In the Mind-Changing Business

I was talking with son Political Sphere the other day, about Ben Shapiro’s speech last week at Berkeley. I watched it live-streamed, and he had watched it replayed later. We had both enjoyed it. We’re Ben Shapiro fans.

The Q&A following the speech was pretty epic. You may have seen a clip of him doing a little debate with an audience member on the issue of abortion. I’ll include it here, because it may be the clearest delineation of the two sides (and the obvious morality of one over the other) that you will see in two minutes.

Ben Shapiro isn’t someone you can safely disagree with; he will win in a debate. He will have the facts in his head, and be able to lay out the argument in a logical way. And, as Political Sphere was pointing out, he never uses an emotional argument.

I am a lover of truth. Sometimes finding truth requires not only laying out the facts and arguments, but also applying conscience, which can be emotional, but is trained toward truth—unless you have practiced overriding your conscience.

When someone uses an emotional appeal—“But what about the children?” “Shouldn’t everyone be allowed to love the person they choose?” “Do you want people to die without health care?”—the emotion is typically irrelevant to the issue.

Do we care about children? Of course. It may be that we care more; we actually want them to be raised in stable families and taught to become productive, civilized adults. A policy that doesn't bring about those results doesn't qualify as actual caring.

Are we against love? Of course not. We’re not even against people committing to the person they choose. What we’re against is being forced to give some other arrangement the imprimatur that God gives to actual marriage.

Do we want people to die without healthcare? Of course not. But forcing people to buy a type of insurance they don’t want and can’t afford, and which does not meet their particular needs, is not providing actual health care. What we see as a better way of getting care to everyone is free market plus philanthropy—both of which are hindered by government interventions.

Those are just examples. Emotional and logical people talk past each other, because one side rushes to place its ladder on the wrong wall and insists that we have to climb, while the other side looks around to determine where is the best wall to place the ladder against, and goes there instead—and then gets yelled at for not climbing the ladder on the wrong wall.

Earlier this week I listened to a Daily Wire Conversation with Ben Shapiro, a full hour of his conservative brand of fun, covering, at breakneck speed, political topics as well as music, movies, and religion. About ten minutes in, the host, Elisha Krauss, asks Shapiro about whether he intended to someday run for president. I’ve never heard him talk about any political aspirations before, and he wasn’t positive about any here either, but he didn’t rule it out. But he said something about his purpose—and the purpose of The Daily Wire, where he is editor-in-chief—that struck me:

Eisha Krauss: What would it take for you to run for president in 2020 or 2024?

Ben Shapiro: So, 2020 is not going to happen. I am old enough—like, right at the cusp. So I turn…  Let’s see, I was born in ’84. So, in 2020 I would turn 37. But the problem is that I wouldn’t want to divide the Republican Party, and whatever happens right now, President Trump is the titular leader of the Republican Party; there are a lot of people that are very loyal to him. The last thing you want to do is sink the candidate of the Republican Party in the primaries and destroy him for a general election. Or, alternatively, alienate half of the people who are big Trump supporters.

So I think it’s Trump of bust for the Republican Party in 2020.

Further down the line, yeah, we’ll see what happens. I don’t really have any intention of doing anything like that right now, but that’s because we’re focused, obviously, right now, on building the company, but in ensuring that the message gets out to the widest variety of people available.

And I’m actually not sure whether you do more good convincing people outside of government, or being in government, trying to convince people. Once you sort of have the patina of government stamped on you, I wonder how many ideas you can actually…how many minds you can change, as opposed to being in the mind-changing business, which is what we do here.

He’s in the mind-changing business. That’s very close to what I do. Maybe that’s why it struck a chord.

It’s an educational mission, changing minds. Mine is more refined as, “Let’s reframe the structure of the ideas, so we can see how they interrelate, and thereby make decisions that will lead us in the right direction—toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization.” Shapiro’s arguments fit well in my framework, but he’s doing more of the nitty-gritty details, issue-by-issue, comparing the two sides and showing clearly which side makes more sense, both morally and economically. While I try to do that too, on certain issues, I don’t tackle as many issues each and every day.

There’s a book I’ve been spending some time on—referred to it before, The Eden Conspiracy, by Joe Harless—that is education oriented, with the purpose of producing “graduates who have skills, knowledge, information, and attitudes to become accomplished citizens.” I agree with that goal, but then we have to define what an accomplished citizen is.

The author suggests that a society of accomplished citizens would have these characteristics [p. 47]:

·         Exists under a democratic form of government.

·         Is lawful, orderly, ethical, and safe.

·         Allows freedom for its citizens—within the law.

·         Allows freedom for enterprise—within the law.

·         Provides equal opportunity for its citizens.

·         Values the family as the basic unit of society.

·         In partnership with the family, provides protection and development of the young.

That’s not too different from how I describe civilization in the Spherical Model. But there’s some difficulty, not only in getting schools to teach these values, but even to agree on which values, and what those values mean.

Harless mentions an anecdote from his household: p. 148

This reminds me of the time our four-year-old son was going to a friend’s house. As usual, my wife admonished Be a good boy. With all sincerity he asked, Mom, what IS a good boy? I don’t recall what she then told him, but the question became our family’s response when any of us became too soft [ambiguous] in our speech.

This lack of precision in speech is part of why there is so much strife in society.

For example, can we agree that being tolerant of differences is a necessary value in a non-homogenous, free society? Yes. But what does tolerance mean? One side simultaneously screes, “Don’t shove your beliefs down my throat!” while using the force of dubious law, social shunning, economic boycotting, and even fascist violence to enforce their beliefs on those who disagree.

A non-slave should not be forced to use his artistic talents to portray a message that goes against his religion, for example. It’s not about a couple getting a cake for a gay wedding; they can get that elsewhere; forcing a particular baker to do it is the ultimate intolerance—beyond what slaveholders ever had the power to force their slaves to do.

Tolerance doesn’t mean we must believe or do all the same things; it means we ought to calmly agree to disagree.

Ben Shapiro’s speech at Berkeley is important for several reasons. One is that it became clear to anyone paying attention that his speech was not a threat; those trying to shut down his speech were a threat. Also, he spoke clearly, rationally, and calmly—even respectfully—toward those who disagreed with him. And that civilized decorum allows for an actual conversation.

If there is an actual conversation, in which terms are agreed on for common ground, then there can be mutual understanding. That may or may not lead to changing minds, but at least it gets rid of the hostile assumption that anyone who disagrees with some prevailing viewpoint is evil and must be eliminated.

If an idea is right, if it’s true, it stands up to scrutiny. If you feel so threatened by someone articulating an idea that you don’t agree with that you must resort to violence to forcibly shut down that speech, maybe your idea is weak. Maybe you’re wrong.

On the Spherical Model, shutting down free speech is a southern hemisphere tyrannical behavior. It could be in the statist tyranny quadrant, with government preventing the speech; or it could be in the anarchical tyranny quadrant, with mobs preventing the speech. Either way, it does not lead to the enlightenment necessary for civilization.

What I believe—what I trust about humanity—is that minds can be changed to come to see the truth. I believe that most people want to think of themselves as good and right, and so, if presented the truth clearly, without clouding emotional pressure, they will choose truth. I might be wrong. But I hope I am right.

Truth is worth seeking and finding. And it’s worth finding ways to express it so that minds—and lives—can be changed for the better.

Truth and Perception

What is truth? Is it real? Or is it relative—whatever each different person perceives it to be?

I’m a believer that there is a truth; it exists outside of ourselves. Our perceptions of it may be different, but if we are seekers of truth, we question our perceptions, and look for what is real.

sketch of a Grecian Urn,
by John Keats, who wrote the poem
"Ode on a Grecian Urn," which makes
the claim "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"
image from Wikipedia

There is a contingent of modern thinkers who claim that truth is relative. You can have your truth; I can have mine. We must accept that what may be true for you, might not be true for your neighbor.

This sounds open-minded and tolerant. But there are problems that come up when you can’t agree on “what is is.” How do we live together with irreconcilable differences on certain things?

For example, if I believe I own a piece of property, and you come along and decide you own that same piece of property, who gets to enjoy the benefits of property ownership? In the non-philosophical world, where we have laws to settle just such disagreements, it would be the person with the deed to the property. The deed is a proof, or evidence of a truth: right of ownership.

Suppose you believe that marriage is a certain thing—a permanent contract between a man and a woman, obligating them to one another, forming a permanent family in which to bring up their offspring, and to financially and socially sustain one another. Suppose someone else believes marriage is any two people announcing they are in a sexual relationship for the time being. Those are not the same things. It is possible for two people to define a word differently, but the thing they define can’t be the two incompatible different things at the same time.

Can the two people hold these different views at the same time and go their separate ways? That was what the Supreme Court ruling in 2015 claimed they could do. But they have not been allowed to. Believers in the permanent-contract-between-a-man-and-a-woman have been told they must accept the any-two-people-in-a-current-relationship as equivalent, even when theirs is a deeply held religious belief. And thus we have bakers, florists, and photographers being coerced to use their artistic skills for purposes that, to them, deny truth.

Suppose you believe that male and female are the only two sexes for human beings, and that your DNA and physiology define which one you are. This has been the truth for all of the millennia of human history. But there are others in our time who believe that there is a plethora of sexes for human beings, and that a person is whatever the individual decides to be, regardless of physiology.

Can the two different people hold these different views at the same time and let the other live their own way? In a tolerant world that could happen. But there is a huge amount of pressure right now to enforce a belief that doesn’t coincide with reality, science, truth as we have historically known it, or as nearly all of us can perceive it to be.

We’re seeing this enforcement of “my relative truth is the one you have to believe” play out with the militantly dogmatic LGBT community (add letters at will to LGBT). But it also exists in politics, economics, academia, entertainment, and just about everywhere you look.

It isn’t actually true that the earth would be better off without humans on it, and that we ought to return to pre-industrial-age technology to atone for being here. Nor is it true that you love pollution if you don’t buy into that humans-are-evil perception.

It isn’t actually true that setting a higher minimum wage for low-skilled workers will make the lives of enter-level workers better. It is more likely to prevent entry-level workers from getting the first jobs that give them experience along with a little bit of income.

It isn’t actually true that government intervention shows that government cares. Government can’t actually care at all; it is simply power. What is actually true is that government interference causes unintended consequences, usually exactly the opposite of the stated goal of the interference. By the way, it isn’t true that government-require purchased health insurance means better health care for all; in the real world it means higher costs and lower quality health care for all.

It isn’t actually true that abstract art, or pushing the envelope, leads to more beauty. Art within constraints has always led to more beauty and innovation than meaningless shapes or purposely vile depictions.

It isn’t actually true that Democrats are the good guys to minorities, especially Blacks. In the provable reality, Democrats have historically been anti-Black, and their policies have proven harmful to Blacks more so other demographics. But perception has overridden verifiable reality for over 90% of Black voters.

It isn’t actually true that centrally standardized government institutional education means better education; in the real world this often means education is deficient for all but the few whose needs match up with the factory-style approach. Maybe not even for them. But even bringing up the idea of alternative choices leads to a howling about not caring about children.

Here’s the problem I see with the philosophical belief that truth is relative: those who claim to believe this are the least likely to tolerate differences from their view of truth. If truth is relative, then the rule must be that you cannot impose your truth on someone else. So there should be zero pressure on the population to conform to their alternative, personal “truths.”

In a world where reality, like gravity, is not to be ignored, we are better off doing certain things:

·         Be open to new information, in case your perception of what is true isn’t accurate.

·         Be tolerant of others who have different beliefs; give the benefit of the doubt that they are searching for truth just as you are. You might just be at a different place in the truth search journey right now.

·         But when you have enough data to be quite sure of a truth, and the other side has no convincing evidence on their side, don’t let them bully you into submission. Stand firm even when the pressure is huge, and growing, and intimidating. Maybe especially then.

Maybe this is why Captain America is my
favorite Marvel superhero.
image from here

This Is Not Tolerance

This past week I came upon yet another story of a private business being attacked by the “gay mafia.” And this time it was kind of personal. (This case was also mentioned last year here.)

Arlene's Flowers, in Richland, WA
photo from Alliance Defending Freedom

The business being attacked this time is Arlene’s Flowers, in Richland, Washington. The name and photo of the shop look familiar to me. We spent most of a decade living in that corner of Washington. Daughter Social Sphere was born in the hospital in Richland. We didn’t have a lot of events that called for flowers back then, but chances are if Mr. Spherical Model brought me flowers when our daughter was born, they came from Arlene’s Flowers.

Owner of Arlene’s is 70-year-old Barronelle Stutzman, who has been making a living as a florist for 40 years. She has served everyone, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation. But she’s a Christian, and in 2013 when a longtime customer asked her to do the flowers for his same-sex wedding, she declined. It was the event, not the client, that she declined, because, to her, marriage is sacred and something that can’t be mutated to mean same-sex.

Stutzman must have been rude enough to really anger the client, right? No. “I put my hand on his and said, ‘I’m sorry Rob, I can’t do your wedding because of my relationship with Jesus Christ…. We talked a little bit, we talked about his mom [walking him down the aisle]…we hugged and he left.”

But the result of her friendly, gentle refusal was to suffer a discrimination lawsuit. More than one. First, the Washington State attorney general filed suit, requiring a $2,000 fine in addition to an order that the service be rendered. Then the couple filed another suit through the ACLU. Last week a Washington State judge ruled against Stutzman. The result is worse than just putting her out of business.

She said, “They want my home, they want my business, they want my personal finances as an example for other people to be quiet.”

An ACLU lawyer said, “Religious freedom is a fundamental part of America. But religious beliefs do not give any of us a right to ignore the law or to harm others because of who they are. When gay people go to a business, they should be treated like anyone else and not be discriminated against.”

So, religious freedom is OK and tolerated—unless it isn’t. Because…law.

So, a moment of history about marriage law in Washington. In 1997, following a threat to the definition after Hawaii had challenges to marriage there, the legislature wrote legislation defending the long-standing definition requiring one man and one woman. It passed  63 to 35 in the House and 27 to 19 in the Senate, but Governor Gary Locke vetoed it. He said it was divisive and unnecessary, since the law was already clear on the definition. And he added, "Our overarching principle should be to promote civility, mutual respect and unity. This legislation fails to meet this test." Please remember that. Veto override vote failed 26-20, when seven Democrats who had voted in favor of the law changed their votes to support the governor.

In 1998 the legislature attempted similar legislation, a Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The governor vetoed this one as well, saying, "Our laws right now prohibit same-gender marriages, and I oppose this legislation because it is trying to make illegal something that is already illegal." The veto was quickly and soundly overridden. Yes, the definition of marriage was settled, but the people wanted it protected.

Over the following decade same-sex “marriage” advocates could not get traction, because public opinion in the state continued to support the existing definition of marriage. So they pushed instead for domestic partnership status, through initiative in 2007, withdrawn for lack of signatures to get it on the November ballot. But in the meantime they did establish domestic partnerships through the legislature in April 2007.

Then in 2012 the legislature voted to enact same-sex “marriage” on close votes. After a delay to let the people decide by referendum, the voters approved the law 54%-46% (I believe that’s the first state to choose same-sex “marriage,” rather than have courts or legislators force it on them against their will). It went into effect in December 2012.

Three months later Robert Ingersoll walked into Arlene’s Flowers and ruined Barronelle Stutzman’s life. It was a no win for her.

I think a businessperson should be allowed to refuse service to anyone for any reason. But that’s an argument for another day.

She didn’t refuse service to anyone; she refused to perform a particular service for a particular event. She did no damage to the customer; he could go elsewhere. He knew she hadn’t ever discriminated against him because of his sexual orientation. But, instead of going and finding a willing florist, he decided she should have her business taken, her livelihood and savings siphoned off in fines and court costs, and threaten everything she had, which at her age she could never recover from. Because she said she wouldn’t do a particular kind of event—that had been against the law for the entire history of the state until three months earlier and was only made law by a close margin.

Somehow that takes precedent over anyone’s personal religious beliefs, even though religious protection is guaranteed in the First Amendment because it is God-given and inalienable.

Alliance Defending Freedom has stepped in, to help her appeal. But even an eventual win will leave her years older, herd business closed, her savings gone.

What Stutzman did was tolerant. What Ingersoll did was beyond intolerant; it smacks of mafia.

Eventually, if the Supreme Court reads the Constitution and grows a spine, we can hope cases like this will be reversed. That will be good news for all people who engage in commerce while living religious lives. But the businesses already attacked will probably never recover.

Because of the threat of these anti-discrimination lawsuits, a religious person doing business today risks losing everything as soon as a protected-class customer walks through their door.

There’s no safety for religious businesspeople, but there are some rather painful alternatives:

1.      Incorporate, rather than have a sole proprietorship, to limit the assets that can be accessed in a lawsuit. The business, then, is sued for discrimination. You’ll need to have the business go bankrupt right away, but at least your personal assets can’t be seized.

2.      Limit your business in a way that will prevent the dilemma. This would look something like “we never do wedding arrangements,” which is pretty limiting but avoids the attack. This would be true for cake decorators and photographers as well. But, it might be hard to keep the business going if you have to turn away work for the 99.99% of customers who might your skills for a regular wedding.

3.      Take the job, and then purposely do a very poor job. Your reputation may be at risk. You may have to return any money you were paid. You may even be out the cost of resources and time. But you can’t be sued for refusing service to a protected-class person, and you haven’t used your skills and abilities in honor of something that offends your religious heart.

The thing that has bothered me so much about these cases is the expectation that a person must do work that some judge says they must. If you must do work that you haven’t contracted to do, that is coercion.

Another word for it is slavery. But there’s a difference between this and the slavery we saw in the South prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. Back then, the slaves could be forced to work. But they could not be forced to create beauty. Mostly slaves wouldn’t be trained to do artistic work. They could be asked to work in a garden, but they wouldn’t be expected to design the garden. They might be an excellent cook, but they wouldn’t be expected to be a haute cuisine chef.

But today’s “gay mafia,” along with the judges that are their tools, are trying to enslave people who should have the expectation of freedom (they are their own bosses in their own artistic businesses) to do things that not even “legally owned” slaves could have been forced to do.

When you’re taking the life, livelihood, home and savings of a 70-year-old woman who has always served you sweetly and cheerfully, you really need to re-think who is the intolerant one.

I’ve written enough for a day. I thought I’d have a portion to devote to the singe same-sex “marriage” that happened in Texas last Thursday. So, just to re-cap, the federal judge who required it had no power of mandamus; he had no authority to require a state judge to do what he asked. The state judge who allowed the license to be granted did so unlawfully. The Jewish rabbi who “married” the two lesbian women was not abiding by any Jewish religion that I’ve ever encountered (but I’m sure I’m not familiar with ever version of Jewish belief). The case is not in any way precedent setting, and the state attorney general has already made clear to all the state’s judges that such licenses cannot be granted in Texas at this time, while cases are pending in the 5^th Circuit and there is a stay. The attorney general has the right to challenge the legality of the “marriage,” since the granting of the license did not abide by Texas law. So, except that two people started calling themselves “married,” nothing has changed in Texas.

I’ve written recently on the same-sex “marriage” issue here and here. I wrote about religious freedom here. The two topics are closely tied.

 

Intolerance on Its Head

A judge says to a New York couple, “Open up your home to provide a gay wedding or face $10,000 in fines plus $3,000 in damages.” Not kidding. 

There must be more to the story. Yes, a bit. But this is the basic truth of it. (Read more here and here.)

Photo originally screen capture from website,
found in this story

The New York couple, Robert and Cynthia Gifford, own a family farm. As you might imagine, making a living from a family farm is tenuous. But the location is rustically scenic. So they do additional business by allowing events there. These include various kinds of events: business parties, school events, birthday parties, and sometimes weddings and receptions.

The main covered venue is a large barn, above which is the couple’s living space, where they are raising their two children. When the Giffords consent to do a wedding, they do the decorating, the food, the setup…. Some events they are less involved in, including receptions elsewhere on the property. But a wedding, in their home—their rustic barn home—is something they take on as a partnership with the couple being married.

You can imagine they can’t take on that kind of event every day. They have to want to celebrate with the couple. After all, this is in their home, and it’s taking up their life and livelihood for some significant amount of time.

So, along comes a lesbian couple who want their wedding in the barn/home. The Giffords are religious Christians. They are not comfortable putting their heart and soul into something that goes against their belief in traditional marriage. So they suggest lesser services, such as a reception on the grounds. Not good enough. The lesbians insist they want the whole shebang or nothing. So the farm owners shrug their shoulders and say they’re sorry they can’t help.

What would a tolerant engaged couple do? Respect the kindly and respectfully offered decision, and go find another venue. Not this couple. They insist it is their right to force this farm family to open their home and give them the full-service wedding. Or else! And the or else was a lawsuit. With a liberal judge, who thinks it’s OK to enslave someone into servitude, not just in their own business but, in this case, in their own home. He gets away with this travesty by claiming the lesbian couple is “suffering” intolerance from the farm owners.

The entire exchange happened in a “recorded” three-minute phonecall.

I have handled wedding events for all three of my children, with receptions in Texas and out of state. These required a lot of phonecalls, plus some in-person visits. I never once considered recording a phonecall. Why would I? If service couldn’t (or wouldn’t) be rendered by a particular vendor, I’d simply go elsewhere. And if there were details that needed to be remembered, I wrote notes, followed up with emails, or called again to clarify. I think that’s normal.

There was a business that turned us away, with prejudice. This was some months before daughter Social Sphere’s wedding. Just a couple of weeks afterward was the wedding of my daughter-in-law’s sister, who has long been a friend of Social Sphere. So the girls all got together, over Christmas break, to do some wedding exploration. Between our houses (about 40 miles apart) there’s a business we see from the freeway that does wedding-related business. We hadn’t ever been inside, so I wasn’t sure if they did dresses, had a reception venue, provided decorations for your venue, or a variety of other services. So I suggested the girls stop in and find out what they offered. They had granddaughter Little Political Sphere with them, at age 2 ½. She can be a handful, but at the time was clean and fed and under control. I think an older sister, with babe in arms, was also helping. The proprietor came up to these girls—two of them wearing engagement rings and ready to explore all kinds of wedding spending—and sent them out of the place because they had children with them. Talk about prejudice. We think that the proprietor didn’t believe the girls were seriously shopping. But the message was clear: people like you (people who have the nerve to bring a child with them) are not welcome here.

So, Weddings by Debbie, in Katy, Texas, gets no recommendation or business from us. Ever. In fact, after knowing how strongly they preferred not to do business with us, I wouldn’t want their services. The idea of forcing them to do something for us, through the courts, never came up.

The fact that it came up for Jenny McCarthy and Melissa Erwin, after a brief—recorded—phonecall, leads me to believe they were seeking a chance for a lawsuit more than then were seeking a lovely, rustic wedding venue.

What we don’t know is how many venues they contacted before they could find one that would offend them suitably for a lawsuit.

The fines might not put the Giffords out of business, but that is a risk. And in their case, losing the business could mean losing their home. Their options are to appeal to the state Supreme Court, or to countersue for violation of their religious freedoms. Either of those options requires money, which they may not have access to. Another consideration is hiring an event planner to separate them from participating in any event they might not want to be involved in. This would also cost them.

None of their options—for living their lives according to valid religious beliefs, in their business and in their home—is easy or inexpensive.

But it’s better than being beheaded, right? Yes. ISIS is moving through the Middle East, summarily executing anyone who holds religious beliefs not meeting ISIS approval. They don’t tolerate dissent.

Neither do the lesbian couple and the New York Judge. If execution were an optional punishment for failure to agree with the homosexual agenda, would they seek it? I don’t know. I hope not. But enslaving someone into service in their own home—because of the pain and anguish you suffered from a three-minute phonecall in which they said they were willing to serve you in other ways—is pretty spiteful. It is not, by any stretch, tolerant.

In the Spherical Model world, honoring family and living according to the Ten Commandments are two components necessary for freedom, prosperity, and civilization, found in the northern hemisphere. Tolerance where there is disagreement, and respect toward all people is part of civilization. Forcing someone to violate their religion is southern hemisphere savagery. ISIS is clearly savage. The difference between their intolerance and that of the Giffords’ opponents is a matter of degree. The more savagery is tolerated, the more civilization deteriorates into more severe savagery. There is no civilization to be found going in that direction.

Meanwhile, a Little Movie Preview

I’ve been planning, since the end of the Supreme Court session at the end of June, to look again at SCOTUS voting patterns. The first such post is April 13, 2012. We were looking at data prior to the ruling on Obamacare, to see if there was a clue about what to expect. What we found was that, while there is a liberal bloc and a conservative bloc, the early decisions of the 2011 session showed a fair amount of congeniality on the Court.  (A session starts in the fall and ends in June of the following year. So those rulings in spring 2012 were part of the 2011 session.)

The 2012 session, now complete, includes all the cases, not just the early ones of the session. So building the data base is a fair amount more work than last time (79 cases, compared to 14). So I set aside a day for it, built the data base, saved it (multiple times while working, plus a final time before closing the file for dinnertime)—and then, because of my technical challenges, the file disappeared. No amount of searching so far has yielded anything but the original few.

Such is life. Maybe I’ll be able to redo the work for Monday’s post.

In the meantime, a little movie preview.

 

This fall the classic science fiction book Ender’s Game comes to the big screen. I’ve been aware of this story for a long time. The novel, I think, was published in 1991, but it was a short story in a collection before that, where I first encountered it. Orson Scott Card was a graduate student at the university I attended more than a decade before this novel, but even then he was a name on campus, because so few English majors go on to make it big. The story is powerful. I don’t recommend it to young readers, but it can be good for more mature teen readers. It’s clean, but there is some raw violence and a lot of psychological struggle.

A couple of years ago I read three of the sequels: Speaker for the Dead, Children of the Mind, and Xenocide, and I’ve occasionally mentioned them. Ideas come up in his writing related to civilization; some have become among my favorite quotes. So Orson Scott Card comes up April 28, 2011; May 31,2011; June 6, 2011; October 14, 2011; and a year later October 15, 2012.

There have been rumors about an Ender’s Game movie almost since it came out, but the author wasn’t willing to lose control to Hollywood. He’s a screenwriter himself as well. So when I heard earlier this year that the movie was really going to happen, I was hopeful it would do the story justice. I’m still a little apprehensive about it (the trailer makes it look like Ender is aware of things he doesn’t know in the book). But Harrison Ford plays the commander, so that’s a possible plus. And then you add in Ben Kingsley and Viola Davis.

Card also authored a nonfiction book for fiction writers called Characters and Viewpoint. It was clearer and more useful than anything on the subject I came across in college. I have a lot of respect for him as a writer.

I think he’s a writing teacher in North Carolina. I haven’t been following closely for a while, but he used to do a regular column for the local newspaper, and it often got picked up by The Mormon Times, an online news and opinion publication. I would often see his articles linked, and several over the years have been worth saving in a file.

His writing is only occasionally political. He’s a Democrat, but I’m puzzled by that, because he feels strongly about the Constitution, and I think he warned us, both times, against the disaster that would follow an Obama election. Once in a while he has written about traditional marriage, as I do. [My Defense of Marriage collection is here]. In 2009 Card joined the board of the National Organization for Marriage, an organization I appreciate. I get their newsletters, and follow their efforts in the courts, as well as with local organizations in many states.

The other day I came across a story about a boycott of the movie—because of Card’s controversial view. Presumably that “controversial” view is the majority opinion that marriage should continue to be defined as it has for  all of the millennia up until now, by all civilizations until the decadent ones we are beginning to experience. Because he has opinions in favor of family, and in favor of children being raised by their own two parents in a committed real marriage, these people who believe they know better than us all think he should be shut down and silenced as a human being, because they deem his opinion unacceptable.

If the rest of us boycotted every movie in any way associated with anyone who has differences of opinions with us on things totally unrelated to their movies, we would simply never see movies. We conservatives tend to value actual tolerance much more than the “we order you to be tolerant” crowd, apparently.

Anyway, if you think there’s a chance the movie coming from this excellent classic book might be worth seeing, maybe you should not pay heed to SkipEndersGame.com (hyperlink purposely omitted). Check it out with some friends and family (preview before sharing with children, please).

"Tolerance"--You Keep Using that Word...

Back in 2008, a week after the election that included Proposition 8 in California, I wrote a response to a post on an online group; it was a political offshoot of a rather large homeschool group, so that inflammatory conversations would not show up where people are just looking for homeschool information. 

The post I responded to was saying we should mark the anniversary of Matthew Shepherd’s death, and if someone wants to do that, I don’t have a problem. I do have a problem with insisting homosexuals exemplify our collective guilt alongside “slavery, women voting, separation of races”; “We simply must stop wasting our energy trying to legislate people out of existence.” Really? We have ever legislated anyone out of existence, and homosexuals are included in this apparently vast group?   

He added, “As long as the majority of the citizens of this country are willing to legislate against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people there will be people that will take it upon themselves to feel it is their duty to harm these people physically.” Really? Protecting the institution of marriage, which is the basic unit of civilization, causes people to go out and beat up homosexuals? This person not only doesn’t understand evidence, he doesn’t care about it.  

“Dennis,” who always signed his posts with “peace,” did respond to my post, point-by-point accusing me of being a bigoted, uninformed homophobe, simply because I hold the opposite view of his, which he defines as good—but without actually responding to the data with any evidence of his own. That is what we face. So my response isn’t to him; it is to give words to those who know somehow his accusations are wrong but don’t have the data and words to defend themselves. (The political group eventually became unused and irrelevant, but Dennis continued on the regular homeschool group until a few months back, when he started a flame war that was so offensive to so many that he was removed from the group—all the while signing “peace.”)

__________________________________

November 13, 2008

Linda Nuttall

You are assuming, Dennis, that homosexuals are “a people” in the same sense that races are “a people,” a group that is alike because of innate qualities. But there is a huge difference between genetics determining the level of melanin in the skin and the choice to act on various urges. The law is equal toward homosexuals: they can marry someone of the opposite sex, who is not a close relative, who is not already married to another, who is old enough to consent to the contract, who is a human being—the same requirements for marriage that are required of heterosexuals. What they want is a special privilege just for them. They want a new definition of marriage—honor for being in a temporary non-exclusive sexual relationship that cannot produce offspring and offers no benefit to society. Traditional marriage is defined as a permanent contract between a man and a woman requiring exclusivity and faithfulness, designed to protect any offspring by guaranteeing the child will be raised by his/her two parents of separate sexes—clearly a benefit to society. Even when it doesn’t always work out, encouraging it is society’s duty. There must be a preponderance of success to avoid societal decay. 

Marriage pre-dates every state; the state didn’t invent marriage, and therefore cannot simply un-invent or re-invent it into something else. The state can only decide under which conditions to grant a license showing how and when the state will honor the bond. What “same-sex marriage” does is eliminate respect for traditional marriage; it encourages honor for a behavior that deserves no honor, and in essence prevents society from honoring what is in society’s best interest.  

Everywhere “same-sex marriage” has been enforced, it has seriously increased the incidence of out-of-wedlock childbirth and then child abandonment in society as a whole, because it separates the connection between marriage and a commitment to children. Everywhere it has been enforced, people with religious beliefs that disagree have been persecuted and prosecuted for their beliefs. Everywhere it has been enforced, parents have been deprived of the right to decide when and how homosexual relationships will be taught to their children. 

This week the people who claim to be asking for “tolerance” demonstrated their refusal to give it. Yesterday Scott Eckern lost his post as Artistic Director of the California Music Theater, driven out after 25 years, because he voted “Yes” on Proposition 8 (along with more than half of California voters) and gave a $1000 donation to support that cause. According to the Sacramento Bee, “when Tony Award-winner Marc Shaiman, the composer of ‘Hairspray,’ read of Eckern’s donation last week, he urged artists and theater workers across the country to boycott the theater.” He wrote “that he wouldn’t allow his work to be done at California Musical Theater, and theater workers across the country have followed his lead… 

“Susan Egan, star of ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ and ‘Cabaret,’ followed with a similar email. Theater professionals flooded CMT’s offices over the weekend with phone calls and emails decrying Eckern’s actions.” What was his action that was so egregious that he should be driven from his profession? Supporting an idea these “tolerance”-seekers disagreed with. 

There was an unauthorized demonstration against a Latter-day Saint temple in Los Angeles two days after the vote last week, requiring LAPD, along with SWAT teams, to protect private property, just because it was owned by a religion that strongly supports traditional marriage—along with the majority of voters, and a wide coalition of churches and demographic groups. The Church has always made it clear that it is important to love and support homosexuals and never attack or hate; but it is also a right and responsibility to stand up for traditional marriage, which is the basic unit of civilization. These beliefs are not tolerated by opponents, who ironically shriek obscenities at their opponents while saying they are only asking for tolerance. 

It might interest you to know that homosexual-on-homosexual violence is so prevalent that a majority of homosexuals experience it, and yet almost nothing is being done to prevent it. Heterosexual-on-homosexual violence as a hate crime (because of prejudice) is so rare that barely a handful of cases can be found annually, and they are prosecuted as they should be. 

If the sacrifice you’re asking from heterosexuals is to re-create the world so we have to raise our children without an understanding of the importance of sexual purity before marriage and complete fidelity within marriage, and have the laws of the country denounce what we would like to teach them—if that is the sacrifice you are asking us to make, I’m not willing.  

At some point it would be nice if the people asking us for tolerance would be willing to experiment: total purity before marriage and complete fidelity after. They’ve been unable and unwilling to do it anywhere they’ve had the opportunity. Doesn’t look to me like they’re willing to make even a small sacrifice of personal self-control. 

You’re asking us to allow a religious belief—that sex outside of a committed marriage, and particularly unnatural sexual behaviors that cannot produce offspring, should be honored as God-approved—you’re asking that this religious belief be forced down our throats, against our will. It is no wonder that people who value marriage and family have stood up in heavy majorities in 30 states to pass state constitutional amendments, and to pass legislation defining marriage in an additional 14 states, to prevent activist judges from forcing this religious belief upon us. 

I recognize that people disagree on the issue. But I am willing to allow the majority to be allowed to say what they believe in a free society, rather than have it forced on them by unelected judges.