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The sad case of British teenager Lydia Playfoot’s fight to wear a chastity ring at her school is just one more sign that secularists are taking aim primarily at Christianity.  In this case, they are going for the issue that is most important to them: chastity vs. unrestricted sexual activity.

Start by stating the obvious: why do school authorities care what ring Lydia wears?  Women and men wear all kinds of jewellery.  Would someone be required to take a wedding ring off?  What about a Masonic ring?

Getting past that, there is no doubt that the most uniformly disliked part of Christianity amongst secular people is proper, Biblical sexual morality.  This has been a running gripe since the Enlightenment, never mind that many Christians frankly don’t always live up to God’s standard.

What’s next?  Will the state then force Christian youth who hold out to become sexually active?  Oh, I’m sorry, that’s just fiction…

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On this site of the Atlantic, while loosening up on sexual activity school authorities will have one more way to muzzle free speech, now that SCOTUS has ruled in favour of the school in the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case (more properly known as Morse v. Frederick).

Last year, when I was on a search committee for a county school superintendent, one of the questions I asked every candidate ran as follows:

U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District and Westside Community Schools v. Mergens have affirmed the basic First Amendment rights of public school students, including religious expression rights such as Bible clubs, student-lead prayers and other student expressions of religious belief. What has been your policy regarding these in the schools you have administered, and how have you handled conflicts in this regard?

This decision is a setback for both of those cases.  If we continue to discourage free speech and encourage free love, our society will not last (no matter how silly the speech is.)  Period.

A little while back, the following was noted in the piece The Trouble with Americans Negotiating:

Basically, Americans look at negotiating with Iran, Syria or anyone else the same way they do business deals: the negotiators go in, they apply whatever skills they have at “doing the deal,” but they get the deal done. Failing to do so results in the perception that the negotiations were a failure, and thus the negotiators are failures. This is a tag no American can stand to be stuck with.

Evidently that kind of compulsive proactivity is at work in both Washington (and sadly Jerusalem) these days with their reaction over the takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas.  Israel is talking about a military strike.  Washington is resuming pouring tax money into Fatah.  And both are trumpeting the possibilities for peace once again.

All of this is silly.  What has happened is that the Palestinians themselves have killed the two-state solution.  This wasn’t supposed to happen; the main opponents of that were supposed to be all of those Zionists out there.  But, since many in both capitals have staked their reputations upon such a solution, they keep working against reality to make it happen.

Although Hamas is certainly formidable, Israel has more formidable opponents to watch (like Hezbollah.)  Washington’s funding of Fatah will probably damage the latter’s reputation in the Middle East, which will only help Hamas.  The best bet of the U.S. and Israel is to sit tight and allow things to continue until the Arab world tires of it.  And that’s unlikely.  In the meanwhile, the more we do, the worse it gets.

I have a few answers of my own to Liam’s response to my last piece on the subject of gay marriage and adoption.

I have, thus far, understood Don to be advocating that homosexuals be excluded from marriages recognized by the state (i.e., civil marriages.) If that is not the case, then my efforts have been misguided.

Perhaps.  Starting with the piece that started this ball rolling, I have always hoped that someone would come up with a more creative solution to this problem.  For example, if the state simply went to civil unions entirely, the Christian churches could concentrate on building up relationships that really reflected the relationship between Christ and his church rather than had proper legal status, because the two would have a clear distinction.  Everyone else could pursue their own agendas for marriage and the family.

But that hasn’t happened. Gay marriage is what has been demanded.  In Canada, homosexual groups opposed the idea that civil marriage be abolished altogether.  Here and in the UK they’ve also opposed extending civil unions to heterosexual couples (as is the case in France.)

The result was commented on by Jeff Gannon of the Washington Blade:

Gay leaders demonized opponents of same-sex marriage as hateful bigots and homophobes, completely ignoring the religious and social motivations behind the opposition. The reality is that marriage as the union of one man and one woman is our most basic social institution and deeply rooted in our culture.

Even though during the last few thousands of years marriage has had some variations that departed from strict monogamy, same-sex combinations have never been one of them. Gay marriage represents such a fundamental change that few can grasp it, let alone support it.

Instead of waging efforts to change hearts and minds, gay movement leaders have tried to bludgeon opponents and pursued a strategy where a very small minority would impose its will on a vast majority though judicial fiat.

But back to Liam:

I have little patience for those who wish to be part of a private club for no reason other than that they have been told that the club does not want them.

Where were you when Augusta National needed you?  In case this news hasn’t filtered out your way, this country club (where the Masters golf tournament is played) has fought a long campaign to force it to admit women members.  But seriously, Liam has hit upon an important issue: freedom of association.  Liam’s desires notwithstanding, there is a substantial movement that would break freedom of association in the name of "fairness" and "anti-discrimination."  That’s what drove the litigation in NJ about the Boy Scouts.

We can float solutions like getting the state out of the marriage business, or allowing people to continue to exercise their First Amendment rights in freedom of religion and association.  But such ideas will probably sink in the storm of our political and social dynamic.

Liam’s response to my question is interesting:

Much as in religious marriage, it is absolutely forbidden by law to engage in a civil marriage unless the parties involved genuinely and demonstrably love each other… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Just kidding. The truth is that, much as in religious marriage, the answer to that question depends upon who is getting married. Two people could marry each other because they like the way each other cooks. Or looks. Or smells. Or because one of the people is pregnant. Or because one or both of them is/are being coerced. Or because each likes the way the other rolls the toothpaste up from the bottom. Or the way neither one of them uses toothpaste at all. Marriage is a contractual relationship; it is a formal legal agreement entered into between two consenting parties (which, by the way, is pretty much the hottest and most romantic thing I can imagine!)

Oh, and people can get married because they love each other, too. Unless they’re gay, of course. Then, even if they love each other more than any two people in history, it is against the law for them to get married almost everywhere in this country. Straight people can get married because they both hate the Pittsburgh Steelers, but it is clearly immoral for gay people who are committed to each other, who would die for one another, whose hearts beat for each other, to get married. For, if that were to happen, it would render the marriage between the Pittsburgh Steeler-haters utterly meaningless.

So, the answer is that the relationship between love and civil (or religious) marriage is everything or nothing. Again, thanks for asking.

Liam and I are looking at the problem from different vantage points.  He’s looking at it from the personal view (the view of those getting married) while I tend to focus on the entity doing the marrying: for civil marriage, the state.  There’s also a generational difference as well; if Liam’s Myspace data is correct, by the time he came into the world, much of the "revolution" was over with.

Gay marriage advocates (including Liam) tell us that they want gay and lesbian people to have the opportunity to express their love and commitment.  As far as love is concerned, from my vantage point love has nothing to do with it.  Any group of people–and I sincerely mean any–that needs the endorsement of the state to express their love is in deep trouble.  The state isn’t about love, it’s about power and control.  It sanctions the family for its own purposes, not for the couple’s.  From Liam’s side, as he says, it’s "everything or nothing."

As far as commitment is concerned, in the U.S. that quality of marriage has been in deep trouble since the institution of "no-fault" divorce, pretty much a fait accompli by the time Liam arrived.  Before no-fault divorce, it was necessary for one spouse to prove the other had acted in such a way as to break wedlock.  This discouraged divorce.  It seems draconian to us now, but, as I said, power and control is what the state is all about.  That’s the only tool it has.  So, from either side, I don’t see how gay marriage achieves those stated goals.

With the two different perspectives, there’s one other thing that needs to be noted: the pursuit of personal desires, be they good, bad, or indifferent, can produce unexpected consequences when applied to a political system, especially one like ours.  Let me take as an example Liam’s cause célèbre, gay adoption.

Let’s assume that we actually achieved gay adoption.  Now let’s assume that some adoption agencies, for religious or other reasons of conviction, decided not to place children with same-sex couples.  The sensible solution would be to give prospective parents their choice of agency (which they have now.)  If a same-sex couple wanted to adopt, they could go to an agency that facilitated that.  Chances are, most would.  For those who wanted otherwise, they could go somewhere else.  We would have choice and competition, after a fashion.

But that’s not how things work these days.  No, we all know that the state would eventually force all of the agencies to adopt same-sex couples, with the usual given rationale.  Institutions and sympathetic individuals who see this and other like things coming (like forcing ministers and churches to wed same sex couples whether they wanted to or not, even with the plethora of denominations and religious institutions out there) do what they have to: oppose gay marriage and adoption.  So we have political conflict.

It seems that freedom has become a "zero-sum" game, where enabling new freedoms for some people means taking away freedoms from others.  I find this disturbing.  If nothing else, this is a big country.  There should be room for everyone.  But, I suppose, as long as we have Boomers running the show, we’re stuck with our present situation.

Note: Liam presented a "contract" view of marriage.  For civil marriage, this is correct.  (After all, it’s the law!)  I’ll let the other religions speak for themselves, but for real Christian matrimony, this is not the case.

Earlier this week I responded to some email satire about gay marriage, adoption and other related issues.  Sure enough, I got an email answer, but, in a sign of progress, now same answer is posted on his blog.

Now that this debate can be pursued on a blog-to-blog basis, in reading Liam’s response there one thing that puzzles me: what does he think the relationship between love and civil marriage is?

P.S. It can be shown that I did know about the proper use of the word "alternative."