Category: Old Dish

The theoconservative attack-dogs now go after Cardinal McCarrick, one of the sanest men in the leadership of the church. Check out the ad here and you’ll see how emotive they have become.

Eugene Volokh provides a superb set of legal answers to David Frum’s set of questions about the potential implications of Massachusetts’ marriages for other states. The bottom line is that federalism, as a matter of current law, will not mandate that even incidents of gay Massachusetts’ marriages be transferrable from state to state. All I know as someone who isn’t a lawyer is what I have tried to read and understand of the legal state of play on this. But Volokh is an expert. And he should calm some conservative fears about “nationalizing” civil marriages for gays in Massachusetts. (By the way: ten days till equality!)

Lawrence Kaplan has a typically astute piece on the topic.

Now here’s an interesting take on the hideous pictures from Abu Ghraib:

What is particularly interesting in these photographs of abuse coming out of Iraq is the prominent role played by Lynndie England. A particular strand of feminist theory – popularised by Sheila Brownmiller and Andrea Dworkin – attempts to argue that the male body is inherently primed to rape. Their claim that only men are rapists, rape fantasists or beneficiaries of the rape culture cannot be sustained in the face of blatant examples of female perpetrators of sexual violence. In these photographs the penis itself becomes a trophy. Women can also use sex as power, to humiliate and torture.

I think that’s right.

They now have an ad that uses the crucified Christ to insult the archbishop. If you want to read how the culture war could tear the Catholic church apart, read this piece.

“After half a lifetime of this kind of frustration, Bush decided to straighten up. Nursing a hangover at a 40th-birthday weekend, he gave up Wild Turkey, cold turkey. With the help of Billy Graham, he put himself in the hands of a higher power and began going to church. He became obsessed with punctuality and developed a rigid routine. Thus did Prince Hal molt into an evangelical King Henry. And it worked! Putting together a deal to buy the Texas Rangers, the ne’er-do-well finally tasted success. With success, he grew closer to his father, taking on the role of family avenger. This culminated in his 1994 challenge to Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who had twitted dad at the 1992 Democratic convention.
Curiously, this late arrival at adulthood did not involve Bush becoming in any way thoughtful. Having chosen stupidity as rebellion, he stuck with it out of conformity. The promise-keeper, reformed-alkie path he chose not only drastically curtailed personal choices he no longer wanted, it also supplied an all-encompassing order, offered guidance on policy, and prevented the need for much actual information. Bush’s old answer to hard questions was, ‘I don’t know and, who cares.’ His new answer was, ‘Wait a second while I check with Jesus.'” – Jake Weisberg, in old, vicious form (it’s the Jake I remember when we were fellow interns at TNR), in Slate.

“I was raised in the Archdiocese of Newark. Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop Myers’ predecessor, is a down-to-earth but charismatic man who gay Catholics could live with. Through clergy in the family, I know the Cardinal, and the worst I’ve ever had to deal with from him are the repeated entreaties to consider the priesthood (he does that to all unmarried men, actually). I liked him. The faithful in the Newark Archdiocese adored him.

Myers is a totally different story. I’ve attended a few Masses he presided over, and he is an awful preacher: one Ash Wednesday Mass he went on for approximately an hour discussing how ashes make lye, which can be turned into soap, so, you see, the ashes are like soap, so they invite you to wash your sins away, etc. Uninspiring nonsense. Not that I’ve conducted a scientific survey, but my relatives in the Archdiocese (who are devout) think the new Archbishop is a pompous dullard. He has done a number of deeply unpopular things, surprise parish closing announcements and the like. Like McGreevey, he is an unpopular public figure. Forget the McGreevey communion flap. What Myers is loathed for is his recent decree that friends and loved ones are not permitted to give eulogies at their loved ones’ funeral masses.

While I think the refusal to give (essentially) Democratic politicians communion is mean-spirited and unfair (much like the eulogy decision) I think it reflects a deeper problem with today’s Church and her clergy. The Archbishops of Newark and St. Louis, and the Bishop of Camden are all poor public speakers. They are unsympathetic. They are unable to convey their positions with humility. Instead, they behave like members of the Curia (many of them were, of course). They don’t bother explaining, because they can’t be bothered to. So many members of the hierarchy never wanted to be priests, just bishops. They are concerned with doctrines and ecclesiastical politics and power. They did not cut their teeth as traditional parish priests, assisting their parishioners as they experienced the many joys and many devastating things about real life. Unfortunately, the Church in America doesn’t get the best and brightest anymore. They get the equivalent of lifelong government bureaucrats in the hierarchy. People who love having power over people but who lack empathy – or even feigned humility.

McCarrick – who is cordial with Senator Kerry – is a star. He could have been a politician himself. He gets it. Whether you agree with the Church’s bizarre positions on gay rights and capital punishment, or her (eminently defensible) opposition to abortion, the Cardinal knows that the bishops need to persuade people gently, and with humility. People like Archbishop Myers? They just don’t care. Do what I say, or don’t bother coming. The Church is so much the worse for it. And it’s why I’ve begun attending a wonderful and welcoming Episcopal church down the street.”

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “It is rather telling that Jonah Goldberg finds your writings and opinions on same-sex marriage ‘radical.’ Though many in the African American civil rights movement are loathe to equate gay rights/same-sex marriage as a similar struggle in some ways, it was common for segregationists to call ’60’s-era forerunners radical for their simple quest for racial equity. If Goldberg’s purported ‘tunnel vision’ on this subject isn’t a cop out, how else to categorize the lack of attention he devotes to a blaringly overt latter-day civil rights struggle that is taking place across this country and around the globe? Radically disingenuous, perhaps?”

The governor of New Jersey, James McGreevey, under intense pressure from his bishops, has said he will no longer receive communion. McGreevey opposes abortion but does not believe the government should make it illegal in all cases. This topic is complicated in many ways. It’s no violation of the separation of church and state, in my view. It’s about how a church deals with its members in public life. But that doesn’t make this new shift any less momentous. What’s particularly stunning about the McGreevey case is that his withdrawal from Communion was not, apparently, simply about abortion. It was also about his support for domestic partnerships for gay couples and stem-cell research. To bar someone from Communion for that array of beliefs strikes me as new territory. Bottom line? From now on, I think, it will be harder and harder for any sincere public Catholic who is a Democrat to continue to be a part of the sacramental life of the church. The Democratic Party, after all, is institutionally supportive of stem-cell research, the right to abortion and at least some recognition of gay couples. Very few leading Democrats are pro-life. If those issues are the criteria for allowing someone in public life to receive Communion as a Catholic, then the Church, in effect, is endorsing one political party over another. The Archbishop of Newark goes further in this letter, released Wednesday. He writes: “As voters, Catholics are under an obligation to avoid implicating themselves in abortion, which is one of the gravest of injustices.” (My emphasis.) I can only infer from this that even voting for any pro-choice politician and receiving Communion is also, as he puts it, “objectively dishonest.” Do the bishops understand what they’re toying with here? Although the sacrament will remain formally open to anyone who sincerely wants to live a life in Christ, in effect only Republicans will be allowed. The bishops can say that this is not their fault. They are just upholding doctrine. It’s the Democrats who have made abortion rights a litmus test for membership. And there may be some truth to this in theory. But in practice, Catholicism’s precious detachment from partisanship could be threatened. This is the dream of the religious right: to destroy the Catholic base of the Democratic party, create a hard-right rump of true believers, and integrate the latter into the G.O.P. I can barely believe that the Catholic hierarchy is doing Karl Rove’s work for him. But then, as we have discovered, the current hierarchy is capable of almost anything.

Check out the following attempts to glean some deeper lesson from the Abu Ghraib obscenity. James Taranto blames the “academic left.” Hello? I cede to no one in feeling dismayed by the “academic left” but how did they get to be responsible for the sexual humiliation of Iraqi inmates? Here’s how. The soldiers who committed the abuses seem like rejects from the latest edition of “Cops.” Therefore, er, well I can’t really summarize Taranto’s argument. So here it is:

Many academic institutions have barred ROTC or military recruiters from campus for left-wing political reasons–first as a protest against the Vietnam War, and later over the Clinton-era “don’t ask, don’t tell” law. Whatever the merits of these positions, it’s time the academic left showed some patriotic responsibility and acknowledged that the defense of the country–which includes the defense of their own academic freedom–is more important than the issue du jour.

I think that means that Yalies wouldn’t do such things. Then Linda Chavez wants to blame women-in-the-military:

While some advocates of women in the military have argued that women’s presence would improve behavior, in fact, there is much evidence to suggest it has had the opposite effect. For years now, the military has ignored substantial evidence that the new sex-integrated military interferes with unit cohesion and results in less discipline.-Putting young men and women at their sexual prime in close proximity to each other 24 hours a day increases sexual tension. Allegations of sexual harassment, even rape, have become commonplace.

Look, I know what it’s like to have to write a column. You can’t always come up with a new angle. But please.

NUMB BY REPETITION: On the other hand, don’t you think the exposure of these photographs – especially on television – has become a little insistent? The visual point, of course, is that they do provide constant visceral shock, as they should. But at some point, it gets almost pornographic. Doesn’t there come a point at which the humiliation of these people is actually abetted by excessive exposure? Less is more sometimes. But then I’m not a TV executive.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I’m all for the ongoing insistence on showing those prison images as long as the media begins showing the World Trade Centers being immolated again. When was the last time we saw those? Think we’ll see them again, even once, on the mainstream media before November? No, that kind of visceral shock wouldn’t serve the left’s agenda.” We also need to see the full scope of the murder of Daniel Pearl, the corpses outside Fallujah, and the severed hands and bodies of those murdered by suicide bombers. Those victims deserve no more privacy than the victims of abuse at Abu Ghraib. And they can no longer be humiliated, because they’re dead. More feedback on the Letters Page.

BRITAIN’S TED RALL: He’s the Guardian cartoonist, Steve Bell. A hater, pure and simple. Here’s the latest.

He claims I have become a radical on this issue. I haven’t. My position remains what it was. It’s the Republican party that has become radicalized. Conservatives who are ambivalent about gay issues have every right to be so. But when a law is passed that bans even private contractual agreements between two gay people in a relationship, and when allegedly tolerant social conservatives ignore it, it’s fair to ask whether they can be believed when they say they have nothing against gay couples per se. And there is something deeply insulting when someone says that another minority’s interests and rights are beyond his concern. If I wrote that I really couldn’t care one way or another if laws were passed directly discriminating against Jews, since I’m not Jewish and it doesn’t really affect me, how would that sound? And if I told an angry Jew that he’s become radicalized and shouldn’t push it or he’ll merely ensure more hostility, how would that sound? If you think I’m exaggerating, here’s the law in question:

A civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage is prohibited. Any such civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement entered into by persons of the same sex in another state or jurisdiction shall be void in all respects in Virginia and any contractual rights created thereby shall be void and unenforceable.

One of Jonah’s readers says this is no big deal. But by making even a “partnership contract or other arrangement … void and unenforceable,” Virginia is denying gay couples any legal protections at all in as broad and vague a fashion as possible. Jonah thinks I’ve become radicalized? Isn’t it time he looked at what is happening in his own party?

HERITAGE RESPONDS: They have apparently removed the pseudo-science of homophobe Paul Cameron from their database. Good for them.