Notes: Thursday, July 1, 2010

Herald letters on Ms Gillard's opposition to so-called gay marriage and on Ms Keneally's support for adoption by same-sex couples

http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/gillard-needs-to-get-it-straight-on-gay-marriage-20100630-zmnw.html?skin=text-only

Interesting to read the following sentence from one of the correspondents:

Marriage equality will come to Australia in time, and Ms Gillard, Kristina Keneally, Tony Abbott and their ilk will be remembered as having been on the wrong side of history as the last defenders of this historic injustice and breach of civil rights.

Note two things there: The terms '[m]arriage equality' and 'wrong side of history'. Each of these terms is a part of the Sodomites' League's rhetorical repertory in discussions on so-called gay marriage; the former is in the name of an Australian pro-'gay-marriage' lobby organisation "Australian Marriage Equality" (whose website's F.A.Q. answers I refuted here), and a pro-real-marriage person--I'm not sure, but it might have been Prof. Robert George--predicted that we will see the latter used repeatedly by the Sodomites' League. Both these pieces of rhetoric are easy to refute though: As for the former, homosexuals already have complete marriage equality with heterosexuals, and as for the latter, the fact that something is on the 'wrong' or 'right side of history' is neither here nor there; what matters is whether it is logically and morally valid. One can easily imagine, say, the Bolsheviks warning their opponents about being on the 'wrong side of history', especially given the Marxist view of the stages of history, as they rose to power, but that doesn't make Bolshevism a good thing.

"John" with some information from MercatorNet about same-sex parenting

http://members7.boardhost.com/CathPews/thread/1277854467.html
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_other_story_about_same-sex_parenting/

Two of "John"'s excerpts from the article were particularly noteworthy:

Research is increasingly clear that many lesbigay partners enter into their versions of a committed relationship with expectations that cheating is acceptable. Some research suggests that gay men have more stable relationships only if cheating is permitted.

and

Richard Redding, writing in a 2008 issue of the Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy, concluded that gay parents were more likely to have gay children. My meta-analyses of 26 studies and ten books on GLBT parenting concur with his findings (Schumm, in press). Furthermore, my research indicates that many literature reviews have systematically excluded information about negative child outcomes associated with gay parenting -- that is, greater levels of insecure attachment and drug abuse among daughters of gay fathers.

Neither of these findings should come as suprises; as regards the former, as even the "homosexual advocate and intellectual" Mr. Andrew Sullivan has acknowledged, "[t]here is more likely to be greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman" (cited in the submission from The Archdiocese of Sydney to the N.S.W. Inquiry into adoption by same-sex couples, p. 5, section 17--go hither in order to download the P.D.F. submission) (and didn't you just love the paradox of "gay men hav[ing] more stable relationships only if cheating is permitted"?!).

A letter to the Tele on the natural law

I was pleased to see the following letter published on page thirty-four of yesterday's Sydney Daily Telegraph (apparently not available on-line, so the following is my own transcription), in a collection of letters under the heading "Waiting to see what this PM can do for us", with "Keep it personal" as the letter's own heading:

I AGREE with David Ridge (Your Say, June 29) that a politician should not push their [sic] religious views on to the general public.
However, every politician has a duty to uphold the natural law in all things, irrespective of their religious leanings or lack of.
In respect to abortion, natural law dictates that human life is sacrosanct from its embryotic [sic] beginning through to its natural or accidental demise, and any deliberate and intentional extinction of this life is a crime against nature.
Again, the erosion of human rights -- partiuclarly against women -- is in defiance of the natural law.
All people, irrespective of race, colour or religion are equal.
They may have different natural roles to play, but all people are entitled to the same respect. Because a politician is a member of a particular religion does not mean they are pushing their religious convictions politically.
All Christian religions have their basis in the natural law.
Tony Byrne Whitebridge

Obviously the letter wasn't perfect (for instance, the natural law does not forbid all deliberate and intentional destruction of human life, just the destruction of innocent human life on human authority), but I was nevertheless pleased to see it published, for a couple of reasons:

1. One problem with arguing for the morality or immorality of a certain act by appeal to 'traditional morality/ethics/values', 'Christian morality/ethics/values', or, most problematically of all, 'Judeo-Christian morality/ethics/values', is that one's opponent can simply dismiss one's reasoning as being perhaps internally consistent, but nevertheless not valid for those who are don't belong to that tradition or religion. (See this blog post, and particularly its combox, for examples.)

2. It's also just nice to see the natural law being mentioned in the mainstream media, in which we usually see 'traditional/Christian/Judeo-Christian morality/ethics/values' pitted against 'secular/non-religious morality/ethics/values', when we would do better to speak of the contest as being between natural-law morality and positivist (a/im)morality.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of The Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, A.D. 2010