The Redwood Review Fiction of the Week

The Redwood Review fiction piece of the week is "from The Congregation," by Lori Dillman.

On the Stands, and in the Dark

Well, my regular subscription copy of the issue of National Review with my name on the cover has arrived. Whether or not that means that it is on the stands, I can't say, but be sure to pick up a copy and then write to the editors to request that the author whose piece begins on page 30 becomes a regular contributor.

For the sake of anybody who's arrived here as a result of the piece, I should mention one helpful feature of Dust in the Light: If you find that the layout makes for difficult reading, just click "Turn Light On" at the top of the left-hand column. That'll brighten and simplify things.

The Intricacies of Love and Hate

In "The Virtue of Hate," from the February 2003 issue of First Things, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik contrasts two exhortations — one Christian and one Jewish — that seem to touch the heart of the difference between the two religions (emphasis in original):

Arguing that the newly empowered South African blacks readily forgave their white tormentors, Tutu explains that they followed "the Jewish rabbi who, when he was crucified, said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." ...

[At the climax of Yom Kippur, Jews] have spent the past twenty–five hours meditating upon their sins and asking for forgiveness. Now, they suddenly turn their attention to those who gave no thought to forgiveness, no thought to God, no thought to the dignity of the Jewish people. After focusing on their own actions, Jews turn to those of others, and their parched throats mouth this message: "Father, do not forgive them, for they know well what they do."

The understanding of knowledge and awareness is the pervasive difference. And it bears not only on the object of hatred, but also on the source of it; the hater should know well what he does, too, as Soloveichik indicates when he writes the following:

The message is that hate allows us to keep our guard up, to protect us. When we are facing those who seek nothing but our destruction, our hate reminds us who we are dealing with.

The disheartening implication of this — disheartening especially because I don't recall ever hearing it disputed — is that love alone is a blinding emotion. "Burning hatred, once kindled, is difficult to extinguish," and hatred "must be very limited [and] directed" — suggesting that it can be applied with circumspection. Love, on the other hand, is granted no such controllability, no such thoughtfulness.

Christian love is not, however, the romantic love of complete abandonment. On the same topic as Soloveichik, Jeff Jacoby writes:

It defies reason and upends morality to claim that God loves both Saddam Hussein and the innocent Kurds he gassed to death -- that He bestows His love on Osama bin Laden no less than on the 3,000 souls he butchered on 9/11.

The minimized possibility, in this, is that God's love is not an indulgent, all-permissive love. Good parents teach their children right and wrong, and they will be disappointed when a child goes astray and stern when imparting the lesson. Their love, however, is constant. The modern popular imagination can only resort to pleas of denial to explain parents' persistent love even for progeny who turn toward evil, but that is an indictment of the modern popular imagination, not of love nor of God.

Christian love between people is not worship or adoration; it is the desire to serve, to help, and one cannot help others without honestly acknowledging their true natures. That is the difficult challenge: not to hide truth, blinding ourselves to the inroads that evil has made in others so that we can love them, but to realize others' faults and love nonetheless. Thus, in loving our enemies, we seek to comprehend the cracks through which evil has seeped into them and to help them free themselves of it.

This will involve insisting on repentance and recompense (and let us not underestimate the pain of coming to terms with direct personal culpability for travesties). It will also require care not to invite them to further sin through naive benignity.

Hatred, in contrast, blinds by diminishing the role that the hated person plays in our prescriptions. Hatred is predictable, because it is grounded in the intention to harm rather than the intention help its object. Hatred makes those who harbor it vulnerable to any enemy willing to accept it with a shrug. Hatred also blinds those who would make it a virtue to important lessons. Soloveichik relates the following as an example of the way in which hatred "allows us to keep our guard up":

The rabbis of the Talmud were bothered by a contradiction: the book of Kings describes Saul as killing every Amalekite, and yet Haman ["the Hitler of his time"], according to his pedigree in the book of Esther, was an Agagite, a descendant of the Amalekite king. The Talmud offers an instructive solution: after Saul had killed every Amalekite, he experienced a moment of mercy, and wrongly refrained from killing King Agag. This allowed Agag a window of opportunity; he had several minutes before he was killed by the angry Samuel. In those precious moments, Agag engaged in relations with a random woman, and his progeny lived on to threaten the Jews in the future.

In the Catholic Bible, this scene is chapter 15 of the first book of Samuel, which would support an entire discussion on its own. For now, the relevant point is that Soloveichik is presenting it as teaching the lesson that more hatred of Agag in Saul would have prevented Haman from ever having been born. (Properly gauging hatred, it would seem, is a tricky matter indeed.)

I see quite a different point: Haman was born, and hatred to the point of utter genocide did not prevent it. And the solution is to hate more? This is merely one thread in the entirety of the Old Testament, of course, but perhaps subsequent history would have been entirely different had Agag been treated according to the modified rule that Christians follow. I find it thematically suggestive that Haman's rampage begins when the Jewish Mordecai is alone among the king's servants in refusing to bow to him; enmity begets exchanges of genocide.

Rabbi Soloveichik states that there is "no minimizing the difference between Judaism and Christianity on whether hate can be virtuous," and the more one considers it, the more the question seems to relate to elemental beliefs. From a Christian point of view, the most profound reality that those who killed Jesus "knew not" was that theirs was an act of deicide. Borrowing a phrase from Jacoby, "those who torture and murder without qualm, who are pitiless in the pain they inflict on others," ignore what is sacred in every human being. In charity, we hope that they know not the spiritual truth of what they do.

That charity, as an expression of love, is critical for our own well-being. In order to hate, no matter how under control we believe the emotion to be, we must also turn our eyes from the sacred in those whom we hate. For hatred's sake, we deny that, somewhere within them, God is part of their true natures. In doing so, we deny that He is necessarily part of our own.

The Best Strategy for Writers: Do Everything

With reference to Donald Sensing's blog-based book pitch, Kathryn Lopez (whose POV is probably more that of an editor) suggests:

My guess is as soon as this idea catches on--pitching books online--it will become inefficient for book editors to look through the net for their next book. On the other hand, like the blogosphere works, a survival-of-the-fittest kind of filter might actually make it worthwhile.

This is obviously a topic in which I've a desperate interest. I spent years pursuing the established path toward publication, and then more years dabbling in self-publication. Now I've decided to blog-serialize a second edition (in a manner of seeing it) of my novel, A Whispering Through the Branches (beginning here, with the actual story beginning here). Through all of these endeavors, I've come to four related conclusions:

1. A ridiculous number of people are trying to become published authors.
2. Whether because of temperament, talent, or schedule, different routes toward publication will suit different ones.
3. Newer, more-innovative routes can give worthy writers a side door.
4. The essential lesson for aspiring writers is to try everything they possibly can.

Returning to Lopez's prediction, I'd suggest that her success in her area of publishing leads her to miss one factor: states of success vary for both writers and publishers. I imagine that she rarely — probably never — finds it necessary to scour the blogosphere or solicit contributions in order to fill an edition of NRO; when she does come a-callin', I imagine writers are very responsive. And the same will be true for major book publishers. Similarly, well-known writers don't require innovative methods of attracting publishers.

Lower down the hierarchy, however, all sides stand to gain the more routes they have to find each other. Publishers in the low-to-middle market, to whom writers might not think to send their proposals, benefit to the extent that they can go in search of open proposals. Some time at the computer can lead one to Sensing, in lieu of advertisement and unsolicited calls to agents and writers whose names the publisher stumbles across somehow. And obviously, unknown writers have nothing to lose by making their proposals available to anybody and everybody.

Of course, this idea is hardly new. I've had proposals online for years (although their longevity is mostly attributable to the perpetual postponement of a site redesign). The blog dimension adds only the ability to plug into an existing and expanding network of related content. Even with links from the likes of the Corner and Instapundit, however, the primary benefit of online pitches and proposals is that they'll increase the efficiency with which writers can move through established procedures — from query letter to proposal to samples to manuscripts.

The process will still involve a lot of work, and those who overestimate their ability (which may well include me, by the way) will still be disappointed. But the more paths there are, the more likely it is that the right people will connect and — perhaps more importantly — the more merit will overwhelm preexisting connections as a decisive factor.

The Redwood Review Nonfiction of the Week

The Redwood Review nonfiction piece of the week is "Are Adults Too Old for Young Adult Literature?," by Len DeAngelis.

The Walls of the Trap

Barbara Nicolosi has noticed the furtherance of some related themes:

The thing with evil is, it never relents. It never sleeps. It never retreats. It never pauses to catch its breath.

That's what I was thinking last Thursday while watching the last half of ER which featured an absolutely compelling and iron-clad dramatic defense for euthanasia....

I don't believe in media conspiracies, but it is amazing how everybody in the worlds of mainstream media and entertainment seem to get "on message" so fast. So, this week, for example, on Wednesday, I heard House minority leader Nancy Pelosi note on CNN that there really isn't any looming crisis in Social Security, and that the whole thing has been raised by the GOP to scare young people. Then, most of Wednesday and Thursday, AOL has the lead headline, "Bush says There is a Looming Social Security Crisis." "Hmmmm..." I thought. "Since when, don't we all agree that Social Security is in trouble?"

Then, I catch the ER episode on Thursday night, and I started to see the next horizon. It all fits together for anyone who wants to see it.

You see it, I trust?

Gonna Anyway

Rebecca Hagelin makes a good point:

When it comes to other topics -- smoking, drinking, drug abuse -- we don't hesitate to give our children the benefit of an unambiguous "no." We tell them flat out that they shouldn't do it. If anyone said, "But kids are going to drink any way, so let's show them how they can minimize the effects of a hangover," most parents would suggest that that person have his head examined.

Yet who can deny that the same logic (or lack thereof) lies behind the push for "comprehensive" sex ed?

I'm actually for lowering the drinking age and, in the interim, using a bit of common sense when it comes to older kids and drinking. But Hagelin's basic point applies to any number of topics. They're going to cheat anyway... they're going to drive recklessly anyway...

The Redwood Review Poem of the Week

The Redwood Review poem of the week is "Elsewhere," by B.E. Delaplain.

The Nightmare Is a Relentless Killer

When I was a boy, my parents bought me several history books disguised as large-format children's books — with such titles as The Invaders and How They Lived in Cities Long Ago. To confess, they generally went untouched.

However, there was one such book (which I can't find in any of my still-packed boxes) that made an impression. One part of it was about an ancient city by the water whose inhabitants had been eradicated by a tidal wave. As I recall, there was a photograph of the site, now at the top of a cliff with water markings all down its face, and an artist's rendering of the disaster in process.

Tidal waves and tsunamis always held a place in my imagination. I pictured a wall of water hundreds of feet high that didn't actually break until it hit the shoreline and then came crashing down. And I was — it is now irksome to admit — disappointed years later when I saw video footage in one of those spectacularized documentaries about natural disasters. Looking back, the first word of the term "tidal wave" should have made it clear that at issue was a very rapid and high change in the tide — not a breaking, crashing, tubing wave.

Watching videos of the tsunami in Southeastern Asia, however, makes the category of disaster quite a bit more terrifying than even my false conception. The water is relentless. It just keeps coming, and rising — like the water in a sinking ship, only as if the land itself is sinking. There is no stark line against the skyline, sickly thrilling in its way, to watch approach and then pass. Instead there's just the water and the terror of wondering whether it will stop rising before people run out of secure things on which to climb. The step, the desk, the windowsill.

Being near the shoreline becomes no different than being in a raft capsizing in a fast-moving river. Passing objects, rocks, hands come so close that it seems implausible that they cannot be reached. But like the nightmare of a panicked run in place, progress cannot be made.

I've been too long in making the time to write this, but my prayers have already been going out to everybody who lived that nightmare and the thousands of others who survived only to find countless nightmares of differing terror.

"Once You Submit, There Won't Be Any Need for Them to Intimidate You"

Be sure to watch the video linked in this WorldNetDaily article about the arrest and prosecution of Christian demonstrators at an event for Philadelphia homosexuals:

The four are part of 11 demonstrators who went before the Philadelphia Municipal Court in a preliminary hearing this week. Judge William Austin Meehan Tuesday ordered four of the Christians to stand trial on three felony and five misdemeanor charges. If convicted, they could a maximum of 47 years in prison. ...

Eight charges were filed: criminal conspiracy, possession of instruments of crime, reckless endangerment of another person, ethnic intimidation, riot, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct and obstructing highways.

As far as I can tell, almost all of the charges apply at least in equal measure to the gay activists, none of whom were arrested or charged with anything. First, the Christian group required police to break up an arm-linked human barrier to the event that spanned the sidewalk (obstructing highways). Next the Christians were followed around by a cluster of activists sporting huge pink signs — to enclose the Christians within moving walls — and blowing whistles to drown them out (possession of instruments of crime, ethnic intimidation, failure to disperse, and disorderly conduct). And apparently, the treatment of the Christian demonstrators was planned and announced beforehand (criminal conspiracy). As for reckless endangerment and riot, those seem completely without merit all around.

The "ethnic intimidation" charge is the most outrageous. A handful of Christians were entirely surrounded by stone-faced activists and moving amid shouted quips from the crowd, including from a speaker on the stage of the event. Furthermore, the Christians were the clear and singled-out focus of the authorities on the scene. The Orwellian twisting of principle is best consolidated in a statement from one of the police officers to the Christian group's leader: "There's going to be no need for their pink signs, because you're not going to have your signs."

ADDENDUM:
Robert Walker-Smith makes a point in the comments that is worth further discussion:

At the major local such event (in San Francisco), such protestors are given a clearly demarcated area to pray in, wave their signage from, and so on, separated from the parade proper by barricades and a line of police officers. Thus, no such incidents - which seems to bother the parade participants and organizers not at all. And the protestors are there every year.

That seems to me a perfectly legitimate strategy for a municipality to balance the demands that are justly made of public space. In fact, it's probably advisable, given the extreme differences in worldview of our nation's citizens. In developing the policy, all people who think it likely that they'll want to either host a public event or protest one will be able to participate in the public debate with a view toward what they'd find acceptable from either position.

What isn't legitimate is an ad hoc solution such as conveyed on the video — with one officer following the group around telling the protestors that they can go anywhere because it's a public walkway, then telling its members that they can stand in a particular spot, and then other officers' coming in and arbitrarily ordering the protestors to retreat to a particular street.

As mentioned in the comments, WND clearly isn't an unbiased source, and the video could have been edited to exclude important factors. But as it appears on the tape, it looks as if the police were attempting to corral the group away from the event not in accordance with any particular law, but using various and shifting demands without assertions of law.

Putting Pieces Together for the MSM

Last week, I noted that the Providence Journal editorial page had taken the surprising position that disconnecting healthcare from employment might encourage hiring. Today, I point out over on Anchor Rising that the very same editorial page is advising Massachusetts to pass legislation requiring all employers to... pay for employees' healthcare. Ugh.

Divine Inspiration in the Arts

One of my fortunate discoveries, this fall, after I'd come to the stunning revelation that not all music with an explicitly Christian message is saturated with a trying-too-hard unctuousness, was Who We Are Instead by Jars of Clay. A review by Mark Joseph that I'd read in early August was absolutely glowing, and it ended by pointing to another revelation:

Among these [fans], ironically enough, is U2's front man Bono, who recently noted, "I've had their version of the song 'Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet' in my car for a year now, and you know what — it never has failed me yet."

Not surprisingly, given my past, I'd never heard U2 described in a Christian context before I began sifting through the Christian neighborhoods of the blogosphere, but apparently the theme has been there all along.

In the time since I read Joseph's review of Jars of Clay, the more-famous of the two bands has released what is being declared its "most conspicuously Christian record," and I can't help but wonder if there's been a Christian music equivalent of what the business folks call "upward management." Is the mainstream, commercial success of such bands as Creed, Sixpence None the Richer, and Jars of Clay beginning to make it acceptable again for pop/rock stars to express their faith? To come out?

That may or may not be the case, but the possibility does indicate a damaging bifurcation of faith and public life that has spread across more aspects of society than music. In a review of a previous album by Jars of Clay, Mark Joseph noted the band's fight to be treated "in the category that describes their music (pop/rock), not the category that describes their faith (gospel)." For too long, now, there has been religion and there has been culture, and one could fully integrate with one by becoming a stranger to the other.

That reality detracts from both aspects of our society, and it would be a mistake to see it as the work of only one side. Doug Giles describes the issue from the other angle:

Since God is the self-existent Lord of the universe and accountable to no one, he could have made the world in which we live completely beige. He could have been a minimalist who only shops at West End. He's God and can do what he wants. Instead, God dumped a lot of unnecessary splendor on us, expressly for our enjoyment. And you know what ... this freaks out the altar-call-driven, number-crunching, pragmatic, no-taste Church-goer because it seems that such expenditure is a waste of time, space and energy.

It sounds oversimple to say it, but at least part of life's purpose is to live, and arts and culture enhance that experience. The opposing reflection of this truism is that arts and culture lose their force without meaning and lose their coherence when disengaged from philosophy. Religion and culture oughtn't be kept distinct any more than they ought to be self-consciously melded. Each is ubiquitous in a person's life, and if we return to the practice of peering through life where they overlap most visibly, we will surely bring about a renaissance in the decades to come.

Songs You Should Know 12/28/04

The Timshel Music Song You Should Know this week is "Gegwsi" by Mr. Chu.

"Gegwsi" Mr. Chu, Hard Rock
Stream (HiFi) Download from Chu's Next

Call Off the Culture War

Back when Janet Jackson's Super Bowl striptease and Howard Stern's usual antics inspired the Senate to increase the fines for indecency to a level at which media corporations wouldn't sniff at the penalty,* Jeff Jarvis began a post titled "The Daily Stern: Taps for the First Amendment" as follows:

TEARING DOWN THE BILL OF RIGHTS: Religious fundamentalists, organized as a Dumb Mob, just dealt a deadly blow to free speech in America with legislators, cynical hypocrites, as their henchmen and media standing idly by, the short-sighted quislings.

Jarvis titled another post, specifically about reaction to the Super Bowl incident, "Book burners." To this rhetoric, somebody who disagrees with Jarvis's general position might be inclined to respond thus:

There is no religous war in America. That ended more than two centuries ago. And now we enjoy the benefits of that struggle. We should be grateful for that and stop squandering it with squabbles.

I didn't write that; Jeff Jarvis did. When religious citizens insist on a standard of propriety in the public square, their expression is "the organized effort of one Dumb Mob." When the argument is over religious displays in the public square, both sides need to "grow up and count their blessings" — and quietly put their creches "anywhere else." If only we could all develop Jarvis's fine-tuned sense of what is "silly" and what is "ridiculous." (Disallowing "an instrumental version of a Christmas ditty" receives the first adjective, but what about disallowing the lyrics to be sung?)

In Jarvis's view, "we are fortunate enough to have a First Amendment that guarantees our freedom to worship... yet we squander that fortune, that blessing, with silly, egotistical, show-off squabbles." I wonder what religious freedom amounts to, though, if the extent of worship — of religious expression — is not an open question. Jarvis (a Congregationalist whose sect's expression of theism is not generally targeted for restriction) has an understanding of the church-state relationship that is not incompatible even with radical secularism. But what of those who disagree fundamentally about the appropriate roles both of religion and of the law? Is it squandering the fortune of religious freedom to insist that citizens have a right to make their religion visible in their public capacity, even when others strenuously disagree, or does it contribute to that fortune?

There is no more expedient way to kill religion than to treat it as a private taste, a fashionable sensibility. Religion dies from silence. Among my most startling discoveries upon opening myself up to the possibility of faith was that people actually believe that stuff. What's more, thoughtful, reasonable, intelligent people believe that stuff! How is it possible that I could grow up not understanding this in a country in which 96% of citizens celebrate Christmas? I'd say that the answer is not unrelated to the willingness of people in '80s–'90s Northern New Jersey to be accommodating enough to say "happy holidays" so as not to offend.

Jarvis makes a puzzling statement when he says "millions around the world would die -- yes, die -- to enjoy" our freedom of worship. I'd suggest that submitting to death would be a counterproductive approach to enjoying anything in this life. As for securing religious freedom — broadly speaking — for others, accepting death has what might be called an extramundane precedent. The more insidious danger to religion and expression thereof is that we'll all learn to keep our lips prudently sealed about God out of concern that "He would roll His eyes"... you know, if He really existed.

* Jarvis argues that the amounts are such that he "can be bankrupted for making what is, in fact, political speech." Putting aside the what and whether of political speech, a wry chuckle is in order with the application of perspective. According to the Washington Post piece to which Jarvis links, the fine had been $32,500; frankly, that's more than enough to bankrupt somebody in my circumstances.

If Jarvis wants to argue that such fines ought to be relative to the person or organization that violates a particular rule or that there ought to be an explicit procedure for seeking mitigation, that would certainly be a reasonable suggestion — one that I'd support. It mightn't even be adequate that Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) added language to the penalty change in order to allow "the FCC to consider [smaller-market broadcasters'] size when assessing fines." But somehow, I think Jarvis would rather push for the removal of all fines than consent to making existing fines more fair.

A Note on the Previous Post

The previous post has elicited recriminations to the effect that comparisons between homosexual activists and Islamicists are beyond the pale. Often, such reactions seem designed merely to shut down a sensitive debate. Be their intentions as they may, there's an important point to be made about them.

Mike Hubbard writes that it "seems especially repugnant, given that Islamic fundamentalists try to stone and murder homosexuals at every turn, for you to compare the two." His suggestion might be an appropriate response if I'd made a general equivalence between the two groups, but what I actually did was to address each group in the context of a particular issue. No matter how much any two groups despise each other, they still share the same world, and the actions of each will affect the other, as well as society at large. As commenter smmtheory puts it, ruling comparison of any sort out of bounds removes the ability to ask "what the possible outcome could be when two such totally divergent ideologies seek the same goal of redefining marriage."

Joel Thomas takes a moderately different approach from Hubbard: "You[, Justin], as a fundamentalist Catholic, may have more in common with Islamic fundamentalists than do gay activists." Putting aside the ambiguity of what constitutes a "fundamentalist Catholic" and my skepticism that the term applies to me, I'd say that Joel's assertion is possibly, if not likely, true.

Along a general spectrum of worldviews, I might be somewhat closer to Islamicists than is the average advocate for same-sex marriage. In such a case, it would be even more dangerous for me to bristle dismissively at delimited points of comparison. It might be true that taking certain of my views to a distorted extreme would approximate the views of Islamic fundamentalists. How else am I to find the line — and keep well away from it — unless I'm willing to be candid about comparisons?

The other option, one that is all too common in the modern West, is to be the deliberate opposite of a hated group. Unfortunately, as I began by pointing out, opposites can come around to supporting the same ends. I can only hazard to guess this, not knowing his politics, but there may be evidence of "coming around to the enemy's side" at the very beginning of Hubbard's comment:

Striving to change the nature of society, which both Islamists and gay activists are trying to do, is sometimes a necessary and useful process. The abolitionists of the 19th century were radically altering society, but I think, Mr. Katz, you agree with me that so terrible a society that allowed slavery needed to be changed. Indeed, it was the Christian thing to do.

That, to my eye, looks like a far more problematic comparison than anything I wrote. The question that ultimately arises is which of the two disagreeable camps — Islamofascists and Western conservatives — Western radicals choose to align with.

A Convergence of Issues

What do Islamic fundamentalists and gay activists have in common? Both are striving to change the nature of marriage in Western society:

The Inland Revenue is considering recognising polygamy for some religious groups for tax purposes. Officials have agreed to examine "family friendly" representations from Muslims who take up to four wives under sharia, the laws derived from the Koran. Existing rules allow only one wife for inheritance tax purposes. The Revenue has been asked to relax this so that a husband’s estate can be divided tax-free between several wives. The move is bound to create controversy if it leads to a change in the rules. It is seen as a breakthrough by Muslim leaders who have been campaigning to incorporate sharia into British domestic law.

Michelle Malkin, to whom the link above leads, casts this primarily as an issue of Islamic nonassimilation, and I mean this post to make no profound statement of comparison between the two interest groups nor to assign relative importance to the threats that they represent. My point in posting this is that the ways in which these issues churn in our society make cultural deterioration unpredictable and rapid.

Our society must maintain the strength of its historically unique cultural foundation in order to keep the various forces that it allows expression from pulling it apart.

ADDENDUM:
Of course, I also don't mean to imply that there are no profound points of comparison. This isn't the only issue on which Islamists and Leftists find themselves working toward the same end, after all. And one could argue that same-sex marriage and sharia marriage law bear some similarity in that they both essentially insist that society assimilate itself to the cultures of minorities.

ADDENDUM II:
Thanks to Michelle for pointing out (in an update to her post) that I'm "on the same wavelength" in this post as Mark Steyn in a column from today's Telegraph:

When I mentioned the Pensions News item in a North American column on same-sex marriage, I was besieged by e-mails from huffy gays indignant at being compared with some up-country Nigerian wives-beater. "It's not the same thing at all," they insisted. But why? If the gender of the participants is no longer relevant, why should the number be? "Don't be ridiculous," they huffed back. "There's no demand for it." Au contraire, recent investigations into de facto polygamy in Muslim communities in France and Ontario suggest that even in Western jurisdictions there'll be many more takers for polygamy than for gay nuptials.

And why should only practising Muslims be entitled to its tax benefits? If you're a travelling salesman with a wife in Solihull and a mistress in Stockport, why shouldn't your better halves enjoy the same equality of treatment from the Revenue as Mullah Omar's get? Polygamy could solve an awful lot of problems, not least among my colleagues at The Spectator.

Studio Matters Notes & Commentary

The latest Notes & Commentary essay by Maureen Mullarkey is "Just Looking," reviewing Dawn Clements at Pierogi, Dawn Clements at Feigen Contemporary, and Uri Blayer at Tatistcheff Gallery.

Barton Answers His Own Question

Both sides of the same-sex marriage debate surely believe that large segments of the other side are beyond persuasion. In many cases, perhaps they are correct, although I'd obviously suggest that those firmly against the innovation stand on better, more-relevant ground. I, for one, can only assert that I am not unpersuadable, but that I've read and written about the topic so much over the past few years that I can fairly state that arguments several degrees of obviousness deep have not been adequate to change my mind.

What those who complain about intransigence are usually reacting to is the impression of fruitless debate. From the perspective of advocates for same-sex marriage, the other side is merely covering up their bigotry or "homophobia" (a term that still sounds to me as if it ought to mean "fear of things that are the same," such as twins). From the perspective of advocates against it, the other side often seems simply not to take their arguments seriously; they are, after all, merely indulging bigots in order to fend off popular action before court action can render it prohibitively difficult. Consequently, supporters' arguments come to feel merely like debate rhetoric and linguistic manipulation.

Consider Mark Barton's conclusion at the end of a post spent insisting that homophobia underlies every argument against same-sex marriage:

I couldn't care less how big a transformation it seems to Maggie [Gallagher] or people of like mind, nor am I under the slightest obligation to care. All I care about is whether there are any valid arguments that on balance people will be worse off as a result of the transformation.

Well then, if those are the rules, then I couldn't care less how obvious a right it seems to Mark or people of like mind. Ought I be cowed by accusations of "homophobia"? Ha! Not if I am not under the slightest obligation to care what homosexuals and their supporters think or feel.

Now that we've reached this impasse, all that remains to our struggle is power, and indeed, SSM supporters are counting on the power of the courts. In opposition, supporters of traditional marriage are counting on the power of the people. And here we've gone and tangled up a discrete cultural debate with dangerous issues of the balance of power in our government. To co-opt a commonplace, the judiciary that grants a right to redefined marriage is one that can take that "right" — and many more, and more critical, rights — away.

Personally, I'd prefer to avoid the further deterioration of our representative democracy, so it is fortunate that Barton's rhetoric leaves discussion open. Even by his own terms, there are "valid arguments" against same-sex marriage. In a previous post in this thread, he states the following:

I suggest that any view that tacitly or otherwise presumes that gay (i.e., same-sex attracted) people should be in opposite-sex relationships or not in relationships at all is quintessentially homophobic.

Some people do hold this view, but it is not an essential component of the logic that dictates against same-sex marriage. In the first post quoted here, Mark declares it "a complete non-sequitur" from the idea that all opposite-sex couples should be married to "the idea that gay couples should not be able to get married." Curiously, he doesn't make as big a deal about the non-sequitur from the belief that all sexually active straight couples should be married to the belief that homosexuals should "not [be] in relationships at all."

Again, some people do hold the latter belief. (And they'd surely contest the assertion that their view is invalid.) The relevant point to the marriage debate, however, is that encouraging marriage among a group whose sexual activity can produce children need say nothing about a group whose sexual activity cannot — except inasmuch as the latter group wishes to diminish the importance of that difference.

Such a wish would certainly be consistent with Barton's lack of care for the concerns of his opposition. For marriage to serve any social purpose, however, what Maggie, like-minded people, and all people believe its purpose to be is absolutely paramount. A central concern of we who advocate against same-sex marriage is that its purpose will shift to what has heretofore been merely a means — affirmation, normalization — to a larger (more selfless) end.

It is not "homophobic" to point to differences between heterosexual and homosexual couples when those differences amount to something as crucial as the creation — often all too casual — of new human life. And it would be foolhardy to attempt to include homosexuals by redefining marriage as an institution into which all couples who are sexually active should enter. That standard slipped long ago, and to be honest, I've never heard a single supporter of same-sex marriage speak out against non-marital sex. When conversation approaches that necessity, the rhetoric compounds.

Exposition, Chapter 1 (p. 7-12)

The woman was kneeling penitently on a large stone, which jutted out into the stream, watching her tears collide ripplingly with those that rose upward from her oppositely kneeling reflection in the pool of calm water between the current and its eddy, and she nearly fell in when a voice drifted across to her from a nearby cluster of bushes:

"You must learn to do without those if it is your intention to stay."

As she turned, startled, to face the speaker, she sat back and, in reflex, tried to dig her fingers into the rock to secure her position. The fake nail from her left ring finger fluttered into the water and floated down the stream. "Excuse me?"

"The tears," replied the man from within his thick silver beard. "You cannot scatter them here."

He now stood at the edge of rock and earth, where the soil petered off unevenly, looking very much the part of a roaming ascetic in his sorely worn, off-white robe, his thumbs tucked each into a pocket of a brown jacket. His long gray hair hung loosely around a deeply wrinkled, gnomish face that seemed to serve only as a contrast to his blue eyes, which had that dull bloodshot glow that is falsely suggestive of depth.

"What?" asked the woman, stalling, gathering options with each sidelong glance.

"Come, remove yourself from your headland, and I'll relate the entire story," and with this puzzling promise he extended his hand.

"I think I'll stay here for now."

Rising cautiously to her feet, the woman wiped dirt from her hands and sized up the stranger. She was nearing a resolution that he was, at most, 5:7, when her glance intermingled with his. He lowered his hand and with the slightest of grins said, "Well, it is the Sabbath, after all."

At that moment, in the inexplicable fashion of divine whim, her rubber-soled hiking boots lost their grip, and she slid into the stream. The water, still icy cold from a Winter not long thawed, seeped its chill fingers into the fibers of her clothing and strove to pull her along on its pilgrimage through the woods. Clawing instinctively at the stone upon which she had just been standing, the woman was relieved to find a hand reaching out for hers. She succumbed to its grasp and was raised as though newly baptized from the pool, now missing another nail, this time the right pointer.

The man stripped the jacket from his back and draped it over her shoulders, "We'll have to get you to some dry clothing. Come, I don't live far from here."

"W-w-wait," she chattered through her shivering lips, "my c-car."

"Think not twice on it. Things like that have a way of waiting for their owners."

"N-no, I have clothes."

"Well, I don't see the point in removing one set of doused clothing only to saturate another when I've a fire burning yet as we speak and a pantry full of food. Just a short jaunt away, really. It can't be much farther than your car, n'est-ce pas?"

"I ap-appreciate it, r-really, but I'd r-rather not."

Smiling as only old men in the company of younger women can, the man said, "So you've found me out. I must admit that I'm not being completely selfless. I haven't had company these many months, and I'm afraid that I must insist on the pleasure of yours. Come, I'm being as insouciant as I can, so it will be an insult to my veracity if you refuse."

She paused, perhaps attempting to reconcile a justly imparted fear of strange men in the forest with a poorly taught standard for etiquette, then said blankly, "But I don't even know who you are."

"Alas, that is the way it must always begin," he explained, gesturing toward a path into the trees. "My name is John."

He was a small man, after all, so what had she, a full grown and independent woman, to fear?

When motion had persuaded her blood to flow and moments had helped to settle her meandering thoughts, the woman halted in her march and leaned back, a sapling as her support, and asked, appropriately, "Who are you?"

"I've told you as much as you'd be apt to listen to for the time being," replied John in a rehearsedly candid way as he stopped his own advancement and turned toward her. "Don't worry, you needn't fear for your safety; my intentions are wholly ingenuous."

"Be that as it may, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of being led off into the wilderness by a complete stranger."

"Young lady, the only artifice I have is to assist you and to secure for myself some companionship for the afternoon. You may, if you like, depart from my company and make your escape back to the metropolis from which you undoubtedly came, but let me assure you that we are now approaching as civilized a home as you are apt to find in the whole of the modern world. As for my leading you, well, I can only opine that you have made it thus far of your own volition and will most likely complete the journey through mere happenstance if left to your own devices. As importunate as our lack of acquaintance may temporarily appear to be, it is an obstacle which can only be overcome by each of us embarking on lengthy discourses, disclosing our chronologies and ideologies — a procedure that would hardly serve to evade any onslaught of influenza that may be impending in your future. So, if it helps, let us consider our cognizance of each other as inherently imparted and merely pending a more opportune moment for aggrandizing." His speech complete, John resumed his singular procession and muttered to himself, "Leading her into the wilderness, indeed."

Gripping the stalk of the young tree for a moment longer, the woman considered John, her head tilted like a curious puppy, and at last resigned herself to following. He had, after all, implied that he was alone. "Wait!"

John turned his head slightly toward the woman but continued walking.

"My name is D..."

Spinning quickly, and not gracefully, John spurted, "Utt-utt! That name will not do here. You must remain anonymous until you find one that better suits you." And he continued on his way.

Running the distance between herself and John, D. finally slowed to a complementary pace at his side and, after a few moments of walking and consideration, asked half jokingly, "Are there very many rules to name-picking in your forest?"

"They are not my rules any more than this is my forest. But it is my firm belief that they are sound rules despite their dubious nature, laid forth, as they are, by one so much greater than I."

"And who, pray tell, is that?"

"Why, Nathaniel, of course."

"Is this his land?"

"No, this over-hallowed ground is merely the foundation upon which he builds his cathedral, and these fruitless trees just the fodder for the great fire he incites in all who come to know him. But he makes the most prudent use of this otherwise barren society, so it is only fitting that he impart the regulations."

To assure herself that John was, in fact, alone, D. stated — reflecting in sarcasm — "Well, I'll have to look forward to meeting him."

"You shall. He generally comes to call before the Summer's quite arrived."

She chuckled. "That's a bit longer than I plan to hang around."

A cool breeze sifted through the branches and trifled John's hair like so many long blades of grass in a field. The playful gust seemed to be more the cause of his dry chuckle than any precognitive knowledge as he said, "Do as you like."

"I'd like to get out of these clothes."

"Again, do as you like," he said with a wry smile.

D. was glad that she hadn't decided to change in her car. Whatever his vocabulary, John was probably the epitome of a dirty old man, neither above nor beneath hiding in the bushes to watch a pretty woman undress. Still, as is the case with many dirty old men, there was something in John's manner that persuaded D. that he was harmless.

Stumbled by a protruding root, she steadied herself on his arm and regained her poise. "So do you stay out here by yourself all winter?"

"No, people pass through from time to time. Even when I'm left on my own, I've plenty to occupy myself. Plenty of wood to cut. Windows to polish, stray nails to hammer."

"You sound like quite the handyman."

"In a way. But I prefer to think of myself as a straightener. I keep things as they ought to be ordered. There's much that can go awry in an old house like ours when I'm the only one around to fix it."

"Do you get paid for the work or something?"

"Paid? What need have I for money? I've a shelter. I've bread enough to eat. The sunrise, sunset, and plenty to read between."

"Still, it seems a shame that you're stuck here."

"Miss, I've been out there in the real world before, and believe me when I tell you that I am much better off here."

"So you volunteer to remove yourself from the world."

"I consider it," pausing to form the phrase, "one of the detrimental quirks of modern society that none are any longer content to look after the way station. And I suppose you will fault me doubly for keeping it for somebody else rather than myself. But I will relinquish my own causes. They've never done me aught but harm, anyway. If I labor for the tranquillity of others, then I am enlarged. If I am the main source of support for the steeple, then am I not greater than the pews? It seems to me an honor to be the voice shouting in the desert rather than the close-mouthed whimpering begging aimlessly for forgiveness."

D. let the subject drop. She knew what was at issue here. A pity when people are so fooled into another's dogma that they willingly forsake their own right to self-realization. She wondered if she hadn't fallen into the hands of some diabolic sect and resolved to escape once her shivers were calmed and her hunger sated. She had had previous encounters with overzealous followers and self-proclaimed oracles and would not consent to being corrupted and so was immune. Her will was strong enough that she would not turn over her personality when she knew in her own heart what was true: that people are, each of them in their own right, both beggar and messiah. Perhaps she would report the cult to a friend of hers who dealt with deprogramming the brainwashed.

The pair, each considering the other's covenants, wandered wordlessly until they came to the peak of a hill, where the trees sprung up less densely and the sun beat down with as much force as is possible to muster in mid-March. As they began their descent down the other side, it occurred to D. that the work is never done, and can be found even in the middle of nowhere, for a person who would rid the world of deception. Perhaps this disciple could be saved simply, D. supposed, "He must be a great man, this Nathaniel."

"He most definitely is. It is a rare thing, indeed, to have the opportunity to call one so vital a friend."

"How did you come to be his messenger?"

John stopped and looked into the face of this foreign lady who had shown an interest in Nathaniel by expressing curiosity about himself, but his look held a secret that made it seem as though he understood her ulterior motive and had resolved to use it. For a moment, D. wasn't so confident that her assessment had been correct.

He smiled, revealing well-polished teeth that had at some previous time been left to rot beyond a full recovery, and she returned the gesture. Looking up at the sky and taking in the height of the sun, John bent to pick up a fairly thick stick. He looked along its length, plucked from it the remnants of broken twigs, and, slowly peeling the bark from one end to fashion a handle, resumed his stroll at a more conversational pace. Realizing that the bare wood was insufficient for the breadth of his hand, he stopped and extended the flaying. Satisfied, he continued his progress. D. followed, and the tale was begun.

Merry You-Know-What!

I'm a little late in the day with this, but I figured anybody who'd be checking Dust in the Light on Christmas Day would know that I wish you all the most joyous of holidays.

Tomorrow comes inexorably, as does the new year, but as the months hurtle by, we do well to take seriously our periodic reminders of God's presence in our lives and the love that He generates.

God bless you all, and may the spirit of this day remain with you every day and evermore.

The Redwood Review Fiction of the Week

The Redwood Review fiction piece of the week is "Granda," by Christine L. Mullen.

Ether Out, Anchor In

I'm sorry to report that Michael Williams has decided to discontinue the multiblog feature in which I'd been participating, Into the Ether. His doing so, however, opened up space (and left me with unused technology) for something that I'd been intending to do anyway.

Scrolling down a bit, you'll find on the sidebar that I've now included an automated list of current posts on Anchor Rising. If anybody is interested in doing the same, there is a bit of a process to accomplishing it, but I'd happily work through it again for others.

The Redwood Review Nonfiction of the Week

The Redwood Review nonfiction piece of the week is "The Plane Ride," by Gary Bolstridge.

Thoughts and Giggles

A couple of items that are especially worth a read over on NRO today:

VDH sides with Rumsfeld (emphasis Hanson's):

So it is with the latest feeding-frenzy over Donald Rumsfeld. His recent spur-of-the-moment — but historically plausible — remarks to the effect that one goes to war with the army one has rather than the army one wishes for angered even conservatives. The demands for his head are to be laughed off from an unserious Maureen Dowd — ranting on spec about the shadowy neocon triad of Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle — but taken seriously from a livid Bill Kristol or Trent Lott. Rumsfeld is, of course, a blunt and proud man, and thus can say things off the cuff that in studied retrospect seem strikingly callous rather than forthright. No doubt he has chewed out officers who deserved better. And perhaps his quip to the scripted, not-so-impromptu question was not his best moment. But his resignation would be a grave mistake for this country at war, for a variety of reasons.

And John Derbyshire offers fodder for levity with his rewritten Christmas carols. I particularly like "The ACLU's Coming to Town."

Recognizing a Name

The author listed in the corner of the latest print edition cover of National Review (writing about Andrew Sullivan) has a familiar name:

Skimming the online version, I see the author apparently writes for this blog and Anchor Rising. Interesting development.

The Redwood Review Poem of the Week

The Redwood Review poem of the week is "Numb," by Janette van de Geest Van Gruisen.

Cross Purposes

Because it has a New England angle, I posted over on Anchor Rising my thoughts about the Vermont Veteran Home's removal of a plain cross from its property. Thought y'all might like to know.

The Other Stem Cells

You've surely come across Michael Fumento's excellent piece on adult stem cell research, but it's worth noting here anyway. (In part to make it easier for me to find it for future reference.)

There's no scientific research so promising that it can't be hyped further. Still, the ASCs — which the Democrats won't acknowledge, and which the New York Times recently claimed have proved futile in treating human illness — have actually been helping people in the U.S. since 1968. On one website you'll find a list, far from comprehensive, of almost 80 therapies currently using ASCs. This is treatment — not practice or theory. Incredibly, there are also about 300 clinical trials involving ASCs.

Songs You Should Know 12/21/04

The Timshel Music Song You Should Know this week is "So Simple a Song" by Victor Lams. Sometimes this song just hits the spot, brightening the morning.

"So Simple a Song" Victor Lams, Pop/Rock
Stream (HiFi) Download
from Robot Love

Delenda Est 2004

Items to post are still a-pilin' up in my bookmarks, but I haven't been able to get to them. I didn't plod off the truck until dinnertime last night, and it had been a rough day, in part because of the snow and in part because everybody seems to have ordered their large Christmas presents for delivery this week. The workday went quickly, though, and at least I've managed to cover our bills for the month.

I'm not sure what I'll do come January, but the ten remaining days of 2004 feel like a painfully long time for the end of a sweet dream turned nightmare. Better to lay down the marker into a bad beginning and strive to end a new year well.

Studio Matters Note & Commentary

The latest Notes & Commentary essay by Maureen Mullarkey is just what its title suggests: "Gallery-Going Round-up." The three included exhibitions for which I was able to find online samples were Jane Wilson at DC Moore Gallery, Charles Cajori at Lohin Geduld Gallery, and Stuart Shils at Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

Healthcare Not Given, Healthcare Out of Reach

I'm increasingly convinced that tying healthcare to employment is just about the worst approach to either:

Other analyses cite the soaring costs of health insurance as a damper on hiring. The best jobs come with health coverage, and employers are reportedly afraid to take on new people for whom they'd have to buy health insurance. And so, rather than add to their personnel, these companies just work the employees they have harder.

This dynamic may partially explain why government-given healthcare jumps to the top of the general list of solutions. A person who doesn't receive a good job because of high health insurance costs to the company is a person who can't afford to buy insurance on his own. It's all or nothing. So, the thinking might go, since it is problematic to get companies to "give" employees coverage, a more-universal entity must "give" it to people: the government.

That, needless to say (on this blog, anyway), presents a whole different range of problems. I'd prefer to work for my money and pay for my own health insurance; others among my fellow citizens apparently differ, and a fair, workable blended solution has not been the subject of extensive public investigation and debate.

Institutions Under Siege

PROEM:
I posted this over on Anchor Rising, but it's clearly a matter of interest to Dust in the Light's audience, and it's short enough that I thought I'd just copy the whole thing here.

Having read "Hendricken administrator arrested on indecent solicitation charge" in the Providence Journal, I think I'd have written the headline somewhat differently. This sounds most newsworthy as a success story. The relevant information comes in paragraphs seven through ten of the fourteen-paragraph piece:

Sheldon had been placed on paid administrative leave from the school last month because of allegations of a "breach of professional conduct," Brother Thomas R. Leto, school president, said at that time.

The action was taken, Brother Leto said then, after he had been made aware that Sheldon may have taken some inappropriate actions on the Internet.

Brother Leto said that he and the school principal were directed to a Web site, where they saw Sheldon's picture. They decided to immediately place him on leave.

School officials then contacted the Diocese of Providence, who referred the matter to the state police. Bishop Hendricken High School, an all-male Catholic school run by the Christian Brothers, is affiliated with the diocese.

Look, on a human level, people who incline a certain way will be drawn toward environments that stoke their inclinations. On a spiritual level, evil will be relentless in its attempted infiltration of that which points toward the divine. The important question, on either level, is whether the institution manages to stop potential threats before they manifest.

We must be wary of the opposing tendency, however, which is to trample over justice and charity toward those whom we suspect in our rush to be safe. In this instance, it looks as if the balance was properly struck.

Is Everything a Legerdemain Set-Up?

I wish this additional information about the Rumsfeld's Armor Record controversy were surprising:

Q At the time of the question -- summarize this, now -- that unit that the kid was complaining about was mostly armored?

GEN. SPEAKES: Yes. In other words, we completed all the armoring within 24 hours of the time the question was asked.

Q If he hadn't asked that question, would the up-armoring have been accomplished within 24 hours?

GEN. SPEAKES: Yes. This was already an existing program.

Simply stunning. Shouldn't exact numbers have been in the very first articles about the armor-question incident? I don't imagine it would have been too difficult to track them down, and that is, after all, what journalists are supposed to do. It's almost as if there's an agenda involved that supercedes the truth and the presentation of an accurate perspective.

via Instapundit)

Prelude (p. 1-3)

Shall we open with the trees? Would that we all could branch outward from such serenity. To be so well centered. To be so balanced by our roots! O to have the faith in the ground on which we stand to dig as deeply inward as we reach out grasping toward the heavens! And to have such little care concerning those with whom we mix our leaves in our aspirations! The sweetly dominating Maple linking arms with the stout Oak and the molting Birch; and the Pines, all yearning to shed their innocent coats, as their cousins have, and show their naked wrinkles to the world.

Ah, but we are too slow to our purpose. We are beaten to it: another approaches. Well then, we will postpone our slumbers and watch for a while. Perchance to pick up the pieces. Perchance a chance for one last souvenir.

More Weight on the Rack

You know, there comes a point at which one is reluctant to reinforce faith to handle increased hardship and fear because experience suggests that God will merely pile on more. There's surely a flaw in that over-emotional theology... isn't there? It's too much a disguised hopelessness: feeling that circumstances will never improve because God is making one ever stronger isn't but so much different than feeling that circumstances will never improve because raw nature goes on churning.

I suppose the former implies that the believer will eventually be strong enough. But what could that possibly mean in comparison with God? Why must we be broken to be rebuilt? Why must the procedure that we undergo be so vague? How do we avoid convincing ourselves that better times, when they come, are a sign of our own weakness and, therefore, to be scuttled?

Yeah, I already know how to answer these questions if I choose to do so.

The Redwood Review Fiction of the Week

The Redwood Review fiction piece of the week is "An Existential Wish," by Gary Bolstridge.

Fri-day! Fri-day!

I don't think I've been this happy to see a Friday roll around in years. When you work from home doing tasks that don't require much interaction with others in the working world, Friday hardly matters. Delivering packages during the workday is a different matter, from which I've learned three things, thus far:

1. Don't underestimate what package delivery entails. This probably goes for any number of jobs: it's harder than it looks.
2. Barnes & Noble boxes are the most curiosity-inducing. Part of it is that there's a limited range of possibilities, unlike Amazon boxes, which could contain just about anything. Most of it, of course, is that books require a large investment of time, so they probably tell us a fair bit about those who read them.
3. My town would be a great basis for a fictional setting for a series of books... someday.

Steps Toward Making Us All Non-Persons

Not knowing what else to do with a comment from Stephen Gordon to a previous post of mine, I thought I'd just reprint it:

Chairm:

Does the "theoretical person" have some person-like aspects but lacks a key component?

The sole person-like aspect present at the moment of conception is a complete unique genetic code. Unlike the DNA in the gametes that came together to make the fertilized egg, it is not a direct copy of either the mother or the father. It is a new unique combination. It contains the complete instructions for making a new body.

One might argue that another aspect of this special cell is that it is human life. That it is alive, and human. Well, the gametes that came together to make the fertilized egg were alive and human too. Few pro-lifers would extend protection to those cells. The blood I have drawn for a physical is alive and human. I presume nobody here has a problem with testing blood.

I think the essential difference between the gametes before conception and the fertilized egg afterward is this new unique code.

There is another thing special about this cell. It is young. My child was born just as young as I was born. This is obviously very important. If age accumulated from generation to generation life wouldn't be around for long. But it doesn't.

This youth is one of the reasons that scientists are so excited about the possibility of embryonic stem cells. Let's say the day comes when we can grow replacement tissues with embroyonic stem cells. If the doctor used therapeutic cloning he could give the patient perfectly matching tissue that is youthful. I think that's pretty cool.

If a unique DNA code is sufficient to assign personhood status to this cell, then the debate is over. We agree that one person shouldn't be sacrificed to save another.

Mike S. said:

What criteria do you use to determine whether someone is or is not a person? When did you become a person?

I don't think that this cell amounts to a person because a fertilized egg is simply genetic code plus a small amount of raw material. We are more than genetic code. My genetic programming would prefer me to spend every waking moment seducing as many pretty young women as I can - wedding vows be damned. But I don't. Why not? Because I am a person capable of making decisions independent of whatever urges biology gives me. The same cannot be said of that fertilized egg.

Something happened that made me a person sometime between now and back when a certain fertilized egg began dividing in 1969. When? I'm getting to that.

The issue is (and I've tried to frame this as neutrally as possible) "theoretical person v. the suffering person in front of us."

No, the issue is, "is an embryo a theoretical person or is it a person?"

How about: "Is this fertilized egg a person or not?"

The fact that you have good intentions and are a nice person doesn't change the fact that you are wrong. I could be, too, but you'll have to try and persuade me of that.

Fair enough. I doubt I can. Not because I think you're too stubborn to see the light. I just recognize that it is very difficult to change minds on something a fundamental as when personhood begins. Reasoning through these things in a debate is a good way to understand our own positions too. So it's not a waste even if I fail to persuade you (or vice-versa).

By the way, that phrase "to see the light," refers to a point that societies have traditionally recognized personhood - birth. Seeing that first light or taking a first breath is still required in most places before a wrong that affects a baby is considered a wrong against the baby as a person.

For example, a drunk gets in his car and plows into a minivan carrying a pregnant mother. The mother lingers in a coma until she gives birth to her child and then she dies. If the child never takes its first breath, most states will not charge the drunk with two vehicular manslaughters.

That's a pretty arbitrary thing, isn't it? Let's say one man is driving at 0.1 blood-alcohol level. He has the accident I described, but isn't too drunk to hit his brake just prior to impact. Hitting his brake meant that less force was applied to the unborn child. The child was, therefore strong enough to take that one magic breath. The drunk gets charged with two manslaughters.

A second drunk has a 0.2 blood-alcohol level. He's passed out at the wheel when he hits the pregnant mom. The baby never takes a breath and so the drunk gets charged with one manslaughter.

Which drunk is guiltier?

It's partly in recognition of this sort of absurdity that states have begun passing laws that punish people who harm unborn children "as if" they had harmed a person. I think that's a good thing. In fact if it were up to me I would protect the embryo as a person all the way back to the point of differentiation.

Differentiation is a point about two weeks after fertilization where cells begin to be assigned specific duties. I mentioned in an earlier comment about how a fertilized cell can become one person, two people, part of a person, or no person. That commitment (to become 1, 2, half, or 0 people) is made at the point of differentiation.

Differentiation obviously occurs much earlier than Rowe v. Wade's first trimester. Most women don't even know they are pregnant at this early stage. Would I deny women who don't discover their pregnancy until later the right choose? Yes I would.

Mike, you are uncomfortable with the idea that society could decide whether a fertilized egg is a person. Who else is going to decide? God may have decided, but He's keeping it to Himself. Even if everyone in our country accepted the Bible as the inerrant word of God, there is no passage that specifically deals with this question. You seem to have decided there is some objective way to know that this cell is a person. Do you have some reason to believe it?

Both the difficulty of knowing what to do with this comment and the belief that it is worth addressing derive from my impression that Stephen has laid his weight on various arguments often made in the service of views with which I generally disagree. Like hopping from stone to stone across a stream, the various points skip over the currents of truth until they reach a headland adequate to declare the stream crossed.

The heart of the problem, it seems to me, comes at the end of Stephen's comment: "God may have decided, but He's keeping it to Himself." Is He? I'm feeling a little silly, so forgive my lapse into fiction:

Hedia tapped urgently on Simon's shoulder. Simon turned from his never-ending project and snapped, "What?" Hedia pointed to her throat and threw her mouth open as if taking a breathless gulp.

"Look, Hedia, if you've got something important to say, spit it out. I've got to get this project to the next stage soon, or I may have to change the whole idea. What is the matter?"

While Simon spoke, Hedia tugged relentlessly at her collar, almost stretching the fabric far enough that Simon thought the whole show bordering on indecent. But still she said nothing, merely clutching at her neck and whacking her palm on the bare skin above her breasts.

"Just tell me what is bothering you!" Simon demanded.

In attempting to discuss moral matters with Christians, and not just dismiss them using their own argot, one must understand their perspective. God is not silent on matters of moral weight. Rather, as St. Paul put it, His "invisible attributes" — from which we can derive morality — can be "understood and perceived in what he has made." The question, therefore, is not whether God has anything to say about a particular matter (despite popular belief, God and the Constitution do not function identically). The question is what He's already said via that which we can observe. And from that perspective, the gap between Stephen's logical stepping stones is conspicuous.

The effective equivalence of the fertilized egg and the gametes is a case in point. The fertilized egg is not unique merely in that it "contains the complete instructions for making a new body." It also sets about making that body. It is an organism that will, of its own volition, progress toward stages at which it is more recognizably a human being. Note Stephen's subsequent admission that "most women don't even know they are pregnant at this early stage." The young human being is not advancing according to the will of the mother, or the father. It advances on its own. The embryo, clearly, is "more than genetic code," as well.

I would suggest that this realization — this understanding of what God has made — is embedded in Stephen's privileging of differentiation. Since he's deprivileged the unique genetic code of the fertilized egg, then one could suggest that the egg and sperm are also differentiated cells of the same potential organism; Stephen knows something important happens at fertilization. Furthermore, since he's emphasized a grown person's ability to make "decisions independent of whatever urges biology gives" him, then differentiation is clearly no less arbitrary a milestone than the formation of unique DNA.

Stephen's more directed argument for aligning personhood with differentiation — that, before that point, the embryo "can become one person, two people, part of a person, or no person" — is an interesting one. In fact, I responded to the suggestion when he first made it, but apparently neglected to actually post the comment. Here, we return to the post by Phil Bowermaster with which this discussion began (emphasis in original):

Each time one of these procedures was done, this living human tissue would grow into a human being. Why would anyone insist that it has to grow into a different human being? Says who? My twin brother can't demand that he has a right to exist. I never have to create a clone in the first place. And if I do create one, I assert that I have the right (before it grows into a separate and distinct human being) to decide that it will be me, rather than him, when it grows up.

Bringing this notion back into the current context, it is clear that a human being's loss of his or her ability to split into multiple human beings at the stage where Stephen would begin personhood is merely a function of our limited technology. With cloning, even adults "can become one person, two people, part of a person, or no person." The cultural function of cloning, therefore, would appear not just to be the removal of the embryo's personhood, but the removal of everybody's personhood, unless that quality is simply made synonymous with the state of being a human being and begun at fertilization.

Especially when the air is filled with promises of miraculous drugs, arbitrary lines are simply not tenable. The conclusion that there's really no such thing as personhood, although obviously ridiculous, is one that atheists and postmodernists have come to for quite some time. As postmodernists understand, absent an absolute morality, the only measure becomes power, and the assertion of power is even less amenable to arbitrary restraints. Ultimately, there are two options: the one that God has left for us to see in what He has made, and the wrong one.

FYI on Comments

There are a few threads ongoing in the comment sections that I hope to join tonight. Even if I don't manage it, though, please know that I'm still reading and pondering all of your posts. Getting the bills paid has proven particularly exhausting this month.

The Redwood Review Nonfiction of the Week

The Redwood Review nonfiction piece of the week is "Three Women on a French Canal," by Heide Atkins.

Clear as Kristol

Like Mark Levin, I'm unimpressed with Bill Kristol's Washington Post attack on Donald Rumsfeld:

Actually, we have a pretty terrific Army. It's performed a lot better in this war than the secretary of defense has. President Bush has nonetheless decided to stick for now with the defense secretary we have, perhaps because he doesn't want to make a change until after the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. But surely Don Rumsfeld is not the defense secretary Bush should want to have for the remainder of his second term.

Contrast the magnificent performance of our soldiers with the arrogant buck-passing of Rumsfeld.

One gets the sense that he's got somebody already picked for the slot from which he would dislodge Donald Rumsfeld. Kristol is, after all, somewhat more than a mere pundit; he's a political player. It will be interesting to see who he believes would do a better job (assuming he feels it prudent to reveal the information).

Simple Facts of Homosexual Parents

As guilty of it as I may unknowingly be from time to time, I'm often amazed at the confidence that people can muster when making proclamations about matters for which both cursory and thorough investigations belie confidence. Here's Dan Kachur of Providence:

In response to Stephen Moccio's Nov. 30 letter ("Homosexual parents are confusing children"), I would simply like to point out that children of homosexual couples are no more likely to be homosexuals than children of heterosexuals, according to several studies. The same studies have shown that the only difference between children of homosexual parents and their peers is that they tend to be more open-minded.

As has come up in similar context before, there's an ambiguity in Mr. Kachur's statement about whether he means to reference studies having to do with children whom homosexuals beget or children whom homosexuals raise. It seems clear that he means the latter, but it's an important question to ask, because his assertion is therefore probably not just debatable, but incorrect.

To my experience, Kachur's assertion is more often phrased as follows: "being raised by gay or lesbian parents does not make a child substantially different from his or her peers." As I pointed out in response to that specific quotation, the speaker apparently brings an anti-judgmentalist view to the assessment of "substantial difference." Even gay activists will admit that studies suggest that children raised by homosexuals evince "a greater fluidity in their sexual expression and may in fact be more likely to identity as lesbian or gay." If one takes as an assumption that differences in orientation aren't "substantial," then the equivocal description of existing research is a handy way to allow those who disagree to misinterpret the findings.

This is — and I'll venture an "of course," here — of course the objective of the language used when discussing such things. "Kids of homosexuals" becomes "kids raised by homosexuals." A finding of "no substantial difference" transforms into "no more likely to be gay." Just about any difference, after all, can be rephrased as merely being "more open-minded."

I might have given Dan Kachur the benefit of the doubt that he was merely falling prey to the clever manipulation of language so mastered by gay activists and the larger radical movement. But then he closed his letter thus:

Massachusetts currently has the lowest divorce rate in the country, so the homosexual community's fight for equality has apparently done no damage.

The charitable option, upon reading the full letter, is that Kachur is clever enough to be deceptive. Same-sex marriage in Massachusetts came without broad debate, without a count-forcing "fight." It swept into public awareness about a year ago, and there are not yet divorce numbers capable of illustrating any effect that it might have had, let alone any effect that the post-battle reality might have. (And that's overlooking the huge logical leap from divorce rates to "no damage.")

The Redwood Review Poem of the Week

The Redwood Review poem of the week is "Born on the Cadence," by Ingrid Mathews.

The Power of Internet Real Estate

John Hawkins notes yet another incident of unabashedly ridiculous liberalism on an American campus. The notion that caught my eye, however, is tangential:

But, you know what's going to be really funny? Right Wing News is a pretty good sized website and I'm sure there will be more than a few links to this post. Fast forward a month or two and when people do a search for the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, you know like Republican Alumni who are thinking about donating or Republican parents who are wondering where to send their kids, this post should be fairly close to the top.

I don't suspect that the average citizen — Red state or Blue — knows this, but most Internet search engines attempt to sort their searches not according to some official list of approved sources (e.g., with msnbc.com, cnn.com, and abcnews.com at the top). They factor in the number of instances of the search term on a page, the number of other sites linking to the relevant page, and the general popularity of the Web site. In other words, a relatively unknown blogger can still help to define any organization's image for those who research on the Web.

That's not a small consideration. No longer is "good press" an adequate term to describe the imaging work that is necessary in that area. To put it in paper-world terms, imagine if every catalogue had to have every criticism of each product appended, and imagine if those bits of criticism were ranked according to the number of average folk who thought particular items worth considering.

Some marketers may not like it — particularly those charged with selling ultra-expensive educational experiences — but the only real solution to the problem of having owners of budget-priced Web sites define their products is to answer complaints promptly and thoroughly. When sympathetic Internet property owners, such as myself, start taking note and linking to a particular post, the organization should really take note.

Santa Calls at Dinnertime

Well, I didn't get back from delivering packages until around six o'clock, tonight. I'm exhausted, but the brain tumbles on, so I'll try to get some posts up.

As much as I'd prefer to get home with plenty of time to unwind before dinner closes out the day part of the day, I have to admit that it's more fun delivering packages at hours when people are actually home. At one point, when our truck pulled to the side of the road, children appeared in windows on both sides of us, watching to see which way the day-job Santa would go.

I made it home in time to be distracted from my own dinner by the sound of screaming outside. Rising to look out the window, I half expected to see a grade-schooler brawl in the street. Happily, the voices were actually those of carolers! (If you can believe it.) Our older daughter, who is not quite three, knew the song ("Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer") but didn't quite understand the kids' reason for the clatter out on the lawn. She also didn't understand why the roving choir didn't stay to take requests.

I've never seen a reason to lament the cultural lapse of caroling. But through my daughter's eyes, I'm beginning to comprehend how all the little traditions that have faded in recent decades — particularly in relatively urban areas, such as where I grew up — can accumulate into a sense of community. Neighbors reaching out from one to another, in large ways and small, making little boys and girls feel worth the effort of a song.

Songs You Should Know 12/14/04

The Timshel Music Song You Should Know this week is "Queen of November" by Rosin Coven. This song is from the band's new CD, Menagerie. I'm still intending to find time to write a very complimentary review of this CD; it isn't for everybody, but if you've a taste for darkly artsy songs, be sure to have a listen and take a look.

"Queen of November" Rosin Coven, Arthouse Rock
Stream (HiFi) Download

Risking Squeamishness for Morality

No doubt about it, this potential alternative to embryonic stem cell research, as described by Ramesh Ponnuru, can raise feelings that something must be immoral about it:

William Hurlbut, a member of the Kass council and a Stanford Medical School professor, suggests mimicking the results of a defective fertilization. Nature sometimes produces "teratomas," eggs without male genetic contributions that begin to divide and grow, even growing body parts such as hair and teeth. But these teratomas are not organisms: They lack the ability to organize themselves and to direct their own integral functioning and development. They are disordered growths, like tumors. Hurlbut suggests that we might be able to produce teratomas artificially and derive from them usable stem cells that are functional equivalents of embryonic stem cells.

I've italicized the sentence that, unless I'm misunderstanding the science, makes the proposal a morally licit one. Ponnuru expands on that critical point in his subsequent piece:

Some pro-lifers seem to be under the impression that a teratoma is a disabled embryo, so that Hurlbut is proposing deliberately to create disabled embryos. If what Hurlbut has in mind were the creation of embryos that have the capacity to direct their own organization and develop but, let's say, were designed to be unable to implant, they would have a point: those would be severely disabled embryos. Hurlbut's proposal, however, involves a scenario with no embryo at all.

Still, there's much to be said for weighting gut feelings of repugnance. Ponnuru acknowledges this, but he doesn't go far enough:

Repugnance can embody good reasons for objecting to something that we are not immediately or consciously aware of. When we feel repugnance, we should stop and try to think through whether it is telling us something. But repugnance does not always have something to teach us, and if we cannot find anything we have no reason for objecting.

The missing consideration, here, is that overcoming repugnance where there is no moral reason to object tends to decrease the healthy repugnance that accrues to similar instances in which there is a moral reason to object. Becoming acclimated to the creation-for-destruction of near-autonomous human life demystifies the same usage of actually autonomous human life to some degree.

The intellectual flip-side is that the principle that underlies the repugnance can be better defined if we manage to properly identify its source. Emphasizing the sentence that I italicized in the first blockquote above clarifies what makes a human being a human being at the point of conception. Winning that point not only whittles away at the argument and emotionally compelling rhetoric of advocates of embryonic stem cell research, but it also has implications for related debates, such as abortion.

I could be persuaded that I'm missing something key, either on a scientific or a moral basis. At present, however, I'd suggest that such proposals as Hurlbut's become associated, in the pro-life platform, with adult stem cell research. If we are right, in an ethical sense, then increased specificity in our explanations and our definitions is an ally, not an enemy. And if we can overcome squeamishness to reach the point at which right becomes wrong and offer compromise on the right side of that line, then we gain the ground of reasonableness.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I got home about an hour ago from my two-week part-time (to full-time) gig delivering packages. I'm still unwinding, though, and I've got a lot on my plate tonight, including my usual part-time editing work at the computer.

I will be blogging, so return visits will probably not be fruitless, but I thought it only fair to put up a note.

Studio Matters Notes & Commentary

It would be difficult to find a better way to jump back into routine practices that I've let slide than with a Notes & Commentary essay by Maureen Mullarkey. "Following Her Instincts," reviewing Joan Snyder at Alexandre Gallery and at Betty Cuningham Gallery, proves that Mullarkey's sharp insight...

Do women make lists? You bet; I have one right here. Mine is a tally of the self-worshiping conceits trumpeted by a generation of women artists in their sortie against standards of achievement—dismissed by art historian Linda Nochlin as "the white male Western viewpoint." Nochlin famously derided what she termed "the Lady's Accomplishment" ("a modest, proficient, self-demeaning level of amateurism"). In its place, scholarly fiat substituted Womanart and its own peculiar accomplishment: an immodest, not necessarily proficient, self-assertive level of amateurism that coincided handily with the assault of camp sensibility on public taste.

.. is not limited to art alone:

Politics, as used here, is a dodge for merchandising lacrimose fantasies of women as vessels of cosmic altruism: The Breast That Never Empties ("Mamilla Immortalis"). Still pitching the old zeal, she insists that "we need to send powerful female energy and imagery out into the universe" to save the world from (male) violence. Even more implausible than Ms. Snyder's painting is her adherence to a crumbling orthodoxy that denies women's complicity in their own culprit cultures. Thirty years ago, her schtick about redemptive female energy was merely silly. Today, in the wake of female terrorists—and the sight of women dancing in Ramallah on 9/11— it is cynical. Or delusional.

(Click the gallery names above for samples of Snyder's Womanart.)

Preface

It may be necessary for me to tell you, since you probably know very little about me, this being my first book and my having done nothing of note but write it, that I realize that it is traditional for a preface to be written after the book is finished so that the writer might have the air of one who has completed a tremendous task and is looking back on what has been learned. And it is true, I'll admit, that I am at the time of writing this preface not even finished with the rough draft of the novel, though nearly. In my defense, however, I'd like to point out that, since you hold the book in your hands, it must now be finished and you would have had no idea that I had not finished the novel before writing its preface had I not been so truthful as to tell you. Even this, however, assumes that you trust me, but being those of a writer, my motives must always be suspect, so both the novel and its preface could have been written at any time and in any order as far as you, as a reader, should be concerned. For myself as a reader, though, I would more readily believe the author who writes his preface on the Eve of the Millennium and confesses that the book itse