The Dish

On the other hand, when you have an institution that proudly declares it will expell any gay students, regardless of their abilities, then the government clearly shouldn’t be giving that college or institution any public funding. The University of the Cumberlands is asociated with the Southern Baptist Comnvention, a group that came into being in part to defend slavery as an integral part of Christianity. Its current discriminatory policies – this time against gays, not blacks – are a continuation of that Christianist tradition and form part of its distinct character. And if a private school wants to discriminate, I believe it should be free to do so. But it should not expect the broader public to subsidize it. The fact that it is receiving state subsidies while it discriminates is intolerable.

A new fight is breaking out – over Christianists’ right to express intolerance of homosexuals. Money quote from the L.A. Times:

With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

There are important distinctions here, it seems to me. Anti-discrimination policies in hiring are so interwoven into the legal fabric that singling out gay people as uniqely ineligible for protection is invidious. You can object to such laws on broad libertarian grounds, as I do, but you can’t pick and choose who gets protected. Similarly, objecting to hate crime laws solely when it comes to protecting gays (Bush’s position) is bigoted on its face. Even if you argue – preposterously – that homosexual orientation is a choice, religious affiliations are also included in hate crime laws, and nothing is more of a choice, in legal terms, than faith. I’d also say that efforts to inform students of the existence and nature of homosexual peers is simply part of a good education. These efforts should never degenerate into advocacy for any political program. But teaching kids that gay kids exist, and deserve respect and dignity, seems to me to be not only legit, but important.

Still, I’m distressed at the attempts to squelch the free speech of bigots and sincere Christianists and Christians alike. Speech codes that inhibit Christianists or even Christians from arguing that they believe gay people should remain celibate or be "cured" are inimical to freedom. Similarly, laws and codes that violate bigots’ freedom of association are also deplorable. If Christianists are indeed prevented from speaking loudly and freely, then they are right to fight back. I’ll happily defend their freedom in this regard, because my opponents’ right to free speech is paramount – even if it amounts to arguing that I should have no civil rights at all. Their freedom of speech and association is mine. It is indissoluble.

Many of you have emailed me about the scripts reprinted below. They’re actually available in book form – and they’re immensely funny and smart. Here’s the Amazon link.

"We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart," – H. L. Mencken.

The new editor of "Out" magazine, Aaron Hicklin, is a straight guy. Money quote from the hetero:

"The gay community has always been at the forefront of defining pop culture and fashion, and never more so than today. While magazines like Details are gay only when it suits them, we are unequivocally gay and forward-looking."

What you mean "we", white man? Seriously, I think it’s great that a straight guy is now heading up a gay magazine. Integration is now the baseline from which many of us operate. Good for Out for being unafraid to pick talent over identity.

I should address a point made by Ross Douthat about the intersection of religion and politics. Ross equates what the Republican party has been doing for some time with the civil rights movement. He argues that just as the civil rights movement was inspired by faith, so too is the religious tenor of the current GOP. Surely, you can’t praise one and dismiss the other? Here’s what I’d say. The civil rights movement was indeed a fundamentally religious phenomenon, and you cannot understand it without understanding that. It was also multi-denominational and included Democrats and Republicans. Its core religious principle was non-violence, and it drew enormous inspiration from Gandhi. It included Jews and Muslims, Catholics and Protestants, atheists and agnostics. And it never, in King’s time, became a vehicle for one political party to win elections. Never. And in so far as it subsequently did, in so far as people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton used religion to buttress a partisan machine, what was left of the civil rights movement lost moral authority. And deserved to.

There are surely many people in the pro-life movement who belong to the King tradition. They see the dignity of human life at stake and seek coalitions of all kinds to illustrate the morality of their cause. In so far as they do this, and do it with non-violence and in the spirit of Jesus and Gandhi and King, they will persuade people and help turn around the horror of mass abortion. But when they fuse themselves with a political party, and when that party’s leadership uses those moral convictions to raise money and support candidates, and when those leaders also accuse people in the other party of being, in the words of the despicable Ann Coulter, "Godless," then they have relinquished any claim to that tradition. When someone like Hugh Hewitt argues for the God-given dignity of an unborn child, he earns my respect. When he then uses that to argue for destroying the Democratic party and supporting the GOP, he loses my respect. There is a critical line here. And today’s Republican leaders have crossed it.

No one expects people’s politics to be unaffected by their faith. My own faith has propelled me to advance the cause of the dignity and equality of gay people as children of God. But I have never argued that one political party can represent this moral cause, and have always told Democrats to their faces that they cannot and must not coopt this cause, and told the gay movement to its face that it cannot and must not conflate itself with one party. Similarly, with the issue of torture. For me, it is impossible to separate my own revulsion at this practice without acknowledging that my faith informs it. But I also know that many good people who do not share my faith oppose it; and do so for their own reasons. I also know that people who believe there is no God have been among those most dedicated to exposing and stopping torture. I can also honestly say that if a Democratic president had done what this president has done, I would have written as passionately against the categorical evil of torture as I have with Bush. The principle matters. Not the party. And what we have seen in this country these past few years is nothing less than an attempt by one party to coopt Christianity. That is what so many of us are opposed to. It is wrong. Listen to Tom DeLay:

"Sides are being chosen, and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will … It is for us then to do as our heroes have always done and put our faith in the perfect redeeming love of Jesus Christ."

The context of those remarks are about the importance of supporting the Republican party, and the validity of Mr DeLay’s career. In that respect, they are utterly disgraceful remarks, and they should have been condemned by Christians of all kinds everywhere. Equating them with the inclusive, non-partisan, social movement of Martin Luther King Jr is as absurd as it is obscene.

This makes for an interesting story from a reader:

"A confession: I lived in this country illegally for the best part of a decade. I came here on a work visa, but the company closed down. I loved New York, and I loved my work. So I started my own company, at one point employing a dozen or so Americans, all of whom paid taxes (as did I, as did the company). I also provided healthcare benefits for my employees and in general, despite my illegal status, made a pretty solid financial contribution to my adopted country.
Eventually, I became legal by paying a small fine (I don’t recall how small, but it was 100s, not 1000s of dollars) receiving amnesty and a green card in return. I’m now married to an Amerian woman, still running a business, still paying taxes, and I’d like to think I am a net contributor to this country. People have a stereotype of illegal aliens that makes it easier for them to exercise their bigotry, but the reality is much more diverse and much more complicated."

I wonder how many of those immigrants who flocked to America in the last century and a half were what we now call "legal." I wonder how many managed to came here fraudulently, or quietly across borders, or by over-staying, and turned out to be the backbone of the country. There was a time when anyone who showed up was basically legal. I’m not advocating illegal immigration (and I have tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees to prove it). I am suggesting that it has always been part of this country’s history. And it has contributed to the strength and diversity of this country. And it still does.

A reader sends in another gem from the British political sitcom, "Yes, Minister." It lays out the five standard excuses given by politicians for screwing something up. I think the president and his spokesmen – Powerline springs to mind, for some reason – hane now used all of them. But I may be wrong. Jim is the politician; Sir Humphrey is the unflappable political maestro. Here they are:

Jim: Five standard excuses?

Sir Humphrey: Yes. First there’s the excuse we used for instance in the Anthony Blunt case.

Jim: Which was?

Sir Humphrey: That there is a perfectly satisfactory explanation for everything, but security forbids its disclosure.
Second, there is the excuse we used for comprehensive schools, that it has only gone wrong because of heavy cuts in staff and budget which have stretched supervisory resources beyond the limits.

Jim: But that’s not true is it?

Sir Humphrey: No, but it’s a good excuse. Then there’s the excuse we used for Concorde, it was a worthwhile experiment, now abandoned, but not before it had provided much valuable data and considerable employmenpt.

Jim: But that is true isn’t it? Oh no, of course it isn’t.

Sir Humphrey: The fourth, there’s the excuse we used for the Munich agreement. It occurred before certain important facts were known, and couldn’t happen again.

Jim: What important facts?

Sir Humphrey: Well, that Hitler wanted to conquer Europe.

Jim: I thought everybody knew that.

Sir Humphrey: Not the Foreign Office.

Jim: Five?

Sir Humphrey: Five, there’s the Charge of the Light Brigade excuse. It was an unfortunate lapse by an individual which has now been dealt with under internal disciplinary procedures."

Maybe when we finally get to the Charge of the Light Brigade Excuse, Rummy will be fired.

Another reader dissents:

"Hamill wrote, "A son in rivalry with a father can be a very dangerous man."
Are lines like this (oft repeated by Maureen Dowd) really necessary? Isn’t the Oedipal analysis really giving Bush far too much credit, almost saying this mess the country is in right now was pre-destined by the Gods? 
Nonsense. If, in 2000, America had given Candidate Bush a mandate to rid the world of Saddam Hussein, he would still – in 2006 – be answering the same questions about lack of troops, lack of planning, alienation of allies, disclosures of classified intelligence to the press, torture‚Ķ Tragically, the list goes on. It is not the policies that have gotten Bush to where he is now.  It is the unparalleled dimwitted execution, the aloofness, the lack of reflection, and the stubbornly arrogant refusal to adjust to changes around him.   
Historians are going to be arguing for a long time over what went on in the administration between 2001 and 2003 that made the Iraq War inevitable.  But the White House rationale, no matter what it was, could never impact the intrinsically good nature of the mission: delivering the people of Iraq from Saddam Hussein.  Americans, and the White House have nothing to apologize for on that count." 

I agree. I don’t buy the Oedipal expanation for the war in Iraq. There’s a much simpler one: 9/11. But Hamill at least predicted such a thing in advance. And it’s not nuts to speculate about the dynamics of the son of a president becoming president and facing the same problem from the same dictator. Dynasties beget these sorts of questions. Which is why we should avoid them if we can.

A reader dissents:

"I voted for Bush in 2004, though not in 2000. I am a long-time reader of your blog and find myself agreeing with most of your posts and positions. While I’m tempted to regret my 2004 Bush vote for many reasons, ranging from economic to civil libertarian to the way Iraq has been handled, the deteriorating Iranian situation has been a good reminder why, upon reconsideration, I am happy I voted for Bush. Should events continue to unfold in the direction we have been seeing, and should bombing Iranian nuclear sites become the only way to stop their pursuit of the Bomb, would John Kerry ever have the guts to pull the trigger? I think not. 

Sy Hersh’s article, intended to be a scare piece, comforted me that Bush will do what is difficult, though necessary, notwithstanding the lecturing of the Leftist and European elite.  Bush’s "religious" or "messianic" feeling, as Hersh derisively describes it, that Ahmadinejad is the next Hitler, is a product of the very same personality that is stubborn and the cause of much of our problems domestically and in Iraq.  But ever since 9-11, Iran’s pursuit of the Bomb is THE most critical moment in this struggle.  For this reason – and perhaps, for only this reason – I’m glad Bush is the decision maker instead of the spineless and pathetic John Kerry."