What’s interesting in the news today?
Open Thread
1. An impartial judiciary…… Not.
From NationalReview “Since there was no bride to be the “belle” at the ritzy D.C. wedding of Shakespeare Theater Company artistic director Michael Kahn and Manhattan architect Charles Mitchem this weekend, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who officiated, was happy to play the part. And she did so with panache, says Maureen Dowd:
The most glittering moment for the crowd came during the ceremony. With a sly look and special emphasis on the word “Constitution,” Justice Ginsburg said that she was pronouncing the two men married by the powers vested in her by the Constitution of the United States. . . . The guests began applauding loudly.
For a sitting Supreme Court justice facing a case on precisely this divisive issue, her remark seems — let’s put it mildly — injudicious. But Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not just some Supreme Court Justice. “
“When the feminist outlet Jezebel reported this remark, it worried in passing that Ginsburg might be “hesitant to pass anything broad-sweeping when it comes to marriage equality rulings.” Precious. Not only is Ginsburg the go-to justice for same-sex-wedding officiating, but she is currently featured in advertisements by the Human Rights Campaign. “Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg [sic] agrees Americans are ready for marriage equality,” the ad declares.”
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2. I’ll Ginsburg credit, at least she’s honest about it. Unlike this guy.
From Politico “One of the authors of a recent study that claimed that short conversations with gay people could change minds on same-sex marriage has retracted it.
Columbia University political science professor Donald Green’s retraction this week of a popular article published in the December issue of the academic journal Science follows revelations that his co-author allegedly faked data for the study, “When contact changes minds: An experiment on transmission of support of gay marriage.””
“In an email to POLITICO, Green said he spoke with LaCour by phone on Tuesday and that he “maintained that he did not fabricate the data but told me that he could not locate the Qualtrics source files for the surveys on the Qualtrics interface or on any of his drives.”
Qualtrics was the survey platform that was purportedly used, though a company spokesman clarified to POLITICO that it did not collaborate with LaCour or anyone else on the study.
“I asked him to write a retraction, and he indicated he would do so, but when it did not appear last night, I sent off my own retraction,” Green wrote.
The investigation into the paper began when graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, were initially impressed with the work and wanted to do an extension of it, according to a timeline of their probe posted Tuesday. When the students started a similar study, they found they were not getting the large response rate that Green and LaCour received in theirs.”
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3. The media has been using an Iraq question to try to trip up Republicans seeking the nomination. Here’s an Iraq question for Democrats, but don’t expect the media to actually ask it.
From TheDailyBeast “The Iraq Question Democrats Don’t Want the Media to Ask
It goes to Clinton and Kerry, and it’s simple: If they knew then what they know now, would they have backed Obama’s decision to leave Iraq?
Some 16 months away for the election to choose the 45th President of the United States, many in the mainstream media have come up with a new parlor game to amuse themselves. The latest obsession is to corner a Republican running for president and ask them a variation of the following: “If you knew then about what you know about Iraq now, would you have agreed with President George W. Bush to invade Iraq?”
Let’s be honest, shall we? No reasonable person would agree to invade Iraq today based on what we know now about weapons of mass destruction being stored in the country. Hindsight some 12 years later will always appear to be 20/20. At the time, President Bush and many foreign leaders around the world strongly believed in the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the Middle East as well as the United States and acted, accordingly.
No, this latest media ploy is not about asking a legitimate question of a contender for the nomination about his views on American military/foreign policy. Instead, this is an effort to bring up their favorite bogeyman, former President George W. Bush, and continue with a variation of the “Bush lied, troops died” trope they hope will trip up Republicans and ostensibly help former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her presumed path toward coronation to the presidency.”
But don’t worry, the press is still totally unbiased as always……. 🙄
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Wandering Views 
#1. Just happened to be there when I came here to argue with Donna. Last night she said:
“” … with an expected federal win for gay marriage from the Supreme Court, the LGBT movement is poised to shift its focus to policing speech in the workplace, schools, businesses, and public squares across America. … ”
Speech restriction is assumed. The next big thing is transgender. I read in the last World that counseling against sex change to minors is illegal in New Jersey and California. (Donna may want to look into that.) They are giving boys puberty retardant medicine and removing the breast of 16 year old girls.
That should be a prison bound crime.
Sex change wan unheard of when I was young. We have chemicals and operations that can turn women into men and men into women?
Paul said somewhere that people were doing things that were shameful to talk about There are questions I would like to have answered.
The problem with the Overton Window theory is that there is no end to it.
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This article is too long and detailed to paste here. Seems a PhD candidates conducted a study.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/20/gay-marriage-study-fake_n_7344796.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
“A seemingly groundbreaking and widely publicized study reported in Science magazine this past December may be a fake.
The study appeared to show that openly gay activists in California had persuaded conservative voters to change their minds in a lasting way by engaging the voters in “heartfelt, reciprocal and vulnerable conversations” about being gay during door-to-door advocacy campaigns. It was co-authored by Michael J. LaCour, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Donald P. Green, a professor at Columbia University”.
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Just to clarify, my statement wasn’t mine, it was a quote from a post — essentially on speech and it’s growing restrictions — I’d linked to from the Federalist. 😉
And I’m sure speaking against all manner of sexual preferences (well, except traditional marriage) will be included in the coming attempted legal crackdowns and restrictions. 🙂
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Actually, transgender is rather old news out here. 🙂
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Chas, on gender reassignment, transgenderism has been around as long as homosexuality. The same chapter in Leviticus which forbids homosexual activity also forbids men dressing like women and vice versa. India has had communities of transgender men and women for centuries and similar traditions can be found in other ancient pagan cultures – the surgical and medical treatments were perhaps a little cruder, but they existed. Male eunuchs were often made to act like women – one of Nero’s infamous activities is that he married a eunuch and treated him as his wife.
By the way, the current trend does not and cannot make men fully women or vice versa. It is purely a cosmetic procedure – men who become ‘women’ cannot have children, and women who become ‘men’ cannot father children. This is a long article, but pretty much sums up what can and cannot be changed with hormones and surgery: http://cbmw.org/uncategorized/studies-what-is-gender-reassignment-surgery-a-medical-assessment-with-a-biblical-appraisal/
And here is an account of an transgender man who transition to a woman, later became a Christian, and reversed, as much as he could, back to a man: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/04/14905/
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Nothing new under the sun? A fallen people in a fallen world.
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I’ve always thought that having a biblical worldview really does make so much sense of everything when you think about it.
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I haven’t listened to this podcast from the guys at Breakpoint, but it sounds interesting — link & opening article here:
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/12/27400
(while there’s nothing new under the sun, some of this is “new” to us in our lifetime and in our nation):
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“For many Christians, it’s as if American culture has changed in the blink of an eye. And for most, it’s for the ‘worse.’ Each month, it seems, America becomes more secular, less morally literate, and noticeably more hostile to Christianity.
“In the space of just two years, we’ve seen marriage laws that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support during the Clinton Administration wither beneath activist outrage. What President Obama professed to believe just three years ago—that marriage is the union of one man and one woman—has today become the definition of bigotry—so despicable it’s compared with Jim Crow-era racism.
“What happened? According to columnist and author Rod Dreher, this overnight revolution in Americans’ opinions on marriage and religious freedom is no mere moral slide. It’s actually nothing short of a ‘cosmological shift.’ In other words, the assumptions that have made gay marriage culturally inevitable—the idea that people are the sum of their desires and that marriage has no intrinsic purpose or definition—amount to a total shift in the way our culture looks at human persons. ….. ”
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On the discussion from yesterday – how is a D&C any more acceptable than taking Plan B? They both have the same effect, to prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg. If we believe life begins at conception (the point at which an egg is fertilized), then deliberating preventing implantation is akin to abortion is it not? I know something of the violence and horror of rape from the experiences of people in my extended family. It is a despicable crime, equaling murder in its destructive power. However, my question is, if we believe the child is alive from conception, are we not meting out the death penalty on the child, rather than the father, by making an exception on abortion after rape? In some cases, aborting the child may actually help the perpetrator go free. In post-war Germany, abortion was illegal; however, many women had been raped by the invading Soviet forces at the end of WWII. These women were quietly granted abortions. Now, they are seeking to prove that these mass rapes happened, as Russia denies such a thing ever occurred. Had the children been allowed to live, there would have been genetic proof that the atrocities of seventy years ago took place.
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On a personal level, I agree with that reasoning — I would say that giving birth to the child, even if it is decided to put the baby up for adoption, is the ethical choice. But a hard one. So in in terms of making public policy in a pluralistic society, allowing the option of abortion for rape victims (and to save the physical life of the woman, understanding that both of these are very rare cases) would be something I would not object to.
Mute point anyway since currently abortion is available for any and all reasons. 😦
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I have been thinking of teaching an Adult SS class about “Politics.” Not Republican or Democrat but how to handle the “politics” of LGBT and all the other letters. We need to think out our individual and corporate responses.
Does anyone have any suggestions for books to read and base this class on? Is it too large for a simple SS teacher to present?
Thoughts?
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Huge topic.
I’d listen to that podcast I linked to above — and just in general, the Breakpoint folks (Eric Metaxas for example, along with Mohler & Russell) are all worth reading & following on social media as they’re speaking to this frequently.
Colson, of course, wrote much on the topic of Christians’ relationship to government (“God and Government” is the title of one of his books, I think?)
I’m planning personally to review the Westminster Confession of Faith section on “Of the Civil Magistrate” when I get a chance this week.
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Russell Moore
You’d probably want to narrow the scope somewhat, but I don think including some church history would be important. I suspect we’re pretty spoiled in our day and age and place — Christians have typically had to live in hostile cultures. Ours has been at least benignly friendly for much of its history. And as we see that shifting (seemingly so quickly of late), I sense a bit of panic. So it’s always good to go back to Scripture (of course) but also to some of the early church documents and history to see how believers elsewhere have coped and even thrived.
I’ve mentioned reading “Thriving in Babylon” recently, it’s also worth a read, I think — it’s a fairly quick read but provides much to think about. I’m still digesting it.
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I do think including church history would be important … Sorry for that random “n” which was confusing
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Donna, pragmatism would be the way to go if one is determined to succeed politically. However, I think in doing that, Christians are losing sight of who we are in the world. We are salt and light. Our role is more to shine a light at the darkness around us and sacrifice our own lives to help others. We speak to corrupt lawmakers and enforcers like John the Baptist to Herod, “It is not lawful for you…” and then take the consequences of speaking up. We use any power we may have to protect the weak, not ourselves, as Amy Carmichael did when she rescued children from the institutionalized abuse of the Hindu temples. Our aim is not to gain political supremacy, but to proclaim the truth.
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I don’t see it as pragmatism really. I still believe all abortion is wrong. But as a practical reality — living in the much-fallen kingdoms of this world and not in a civil/theocracy — I think some concessions are understandable
I guess I don’t really see a conflict in sometimes having to choose the lesser of two evils.
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and not with the aim of gaining “political” power, but with the aim of doing the best we can under the circumstances we live in for our neighbors.
Looping this back to Bob’s questions, I suspect Christians will always disagree to some extent on how best to move the world forward for the benefit of creation. I don’t see taking baby steps — if that’s all that’s possible — as being in conflict with the faith.
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Bob Buckles, I don’t have any specific book recommendations for you. But I mentioned LGBT as one of the issues in my SS lesson last Sunday.
It is the Overton Window at work. I have discussed this several times in the past.
But, that is essentially the technique that is used to transform society
But the problem with that is that it has an end.
There is never an end. It always moves to something else.
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I’d add, too, that protecting or persecuting the weak often happens via the civil structure of a particular society.
Politics isn’t evil in and of itself. And especially in a democratic society, where Christians and all others have a say, it is rightly seen (I believe) as part of our stewardship in the world to do our part in terms of voting or even advocating for issues and/or candidates we believe will best serve the people.
We speak the truth, the whole truth to power biblically.
But within a particular (and understandably fallen) paradigm, we also have the opportunity (and responsibility) to take part in the society in which we live.
Thus some restrictions on abortion are better than having no restrictions on abortion — even though it allows some abortions to sadly go forward.
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Another piece about Kirsten Powers’ book:
http://spectator.org/articles/62790/kirsten-powers%E2%80%99-profile-courage
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” …. The Silencing is Kirsten Powers’ tour de force guide to the mindset of the modern American Left. As a liberal herself she is clearly not merely disappointed but horrified at what she has found — and experienced first hand. In fact, I would argue that the leftist mindset of today is a direct descendant of the 1960s so-called “New Left” which erupted on college campuses across the country and began spawning all manner of intolerance, famously including the “unrepentant terrorist” Bill Ayers. Time has moved on, and the leftist mindset, while arguably less violent than in the 1960s and early 1970s, has made considerable progress in spreading its intolerant ways. Make no mistake, in the world that modern leftists are trying to create it takes courage for Powers simply to appear on Fox, much less write this book. …. ”
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I remember the “new left in high school. I asked someone at lunch one day (1968 or 1969?) if she was a “liberal” and she responded, “Oh, I’m a member of the New Left.”
Huh? What’s that? I asked. ….
🙂
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Democratic participation is a great privilege afforded to us in the West in this day and age. However, I do not think Christians have thought through how it should be used. Choosing candidates and lobbying has become a question of who has the most money, and it is emphasized repeatedly in Scripture that those who assume godliness in the hope of gain are the lowest of the low.
To use the example of the current political atmosphere of the United States, Christians have, for the most part, thrown their support behind one political party. As this support has now been acknowledged for a number of decades, Christianity is identified with that political party. Their most vocal opponents have entrenched themselves in the opposing party. Since Christians are in the minority (the Bible says so, and as Moore has pointed out, many of those who claim Christianity in the U.S. aren’t), the party identified with them, finds it necessary to compromise with the lukewarm majority in order to gain leverage. Candidates are chosen who claim some kind of Christian values, but promptly forget those values once in office.
The situation reminds one of the conflict of the house of Guise, who identified with the Catholics, and the house of Bourbon, who identified with the Huguenots in Renaissance France. Both houses jockeyed for political supremacy until the entire country was engulfed in bloody conflict. When the Bourbon duke was finally victorious, he promptly compromised by converting to Catholicism in order to be crowned king, promising his Huguenot subjects freedom of worship. His grandson removed that freedom and drove out the Huguenots or forced them to convert.
There is another way to influence politicians and policy. That is by being as much of a witness to your state representative, whatever party he may be of, as you have the opportunity to be. If Christians viewed Republican and Democratic candidates alike as a mission field (rather than the object of lobbying) they will have a much greater opportunity to make a difference. A Christian who befriends the likes of Ruth Ginsberg, would have much more opportunity of impacting Ginsberg’s decisions – her gay friends certainly seem to have made an impact. This requires going outside of one’s comfort zone and personally investing oneself in people with whom you may not feel like associating.
Nevertheless, we know that it works. Esther was able to prevent genocide. Daniel not only confronted Belshazzar, he was instrumental in the apparent conversion of Nebuchadnezzar. These kings wielded far greater political power than the President, and were far more cruel and ruthless. Obadiah was able to limit the destruction of Ahab and Jezebel. Even Herod liked to listen to John the Baptist. A recent example would be Rosaria Butterfield, a leading professor in queer studies who became a Christian through the friendship of a Christian couple. Loving our neighbour is not a passive passing of half measures, but a whole hearted service to their needs.
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Kirsten Powers is a good example of how a Christian can use their influence right where they are.
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Fixated is right….
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