The United States Congress was in a rare joint session. All 435 representatives and 100 senators were in attendance, and the C-SPAN-TV cameras were rolling. The members were gathered together to hear a speech by a descendant of George Washington. But what they thought would be a polite speech of patriotic historical reflections quickly turned into a televised tongue-lashing. With a wagging finger and stern looks, Washington’s seventh-generation grandson declared,

Woe to you, egotistical hypocrites! You are full of greed and self-indulgence. Everything you do is done for appearances: You make pompous speeches and grandstand before these TV cameras. You demand the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats wherever you go. You love to be greeted in your districts and have everyone call you “Senator” or “Congressman.” On the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness! You say you want to clean up Washington, but as soon as you get here you become twice as much a son of hell as the one you replaced!

Woe to you, makers of the law, you hypocrites! You do not practice what you preach. You put heavy burdens on the citizens, but then opt out of your own laws!

Woe to you, federal fools! You take an oath to support and defend the Constitution, but then you nullify the Constitution by confirming judges who make up their own laws.

Woe to you, blind hypocrites! You say that if you had lived in the days of the Founding Fathers, you never would have taken part with them in slavery. You say you never would have agreed that slaves were the property of their masters but would have insisted that they were human beings with unalienable rights. But you testify against yourselves because today you say that unborn children are the property of their mothers and have no rights at all! Upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed in this country. You snakes! You brood of vipers! You have left this great chamber desolate! How will you escape being condemned to hell!

Of course such an address never really took place. Who would be so blunt and rude to address the nation’s leaders that way? Certainly no one claiming to be a Christian. Are you sure?

Jesus said something very similar. What? Sweet and gentle Jesus? Absolutely. If you read the twenty-third chapter of Matthew you’ll see that much of my fictitious speech is adapted from the real speech Jesus made to the Pharisees. Contrary to the spineless Jesus invented today by those who want an excuse to be spineless themselves, the real Jesus taught with authority and did not tolerate error. When people were wrong, Jesus corrected them and sometimes he got in their faces to do so.

While Jesus was often more diplomatic, he knew that sometimes you need to be blunt with people.  Sometimes you need to be direct instead of dancing around the issues.  In fact, if you fail to be direct, you risk enabling people, allowing them to continue on their merry way, destroying themselves and the nation.

“Oh, but Jesus wouldn’t say that kind of thing to politicians,” you say.  “He wouldn’t get involved in politics.”

Think again.

Who were the Pharisees? They were not just the religious leaders but also the political leaders of Israel!  You mean Jesus was involved in politics?  Yes! Paul was too. He addressed the political leaders of his day and even used the privileges of his Roman citizenship to protect himself and advance the Gospel.

But didn’t Jesus say, “Give unto Caesar.”  Yes.  So what?  We all ought to pay taxes.  But that doesn’t mean we ought not get involved in politics.  In our country, you can not only elect “Caesar,” you can be “Caesar!”

Jesus told us to be “salt” and “light,” and he didn’t say be salt and light in everything but politics.  Christians are to be salt and light in everything they do, be it in their church, in their business, in their school, or in their government.

That doesn’t mean establishing a “Theocracy.”  Christians should be great protectors of liberty, including freedom of religion. In fact, having Christians involved in government happens to be advantageous for even non-Christians.  How so?

It is only the Christian worldview that secures the unalienable rights of the individual in God— rights that include the right to life, liberty, equal treatment, and religious freedom.  Islam won’t do it.  Islam means submission to Allah and Sharia law.  It doesn’t protect individual rights.  Neither will Hinduism (the Caste system) or outright secularism, which offers no means to ground rights in anything other than the whims of a dictator. Only Christianity grounds the rights of the individual in God, and also realizes that since God doesn’t force anyone to adhere to one set of religious beliefs, neither should the government.

I often hear Christians claiming that we ought to just “preach the Gospel” and not get involved in politics.  This is not only a false dilemma; it’s stupid (how’s that for direct?).   If you think “preaching the Gospel” is important like I do, then you ought to think that politics is important too.  Why?  Because politics and law affects your ability to preach the Gospel!  If you don’t think so, go to some of the countries I’ve visited—Iran, Saudi Arabia, China.  You can’t legally “preach the Gospel” in those countries—or practice other aspects of your religion freely—because politically they’ve ruled it out.

It’s already happening here. There are several examples where religious freedoms are being usurped by homosexual orthodoxy. This summer a Christian student was removed from Eastern Michigan University’s (a public school) counseling program because, due to her religious convictions, she would not affirm homosexuality to potential clients.  A judge agreed (a similar case is pending in Georgia).  In Massachusetts, Catholic charities closed their adoption agency rather than give children to homosexual couples as the state mandated.  In Ohio, University of Toledo HR Director Crystal Dixon was fired for writing a letter to the editor in her local newspaper that disagreed with homosexual practice.

More violations of religious liberty are on the way from the people currently in charge.  Lesbian activist Chai Feldbaum, who is a recess appointment by President Obama to the EEOC, recently said regarding the inevitable conflict between homosexuality and religious liberty, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.” So much for tolerance.  The people who say they’re fighting for tolerance are the most intolerant, totalitarian people in politics.

Getting involved in politics is necessary if for no other reason to protect your religious liberty, and the liberties of us all.  So if you’re a Christian, follow the example of Christ—call out hypocrites and fools, and vote them out on Tuesday!

Oh, I almost forgot. If you’re a pastor and you’re worried about your tax-exempt status, please remember two things:  1) you have more freedom than you think to speak on political and moral issues from the pulpit, and 2) more importantly, you’re called to be salt and light, not tax-exempt.

If you’d like the complete case for Christian involvement get Jesus Is Involved In Politics!  by Neil Mammen.

(This article originally appeared at Townhall.com on Oct. 31, 2010.)

When one judge overturned the will of more then seven million Californians last week in Perry vs. Schwarzenegger, he listed 80 supposed “findings of fact” (FF) as evidence that Proposition 8 violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.  Many of those 80 findings are not facts at all.  They’re lies or distortions.

Before we address the top ten false “facts” asserted by Judge Vaughn Walker, there is one real fact in his opinion that defeats the entire case for his opinion.  Here it is:

“The evidence at trial shows that marriage in the United States traditionally has not been open to same-sex couples.”

Since that fact is unquestionably true, how can Judge Walker honestly declare that Proposition 8 violates the Fourteenth Amendment? Certainly no one in 1868 intended the Fourteenth Amendment to redefine marriage.  Only the most tyrannical form of judicial activism can get Judge Walker to his conclusion.

Second, Prop 8 doesn’t violate the Fourteenth Amendment because every person in America already has equal marriage rights. We’re all playing by the same rules—we all have the same right to marry any non-related adult of the opposite sex. Those rules do not deny anyone “equal protection of the laws” because the qualifications to enter a marriage apply equally to everyone—every adult person has the same right to marry.

What about homosexuals?  That leads us to Judge Walker’s first false “fact.”

1.  “Sexual orientation is fundamental to a person’s identity and is a distinguishing characteristic that defines gays and lesbians as a discrete group.” (FF 44)   This is the most important of the false facts because Walker’s entire case collapses without it.  The “fact” is false because it ignores the difference between desires and behavior.

Having certain sexual desires—whether you were “born” with them or acquired them sometime in life—does not mean that you are being discriminated against if the law doesn’t allow the behavior you desire.  Good laws discriminate against behavior. They do not discriminate against people. If Walker’s false “fact” was a real fact, we’d have to redefine marriage to include not just same sex couples, but also relatives, multiple partners, children or any other sexual relationship people desire.  After all, those are “sexual orientations” too.

In other words, there should be no legal class of “gay” or “straight,” just a legal class called “person.” And it doesn’t matter whether persons desire sex with the same or opposite sex, or whether they desire sex with children, parents, multiple partners or farm animals.  What matters is whether the behavior desired is something the country should prohibit, permit or promote.  And that’s a job for the people, not judges.

2.  “California has no interest in asking gays and lesbians to change their sexual orientation or in reducing the number of gays and lesbians in California.” (FF 47)

Other than helping them avoid disease and live longer, absolutely no reason.  As I document here, health problems are higher and life spans shorter for homosexuals.  This has touched me personally (and perhaps someone you know as well)—a childhood friend of mine died from AIDS at the age of 36.  How is it wise public policy to endorse behavior that leads to such tragic results? That’s exactly what same-sex marriage does—it endorses homosexual behavior, which results in serious health problems and shorter life spans.  Permitting unhealthy behavior is one thing, but endorsing it is quite another.

But won’t same-sex marriage help reduce gay health issues?  Not likely.  See Judge Walker’s next false fact.

3.  “Same-sex couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in the characteristics relevant to the ability to form successful marital unions.” (FF 48)

What does “successful” mean?  It has nothing to do with children according to Judge Walker.  In his “the stork brings children” universe, marriage is merely about coupling; procreation is just incidental to it.  He thinks a “successful” marriage is merely about commitment, but he can’t even support that case.

In another instance of special pleading, Judge Walker ignores the evidence that at least half of committed homosexual relationships are open as even the New York Times reported.  (Other studies found even higher rates of promiscuity and infidelity.) This is so well known it’s a travesty that Judge Walker claims exactly the opposite is true. The Times reported, “None of this is news in the gay community, but few will speak publicly about it. Of the dozen people in open relationships contacted for this column, no one would agree to use his or her full name, citing privacy concerns. They also worried that discussing the subject could undermine the legal fight for same-sex marriage.”  Maybe Judge Walker was worried too, and that’s why he didn’t bother mentioning this real fact with his false facts.

4.  “Permitting same-sex couples to marry will not affect the number of opposite-sex couples who marry, divorce, cohabit, have children outside of marriage or otherwise affect the stability of opposite-sex marriages.”  (FF 55)

Judge Walker cites just four years of data from Massachusetts to make that sweeping conclusion about the most important relationship in human civilization.  The truth is that evidence from other countries over a much longer period shows a mutually reinforcing relationship between same-sex marriage and illegitimacy.  And the disastrous results of 40 years of liberalized divorce laws show how monumentally important marriage laws are to the health of marriages, children, and the nation.

5. “Proposition 8 does not affect the First Amendment rights of those opposed to marriage for same-sex couples.” (FF 62)

It’s too bad Judge Walker didn’t look to evidence from Massachusetts for this false fact. If he had he would have seen that court-imposed same-sex marriage has severely affected First Amendment rights.  Same sex marriage may not affect heterosexual marriage behavior quickly, but it certainly affects the free exercise of religion very quickly.

Parents in Massachusetts now have no right to know when their children are being taught homosexuality in grades as low as Kindergarten, neither can they opt their kids out (one parent was even jailed overnight for protesting this).  Businesses are now forced to give benefits to same-sex couples regardless of any moral or religious objection the business owner may have.  The government also ordered Catholic Charities to give children to homosexuals wanting to adopt.  As a result, Catholic Charities closed their adoption agency rather than submit to an immoral order.  Unfortunately, children are again the victims of the morality that comes with same-sex marriage.

“But you can’t legislate morality!” some say.  Nonsense.  Not only do all laws legislate morality, sometimes immorality is imposed by judges against the will of the people and in violation of religious rights.  There is no neutral ground here.  Either we will have freedom of religion and conscience, or we will be forced to adhere to the whims of judges who declare that their own distorted view of morality supersedes our rights—rights that our founders declared self-evident.

Think I’m overreacting?  If this decision survives and nullifies all democratically decided laws in the 45 states that preserve natural marriage, religious rights violations in Massachusetts will go nationwide.  In fact, it’s poised to happen already at the federal level. President Obama recently appointed gay activist Chai Feldblum to the EEOC.  Speaking of the inevitable conflict between religious rights and so-called gay rights, Feldblum said, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”

6.  “No credible evidence supports a finding that an individual may, through conscious decision, therapeutic intervention or any other method, change his or her sexual orientation.” (FF 46)

I guess thousands of ex-gays just don’t exist in Judge Walker’s special-pleading universe.  Neither does renowned Columbia University psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Spitzer, who concluded that some highly motivated individuals can change their orientation from homosexual to heterosexual through reorientation therapy.

This is significant because Spitzer is no propagandist for the religious right. Quite the contrary—a self-described “Jewish atheist,” Spitzer has been a hero to homosexual activists since 1973 when he helped get homosexuality declassified as a mental disorder.  Recently, however, they’ve turned on him because he reported the truth.

Dr. Spitzer said that his 2003 study “has been criticized severely by many people, particularly gay activists, who apparently, feel quite threatened by it. They have the feeling that in order to get their civil rights, it’s helpful to them if they can present the view that once you’re a homosexual you can never change.”

When asked whether the American Psychiatric Association should now change their position statements that say orientation cannot be changed, Dr. Spitzer said, “I think they should, [but] they will not be. . . . There’s a gay activist group that’s very strong and very vocal and is recognized officially by the American Psychiatric Association. There’s nobody to give the other viewpoint. There may be a few who believe it but they won’t talk.”

Dr. Spitzer then acknowledged explicitly that politics often trump the scientific facts at organizations like the APA (an organization cited to bolster Judge Walker’s conclusion).   He also said that the APA should stop applying a double standard by discouraging reorientation therapy, while actively encouraging gay-affirmative therapy that’s intended to confirm and solidify a homosexual identity.  Good point by Dr. Spitzer. After all, if people can be talked into it, then why can’t they be talked out of it?

Sexual orientation isn’t like race either.  You’ll find many former homosexuals, but you’ll never find a former African American.

Of course Walker’s “fact” even if true is irrelevant anyway.  Marriage does not need to be redefined just because people can’t change their sexual desires.  Otherwise a legal “marriage” relationship must be created for every particular sexual desire.

7.  “The gender of a child’s parent is not a factor in a child’s adjustment.” (FF 70)

Incredibly, Judge Walker says that this conclusion “is accepted beyond serious debate.”  Citing a study by the politicized APA, Walker never admits that not enough research has been done to evaluate the well being of children living with homosexual parents.  And he ignored evidence presented by the defense that contradicted his “fact.”

But does one really need a study to know that Walker is wrong?  Was your father different as a parent than your mother?   To say no is laughable.  In fact, even Rodney Dangerfield could expose this false fact.  “No respect at all—when I was a baby, I was breast fed by my father!”

Later in the opinion, Walker makes the unbelievable assertion that, “Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals.”  Who sez?  The imperial Judge Walker.

Questions for the Judge:  Why do you assert that men and women are interchangeable as parents but not as sex partners?  After all, if gender really is irrelevant to marriage as you maintain—if men and women are interchangeable—then why argue for same-sex marriage at all?  Why not just tell homosexuals, “Gender is irrelevant to marriage, so instead of making a fuss, why not just go ahead and marry someone from the opposite sex”?

Why not?  Because when it comes to their own personal gratification, homosexual activists like Judge Walker clearly recognize the big difference between the sexes.  But when it comes to the more important priority of raising children, they say there is no difference between the sexes.  Children are just going to have to take a backseat to their sexual desires.  Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse sums up the attitude of homosexual activists well. She writes, “[Homosexual] adults are entitled to have what they want. Children have to take what we give them.”

8.  “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.” (FF 77)

Really? Do religious beliefs that drunkenness is sinful or inferior to sobriety harm alcoholics?  No, those beliefs help such people by telling them the truth about destructive behavior instead of enabling them with liberal fantasyland talk about how all behaviors and lifestyles are equal.

9.  “Proposition 8 results in frequent reminders for gays and lesbians in committed long-term relationships that their relationships are not as highly valued as opposite-sex relationships.” (FF 68)

This is not meant to be offensive, but what if certain relationships really are more valuable to society than others?  Clearly, the procreative committed relationship of a man and a woman is more valuable than any other relationship in society because it is necessary for society’s very survival. To comprehend the impact of this, you just need to consider two questions.

1) What would happen to society if everyone lived faithfully in natural marriage?  Our country would thrive with a drastic reduction in numerous social problems including illegitimacy, crime, welfare, and abortion.

2) What would happen to society if everyone lived faithfully in same-sex marriage?  Society wouldn’t thrive because it wouldn’t even survive.  It would end the human race!

This is not to say that such a law would cause this, but merely to point out that certain relationships are more valuable to a society than others.  The truth is that homosexual and heterosexual relationships are not the same, can never be the same, and will never yield the same benefits to individuals or society.  No law can change that fact; only deceive people into thinking so.

If this point offends you, then you have a problem with reality not me.  I didn’t make up the facts of nature.  I’m just admitting them—something Judge Walker and many same-sex marriage supporters seem unwilling to do.

10.  “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.” (Conclusion) 

 The real fact is that Judge Walker fails to provide any “rational basis” for overturning Proposition 8—no rational basis from the constitution or common sense.  While lecturing the people of California that their “private moral views” cannot be used to make their laws, Judge Walker has simply imposed his own “private moral view” that same-sex marriage must be sanctioned.  That is objectively immoral and unconstitutional itself.

He claims that the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage “exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed.”  If that’s true, that’s not for him or any judge to decide. The people of California have said that time has not passed.

Disagree?  Then you have the burden of persuading your fellow citizens to pass a constitutional amendment sanctioning same-sex marriage. That’s what the amendment process is for!  When judges short-circuit that process, we are no longer a free people who govern ourselves.

(For more about this complicated and sensitive issue, get my compact book from which some of this article is adapted: Correct, Not Politically Correct:  How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone.)

Note: This column originally appeared in two parts at www.Townhall.com.

Two Christian graduate students at public universities (Eastern Michigan University and Augusta State University)  are being expelled from their counseling programs for their religious and moral objections to homosexual behavior.   One case has been decided in favor of EMU (and will be appealed) and the other case has just been filed.   The Alliance Defense Fund is representing both students.

Why the expulsions?  Because the American Counseling Association’s (ACA) “code of ethics” prevents counselors from “imposing values that are inconsistent with counseling goals.”  That, of course, is a value imposed on the counselor, and it begs the question as to what are the “counseling goals.”  What if the client wants to stop engaging in homosexual behavior?  I guess the ACA can’t tolerate that.

The people who say they are fighting for tolerance and diversity are the most intolerant and least diverse people out there.  According to them, the only people who can be counselors are those that affirm homosexuality.   So much for tolerance and diversity.  Instead, they advocate a form of totalitarianism by shutting out different viewpoints and insisting that everyone must agree with them on such a controversial issue.   That includes all people– religious or not– who disagree with homosexual behavior.

The student at EMU, Ms. Julea Ward, didn’t even want to counsel that homosexual behavior was wrong.  She just pledged that she would refer clients with homosexual issues to other counselors.  That wasn’t good enough for EMU.  They wanted to put Ms. Ward through a “remediation” program so she could “see the error of her ways.”  Jennifer Keeton at Augusta State must attend Gay “Pride” parades and change her mind to say in the program.  Speaking of totalitarianism, these  requirements remind me of the goals of a Soviet style “re-education” camp.

These cases have obvious implications on religious rights, and illustrate that there is no such thing as value neutrality.  The value put forth by the ACA, Eastern Michigan University, and Augusta State University is that people with different values need not apply. Either we’ll have gay totalitarianism or Christian liberty, but we won’t have both.

I said quite a bit about this on today’s radio program which should be up in podcast in a couple of days.  I just don’t have time to write more today.   To get a good perspective on the cases and problems with the ACA code of ethics, see Kelly Boggs column here.

As predicted by all reasonable people who knew that Obama’s executive order was disingenuous, elective abortion will now be paid for with your tax dollars.  The Obama administration has just approved it.  This is truly a “moral injustice of the first order.”  Here are the details.

By the way, I don’t merely object to abortion because I’m now paying for it.  Abortion is wrong no matter who pays for it.  Tax-payer funding just adds another injustice.

UPDATE 7/19/2010:  Perhaps due to pressure and the spotlight put on this issue, the Obama administration reversed itself. Click here for details.  However, pro-lifers are calling for a law to be passed to prevent abortion funding because an executive order cannot overrule the health care law.   A new congress seems the only hope for that.

(This column first appeared on Townhall.com)

Elena Kagan called the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy “a moral injustice of the first order.” A moral injustice of the first order?  Where on her moral hierarchy is a real “first order” injustice like murder?  Not high enough.  For Elena Kagan, sexual standards that protect military readiness are a moral injustice, but tearing apart a baby in the womb is a moral right.

 

I have little doubt that given the opportunity, Ms. Kagan would impose this kind of inverted moral reasoning in her judicial opinions.  She already advocated as much when she clerked for Justice Marshall, and when she distorted information about partial birth abortion as a policy advisor to President Clinton.  She wants to correct what she sees as injustices from the bench.

That should scare everyone.  By whose standard is she declaring something injust?

Whenever someone talks about injustice, they are implying that there is such a thing as justice.  You can’t know what is not just unless you know what is just.  True justice, however, requires grounding in something other than human opinion.   Otherwise, we are left with the problem of, “Who sez?”

According to our Declaration of Independence, that grounding is our Creator. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Our founders called this “Nature’s Law” or “Natural Law”—the same Natural Law that Vice President Joe “Ted Knight” Biden pooh-poohed when he was the Senator from Delaware during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings.  (My money is on the intellectual firepower of our founders, not Ted Knight.)

If there is no God, then everything is just a matter of opinion—kicking out of the military people who commit homosexual acts is no better or worse than keeping them in.  In fact, if there is no God, Mother Teresa was not morally better than Hitler in any objective sense. In order for Mother Teresa’s behavior to be “better” than Hitler’s, there has to be an objective standard of “best” beyond both of them by which we can measure both of them.

C.S. Lewis put it this way, “The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something—some Real Morality—for them to be true about.”

My question for Ms. Kagan is this:  What’s your standard?  By what standard is “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” “a moral injustice of the first order” and abortion a moral right?

Does she appeal to the Constitution?  Certainly the Constitution says nothing about homosexuality or abortion (despite what activist courts have said). But the Constitution does assign the authority to Congress (not the courts) to establish rules for a well-functioning military.  That’s why Kagan’s cries of unjust discrimination by the military are false.  She needs to understand that military service is not a right. As I’ve argued before, for the sake of national security, the military rightfully discriminates against numerous behaviors and conditions. Recruits can only qualify if they meet rigorous physical and mental standards and agree to give up certain behaviors (that’s why it’s called “service”).  This has always been true about the world’s greatest military beginning with George Washington’s army.  Since joining the military is not a constitutional right, along with these other reasons, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is certainly constitutional.

Does Ms. Kagan appeal to God and Natural Law for her standard?  I doubt she would go there.  If so, she would have to make the untenable case that God believes homosexual behavior and abortion are moral rights. That’s anything but self-evident, as evidenced by the texts of all major religions, the “laws of nature,” and the design of the human body.  Our founders called homosexuality a “crime against nature” for a reason.

If Natural Law and the Constitution are not standards of justice for Ms. Kagan, what is?  She’s left with nothing but her own personal moral standard.  “Who sez?” is not Natural Law or the Constitution, but Elena Kagan.  And that’s exactly the problem with activist judges.  They ignore the laws of nature and the laws of the land to legislate their own laws based on their own personal standard of morality—and in the case of liberal activists, it’s usually a very bizarre, morally inverted standard.

“But you can’t legislate morality!”  Nonsense. All laws legislate morality.  Each law declares one behavior right and its opposite wrong.  The only question is, “Whose morality will be legislated?” Unfortunately, activist judges often ignore our common “self-evident” morality in order to legislate their own immorality on the rest of the nation.

That must stop if freedom is to survive.  All freedom-loving Americans should oppose judicial activists.  Even if you agree with Ms. Kagan on certain issues, you should want the people to retain the power to govern themselves.  Otherwise, when she disagrees with you, you will have little practical recourse.  So, if you want legal abortion or gays in the military, then persuade your fellow citizens and legislators to vote for such measures.  Pass a constitutional amendment like we did with slavery and women’s suffrage. That’s what the amendment process is for!

But don’t give up your liberty and the ability to govern yourself by allowing unelected, lifetime-appointed, judges to impose their view of what’s good for America on you and the rest of the country.  That’s judicial tyranny, plain and simple, and that’s exactly what we’re asking for when we put judicial activists on the Supreme Court.

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is not “a moral injustice of the first order.”  Giving up liberty won by the sacrifice of millions is.


John Zogby recently interviewed nearly 5,000 American adults and asked them eight basic questions about economics.  The eight questions have easily provable answers.

Here are the bottom line results published in a Wall Street Journal article titled “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader:”  the more conservative people did the best and the more liberal people did the worst.   In fact, as a group, the moderates to very liberal all failed.  Out of eight questions, here is the average score of each group:

Very Conservative (1.3 wrong)=84% correct

Libertarian (1.38)= 83%

Conservative (1.67)=79%

Moderate (3.67)= 54%

Liberal (4.69)= 41%

Very Liberal (5.26)=34%

Here are the results by party affiliation:

Republicans (1.61)= 80%

Democrats (4.59)=43%

Going to college was no indicator of intelligence in this survey.  On half the questions folks without a college education scored better than those that had one. In fact, in their abstract, the authors of the article wrote, for people inclined to take such a survey, basic economic enlightenment is not correlated with going to college.”

Why then these results?  Could it be that liberals and conservatives have two radically different views of human nature that influence them to answer in the way they do?   Conservatives tend to understand that human nature is fallen and thus, when it comes to economics, needs incentives.  Liberals tend to think against all the evidence that humans are inherently good and will do the right thing without incentives (even in the face of disincentives).

My friend Neil Mammen, who has an excellent new book, puts it this way on page 255:  “Socialism depends on every man working as much as he can and only taking up as little has he needs.  Yet in reality human nature is such that we work as little as we need and take as much as we can.  Anybody who advocates socialism is essentially helping man continue to be mired in his sin nature.”

I used to think that many liberals were denying the facts.  Now this survey makes me think that they just don’t know them. Maybe that’s because their false worldview causes them to never question what they already think is true.  Sometimes it’s not the things we don’t know that cause us trouble– it’s the things we think are true but really aren’t.

With wit, passion and clarity, radio talk show host Dennis Prager unearths one of the root problems in America today– the failure of our schools and parents to teach why America is exceptional.  American exceptionalism is not elitism but the admission that certain moral values are better than others.

Note: those who say that certain moral values are not better than others are making a value judgment, thus defeating their own case. In other words, saying that we should prefer “multiculturalism” (whatever that means) to the moral values legislated in our Constitution (yes, all laws legislate morality), is itself a value judgment. On what moral grounds does one make the case that multiculturalism is better than the Bill of Rights?

I’ve issued a challenge at Plumb Bob Blog, my political/social blog, to progressives and atheists to see which of them can answer cogently. I’m giving away the secret up front: this is about the semantic contortion that leads them to call long-term cohabiting between gays “marriage,” and insist on marital rights and appurtenances that apply thereto. I will describe the challenge here, but for the sake of keeping the discussion in one place ask you to comment over there.

I want you to form an argument that (1) explains why you oppose what I’m about to propose, but (2) cannot immediately be offered back as an argument against gay “marriage” rights.

Any answer that contains an insult will be deleted out of hand, and I will not let the author know. I reserve the right to determine what constitutes an insult.

Here’s the challenge:

I want to marry the birch tree in my front yard. I love it dearly, it has faithfully provided me shade for decades. I want to marry it legally, and I want all the financial and social advantages that appertain to marriage. The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees equal protection under the laws; the law of my state does not permit me to marry the birch tree the way others marry their spouse of choice, so my Fourteenth Amendment rights have been violated.

Why should I not be granted the right under the law to marry my birch tree?

The challenge is on. I pre-empt two possible answers at the blog, and supply a helpful image of the beloved birch, so again, come on over and take your best shot.

Jack Cashill makes an interesting case at the American Thinker today that the mortgage crisis and much of the faltering economy can be traced back to the breakdown of the family.  Minority families broke down (or really, never formed) at rates much greater than white families.  Since more minorities came from broken homes and thus had lower incomes, fewer minorities than whites could qualify for home loans.  This seems rather obvious, except the Clinton administration charged that the real reason for the disparity was, you guessed it, racism.  Hence, pressure was put on banks to make loans that no responsible lender should make.  Now we are all paying for false charges of racism when a lack of personal responsibility was really the culprit.  It’s always easier for  politicians to shout that their constituents are victims rather than irresponsible.

The following column created quite a long discussion when it was posed on Townhall.com last week.  I’m sure it will here too (though I won’t be part of the discussion for at least a week).  Please let me know if you are benefiting from the comment portion of this blog.  We are considering shutting the comments portion down for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the time commitment and the fact that most comments seem more about defending positions at all costs rather than a gracious exchange of ideas in pursuit of the truth.  I appreciate your honest comments about comments.  Thanks!   Here now, the column:  “Gay Rights:  Don’t Ask, Don’t Think”

The central argument in favor of same-sex marriage or overturning “Don’t ask don’t tell” contains a fatal flaw.  In fact, this is the flaw at the heart of the entire gay rights movement. 

Joint Chief Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen dutifully proclaimed the flaw as truth the other day when speaking in favor of ending the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy. He said, “I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

Lie about who they are?

Sorry Admiral, but as a former ROTC instructor and legal officer in the United States Navy, I helped deny entrance to potential recruits and prosecuted existing service people for all sorts of behaviors that were incompatible with unit cohesion and military readiness.  As you know, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice prohibits numerous behaviors that are not criminal offenses in civilian life (including adultery, fraternization and gambling with a subordinate), yet I never once saw anyone excused for their behavior by claiming that’s who they are.

The military is essential to our survival as a nation.  It’s not a social experiment and serving in it is not a right.  People have to qualify and then make sacrifices. Military people must subordinate many of their individual rights to advance the national interest. Recruits must agree to give up some of the freedoms that civilians enjoy, including certain sexual freedoms and even the freedom of speech!  (That’s one reason it’s called “service.”) So even if homosexual behavior is permitted in society, that doesn’t necessarily mean it should be permitted in the military.

Having served, I believe that the military needs as few sexual distractions as possible, be they from men and women serving together in combat or open homosexuality.  The job is too difficult and critical to be complicating matters sexually.

More could be said, but I want to zero in on the fatal flaw in most gay-rights causes, and the one the Admiral repeated.  It is the failure to distinguish between desires and behavior. Having certain sexual desires—whether you were “born” with them or acquired them sometime in life—does not mean that you are being discriminated against if the law doesn’t allow the behavior you desire.

Take marriage as an example. Despite complaints by homosexual activists, every person in America already has equal marriage rights. We’re all playing by the same rules—we all have the same right to marry any non-related adult of the opposite sex. Those rules do not deny anyone “equal protection of the laws” because the qualifications to enter a marriage apply equally to everyone—every adult person has the same right to marry.

“But what about homosexuals?” you ask.  The question would better be stated, “What about people with homosexual desires?” Put that way, you can see the flaw. If sexual desires alone are the criteria by which we change our marriage (or military) laws to give people “equal rights,” then why not change them to include polygamy? After all, most men seem born with a desire for many women.  How about those who desire their relatives? By the gay rights logic, such people don’t have “equal rights” because our marriage laws have no provision for incest. And bisexuals don’t have “equal rights” because existing marriage laws don’t allow them to marry a man and a woman.

If desires alone guarantee someone special rights, why are there no special rights for pedophiles and gay bashers?  The answer is obvious—because desires, even if you were “born” with them, do not justify behavior, do not make anyone a special class, and should have no impact on our laws. (See Born Gay or a Gay Basher: No Excuse.)

Laws encourage good behavior or prevent bad behavior. Desires are irrelevant.  We enact all kinds of laws in the country and military that conflict with people’s desires.  In fact, that’s why we need them!  We wouldn’t need any laws if people always desired to do good, which is why James Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

In other words, there should be no legal class of “gay” or “straight,” just a legal class called “person.” And it doesn’t matter whether persons desire sex with the same or opposite sex, or whether they desire sex with children, parents, or farm animals.  What matters is whether the behavior desired is something the country or military should prohibit, permit or promote. Those are the only three choices we have when it comes to making law.

The standard comparisons to race and interracial marriage don’t work either. Sexual behavior is always a choice, race never is. You’ll find many former homosexuals, but you’ll never find a former African American.  And your race has no effect on your military readiness, but your sexual behavior often can. Likewise, race is irrelevant to marriage while gender is essential to it. Interracial couples can procreate and nurture the next generation (the overriding societal purpose of marriage), but homosexual couples cannot.

The truth is that our marriage and military laws do not discriminate against persons for “who they are”—they discriminate against the behaviors in which they engage. But so what? That’s what most laws do. For example, the Thirteenth Amendment discriminates against the behavior of some businessmen who might like to improve their profits through slavery, but it does not discriminate against those businessmen as persons.  And the First Amendment’s freedom-of-religion protections discriminate against the behavior of some Muslims who want to impose Islamic law on the entire nation, but it does not discriminate against those Muslims as persons. Likewise, our marriage and military laws discriminate against the desired behaviors of homosexuals, polygamists, bigamists, and the incestuous, but they do not discriminate against them as persons.

Now some may object to my comparison of homosexuality to polygamy, incest or pedophilia.  I agree that the behaviors are not the same, but the point here is that the logic used to justify homosexuality is the same.  “I was born with these desires” could also be used to justify polygamy, incest, pedophilia, and even gay bashing—“Don’t blame me. I just have the anti-gay gene!”

That’s the logic reduced to the absurd. And that’s why people who want to make a case for same-sex marriage or homosexual practice in the military should use different arguments.  Claiming you “are” your sexual desires, is a case of don’t ask don’t think.

If you’d like to think more about this admittedly complicated and sensitive issue, get the compact book from which this article is adapted: Correct, Not Politically Correct:  How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone.