The Dish

A reader makes a good point:

You observe with regard to Tim Graham’s remarks at NRO that "it’s stigmatization that these people are so adamant about." That’s spot on and it got me thinking. Why so adamantly oppose abortion, but also convenient access to birth control and sex education, or oppose the HPV vaccine? Because they allow people to "sin" without bearing the stigmatizable (if that’s a word) results of that sin.

From ancient times until now, abortion wasn’t condemned because it was the destruction of "human life," but because it allowed women to conceal the result of an illicit affair. Similarly, the pill and HPV vaccine prevent society and medicine from stigmatizing sinful women’s bodies as the proper punishment for their behavior. Allowing gays full civil rights, or teaching tolerance of homosexuality, removes from their lives the stigma they deserve to live with as a result of sin. What Christianists (as well as their Islamist brethren) fear most is a world where any expression of sexuality outside the confines of a procreative marriage goes unpunished and women’s sexuality in particular slips out of the control of religious patriarchy. Imagine a world where sexual pleasure were possible with no risk of pregnancy or STD, or even in the case of gays, occurs entirely from outside a procreative framework. Modern medicine makes it possible and it’s the Christianists’ worst nightmare.

Hence the growing realization that they have to stop contraception.

The Telegraph’s Craig Brown has the scoop.

Tomorrow – live at noon on C-SPAN, I’ll be part of a political lunch session at the Book Expo of America. Pat Buchanan, Arianna Huffington, Frank Rich and I will be talking about our respective upcoming books. I’ll be previewing "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How To Get It Back." I just sent off the final copy-edits. C-SPAN will have me taking listener calls from 2 pm till 2.20 pm.

Washington has a bad case right now. Ana-Marie Cox witnessed the source of the infection – the new documentary hailing the prophet of global warming. Money quote:

Viewed through the optimistic lens of the post-premiere chatterers, An Inconvenient Truth is intended to be a political biography whose power comes from the film’s terrifying argument about global climate change: Elect me or we will all die.

Or ManBearPig will eat you alive!

A reader writes:

My wife and I loved your essay My Problem with Christianism. We have been discussing the same issue for a while now but so far we have not been nearly as articulate and precise as you were in that essay. We both grew up Catholic and have remained so. Our kids are in 2nd and 3rd grade and right now going to a Christian school. However, we have decided to send them to a Catholic school next year because of the exact problems you describe in your essay. The administrators and the teachers at the Christian school, as you say, believe "Christianity is compatible with only one political party" and can’t understand how any Christian could possibly be truly Christian and vote for a Democrat. They are intolerent of others to the point of almost constant condemnation.  Their narrow view of the world is almost unbelievable.
I hope your essay and others like it will convince others that the Christian right has gone too far in this area. In expressing our views though, I believe we have to stop just short of condeming them the way they condemn others.

Agreed. But what we have to do is describe them in plain English. I’m encouraged that two weeks after its publication, the essay is still among the most emailed articles on Time.com. There are more Christians out there disgusted by the religious right than the MSM would have you believe.

The story I linked to earlier today is now being questioned. I’ll link to any developments as soon as I come across them.

From Rich Lowry’s account, it seems as if he was subjected to the usual leftist incivility. Too bad. If the left cannot respect McCain, they cannot respect anyone who differs from them. I’d also add the following. It seems significant to me that McCain has given two commencement speeches – at the far right Liberty University and the p.c. left New School. His choice of venues is in itself a statement. He intends to be a uniter, not a divider. Unlike the current president.

Amir Taheri sees an influx of emigres and other positive indicators. The NYT sees an exodus of the middle class. Who’s right? None of the rejoinders to the NYT account manage to debunk this:

In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country’s estimated middle class.

Whether they have actually left or not is, I suppose, the salient question. But they are clearly making preparations. Middle classes don’t like living in anarchy. And anarchy is what Donald Rumsfeld has ensured for them.

In Britain, it’s a live issue, since a follower of Opus Dei, Ruth Kelly, is now the Equality Minister in the Blair cabinet, bringing calls for removal from some gay groups. I think those groups are mistaken. Kelly has every right to her religious faith; and she has also publicly insisted that as a public servant, her first loyalty is to uphold the laws as they stand. That’s exactly the right position; and exactly the right distinction between faith and politics. The gay groups should lay off. Danny Finkelstein gets it exactly right in this column in the Times.

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it," – John Stuart Mill, in a letter to Sir John Pakington, a Conservative MP, March, 1866.