A World Apart

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The New Yorker a few weeks back had an insightful profile of columnist and blogger Rod Dreher, a religious traditionalist who urges his fellow traditionalists to form their own communities of faith within but apart from the greater secular society.


Excerpt:

In the main, however, Christians have sought to make America itself one big Christian community. Dreher thinks that this effort, most recently associated with the religious right, has been a disastrous mistake—it has led Christians to worship the idol of politics instead of strengthening their own faith.

“I believe that politics in the Benedict Option should be localist,” he said. The idea was not to enter a monastery, exactly. But Christians should consider living in tight-knit, faith-centered communities, in the manner of Modern Orthodox Jews. They should follow rules and take vows. They should admit that the culture wars had been lost—same-sex marriage was the law of the land—and focus on their own spiritual lives. They should strive to make Christian life meaningfully different from life under high-tech, secular capitalism; they should take inspiration from Catholic dissidents under Communism, such as the Czech activist Václav Benda, who advocated the creation of a “parallel polis”—a society within a society. They should pray more often. Start their own schools. Move near their church. St. Benedict, Dreher said, didn’t try to “make Rome great again.” He tended his own garden, finding a way to live that served as “a sign of contradiction” to the declining world around him.

The article continues:

The writer Andrew Sullivan, who is gay and Catholic, is one of Dreher’s good friends. … Sullivan has a long-standing disagreement with Dreher over same-sex marriage, but he believes that the religiously devout should be permitted their dissent.

“There is simply no way for an orthodox Catholic to embrace same-sex marriage,” he said. “The attempt to conflate that with homophobia is a sign of the unthinking nature of some liberal responses to religion. I really don’t think that florists who don’t want to contaminate themselves with a gay wedding should in any way be compelled to do so. I think any gay person that wants them to do that is being an asshole, to be honest—an intolerant asshole. Rod forces you to understand what real pluralism is: actually accepting people with completely different world views than your own.”

The profile’s writer, Joshua Rothman, notes that Dreher:

…argues that “the question is not really ‘What are you conservative Christians prepared to tolerate?’ but actually ‘What are LGBTs and progressive allies prepared to tolerate?’ ” He wants them to be magnanimous in victory; to refrain from pressing their advantage. Essentially, he says to progressives: You’ve won. You wouldn’t sue Orthodox Jews or observant Muslims. Please don’t sue us, either.

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A Hateful Choice, But Respect Free Speech

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While I support demonstrating against a branch of the City University of New York (CUNY) for choosing as a commencement speaker Sharia law advocate and Palestinian terror-defender Linda Sarsour, demanding that she be disinvited plays into the hands of “progressive” opponents of free speech.

Aside from her advocacy for Sharia law, Sarsour, reports an Israeli news site:

is also an avowed anti-Zionist, having shared the stage with a terrorist murderer who killed two Jewish students in a supermarket bombing in Israel. Sarsour praised convicted PFLP terrorist Rasmea Odeh when the two addressed a left-wing conference in Chicago on April 2nd, saying she was “honored and privileged to be here in this space, and honored to be on this stage with Rasmea.”

While commencement speakers are overwhelmingly partisans on the left, and leftwing activists routinely and usually successfully demand that conservative commencement speakers be disinvited (or prevented from being heard due to the protestors’ loud chanting and other disruptive activities), nonleftists shouldn’t follow suit and demand that terror advocates supported by the left be likewise “deplatformed.” By all means, hold protests and boycott the event, but leave it to the left to demand limits on speech.

And no, the fact that Sarsour helped to organize the anti-Trump Women’s March in Washington and has been praised by former president Obama and other Democratic leaders in no way makes her acceptable. It just adds to the shame of the left.

(Jihad Watch takes on the skewed press coverage of the anti-Sarsour demonstration.)

By the way, leftwing defenders of Sharia law advocates might want to note that supposedly “moderate” Islamic Indonesia, in a province now under Sharia law, publically flogs men “guilty” of gay sex, with two men brutally “canned” 83 times last week. I guess the “moderate” part is that they weren’t thrown to their deaths from roofs.

More. This is not a parody. This is how you hear a great many progressives talk. They believe Christian conservatives who don’t want to be forced by the state to participate in same-sex weddings are worse—much, much, incomparably worse—then Sharia law advocates who would beat and executive homosexuals.

And then there’s this.

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They Want the Feds to Make a List

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More. I realize the data is meant to be reported in the aggregate with safeguards to ensure the anonymity of respondents. But of course the census forms are reported with respondents’ names/addresses, and you might think people would now be aware how unsecure protected government data actually is.

There’s a reason the census doesn’t ask about religion, and why religious minorities are quite content that it doesn’t.

Also, it’s not my contention that the information would be misused, but then I’m not among the hoard accusing the Trump administration of being a neo-Nazi regime supplicant to Vlad Putin and deserving an “F” on LGBT issues. No, that would be the left making those accusations—the same folks upset that the administration won’t be collecting information on the sexual orientation and gender identity of all U.S. residents.

A final thought: given the extreme likelihood that a lot of people would not want to share their minority-status sexual orientation with the government, the numbers reported in aggregate for LGB Americans would likely be even less than the 3.5% that many surveys show (with the T number far lower). And that would be helpful to us because….

(Election exit polling, where people are not contacted at their homes and so are completely anonymous, show a higher LGB figure, usually around 5 percent.)

Constitutionally, the census is meant to count the population in order to apportion electoral districts. Arguably, the civil rights statutes pushed the census to include race, so as to ensure that districts aren’t racially biased. All else is extraneous.

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That’s Not Funny!

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LGBTQ hypersensitivities have played a major role, after race and gender, in the intersectional hysteria that has gripped college campuses and, indeed, much of the left. Does growing mockery signal that sanity may be returning? If so, is there a path toward equality and supportive community that doesn’t invoke authoritarian-like thought control and the demonizing of white, heterosexual, cisgender males?

—


Really not so funny:

More. Via Heterodox Academy: “In the wake of the violence at Middlebury and Berkeley…many commentators have begun analyzing the new campus culture of intersectionality as a form of fundamentalist religion including public rituals with more than a passing resemblance to witch-hunts.”

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Assaults on Free Speech Continue

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This says so much:

Kirchick [was] expected to address the ways in which oppressive regimes endanger gay rights. The event has generated controversy on campus, with DePaul officials censoring a poster promoting the talk due to its statement: “Gay Lives Matter.”

More. It’s not just Jamie Kirchick. Leftist Protesters Shout Down Gay Journalist at Portland State University, referencing Chadwick Moore’s attempt to share his views. Writes Tom Knighton:

College campuses aren’t welcoming places for any speaker who isn’t a Leftist—the Left’s dirty little secret is that identity doesn’t really matter to them at all. …

The student group that put on the event, Freethinkers of PSU, is reportedly a non-partisan student group. They reported that they attempted to place flyers for the event with PSU’s Queer Resource Center, but were denied.

From the comments:

Kosh III: The true danger to the First Amendment is from Trump and his cult followers such as Miller and other quislings. But maybe Miller hopes for a sinecure in the Fourth Reich?

Jason replies: Only in the Alice-in Wonderland delusions of the left would opposing mob tactics to keep invited speakers from expressing views that the mob dislikes be seen as the Nazi side.

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The Colbert Contretemp

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CBS’s Stephen Colbert said of President Trump during a “Late Show” monologue: “You’re a real prick-tator. The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s cockholster.”

Flashback: Alec Baldwin Apparently Calls Paparazzi A ‘C**ksucking Fag’


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Pride Month Approaches

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June is Pride Month, and various cities and locales are facing a new wave of politically correct deplatforming and exclusion protests.

In Washington, D.C., organizers of D.C.’s annual Capital Pride Parade and Festival were pressed by a group called No Justice No Pride to ban police officers and corporate sponsors from the annual pride parade and events. The organizers stood their ground.


In Toronto, organizers went the other way and banned LGBT police from participating in their pride events, capitulating to Black Lives Matter activists.


D.C.’s Capital Pride did remove a volunteer event producer for expressing views they deemed offensive. Bryan Pruitt had posted an article last year at the conservative blog RedState that said government decrees and legislation regarding transgender bathroom use sought “to implement a solution in search of a problem. The City of Charlotte passes an unnecessary law and the State Legislature provides an equally overreaching response.”

On that point, if not on others, I would agree, so I guess my volunteer services would also be unwelcome.


And the demands keep coming….

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