Compulsory Tolerance

Spero News author James Thunder shows that the tolerance demanded by the gay lobby comes at the expense of everyone else's freedom.

Representations have been consistently made by the gay community that allowing gays to marry will not affect heterosexuals. They note as one example of this that they will not push the government to require religious denominations to conduct gay marriages. Ah, but we now have at least two examples where gay people have persuaded our government to compel the private sector to help gays date, mate and procreate.

Specifically, he notes that the recent bullying of eHarmony amounts to forcing a company to provide a service they don't want to provide.

a company has been compelled by our government to start a new service, and fund it and market it for at least two years, to promote gay dating and mating.

On the next day, November 20, a California trial court issued a ruling allowing a case brought by a lesbian against eHarmony to proceed as a class action. The plaintiff’s attorney stated to the press that the New Jersey settlement did not change his case since eHarmony’s agreement with New Jersey to set up a separate website (with an acknowledgement on the main website that they were affiliated), was separate, not equal. He also decried the two-year minimum requirement for eHarmony’s operation of the gay options since eHarmony could choose to discontinue at any time after two years. Presumably, therefore, the California plaintiff will seek to make eHarmony stay in the gay matchmaking business permanently.

In another area of law, antitrust, companies are required to divest lines of business, never to establish them. Yet here we have the government requiring a company to start a new line of business with the prospect that it may never be able to cease that line of business unless it goes bankrupt.

Governor Corzine or Attorney General Milgram should renounce this settlement and defend eHarmony.

He also writes about the lesbian artificial insemination case, which I have written about extensively.

The Court ruled that the doctors had no right of free speech or freedom of religion under either the California or United States Constitutions to refuse elective medical treatment, including the establishment of a pregnancy, of a homosexual. The doctors and the clinic violated the law even though they had referred the patient to another doctor. The concurring opinion by Judge Baxter expressed concern for sole practitioners who had religious objections, but observed that that issue was not present in the North Coast case.

Thus, under this decision, and under the Unruh Law, as revised in recent years to include sexual orientation and marital status, our government compels medical personnel to help unmarried or gay or lesbian patients establish a pregnancy. Doctors -- and prospective doctors -- are told by our government to leave their consciences at the door or join medical groups that include doctors who have no consciences.

He concludes with a reference to Sir Thomas More and the play, "A Man for All Seasons."

Are we not free to refuse (for business or moral reasons) to help unmarried persons, regardless of their sexual orientation, date, mate and procreate? Are we not free to promote heterosexual marriage without being compelled by our government to promote relationships among homosexuals?

We have seen this scene play out before. Henry VIII was determined to have a male heir. In contemporary parlance, it was his reproductive right. He chose to exercise this right by using a woman who was not his wife and making her his wife. He had a right to marry – whomever he wished. Furthermore, the king was responsible for new legislation by which the law and Parliament recognized this right to marry and this right to reproduce -- and compelled the private sector to recognize this woman as his wife and their children as his heirs. A private subject who had long since resigned his office of Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, conscientiously remained silent, simply silent.

Sir Thomas More's story, told by Robert Bolt in “A Man for All Seasons , ” was revived on Broadway this year (until December 14). I suggest our legislators, prosecutors and judges watch the 1966 movie version. Thomas More declared, “I do none harm. I say none harm. I think none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, then in good faith I long not to live.” And Henry executed him.

Same Sex "Marriage" and the Persecution of Civil Society

My article is up on National Catholic Register.
I refer to two different books in that article. One is Nation of Bastards, an important and thoughtful book by Canadian professor, Douglas Farrow.

The underlying pattern is unmistakable. Legalizing same-sex “marriage” has brought in its wake state regulation of other parts of society. The problem is sometimes presented as an issue of religious freedom, and so, in part, it is. But the issue runs deeper than religious freedom.

McGill University professor Douglas Farrow argues in his book, Nation of Bastards that redefining marriage allows the government to colonize all of civil society.

If same-sex couples can marry each other, they should be allowed to adopt. Anyone who says otherwise is acting against the policy of the state. If same-sex couples can have civil unions, then denying them the use of any facility they want for their ceremony amounts to unlawful discrimination. When the state says that same sex couples are equivalent to opposite-sex couples, school curriculum will inevitably have to support this claim.

I also quote Seana Sugrue's essay in The Meaning of Marriage.

Because marriage is an organic part of civil society, it is robust enough to sustain itself, with minimal assistance from the state.

By contrast, same-sex “marriage” is completely a creation of the state.

Same-sex couples cannot have children. Someone must give them a child or at least half the genetic material to create a child. The state must detach the parental rights of the opposite-sex parent and then attach those rights to the second parent of the same-sex couple.

The state must create parentage for the same-sex couple. For the opposite-sex couple, the state merely recognizes parentage.

In her essay in The Meaning of Marriage, Seana Sugrue argues that the state must coddle and protect same-sex “marriage” in ways that opposite-sex marriage does not require.

Precisely because same-sex unions are not the same as opposite-sex marriage, the state must intervene to make people believe (or at least make them act as if they believe) that the two types of unions are equivalent.

Read my whole essay here.

Taken Into Custody

I reviewed Taken Into Custody for my column in the National Catholic Register. I have already been getting responses from the on-line version of the column. Here is my brief summary of the book's argument:

no-fault divorce frequently means unilateral divorce: One party wants a divorce against the wishes of the other, who wants to stay married. This fact means that the divorce has to be enforced. The coercive machinery of the state is wheeled into action to separate the reluctantly divorced party from the joint assets of the marriage, typically the home and the children. Involving the family court in the minutiae of family life amounts to an unprecedented blurring of the boundaries between public and private life.

People under the jurisdiction of the family courts can have virtually all of their private lives subject to its scrutiny. If the courts are influenced by feminist ideology, that ideology can extend its reach into every bedroom and kitchen in America.

Thus, the social experiment of no-fault divorce, which was supposed to increase personal liberty has had the unintended consequence of empowering the state.

Taken Into Custodyis well worth reading, for anyone who wants to understand just how much the government has done to undermine marriage.


I have already begun getting responses from readers about my article. I'll be posting them, once I have their permission.

Corrections to Gender Jumble

Two different attorneys wrote to me to point out an error in my NRO article, Gender Jumble. They both called attention to the fact that I had quoted the language from an early version of the bill. The difference is between "reflects adversely" upon anyone based on sexual orientation and "promotes a discriminatory bias."
My first message was from Matt McReynolds, Associate Counsel for the Pacific Justice Institute:

As a matter of accuracy, please note that the original versions of SB 777 and its predecessors containing the "reflects adversely" language were amended before it was adopted. In place of "reflects adversely," which caught a lot of flak last year when it was proposed as SB 1437, the statute as enacted now prohibits instruction or activity that "promotes a discriminatory bias." The substantive effect will likely be the same, but I thought I should alert you to the distinction before someone from the left tries to use that point to discredit your piece.

As I understand it, Pacific Justice Institute was involved in tracking SB777 and commenting on its potentially disastrous consequences.
My second missive came from another attorney:

Dear Jennifer: I enjoyed your article about SB 777. However, you quoted the OLD statute rather than the NEW one. The old law was bad enough, but the new version is much worse. Whereas the old language barred any instruction that "reflected adversely on any person" in the protected groups, the new language leaves out "any person" and bars any statement that "promotes a discriminatory bias." This phrase is nowhere defined in California law. It does not require a showing that any specific person has been adversely affected. It simply focuses on the potential that a sentence uttered by a teacher, or by a student at a school activity, might make it more likely that any person in their audience subjectively might become more rather than less biased toward a member of the protected groups. It is clear from statements by the author of the legislation that ANYTHING that criticizes the LGBT agenda, such as opposition to gay marriage, or even quoting a news story in which such opposition is voiced, would be punished as a violation of the new law. In other words, gay rights groups now have the power under California law to completely censor any statement that disagrees with their political views. Indeed, any statement critical of SB 777 itself is now a violation of law and can result in punishment of teachers and students and lawsuits by LGBT groups against the schools. Schools must take the political position of the LGBT groups or be punished. It is a violation of the First Amendment, both in its free speech and freedom of religion clauses. Indeed, it amounts to an "establishment" of a religious philosophy that sees all kinds of sex outside of marriage as moral.

He offers a more complete analysis of his argument here. I am not qualified to evaluate his claims, as I am not an attorney. Does anyone else have any analysis of this issue? As I said in my original article, any bill that can not be easily interpretted is worth defeating on that grounds alone. But this bill not only passed through the legislature, but it was signed by the Governator.
Readers might be interested to know that the Capitol Resource Institute is sponsoring a petition drive to overturn the law.

Gender Jumble on National Review

The powerful California gay rights lobby has passed a bill regulating the content of public school curriculum, requiring that it not "reflect adversely" on persons based on sexual orientation or sexual identity. I illustrate how this will amount to a huge power grab by the state in my latest article.

More Editorial Comments on Mental Illness and the Virginia Tech Massacre

Suzanne Fields starts strong and trails off. Parents are not necessarily "reluctant to commit" their children. In some cases, parents have few opportunities to get meaningful treatment for their children. Contrary to some of the comments over at Town Hall, there are people who really are dangerous to themselves and others. About a third of the "homeless" population have serious mental illnesses. We are doing no one any favor by pretending they are just a little different, or just transgressive non-conformists. Of course, there is the danger of over-treating people, or of commiting people who shouldn't be committed. But at this time in our history, the pendulum has swung so far in the direction of protecting the civil liberties of the insane, rather than protecting the sanity of the mentally ill (which can sometimes be improved with medications) and the safety of the public.
Daniel Henninger, at the Wall Street Journal, refers to the Safe Schools report and its perhaps surprising conclusion that although most of th school shooters gave indications that should have been recognized, not all of the school shooters were certifiablly insane.

One of the Safe School report's most relevant findings, for the purposes of stopping another Virginia Tech, is that the 37 school attacks weren't typically carried out by severely ill, unhinged psychotics like Cho Seung-Hui. This is not to say they were happy campers (the study interviewed 10 perpetrators in depth). Though few of them would get off by reason of insanity, they were all mentally very unhappy campers; and what is more, other people knew that. And in nearly every case, someone knew they were planning the attack: "In nearly two thirds of the incidents, more than one person had information about the attack before it occurred."

Henniger's bottom line is that people need to DO something when they notice strange behavior. Running to get medication or commitment papers is not the "something" that needs to be done in all cases. But we need to stop being so passive:

Among the reasons widely adduced for not doing something about Cho's violent proclivities are HIPAA and FERPA, the confidentiality laws for health records and college students' records. Well, there's no FERPA for high schools. There is merely the weird cultural refusal to turn in bad actors to adult authority. In one school attack, so many students knew it was coming that 24 were waiting on a mezzanine to watch, one with a camera. The enemy is us....

If there is a sliver of silver lining in the Virginia Tech aftermath, it is that there seems to be a willingness to look hard at the status quo -- no matter what assumptions pre-existed about rights, privacy, stigma, coercion, security or whether we can blame it on Karl Rove. On Tuesday, for example, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece by a professor titled, "Why It's OK to Rat On Other Students." Here, as with the message screaming off the pages of the Safe School report, the exhortation is to do something, no matter what the intimidations of the law or received wisdom.

What this means is that some college presidents, and their lawyers, rather than rolling over before those confidentiality laws, should tell some aggrieved student who is refusing to take the medication prescribed for his psychosis: So sue! Let a judge decide whether 32 deaths warrant a reconsideration of these restrictions.

Mental Illness and the Virginia Tech Massacre

My commentary called, "Waiting until it is too late," is up on National Review. Here is the bottom line:

What would be constructive is an honest discussion about how a free society should face the reality of mental illness. It is not a protection of civil liberties to redefine the mentally ill as if they were rational and able to make informed decisions about their care and treatment, even when they are obviously not. As we can see from the Virginia Tech massacre, it is not consistent with public safety to wait until a mentally ill person has committed a crime. It is not “personal responsibility” to expect the families of mentally ill people to take care of them themselves. This means turning their homes into a 24-hours-a-day mental institution, staffed by relatives who never get training, help, or a day off.

Some smart radio talk-show host could do a real public service by inviting the relatives of mentally ill people to call in and describe the challenges they have faced in getting meaningful help. They will give you an earful. They will tell you about the legal institutions that protect the civil liberties of the ill, without providing protection for the well. They will tell you about being sent home from the hospital with medications they can’t make their relative take. They will tell you about the revolving door between the street, the hospital and the jail.

Let these relatives of the seriously mentally ill tell their stories. I promise you a much more interesting hour of talk radio than yet another hour of yammering about gun control.

Facing the reality of mental illness just might prevent another round of school-shooting victims.

I'm getting many reactions to this article, which I will post later today.