A new label

Andrew Sullivan has come up with a new label for people who don't think God approves of sodomy. He calls them "Christianists," which he defines as "those who see Christianity as compatible with only one political party, the Republicans, and believe that their religious doctrines should determine public policy for everyone." I suppose he'd classify me as a Christianist because I oppose using the power of government to validate his lifestyle by changing the definition of marriage. I'm not sure that it's my burden to defend the status quo, however. This language, "their religious doctrines should determine public policy for everyone," is just an attempt to put arguments he doesn't like out of bounds, so that only his views are allowed legitimacy in the debate. Why do we outlaw murder? Is it because of the commandment given through Moses? I imagine that to a lot of people that is what they'd answer. Others would say that is violates the rights of other individuals. I'd say it interferes with a healthy society, which is one where people live together and receive advantages of trade, social interaction, family support and specialization and accomplishments through joint efforts which none of us could bring about on our own. What we give in return is an agreement not to interfere with the reasonable expectations of others from society. That's why we have breach of the peace laws, and the concept of public nuisance.

In recent years the argument that nobody has a right to be offended by speech or conduct of others has held sway, but, of course, it's turning out that the argument seems only to go one way. People who demonstrated for the right of "counter-cultural" figures to speak out during the 1960s and '70s, are now banding together to prevent Condoleeza Rice from speaking at Boston College's commencement, and receiving an honorary law degree, on the ground that it would "politicize" the event. What they really mean is that they don't want to hear what she has to say or to allow her to say it. The reasons they give are as disingenuous as they are hypocritcal. If she were a famous lesbian feminists spokesperson, would they be complaining that allowing her to speak would be too divisive or contrary to B.C.'s Catholic values?

There's a bill in the California legislature which would put require school textbooks

``accurately'' portraying ``the sexual diversity of our society.'' More controversially, it could require that students hear history lessons on ``the contributions of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender to the economic, political, and social development of California and the United States of America.''

Now, I've never seen a public school textbook that belittles or denigrates gays and lesbians, but I'm aware of the tendency of school kids to call each other "gay." My sister-in-law reports that her son who is 7 or 8 objected to wearing a purple shirt to school because it was "gay." He didn't know what that meant, exactly, other than that it carried some opprobrium. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the third grade curriculum explained it all and inculcated admiration for gays and lesbians instead? Nothing like making the curriculum even more irrelevant to real life. Sorry, I just can't picture the middle school crowd giving up their favorite jeering term to accommodate poltical correctness.

So, it's very bad if peoples' "religious doctrines . . . determine public policy for everyone," but it's okey-dokey if anti-religious doctrines and social theories do.