I was recently accused of (actually, praised for, but it seemed to me an accusation) supporting “marriage equality”—a slogan that indicates whoever uses it fails to understand either of the terms it combines. The occasion for this slander was, rather ironically, a piece I had written rejecting calls for gay marriage. The piece was misread, I think, because I had positive things to say about gay people and about the love present in countless gay relationships. Apparently this fact was significant enough that there was no need to attend to my actual conclusion. Continue Reading »
For those who may be interested, my colleague Marc DeGirolami and I have done a podcast on last week’s oral argument in Holt v. Hobbs, the “prison beard” case currently before the Supreme Court. Continue Reading »
With widespread news about ISIS selling kidnapped women and girls as sex slaves, smiting necks of non-Muslims or expelling them from their homes, one would assume that everyone on the planet views ISIS as wicked. Yet not only in the Muslim-majority countries, but also in Europe, Australia, and even the U.S., ISIS has drawn support. The group is obviously successful in continually recruiting Muslim men, women, even children as its members. What in the world makes these individuals love ISIS? Here are three possibilities. Continue Reading »
A follow-up to last month’s post on the Armenian Orthodox church in Myanmar: This summer, the BBC did a lovely story about a 150-year old Armenian parish church in the city of Yangon, St. John the Baptist. Hardly any parishioners remained, the BBC said, maybe 10 people on a good Sunday. Most of the congregation were not Armenians, either, the Armenians having left Myanmar, with the British, decades before. Continue Reading »
The cognoscenti tell me that Stephen Colbert, who is a self-identified faithful member of a Church that teaches that homosexual inclinations are intrinsically disordered and that sodomy is a mortal sin, is a smart guy—a really smart guy. Evidently, his shtick is to adopt the persona of a certain type of individual whom he regards as intellectually and morally inferior to himself so that he can ridicule people of that sort. This, I’m told, is the kind of humor that people who watch Stephen Colbert, who is a self-identified faithful member of a Church that teaches that homosexual inclinations are intrinsically disordered and that sodomy is a mortal sin, relish. Continue Reading »
Evangelicals are changing their minds on gay marriage. So argues the Log Cabin Republicans’ David Lampo in a recent op-ed in the Daily Caller. In defense of his thesis, Lampo trots out the examples of two prominent evolved evangelicals: David Blankenhorn and yours truly. There are two problems here: Blankenhorn is not an Evangelical and I have not changed my mind on gay marriage. If David and I are the two best examples of an evangelical evolution, it ain’t happening. Continue Reading »
The first-year reading program at Williams College, “turned out to be kind of like a bad blind date,” wrote Michaela Morton, a freshman at the time, in an article in the student newspaper. Continue Reading »
