes people think that they are nice people. And they get very confused and flustered if you try to prove them wrong with evidence.
Remember how I was freaking out about Marco Rubio from the day he announced his candidacy for the Florida Senate seat? Well, I think that Ted Cruz is another Marco Rubio. He may even eclipse Marco Rubio.
Today, we are excited to announce that national pro-life, family values leader Dr. James Dobson is endorsing our Senate campaign.
In his endorsement announcement, Dr. Dobson said: “I’m pleased to endorse Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate because he’s exactly the kind of candidate we need to turn this country around. Religious freedom is under assault every day. We need leaders with the courage to stand strong for conservative values in this battle. Ted Cruz is such a leader—one who will not only vote his convictions in the Senate, but will also lead the fight to defend life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty.”
Dr. Dobson added: “Ted Cruz stands out among conservative leaders across the country today. He has a consistent record of standing up for faith, family, and freedom, and winning values battles on a national level….I urge all Texans who love life, family, faith, and freedom to not only vote for Ted Cruz, but to work hard for his campaign.”
For a conservative Texan seeking national office, it could hardly get better than this: In a recent 48-hour span, Ted Cruz, a candidate for next year’s Republican Senate nomination for the seat being vacated by Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, was endorsed by the Club for Growth PAC, FreedomWorks PAC, talk-radio host Mark Levin and Erick Erickson of RedState.com.
For conservatives seeking reinforcements for Washington’s too-limited number of limited-government constitutionalists, it can hardly get better than this: Before he earned a Harvard law degree magna cum laude (and helped found the Harvard Latino Law Review) and clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Cruz’s senior thesis at Princeton — his thesis adviser was professor Robert George, one of contemporary conservatism’s intellectual pinups — was on the Constitution’s Ninth and 10th amendments. Then as now, Cruz argued that these amendments, properly construed, would buttress the principle that powers not enumerated are not possessed by the federal government.
Robbie George??? Robbie George??? Holy snouts! That guy is one of the top academic pro-lifers. Every Christian apologist knows about Robbie George. It’s the law! Well, it isn’t. But it should be!
I continue:
At age 14, Cruz’s father fought with rebels (including Fidel Castro) against Cuba’s dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Captured and tortured, at 18 he escaped to America with $100 sewn in his underwear. He graduated from the University of Texas and met his wife — like him, a mathematician — with whom he founded a small business processing seismic data for the oil industry.
By the time Ted Cruz was 13, he was winning speech contests sponsored by a Houston free-enterprise group that gave contestants assigned readings by Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. In his early teens he traveled around Texas and out of state giving speeches. At Princeton, he finished first in the 1992 U.S. National Debate Championship and North American Debate Championship.
As Texas’s solicitor general from 2003 to 2008, Cruz submitted 70 briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court, and he has, so far, argued nine cases there. He favors school choice and personal investment accounts for a portion of individuals’ Social Security taxes. He supports the latter idea with a bow to the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who said such accounts enable the doorman to build wealth the way the people in the penthouse do.
Regarding immigration, Cruz, 40, demands secure borders and opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants but echoes Ronald Reagan’s praise of legal immigrants as “Americans by choice,” people who are “crazy enough” to risk everything in the fundamentally entrepreneurial act of immigrating.
Ted Cruz has Republican life experiences: legal immigrant, fought communism, studied something that required actual work, founded a small business, etc. This is the prototypical Republican!
Ted Cruz has fought to protect innocent human life. He played a leading role in several important cases, including defense of the partial-birth abortion ban, parental consent laws, and prohibiting state funds from going to abortion. These cases have all been part of the ongoing effort to ensure that every child in America receives the protection and respect he or she deserves.
Authored an amicus brief for 13 states, successfully defending the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. The ban was upheld 5-4 before the U.S. Supreme Court;
Authored an amicus brief for 18 states, successfully defending the New Hampshire parental notification law. The law was upheld 9-0 before the U.S. Supreme Court [note: this brief was awarded the Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for U.S. Supreme Court briefs written in 2005-06];
Successfully defended Texas’s Rider 8, which prohibits state funds for groups that provide abortions, winning unanimously before the Fifth Circuit court of appeals.
Ted Cruz has worked hard in defense of traditional marriage, including his intervention in a case protecting Texas marriage laws. In addition, he has fought on the federal level to defend marriage between one man and one woman as the fundamental building block of society.
When a Beaumont state court granted a divorce to two homosexual men who had gotten a civil union in Vermont, Cruz, under the leadership of Attorney General Greg Abbott, intervened in defense of the marriage laws of the State of Texas, which successfully led to the court judgment being vacated;
Worked with Attorney General Abbott to send a letter to Congress in support of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
He has lots of nice actions related to lots of conservative policies on that page. What a resume! Energy production, voter fraud prevention, border security, legal firearm ownership – you name it, this guy has been fighting for conservative principles. Like Michele Bachmann, (and unlike RINO Mitt Romney), he has actually tried to do pro-life and pro-marriage things. We don’t just have to take his word for it, he has the actions to prove his words. Just look at the list of issues on his page!
WINTERY KNIGHT 