Students at a D.C. Catholic University Seek Ouster of Catholic Chaplain for Anti-Gay Comments

Reaction to a story published April 9, 2013 in Bondings 2.0.

by Doughlas Remy

Blake Bergen and Damian Legacy

(Background: Last month, two gay seniors at George Washington University in Washington D.C., filed a formal complaint with the University’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion against Fr. Greg Shaffer, Chaplain at the Newman Center, which receives funding from the GWU Student Association. The students, Blake Bergen and Damian Legacy, claim that Fr. Shaffer has created an environment hostile to GLBT students seeking pastoral care at the Newman Center.)

Fr. Greg Schaffer

This is where change will come from. The new generation of young people in Catholic universities have little patience with spiritual bullying of the sort that Fr. Shaffer practices, and I believe they will either win their case against him or both the Newman Center and George Washington University will take a hit. Let’s not forget that students these days generally select the universities they will attend, and so they are a force to be reckoned with. GWU cannot survive without them. The Newman Center there depends on the GWU Student Association for a significant amount of its funding.

And let’s not imagine that it is just a couple of gay activists demanding Fr. Schaffer’s ouster. The two seniors mounting the campaign–Damian Legacy and Blake Bergen–have the support of many straight students on the campus, many of whom have also complained of Fr. Schaffer’s harsh counseling style and his homophobic homilies.

He tells gay students that they should be celibate for the rest of their lives (!) and calls their relationships “unnatural and immoral.” He called Legacy “wicked and faithless” and “intrinsically disordered” for being gay. Legacy reports that he was on an “emotional rollercoaster” for months afterwards, losing sleep and appetite.

Under the law, Fr. Shaffer is free to speak as he likes, even if his counseling is abusive. But if he is upsetting the students who come seeking pastoral care, then he may have to take his abusive speech elsewhere. The younger generation of Catholics are not afraid to challenge him.

Bergen and Legacy filed their complaint in GWU’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion. The University has a zero-tolerance policy toward harassment or bullying of LGBT students. Fr. Shaffer’s conduct appears to be in violation of that policy.

In response to charges that they are “persecuting” Fr. Shaffer, Bergen and Legacy have explained their position:

Let us be clear, we are not attacking the Roman Catholic Church. We are by no means asking the Church to change its views on same-sex marriage, nor are we seeking validation or celebration of our sexuality by the Church, or anyone for that matter.

What we ask is to be treated with dignity and respect at our university. We ask that the Chaplain of the George Washington University Newman Catholic Student Center, a man charged with the pastoral care of students by a non-university entity, treat each of us with equal love and value. We ask that our university provide a safe and welcoming environment for every student.

Can we not agree that our students should be safe in schools and that all bullying should be stopped? Furthermore, as an institution dedicated to acceptance and inclusion should GW not be called to take steps to stop homophobic bullying along with all other forms of bullying? We might not all agree about full celebration and inclusion of LGBT civil rights, but we can all agree that bullying should be considered unacceptable, especially from our spiritual leaders.

We have been criticized for waging an intolerant attack on civil liberties by speaking out against a religious leader for espousing discrimination and anti-LGBT rhetoric. Hate in God’s name is hate, not religion.

4/26/13: Further thoughts:

For some time now, we’ve been seeing the fruits of the diversity programs that began in the K-12 schools 20 years ago, especially in the progressive urban areas of the East and West coasts.  My own son, now 25, is a product of those efforts, and I couldn’t be more pleased. He gets along with everyone and I’ve never heard him bully or disparage anyone.

University students now have high, though certainly not unrealistic, expectations about the respect that they are due. It must have been a shock for these two GWU students to be treated in ways that would have been completely unacceptable in their K-12 schools. The Catholic Church is going to lose these young people unless it can change its message, which they rightly perceive as psychologically or spiritually abusive.

It is sad that the secular schools, and not the Church, were the ones to lead on this. What efforts has the Church made to stop bullying and teach respect for diversity in the schools?

Gay Marriage: Plato Would Not Have Approved. Nor does Robert P. George.

by Doughlas Remy

Robert P. George

A trio of highly credentialed gay-marriage opponents, including Princeton professor Robert P. George (co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage and author of the Manhattan Declaration) have recently published what many social conservatives now regard as the definitive summa of reasoned argumentation against gay-marriage—a pure distillation of incontrovertible truths on the subject. What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense is in fact so skillfully crafted and so disarmingly civil that many sympathetic readers, haunted by accusations of homophobic and bigotry, will at long last feel vindicated. It’s not about homosexuals, the Trio tells us, and it’s not about rights. It’s not even about religion.

It’s about marriage!

So you can breathe a sigh of relief. If you were under the mistaken impression that opposition to gay marriage was driven by animus, fear of change, or religious prejudice, the Trio are here to set you straight. Representing the finest and clearest thinking in the field, they have finally made a case so impeccably objective, so dispassionate, even secular (!), that the Supreme Court justices deliberating on DOMA and Proposition 8 this Spring cannot fail to be impressed, even inspired by it.

It comes down to this: If you are in a same-sex relationship, the Trio wish you well, but, basically, you see, their hands are tied. It’s nothing personal, you understand. The simple fact of the matter is that you cannot “marry” each other because such a marriage is Conceptually Impossible. Conceptually. Impossible.

Now, the Trio doesn’t exactly go into this, but to understand why same-sex marriage is Conceptually Impossible, you have to read Plato and Aristotle. It’s all explained there.

Zebra-horse hybrid (not photoshopped)

You see (to start with Plato), everything in our everyday experience is but a pale reflection of an eternal idea, or essence. An actual tree is only a particular instance of “tree-ness;” its inherent nature is bound to that concept, which resides in the Transcendent Realm of Ideas. A tree is never a bush. It is always and only a tree. Anything with big and bushy leaves and branches must either be a tree or a bush. When you look at it, you will know whether it is a tree or a bush. There’s a difference, and anyone possessed of ordinary common sense will recognize it immediately as either one or the other.

Furthermore, each concept is eternal and changeless. If a new tree on the block expects to be accepted as a tree, it must conform to the concept, even if the tree regards the concept as hopelessly outdated and over-ripe for revision. Bowls today must look like bowls yesterday. They cannot have handles, like cups. They cannot be tall like vases, or shallow like plates. No cross-overs are allowed into the Transcendent Realm. Nor are ambiguities of any kind. A thing is what it is, and nothing else. A sports car is a sports car, and a truck is a truck. SUVs are Conceptually Impossible. In Plato’s time (and therefore in ours), a play is either a tragedy or a comedy. New and hybrid genres such as tragi-comedies, dramas, and dramedies are nothing more than charades, impostures! Like same-sex marriage, they are Conceptually Impossible.

With Aristotle, the idea of “purpose” is attached to these pure essences. An eye is for seeing, an ear for hearing, a mouth for… uh… eating. A knife is for cutting, not for using as a paperweight. A charger is for serving food on, not for carrying the head of John the Baptist. Never use your toothbrush for cleaning your ears, and never pee in the punchbowl. So, essentially, all things have purposes that limit the uses to which they can be put and, just to cut to the chase here, the penis and vagina were intended for one purpose only.

What purpose might that be, you may ask? Well, the Trio are here to enlighten us.

Our sexual organs are intended for procreation within the framework of conjugal union. If you were thinking that they might serve for pleasuring yourselves, you were just wrong.

How do we know any of this? Easy. It’s right there in Plato. And Aristotle.

And it should be obvious, anyway. You can tell the difference between a tree and a bush, can’t you? And you know the purpose of each? So common sense just confirms what the ancient writers said. A thing is just what it is and always has been. It can’t be something else. Point, c’est tout.

But (you may object) no serious philosopher any longer accepts Plato’s theory of Ideas or Aristotle’s teleological arguments. And you would be right, because there was a major shift in philosophical thinking in the 19th century, when the first phenomenologists began challenging the notions of fixed essences and immutable purposes. The modern world has almost entirely left these notions behind, but there is one institution that still clings to them, and that institution is grounded in medieval scholastic readings of Plato and Aristotle.

Uh-oh. Houston, I think we’ve got a problem here.

Catholic Websites Spinning the Pew Research Center’s Recent Data on Abortion Opinion

Gil Bailie of The Cornerstone Forum reflects on the impressive turnout at San Francisco’s recent Walk for Life:

How frustrating it must be for [pro-choicers] to see history moving decisively (despite the setbacks of the current regime in Washington) in the pro-life direction.

Howbutwhatinthewhat? Here, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal and NBC News, is a snapshot of current opinion:

The results of the recent Pew Research Center poll are probably even more authoritative and also show robust public support for Roe v. Wade. The PRC’s numbers have caused quite a stir on conservative Catholic websites. Contributors to online magazines like The Catholic Thing, Crisis, and First Things have been scrambling to somehow spin or deny the fact that only 29% of Americans want to see the 1973 ruling completely overturned, while 63% support it. The data also reveal a slow but steady increase in support over the past 20 years, from 60% in 1992 to the current 63%. Opposition has declined more significantly during that period, from 34% to the current 29%.

The Church’s propaganda elves are working 24-7 to convince us that the PRC report is flawed. Roe v. Wade‘s provisions are not widely understood, they say, or the PRC’s polling questions were misleading. Or they bring in other polling data—some out-of-date and some from dubious sources—to confuse the issue.

Thus, Kenneth D. Whitehead, writing for Crisis Magazine, claims that “many people [including the poll respondents] do not understand that Roe v. Wade actually allows abortion on demand throughout the entire length of a pregnancy for any reason or for no reason.”

This is demonstrably false. Roe’s central holding is that abortions are permissable until the fetus is viable (from 24 to 28 weeks, or about six to seven months). After that, the State may proscribe abortion except in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.

Here’s what the law actually says:

During the first trimester, “the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician.”

After the first trimester,”the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.”

After viability, which occurs at around the beginning of the third trimester, “the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.”

If Whitehead can sow enough distrust of the Pew findings, he may be able to persuade us that a poll conducted by the Knights of Columbus is more reliable. Yes, you heard me right. He’s citing a Catholic fraternal service and lobbying organization that is famously dedicated to upholding Catholic teachings on abortion. Their finding is that “no less than 83 percent of Americans now favor some restrictions on abortion.” Even if reliable, this finding is not necessarily at odds with the PRC’s. Roe v. Wade does not, in fact, allow unrestricted access to abortions.

Jon A. Shields, writing for First Things (“Debating Roe’s Legacy,” 1/30/13) claims that (1) “young Americans are suddenly less pro-choice than older Americans,” and that (2) “young Americans are not only less pro-choice than any other age group, but they are also markedly less pro-choice than any young cohort in any previous decade.”

His first claim is false and the second is only half-true. While it appears to be true that Americans aged 18 to 29 are still trending slightly toward anti-abortion views, they are not currently “less pro-choice” than older Americans (if “pro-choice” is taken to mean supporting Roe v. Wade and if “older Americans” means “Americans older than 29”). Shields does not disclose the actual PRC numbers, which, at best, show a pro-choice lead of only one percentage point in only one of the three “older” cohorts (the 50-64 year-olds). And the difference between the support and opposition figures is still very significant in all four age cohorts:

Ages 18-29: 41 percentage points (difference).

Ages 30-49: 30 percentage points.

Ages 50-64: 43 percentage points.

Ages 65+: 16 percentage points.

(In all of these, the percentage supporting Roe v. Wade is the higher of the two.)

Using the PRC’s polling data, 68% of the 18-29 year-old cohort are opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade, compared to only 27% in favor. Note that in the next age cohort (30-49 years old), the figures are 61% and 31% respectively. Significantly, the 50-64 year-old cohort is slightly more opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade than the 18-29 group, with the numbers at 69% (opposed) and 26% (favoring).

No wonder Shields doesn’t show us the numbers.

Shields’s related claim was that young Americans (aged 18-29) are also “markedly less pro-choice than any young cohort in any previous decade.” This is true only if we replace the word “markedly” with “slightly.” While it is true that the 2009 Gallup poll showed a 12-percentage-point decline in the numbers of young pro-choice Americans since the early nineties (from 36% to 24%), that number had not declined at all since the eighties, and it had dropped only two percentage points since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

I think we would be entitled to conclude that young Americans’ position on reproductive choice has not significantly changed since Roe v. Wade. What is perhaps more significant is the slow but steadily growing overall support for the ruling.

————————————-

View PRC’s “Abortion Support slideshow” here.

Read: “Roe v. Wade at 40: Most Oppose Overturning Abortion Decision” (PRC, January 11, 2013)

For related content, visit my alternate site, The Cornerstone Forum Samizdat

Visit The Cornerstone Forum Samizdat here.

Response to Dale O’Leary, author of “The Defense of Marriage Requires Honesty About Homosexuality,” Crisis Magazine, 12/20/12

[Read Ms. O’Leary’s article here.]

Ms. O’Leary, how ironic that your article calls for “honesty” about homosexuality but is so starkly and fundamentally dishonest in its claims. You would have us believe you are speaking as a professional, an expert, and perhaps even as a scientist: “It is long past time to educate the public and particularly the younger generation as to what we know about SSA,” you write. Who is “we?” Surely not the medical community, which has time and again denounced the reparative therapies that you advocate.

Maybe by “we,” you means the Catholic Church? But the Church doesn’t “know” anything about homosexuality. It is not in the business of research or the accumulation of scientific knowledge; it is in the business of propagating certain views of society that are often at odds with scientific knowledge.

So let’s be honest about where we’re coming from, Ms. O’Leary. This is a propaganda piece masquerading as health science, and one sure sign of this is the conspicuous absence of journal citations or even names of researchers. You refer to “numerous well-designed studies” without a hint as to their origin. You make easily disprovable claims from beginning to end, in the apparent conviction that none but the “faithful Catholic laity” for whom Crisis articles are intended will read your piece.

Identical twins don’t share the same sexual attractions? Check again. More than half of them do. There is “no evidence” of a genetic or hormonal cause? Time to read up on the literature. By “the literature,” I mean the scientific literature, not junk-science articles in Catholic magazines. You want evidence? Just ask me. I’ve got it waiting in the wings. Homosexuality is caused by “masturbation with fantasy?” I suppose masturbation also causes pimples? … and hair to grow in the palms of your hand? All this is early 20th-century Catholicism redux.

If you are interested in disease control and prevention, follow commenter “Tim’s” advice. Go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website and read what they have to say about HIV.  Here’s what I found:

“The effects of homophobia, stigma and discrimination can be especially hard on adolescents and young adults. Young MSM and other sexual minorities are at increased risk of being bullied in school. They are also at risk of being rejected by their families and, as a result, are at increased risk of homelessness. A study published in 2009 compared gay, lesbian, and bisexual young adults who experienced strong rejection from their families with their peers who had more supportive families. The researchers found that those who experienced stronger rejection were:

• 8.4 times more likely to have tried to commit suicide
• 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression
• 3.4 times more likely to use illegal drugs
• 3.4 times more likely to have risky sex”

I hope that before you write another article about HIV, you will do some serious soul-searching about  the issue of responsibility for the HIV scourge. Blaming HIV on “troubled childhoods,” “narcissistic attitudes,” “[early] wounding,” “rebellion against the moral law,” and “[psychological] disorders” all adds up to homophobia, which is one of the three causes of HIV as identified by the CDC. If anyone needs conversion, it is you.

Doughlas Remy (The Bent Angle)

New Bent-Angle Satellite Site, “The Cornerstone Forum Samizdat” Now Up and Running

Because The Bent Angle was becoming a little top-heavy with responses to Gil Bailie’s postings on The Cornerstone Forum, I decided to start a dedicated site for these responses. You will find it here.

Another Purge, More Melodrama at The Cornerstone Forum

Not long ago, Gil Bailie was considering a run for public office. But voters beware. If he were to run an administration anything like he runs his Cornerstone Forum website and Facebook page, his periodic ideological purges would rival those of the Politburo.

The Cornerstone Forum is certainly no forum, if by “forum” we mean a place where ideas on a particular issue can be exchanged. Those who step up to the microphone must be prepared to parrot the prescribed line, or they’re out on their duffs. The ideological purity exacted from commenters is extreme and even extends to prohibitions against factual corrections.

Mr. Bailie’s bottom line is that the Catholic Church can do no wrong. She is the gold standard for all that is True and Good. She has never erred. Her teachings are not to be questioned. And in Mr. Bailie’s little empire, one does not question them. Or him.

Dorothy Jospin was the latest unwary visitor to Mr. Bailie’s Venus Flytrap. It all started when Mr. Bailie posted the photo shown to the right, with the following caption:

This is what we all looked like at 12 weeks in the womb. Legal to kill in all 50 states. Anyone think its not a person? Pass this along. It literally might save a life.

Dorothy responded:

This photo actually shows a plastic baby replica made by Mattel. It sells for $25, and you’ll find it on Mattel’s website.
For a photo of a real 12-week-old fetus (which looks nothing like this one), go to YouTube and find the video called “Week by week fetal development showing fetal development stages.”

At week 5 the fetus is the size of a poppy seed. At week 12, it is about two inches in length and weighs less than an ounce. It’s not until week 17 that it becomes the size of an orange.

The majority of abortions (88% to 92%) occur during the first trimester (the first 12 weeks), and the majority of those are well within the embryonic, pre-fetal stage of development. Most abortions occur sometime after the blastocyst attaches itself to the wall of the uterus.

The blastocyst has 70-100 cells (contrasted to a fruit fly, which has 100,000).

Mr. Bailie responded:

Quite literally, the devil is in such details. Poppy seed. Fruit fly. All these dismissive metaphors, and all the technical equivocations, so profoundly miss the essential point that it is hard not to assume that that is their purpose. Whatever the fetus looks like at 12 weeks – or 12 minutes – it remains perfectly clear to anyone who has not hardened himself against reality that abortion takes the very human life of the most innocent, powerless, and voiceless among us.

To which Dorothy had the effrontery to respond:

If the case against abortion is really compelling, then misrepresenting the facts makes it seem that the facts are not on the side of the pro-life movement. I believe it would be best to studiously avoid any tinkering with images or transparent attempts at propagandizing. They only discredit the movement.

At about the same time, Mr. Bailie posted a photo of German Lutheran pastors filing in front of Nazi officers, with the following caption:

This photo is a march of Lutheran pastors who allowed themselves to be useful idiots to the Nazis, and march under the banner of the deutsche Christians. Do they look like idiots today or what?

Dorothy responded, pointing out that the Catholic Church also collaborated with the Nazis, and not just the Nazis but with virtually every fascist regime of that era. The Church saw these regimes as bulwarks against Bolshevism and French anti-clericalism. Dorothy mentioned the 1933 Konkordat between Hitler and the Vatican. This is something that one must never mention on The Cornerstone Forum.

Mr. Bailie “clarified” by referring to Catholic and Lutheran “heroes” and conveniently ignoring the Vatican’s complicity as well as that of rank-and-file clergy of both confessions:

There were heroes among the Lutherans and Catholics in the face of Nazi thugs. But most of those who complain that the Church failed to stand up to savage oppression are cowered into submission by the threats of political correctness. It doesn’t inspire confidence that these same people would resist something far more threatening. More to the point, those who criticize the Church for not doing more to resist the mass murderers of yesteryear are the first and loudest to condemn it for resisting today’s mass murder of the unborn. You can’t have it both ways.

…Nor should Mr. Bailie. But that was it. Dorothy disappeared. Every trace of her. All that was left were Mr. Bailie’s responses, dangling like half an arch in the air.

At this point, Sophie Sommers, who must have been following the awkward exchange, spoke up to ask, “What happened to Dorothy??” and “Was that really a Mattel baby?” She reminded me of the gangster’s moll played by Mia Farrow in Woody Allen’s “Radio Days,” stumbling into a restaurant just as one of the diners—a Mafioso—has been gunned down at his table. She looks at the assassin, who is still holding his gun, and says in her shrill Brooklynese, “Oh my God! You KILLED Mr. Luciano! I SAW you shoot him!” (View clip here.)

As if that weren’t messy enough, Ben Boyce, a parishioner from St. Leo’s Parish in Sonoma, left this comment:

Oh, Gill [sic], what happened to you? You’ve drunk the Konservative Kool-Aide, and now you see the tepid centrists of the Obama Administration as some kind of anti-Christ threat to religious liberty in America. You might have known that this was ridiculous at one time, but now the logic of orthodoxy has backed you into defending this absurd thesis. The greatest blow to the last remnants of the moral authority of the Catholic bishops was delivered by their own unhinged attack on Obama and making common cause with the most reactionary elements in American society in the 2012 election. Thank God the Catholic laity had more sense than their bishops. When Bishop Jenky denounced Obama as a threat to America like Hitler and Obama, and not a single bishop had the courage to standup for decency and common sense to distinguish themselves from this outrageous comment, I knew that the American Catholic Church has hit bottom. Men of that caliber have no spiritual teaching worth listening to.

Whereupon Mr. Bailie brought out the big guns again:

It pains me, on the day before Thanksgiving, to have to repeat—once again— what I have said multiple times about this Page and our comments policy. But below is a word-for-word repetition of what I have said many times. Those who ignore this, and especially those who insist on slandering the Catholic Church or mock its teachings, should not be surprised to find that they are blocked from further comment.

Mr. Bailie then, for the fourth or fifth time, pastes in his entire speech about the purpose of The Cornerstone Forum.

Mr Boyce responds:

Apparently, my comments have precipitated this response. I do take exception to being described as some kind of random outsider who is coming in to stir up trouble on your Facebook page.I am a weekly Mass attendee at St. Leo’s parish in Sonoma, where you lived and worshipped for many years.I have listened to every audio tape you made over a twenty-year period, until you took a turn to the dark side by falling under the influence of the Religious Right. I have attended a number of your lectures and have always held you in high regard until this latest chapter in your career. You can ban me from the page, but that will not be because I am making inappropriate or offensive comments. Yes, I and my Catholic colleagues are directly challenging your assertion that you and your conservative Catholicism represent the gold standard.

Mia Farrow as “Sally” in Woody Allen’s “Radio Days”

And Sophie again, in her best gangsta moll voice:

So THAT’s what happened to Dorothy! Was it her comment about the plastic baby? Or pointing out that the Lutherans weren’t the only ones who collaborated with the Nazis? These things are both true, aren’t they? Don’t you want to know when something you’ve shown or written on your Facebook is untrue? I always taught my children that truth was important–not just “Truth” with a capital T, but “truth” with a small one. The little truths all add up, and when you punish those who speak them, pretty soon you lose the big Truths, too. I know this, because I have family who lived in the DDR before Reunification.

I think you owe Dorothy and Ben Boyce an apology. But you’ll probably throw me off now, too. How many of us have there been?

Mr. Bailie responds:

I shared a post by my friend Jennifer Roback-Morse and the photograph she posted. I never said Lutherans were the only ones who collaborated with the Nazis. My gosh. What nonsense. I made my point clear in the follow-up. Who thought that the fetus in the palm of the hand was an actual fetus for goodness sake? Of course it was a replica —and of course it was not bloodied and covered with fetal fluid. My gosh. To make such a big deal out of that—all the while ignoring the real point—the systematic killing of millions of unborn babies in the womb—is simply amazing. You wonder why I’m uninterested in that kind of dialogue. I know it will be a badge you will wear proudly, but unless you can show some respect for the purpose of this Facebook page, you will be obliged to find another outlet for your positions. Don’t expect further response.

Sophie’s bold response:

I know you won’t like this, Mr. Bailie, but what you said about the Catholic and Lutheran heroes suggests that they were in opposition to their churches’ official positions, because both churches supported the Nazi regime. The Vatican was not heroic; it collaborated and cooperated with fascist regimes. If Catholic priests in Germany were heroic, it was because they spoke out not only against the Nazis but also against their own magisterium. This is what you don’t seem to be able to acknowledge, and I wonder why you can’t. It is the truth.

And an offline comment from Dean Hansen:

Golly Jeepers, Sophie!  Golly gosh!

Bullshit.  Thou dost protest too much. You fully believed the fetus was real:  ”….This is what we all looked like at 12 weeks in the womb. Legal to kill in all 50 states. Anyone think its not a person? Pass this along. It literally might save a life.”  Why would you ask others if they thought it was a person unless you thought it one yourself?  If you knew it was plastic, it would cancel out the rhetorical assertion in your question. “Anyone think it’s not a person?”  (Well, you don’t of course, but will nevertheless use any kind of trickery to get a concession from your captive audience even if it means lying to yourself.)  I’m sure that once you Googled the images and realized your error, you had two options.  Come clean and acknowledge that you were fooled, or lie and pretend ignorance.  The second option seems to fit you well, but it makes you look no less foolish.  Why make a big deal out of that?  Because you have decided to make abortion your Waterloo; your rubicon.  When you use the word “killing” and “murder” indiscriminately to define what women do when they are pro-active in their own decisions, it is a big deal.  It’s a big deal because 1) You are barred from the actual experience of birth, and need to show some humility when it comes to other people’s plight.  2) Life actually begins before conception (sperm and ova are alive) but they don’t make babies, therefore, since life is a continuum, you draw the line at conception, which, along with birth, are both false thresholds.  At what point does a baby become a person?  Fertilized eggs, like the gametes that precede them, cannot live on their own, or think or feel.  They are biological life in the strict sense, but they are not human life.  Since they are not human, you are not guilty of murder if you abort them.  3)  Look beneath the heated passions on the surface and you will find there is a remarkable lack of polarization on the issue, save with old guard Catholics and picketers at abortion clinics with concealed handguns. Most people think that abortion should be allowed but not encouraged. That is the de facto reality.  And most people choose the first trimester as their own threshold because of what science, biology, nature, and common sense tell them.  It is why only 1% of abortions occur after week 20, and usually only when the life of the mother is in danger, or the fetus is damaged and not sustainable.  (Most women who waited 15 weeks or more to get an abortion did so because it was so hard to find a clinic where the operation could be performed, and not because they were resistant to basic information about gestation and pregnancy).

1000+ Washington State Catholics Sign Ad Supporting Marriage Equality

The following ad appeared in the Seattle Times, Sunday, October 28, 2012:

The Cornerstone Forum Silences Critics

Just beneath the calm surface of Gil Bailie’s Facebook page for The Cornerstone Forum (TCF), the waters are roiling. Bailie, a paleo-conservative Catholic whose life and career have become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the magisterium, uses TCF as a Gatling gun against all those perceived “enemies” of Catholicism gathered outside the walls: homosexuals, pro-choicers, secularists, and especially the more moderate Catholic voices, the voices of protest and reform. But he is attempting to insulate himself—on Facebook of all places—from any return fire. Bailie has built a fortress that also functions, as one visitor put it, as an echo-chamber and a hall of mirrors—a make-believe world where those who are faithful to the Church can go on pretending that the institution is eternal and that its teachings are unassailable.

Gil Bailie of The Cornerstone Forum

Except that it’s not and they’re not. The make-believe world is under attack, most significantly and vocally by Catholics themselves. And Bailie is armed and ready for its defense. Those who disagree with the views expressed on TCF are enemies who must be wiped out, not through negotiation or reasoned argumentation but by making them simply … disappear, like the “desaparecidos” of Chile and Brazil under authoritarian regimes, or those fractious Politburo members whose images were erased from official photos. Bailie regularly purges the site of troublesome visitors. This year’s casualty count is now at around eight. These were all, with one or two exceptions, intelligent reform-minded Catholics. Others were of unknown or no faith affiliation but respectful and thoughtful in their comments. All had carefully crafted their objections to the tone and content of TCF and deserved to be heard, if only by each other.

The latest of the “desaparecidos” is S. Darrick Northington, in whose honor I am posting the conversation that occurred today regarding the HHS mandate:

John Corvino Explains Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Gay Marriage

John Corvino, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Wayne State University (Detroit), has recently published on YouTube a ten-part video series on same-sex marriage. Each video is succinct (about 3 minutes), entertaining, and informative. Corvino is an accomplished speaker, and you will want to hear what he has to say. It is the best half-hour presentation on this topic that you will find anywhere.

 Here they are:

The Definition of Marriage

Are People Who Oppose Gay Marriage Bigots?

Is Homosexuality Unnatural?

Is Gay Marriage a Threat to Religious Freedom?

Do Children Need a Mother and Father?

Is Gay Marriage a Threat to Traditional Marriage?

Why Marriage? (Why not Civil Unions?)

If Gay Marriage, Why Not Polygamy?

Debunking the Regnerus Study.

What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?