Join us by not joining us, that is. The Conspirators are taking a day off Monday November 7th to fast and pray for the elections on Tuesday.
FYI for those who are wondering about my recent absence from this blog and social media, no, I haven’t been extra prayerful in advance. I switched around my schedule to very good effect, but have ended up not quite making it to the PC at the end of the day. More blogging is on the horizon.
Meanwhile, pray!
Among evangelical Protestants and Catholics (and perhaps a few Orthodox), there’s a line of thinking about Donald Trump that goes about like this: He’s got his flaws. None of us are perfect. Anyhow, let’s leave the past in the past. He’s a Christian now.
At the opening of the debate Sunday, Donald Trump was asked directly about the recordings (over a decade old) of him bragging about committing sexual assault.
Now here is what any good politician, honest or a liar, would say if they were courting the Christian right:
Oh, yes, that’s a very shameful part of my past. I have repented of those sins, and I regret every day that I ever said or did such things. By the grace of God I’m trying to become a new person.
I know many Christians who’ve sincerely expressed that sort of repentance; I’ve also seen bona fide psychopaths spout the lines. Saying the words isn’t a measure of sincerity, but it is a measure of knowing the words.
Trump went nowhere near those lines.
What he did was justify his recorded words by sticking to his argument that it was just “locker room talk.”
It was a good service he did, because now we don’t have to wonder whether he was lying or not. We can be confident that:
His conscience is wickedly deformed, but logically consistent.
Two Related Topics:
Here’s an article on sex-trafficking in the Myrtle Beach area, with a few comments from an assistant US Attorney who works on prosecuting such cases. I had not considered it until this very moment, but I am now asking myself: To what extent would a President Trump cooperate with such investigations if his own businesses were implicated?
We do know that Democrats have repeatedly made abortion a litmus test for which organizations can receive grants to help victims of human trafficking. We can reasonably assume Clinton will continue with that approach. On the other hand, at least in this part of the country, under the present administration federal prosecutors are plenty active in shutting down what they can of that business.
Lest you think I overreach, keep in mind that Trump’s lack-of-repentance concerns non-consensual sexual acts. That’s what human trafficking is about. The difference is degree, not kind.
Second topic, here’s Julie Roys’ op-ed at the Christian Post “Evangelical Trump Defenders Are Destroying the Church’s Witness.”
But let’s face it. This election presents us with a Sophie’s Choice. There is no moral vote. Only when compared to Hillary Clinton can Donald Trump come even close to resembling a decent human being. But, let’s be honest, that’s like saying I’m better-looking than Quasimodo. However, if we choose not to vote, or vote for a third party, then we can legitimately be accused of helping Hillary win the presidency (unless you live in a blue state like me where a vote for the GOP candidate doesn’t count anyway).
So, let’s stop claiming a moral high ground in this election. There is none. These are the two most morally depraved, power-hungry, and unfit candidates ever to win the Democratic and Republican Party nominations. They are a reflection of the moral bankruptcy of our nation. And, rather than waiving a party flag, every honest person of faith should be mourning the truly pathetic state of our union.
She’s writing to her fellow Evangelical Protestants, but her comments apply to Christians of every stripe.
Artwork courtesy of Tim Green from Bradford (facepalm) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Among conservative Catholic Republicans on Facebook, there’s a meme being passed around that keeps ending up in front of people like myself and Scott Eric Alt, though neither of us can possibly be the intended target. The argument is that the popularity of novels such as 50 Shades of Grey proves that women don’t, in fact, object to Donald Trump’s lewd behavior; any objections are political calculus.
Rebecca Bratten Weiss responds to another variation — same argument, different famous incident:
“But Bill Clinton…”
Oh yes. And I opposed him, and criticized him, at the time. Anyone else who did so must, in order to be morally consistent, do likewise with Trump. If you don’t, it just sends a message that you never really cared about sexual abuse of women, but were just appropriating morality in order to make your opposing team look bad.
Before my next sentence, let me reiterate: I do not think you should vote for Donald Trump.
Next sentence: There is some validity to the observation that Donald Trump’s lewd behavior is indeed representative of the American public at large. I said so here. This is a representative democracy, and our two candidates do in fact represent America.
Dear friends, if Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump represents you? You can change that.
You can’t change the candidates, but you can change yourself. You don’t have to be a person who winks at sin. You don’t have to be a person who creates convoluted defenses of BDSM. You don’t have to be that person who justifies exposing kids to porn.
You can stop that now. You do not have to be enslaved to the person you were yesterday.
***
Pro-life friends, another minute of politics: When people give sorry mealy-mouthed justifications for voting for a pro-abortion candidate by explaining that solving poverty or immigration or global warming will somehow fix abortion, those people are dangerously deluding themselves. There exists a hierarchy of priorities, and cold-blooded murder is a far graver and more pressing issue than good roads or good tax policy. When someone says I don’t like abortion but I’m voting for the person who advocates tirelessly for abortion, what I hear is: Actually, I’m fine with abortion.
I understand, therefore, the Republican Impulse.
I have grave reservations about Donald Trump’s sincerity on pro-life issues, however, because his life is one long series of promotions of the actual, real-live causes of abortion.
Food stamps don’t cause abortion. Adultery? That causes abortion.
***
Quick aside on modesty.
When people like me talk about “modesty” we tend to hit a few topics related to girls’ clothing. That matters, of course. But for those who are trying to get their heads around about what immodesty looks like in someone who is neither female nor scantily-clad, Donald Trump is the poster boy. He models immodesty not just with regards to sexuality, but also with regards to wealth, power, and personal accomplishments.
It is easy to excuse his unseemly boastfulness by saying that he needs to prove his leadership potential or share his legitimate accomplishments with voters. Not so. It is possible to communicate one’s ability to lead without behaving immodestly.
Below in the links I include some examples of SC’s governor Nikki Haley in action, for other reasons. But in her hurricane Matthew press conferences, she’s a vivid example of the counterpoint: A leader who is both a strong, decisive, competent leader, but who also conducts herself with modesty.
***
Link Round-up. Here are all kinds of loosely related links. At the bottom are a few of mine, but first here’s the pile I extracted from my reading list.
Timothy Scott Reeves, an evangelical Anglican philosopher with strong ortho-catholic leanings writes on our tendency to rely on chariots and horses instead of trusting in the Lord.
Simcha Fisher has an excellent piece on why consent alone is not sufficient.
Nathaniel Peters at Public Discourse writes:
Many young conservatives have been disheartened to see the leaders of their movement endorse Donald Trump. I am one of the disheartened ones. Let me explain what these leaders taught me and why their endorsement of Trump betrays those principles.
Faithfully Catholic, orthodox, conservative Katie O’Keefe catalogs her series of encounters with so called “locker-room talk” sexual abuse, and how she learned from an early age that protesting was futile:
5 years old – In my own backyard. I was stopped by a man in a car in the alley behind my house who showed me “what (he had) in his pants” and then offered me the opportunity to put my mouth on it. I declined but never told anyone because I had no idea that it was anything but just gross. . . .
12 years old – On my paper route, I was collecting for the monthly bill. An old man who had been very kindly toward me and had several grandchildren that he looked after, grabbed my breasts (which were more impressive than they were when I was 8) and humped me. He told me I was a good girl and he’d take good care of me. I quit carrying papers that month. I never told anyone because I figured that no one would believe me. . . .
Father Longenecker has sensible, hard-nosed advice on what to do after the elections, which promise us four years of disaster no matter what.
And here is a short, heartening story on seminarians already following that advice.
Erin Arlinghaus writes about:
Mary Pezzulo writes about the bad news for feminism that will come with the election of our first female president.
To which end, here’s a refreshing antidote: Watch a conservative, pro-life female governor in action, successfully managing a natural disaster. I don’t know how long the SCETV archives will be up, so here’s a link to the governor’s YouTube channel where you can find most of the videos.
(Tip: If you skim ahead to the Q&A’s with the whole executive branch team, a few of the press conferences contain striking examples of the linguistic diversity among educated, standard-English speaking southerners. And that’s just a beginning. Armchair linguists, this place is a treasure trove.)
Here’s Meg Hunter-Kilmer saying what many of us are saying:
A friend of mine attempted to defend Trump by pointing to his daughter’s respect for him and saying that he must be a good father. I don’t care what she says. I don’t care how marvelous he was every single time he was with her. Owning strip clubs makes you a bad father. Being a serial adulterer makes you a bad father. Treating women like objects for your sexual gratification makes you a bad father. And it will make him a bad president.
To round out the reading, from a man who’s no slouch on Catholic faithfulness, Archbishop Chaput shares his thoughts on faithful citizenship:
But 2016 is a year in which two prominent Catholics – a sitting vice president, and the next vice presidential nominee of his party — both seem to publicly ignore or invent the content of their Catholic faith as they go along. And meanwhile, both candidates for the nation’s top residence, the White House, have astonishing flaws.
This is depressing and liberating at the same time. Depressing, because it’s proof of how polarized the nation has become. Liberating, because for the honest voter, it’s much easier this year to ignore the routine tribal loyalty chants of both the Democratic and Republican camps. I’ve been a registered independent for a long time and never more happily so than in this election season. Both major candidates are – what’s the right word? so problematic – that neither is clearly better than the other.
And finally, a few links from my own archives:
Adultery is Not the Only Option: Five Things You Can Do to Keep Your Vows Intact
Here’s a patron saint for those who’ve fallen for the idea that Catholics need to be all sophisticated and cosmopolitan.
And to close, here’s my report from the field on how our Trump-Clinton society plays out among middle schoolers. In Sexual Bravado vs. Sexual Maturity, I share some of the real-world evidence parents like to ignore, then discuss the underlying issue:
In our popular culture, sex-status is the big thing. The kids have learned from their parents that the purpose of sex is to gratify one’s desires, and that a girl’s worth is measured in sexiness. The kids have adopted that philosophy wholesale. . . .
. . . Why is there such a market for teenage girls in a sleepy Bible Belt town, to the point that pimps are willing to risk kidnapping charges and worse in order to abduct upper class girls and sell them locally?
You can almost hear the eighth grade boys scoffing at those pathetic men who have to pay for what they can get the girls to give them for free.
There is no magic remedy that will guarantee your teens will live chastely and stay out of harm’s way. But you can be certain that if your understanding of human sexuality is all about the quest for gratification and sexual status, your children are going to learn that from you.
Photo Collage by DonkeyHotey (New York Primary 2016) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
The latest on Donald Trump’s lewd exploits have unleashed a flurry of “all guys talk that way” defenses from desperate supporters. When it was Bill Clinton extorting sexual favors from interns, we heard roughly the same thing.
All men are not like this.
While every one of us sins, there are differences in behavior among persons. That’s why some people can be trusted to watch your children, or your money, or your new car, and other people cannot be.
As voters, it is our job to be discerning. The right sinner for the job is the order of the day, as I discussed on a different but related question of fallen men and women in positions of authority.
Here is a related fact: Not everyone on the internet is a pompous boor. I have a fairly active presence on Facebook, and my friends list runs the gamut politically, religiously, and socially. I have friends who, in this election, are posting strong political opinions that also happen to be terribly, terribly wrong. (They feel the same way about me.)
I have friends on the internet who promote the products they sell to make cash on the side. I have friends on the internet who post endless pictures of their crafts or their kids or their favorite inspiring-quote-du-jour.
None of these people are narcissists. None of them are bent on stirring up drama. All those horrible things you hear about, and perhaps experience, in social media relationships? Not happening among my friends.
Another related fact: This doesn’t happen among my real-life friends either.
It isn’t because I live in some special protected bubble. It isn’t because fairies and unicorns circle around me every day, keeping out the criminals and crazy people. Real world nasty situations find me just the same as they find anyone else.
And yet I and other men and women I know manage, all the same, to avoid surrounding ourselves with toxic, dangerous people as a matter of course.
What’s the secret?
That means you can’t be so concerned about your career that you’ll tolerate the lewdness of a Bill Clinton or a Donald Trump because you desperately hunger for the glamour or the promotion that comes with it. When someone behaves badly towards you, that’s on them. Your virtue will not deter someone determined to violate you. But when you realize someone is a dangerous person, you can make choices about how to respond.
You can choose to resist and to avoid. You can choose to cultivate an awareness of warning signs so that you are less likely (not guaranteed — just less likely) to be preyed upon in the future.
You can choose not to be friends on social media with that toxic drama queen. When some guy thinks he’s got a right to grab your genitals? You can show him what knees are for, thanks.
Yes, I said that.
I didn’t just say it, I’ve done it. I don’t tell a lot of personal stories, but here’s one: I was staying with another family as a teenager, and the teenage son, same age as me, got the idea that he should to come to my bedroom and inform me he’d arrived for intercourse. The tone was a little difficult to read — was he joking? He claimed afterwards he was. But the words were not difficult to understand at all, rather unequivocal, so I kneed him in the groin.
(The fact that he was close enough to be on the receiving end of that response tells you a little more. I didn’t have to disturb myself and cross the room to carry out the counter-offensive.)
He proceeded to get upset at me for doing that, and to inform me that I needed to be more careful, as such behavior on my part could cause serious injury.
Well, darling, that behavior on your part is what got you injured.
Another word was never said. I’m sure I immediately garnered the reputation among our mutual friends as the resident prude. I also never had another untoward advance during the time I was staying with that family. Guess what? My reputation was deserved and earned. Call it prudery or call it clear communication, do not present yourself in my bedroom even jokingly soliciting sexual favors.
Nothing I did brought on that advance.
Whatever caused that young man to think he could get away with that behavior, it wasn’t me. Not every intern who’s been groped by a Clinton or Trump was “asking for it.” People who want to get away with deviant behavior aren’t sitting around wringing their hands waiting for an invitation. You cannot control the fact that there are people like Trump out there in this world.
You can control whether you tolerate their behavior.
Your options may vary, but you can choose to use the ones you have.
There’s not always a quick, easy way to stop an aggressor.
You have to assess the situation and do the best you can.
But among your limited options, choose to resist in whatever way you can.
Don’t settle for excuses.
People who make themselves lists of the reasons they need to tolerate bad behavior are people who invite continued bad behavior. Don’t act so shocked you’re surrounded by evil when you keep choosing to surround yourself with evil.
You do not have to cooperate with the people who want you to put a crude, immoral, inept candidate into office.
If your state’s ballot includes third party candidates, vote third party. If there is no moral choice on the ballot, write-in a moral choice.
As a last resort, if your state offers neither of those options, protest by going to the polls and participating in all the elections that have moral options, and abstaining only from those races where there is no moral choice. Follow-up by publicly voicing your opposition to the slate of candidates and pointing to the better options.
There are men who treat women decently. There are women who stand up for the lives and rights of all women, even the very young ones. There are politicians who follow the law in all matters, and do their best to act in the interest of the public good. There are principled men and women who would go into politics, or go farther into politics, if they knew they were wanted.
There are even unprincipled people who would back any likely winner, and so if they knew that what it took to win the power game was an honest candidate, they’d back an honest candidate.
Stop shutting up and putting up. This year and every year, refuse to be screwed.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia [Public Domain].
At this morning’s press conference, Governor Haley had to start getting stern with Charlestonians, who are being a mite sluggish about evacuating. In light of the category 4 hurricane predicted to hit the coast Saturday morning, staffers are preparing a set of stronger warnings for the governor’s next press briefing.
Officials denied rumors that the delay in announcing the fate of Saturday’s Carolina-Georgia game is a ploy to improve evacuation rates, but conceded, “if only it were the Clemson-Carolina game, we’d just paint tiger paws on I-26 and be done with it.”
Photo: South Carolina Governor Nikki R. Haley (Flickr) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
A hot newish thing in scientific research is combining human and animal genetic material in order to do something-or-another. Here’s a quick rundown of the moral issues involved, including “What if there were Cat-People?”
Principle #1: If it directly kills an innocent person, don’t do it. Some of the procedures under scrutiny involve removing genetic material from human embryos (for whatever purpose, noble or otherwise), and thus killing the embryo in the process. A human embryo is a human being. A very tiny, very young, very immature human being, but a distinct human person all the same. Just because your friends can’t drive or hold down steady jobs doesn’t mean they’re disposable.
Don’t kill the innocent humans. That’s a hard-and-fast rule. Therefore, any procedure that requires the direct killing of any innocent person is a no-go. Always and everywhere.
Principle #2: Human beings have eternal souls. Now let us imagine you acquired your human genetic material through some moral means. A question that then arises is: Does our use of that human body-part cause a new human being to enter into existence?
We have situations in which no such thing happens. You can donate your kidney and liver and heart and all kinds of stuff to some other person, and the recipient remains one person, the same person as before, and you remain the other. (You might be dead, but you’re still you.) No new human is created via organ donation. We can conceive of situations in which the use of human genetic material works in a similar way — the donated body part does what it does, but it doesn’t cause a new human person to come into existence. In such a case, as long as other criteria for moral action are met, there’s not a problem.
We have, likewise, situations in which the pro-creation of a new human person does or could happen. It is not necessary for us to analyze the state of science at this very moment. All we need to know is that if a new human being is made via cloning, genetic donation, or what have you, we’ve violated a moral law. It is immoral to procreate outside the bonds of marriage. But, like all the other immoral ways people procreate, we also know that every human person is endowed with inherent dignity that comes from being an eternal soul created in the image and likeness of God — regardless of the circumstances of conception.
Therefore, though it is patently wrong to create new humans via cloning, IVF, rape, adultery, and whatever else science might devise other than the marital act, the new humans so-created still must be treated with all the same rights and privileges the rest of humanity is owed.
Principle #3: When in doubt, err on the side of protecting the sanctity of human life. People are stupid, though, and sometimes evil. We can envision, therefore, some dreadful situation in which scientists create part-animal-part-human hybrids. Is this new creature a human being?
Well, that would be hard to know, wouldn’t it?
We could be quite certain that if, say, you donated a human lung to a pig, the pig is still a pig. We know that because that’s how it works when you donate a human lung to a human. The recipient remains what and who the recipient always was. There are moral problems with donating human tissue to animals, for example: Why was a perfectly good human lung wasted on a pig? Those issues must be dealt with, but they are different from the question of whether the pig just became a human person. The pig is still a pig. Not one you want to barbecue, though. Ick.
In contrast, let’s say we created an embryo in-vitro (don’t do that, it’s wrong), but rather than using 100% human genetic material, we used some portion of non-human tissue as well. The resulting being might be obviously “human” or might not be. But here’s the rub: You could not count on appearances alone to know whether you had a human person. Does it look mostly like a human, but really it’s a dog-soul animating a modified dog-body, more like the animal recipient of human organs? Or, in contrast, does it look mostly like a dog, and lack many of the characteristics we take for granted as being “human” but in fact it’s a human soul animating a damaged human body?
It is quite probable that we might find ourselves in the situation of having to say: Who knows?
And in that situation, the moral response is to assume it’s a human person until proven otherwise.
Should you create human-animal hybrid creatures? No! You shouldn’t be procreating humans in the laboratory at all, unless it’s you and your spouse up late going at it the old fashioned way. But in the event that hybrid-creatures are produced, we would be obliged to treat them as if they were human, no matter how miserably inconvenient that turned out to be.
Related:
Artwork: The Ball of Yarn (1854) by Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons
Rebecca Hamilton reports on the AZ bill allowing businesses to refuse customers based on religious grounds. I haven’t seen the bill either, so I don’t have an opinion on whether it is a good one. But the idea — that a person should not be required to do something they think is wrong — I like that idea.
Some people would go so far as to say it’s such a good idea it ought to be in our Constitution.
***
The trouble we’re having with these laws is that no one is testing the courts in all the possible directions. What we need to do is start an onslaught on the printing companies.
When the tables are turned: Shouldn’t the business owner have the right to decline? I think so. I think it so profoundly that I’m not sure I could bring myself to place the test-order. Who would do that? If you care about someone, would you really put them in that position?
If I did it accidentally, I’d apologize and quietly take my business elsewhere. What kind of person *wants* to make another person miserable? Not me.
This decency is killing us. We’re too nice for own good, and we have an empty slate of court cases to prove it. Because the “anti-discrimination” cases are all running in a single direction, today, everyone thinks that “conscience protection” is all about right wing religious extremists wanting to discriminate against innocents.
No. Just no. Conscience protection is about everyone being free to refrain from actions that violate their conscience.
***
The one trouble with conscience protection is that it eventually reaches a wall. As a society we have a fundamental morality, a firm set of non-negotiable beliefs. Americans believe (rightly) that discrimination based on race is wrong. It’s a non-negotiable. If you want to have a business that serves the general public, you can’t pick your clients based on race. That is a fundamental moral law that Americans have (rightly) adopted.
The battle in our courts and in our legistures right now is not, therefore, fundamentally about “freedom of belief”. If we truly thought that people were free to have any number of opinions about abortion, or contraception, or the nature of marriage, we would not have these cases. The Bill of Rights would suffice, end of story.
What is being fought, now, is a battle over what our national morality will be. “You must believe that contraception is morally acceptable.” That’s what’s at stake. “You must believe that marriage is not the sole province of one man and one woman.” That’s what’s being fought.
This is evil.
My thoughts on a pair of related conversations I’ve witnessed lately.
#1: Liberal friend, offended by Barilla’s opposition to using gay couples in their advertising, declares that corporations have no conscience rights.
–> The precedent she’s proposing: If the religious right gains power, she’s volunteering to carry out in her business and public life whatever religious or moral requirements those tea party extremists manage to pass.
(Hint to subversive types: Consider hunting down the openly and adamantly pro-choice owners of a local printing company, and commissioning a pile of anti-abortion literature from them. Consider hiring the local pagan to print your anti-Wiccan Christian tracts. They haven’t the right to discriminate against you, we’re being told.)
#2: Conservative but sophisticated friend dismisses the concerns of those who don’t like certain literature choices mentioned in the common core standards. She argues that kids are going to be exposed to such things eventually, etc., etc..
–> Here’s the reality for the vast majority of young people: Whatever the public schools put on their reading the list, the student is now required by law to read. Failure to comply means failure to be admitted to nearly every job opening that offers a living wage.
Private schools? Home schools? The refuge of a privileged few. Most parents have no option but to send their child to the local public school. And if they fail to do so, their child will be seized by the state and put into the care of the foster system.
Yes, that’s the reality. Your child is literally forced by law to read whatever is on the list, or forgo every economic advantage that high school graduation confers.
That’s not me being reactionary. That’s me summarizing life in the US today.
So, precedent #2: Be careful what you say is an acceptable choice for that high school literature curriculum.
Greetings Jennifer,We’ve had a huge response to our call for an August 1 demonstration by WSFT. So it’s a GO.
We have a permit from the Park Service: 11:30-12:30 Lafayette Park, Washington DC, Pennsylvania Ave. at 16th, (In front of the White House!! yea!). Can start assembling around 11:00.We’ve ordered about 60 signs. Will need you to bring your own too though! About 3’x3′ or 2’x 3′, and NOT on sticks please.Some possible slogans?
- Women For Religious Freedom
- Women Against the HHS Contraception and Abortion Mandate
- Women can Speak for Themselves !! [Pelosi/Sebelius, etc…..]
… and others dreamed up by your fertile brains. Try to keep them short, punchy, and positive!I probably have 75-100 women coming now. Would be great to have about 50 more!In the spirit of WSFT, I will need you to arrange to get yourselves there and home please. I don’t have a spare minute to arrange for proper drop off and pick up spots or other transportation. I’m so sorry but I just can’t….But WSFT will organize marshals, first aid, water and a series of two minute speeches, by our members.I have some speakers. FOR SPEAKERS, YOU WILL HAVE A BULLHORN, NOT A MIC, and are limited to two minutes each please.I could use few more speakers who work at religious institutions but want them to be free to choose insurance coverage that respects their religious integrity.After the rally, there is the possibility that we could go to the Capitol Visitors Center and meet some female staffers or Representatives. We are working on this. We would need to cab to the Capitol, 16 blocks away.Finally, I am working on personal meetings with Biden and Sebelius staff to present our current total of signatures, I’ll keep you apprised.That’s it for now! See you soon I hope!Helen
http://womenspeakforthemselves.com/
https://www.facebook.com/WomenSpeakForThemselves?ref=hl
https://twitter.com/womenspeak2012
Either you believe in women’s liberation or you don’t. Do you believe that mentally competent, grown women are capable of making their own purchases?
Then require employers to pay us a living wage, and let us make our own purchases.
Women don’t need men at the office, men in Congress, or men at the HHS to force us to spend our wages on this pill or that surgery. And we don’t need Mama making us buy stuff either.
We’re grown-ups. Pay us fairly, and we’ll pick our own health insurance, thank you very much.
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