RFRA

Understanding the Left

Mark Noonan40 Comments

It does come to everyone who listens and watches – in this case, to Pete Kaliner:

I find myself at odds now with a lot of proponents of same sex marriage who appear to be walking the charred battlefield of the cultural war and shooting the wounded.

I apologize for thinking this was about only equal treatment under the law. I apologize for dismissing conservatives’ fears that this slippery slope would lead to de facto banishment from various sectors of the public square.

I thought people just wanted to be left alone. I was wrong.

For many, they wanted forced conversions.

As such, it’s only fair we ask where it ends.

Do read the whole article – there is a lot more, including a very insightful quote from Vaclav Havel about how people conform out of a desire to just “get along”, thus strengthening tyranny upon all.

As to the question of, “where it ends”: the answer to that is simple. It ends with the complete victory of one side, or the other. I’ve got a little bit of inside knowledge and thus I know that in the End, my side wins – but it is still my responsibility to try to avert as much trouble and suffering as I can in this world, and so I will still fight for my side, hoping that eventually a majority will understand the facts and allow the necessary reforms to preserve our civilization. But in that task one of the crucial things is for all those in favor of civilization to stand together.

We are in a titanic battle for our civilization, my friends. Pick your side. You can come up with lots of reasons to back this or that liberal ideal – but no matter what the alleged merits of a liberal ideal, the bottom line is that the left, itself, is under the thumb of oppressors. Junior-league Leninists I called them a number of years back…people who just yearn for the opportunity to smack a person down; to humiliate them and drive them off. These people are not in it for justice – they are in it for total domination.

UPDATE: Ace of Spades, who does understand the left, gets very angry:

…Unlike some other Dummies, I’m not really of a mind that we must all Follow the Same Rules and all Subscribe to the Same Bland, Grey, Dead Corporate-Friendly Culture in which no one is really religious or different or odd at all Because That’s Bad For Corporate Business.

I think people should have — and by God, do have — the right to be fairly different from one another.

That’s f***ing America.

Did you not know that? That {is} what America is?

That America is the right to be different from other people?

I don’t see why a store run by a pious conservative Muslim can’t demand that women be covered, if that’s his bag, nor why a store run by a pious conservative Catholic can’t also insist that women cover their shoulders, if that’s his sense of what his business should be, of what should happen on property he owns.

Will there be hurt feelings when some are turned away?

Sure.

And who cares?

What the f*** are we, babies? Is this kindergarten, where everyone must be made to feel welcome, always?…

Do read the whole thing – be warned, though, of lots of NSFW language, but that is just Ace all over…and, hey, it takes all kinds to make a world, right?

Being Clear on Religious Liberty

Mark Noonan10 Comments

Indiana passed a Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which is fundamentally the same as the federal RFRA and the RFRA’s in force in 19 other States – and liberals went ballistic. Given the rapidity with which the outrage spread, I can only presume that it was all orchestrated – liberals, at any rate, not being given to doing anything until they are so ordered by the liberal leadership (no liberal wants to get out in front just in case the Party Line turns out to be different from personal opinion). As to why it was orchestrated – I figure that the left is trying to gin up its base for 2016 and this is just the start of it, and as Democrats have zero chance of winning Indiana in 2016, it makes the perfect target for liberal slander and hatred. Expect more and more of this sort of manufactured outrage as time goes on – Hillary’s only chance (other than the GOP nominating Jeb) being people upset over nothing rather than paying attention to what is happening.

Still, there is an actual issue here. Liberals are attempting to frame it as a replay of Jim Crow – the RFRA, it is alleged, will allow a “straights only” lunch counter and this will be a horrific violation of homosexual rights. The truth, of course, is completely different. The purpose of RFRA is not to harm anyone, but to protect the rights of a minority – in this case, a religious minority (orthodox Christians). Jim Crow was different – that was laws which required the treatment of non-whites as second class citizens by all and sundry. RFRA is just a way out if someone tries to get someone to do something in violation of their deeply held religious beliefs. It would not allow me, if I were a baker, to refuse to serve homosexual customers – it does excuse me from participating in a same-sex wedding by making the cake which will be consumed at that wedding. If I were a baker – and being that I am Catholic – you could get just about anything you want form me…but you couldn’t get a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. There are other sorts of confections you couldn’t get from me, as well…I probably would not want to bake a cake which, say, proclaimed some dogma of Christian Science. You just want a cake – you got it; you want a cake which requires me to sin: it ain’t happening.

And that is all RFRA does – it allows me to not do something for you. If I am not doing something for you then I am also not doing anything to you. I am not violating your rights by not providing a service. In fact, if you were able to compel me to do something for you, then not only would you likely be violating my religious beliefs, but you’d also be forcing me into involuntary servitude…and slavery is explicitly prohibited in our Constitution.

I would never dream of asking someone to do something against their conscience. I’d never ask a pacifist to serve in the army. I’d never ask a Jew to provide me a ham sandwich. I’d never ask a Muslim to sell me some wine. It is just plain and simple courtesy that I do this – it would be the height of arrogant oppression if I were to demand that everyone do for me as I wish. We do live in a pluralist society – in the United States there really are all kinds of people and the only way such a society works is if everyone respects everyone else. Doing it any other way just leads to anarchy, oppression, a disintegration of the ties that bind and a risk of complete societal breakdown.

Live and let live – wise words to live by.