... and my response to my friend
You know, one of the things that I think needs to be mentioned is the frequent use of the Bible quotation, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." My (now former?) friend closed her last e-mail to me with that quote.
I see it used all the time by people who want to hide behind it - to avoid taking a position on a controversial topic. Sort of like, "Abortion? I'm personally opposed, but I wouldn't impose my morality on anyone else." If there's nothing wrong with abortion, then why be personally opposed? It's like being personally opposed to spaghetti or shag carpet. People who say that want it both ways - they want acknowledgment of both their higher moral standard and their "tolerance." Because, in this day and age, "tolerance," is the only universally-mandated virtue.
But there is a big difference between not evaluating someone's - or your own - culpability before God, and not evaluating the rightness or wrongness of particular conduct.
Let me offer an example that cuts the other way. In this day and age, we have explanations for certain types of wrongful conduct. For example, we know that people who were abused as children are far more likely to abuse their own children. Some charge that that is just an "excuse." But there is a big difference between an explanation and an excuse. Just because we understand what might drive someone psychologically to abuse their children doesn't mean that it isn't wrong, that we don't try to protect the children, or need to punish abusers.
By the same token, even if we are not to "judge" someone in the eyes of the Creator, we are still able to identify conduct that is destructive. And certainly conduct from which we want to protect our children.
My friend's fury at my June 28th message stunned me. Particularly because she oddly characterized it as being about homosexuality, when I was speaking largely about heterosexual promiscuity in middle-school-age kids, never even discussed homosexuality, and made only a passing reference to legal scholars discussing gay marriage.
I don't know if I will ever know what made her go off like that. But, in the interests of closure, this was my response:
********************
"Ohhhhhhh-kaaayyyy. Whatever.
I will take you off of my e-mail list. But since this is the last e-mail you will get from me, I will set the record straight about a few things. For starters, I don't know where you got the idea that my last e-mail had anything to do with being gay, per se. Most of the behavior that I was decrying - particularly the promiscuity I know of that is going on at the middle school level - was definitely heterosexual. Otherwise, the political movement I was describing was among pedophiles. If being gay is a sensitive issue with you, well, okay. On the other hand, if you're trying to tell me that we need to be sensitive to the needs of pedophiles, we will have to agree to disagree.
And you can spare me the righteous indignation - I am not claiming to "know everything," or that I am "right" and everyone else is "wrong." What I am telling you, I am telling you as a lawyer. I did not bring up anything about gay marriage in the last e-mail. But regardless of how you feel about gay marriage (for example), the polygamists, polyamorists and pedophiles are already crafting the constitutional Due Process and Equal Opportunity arguments that will analogize their sexual preferences and civil rights to those of homosexuals. And I can tell you as a lawyer that there is no meaningful distinction between the "civil liberty" and "privacy" arguments made by homosexuals in favor of gay marriage, and those which will be made by the others. And for those who claim that consenting adults ought to be able to do as they please as long as it does not hurt anyone else (an argument with which I agree as a Libertarian, by the way), so this will knock out pedophiles, I can tell you that that argument is a house of cards. They will argue that there are already laws which have eliminated statutory rape, and which allow children under 18 to get judicial emancipation, as well as laws that allow girls as young as 13 to get abortions without their parents' consent. These laws, it will be argued, are justification for the elimination of age-of-consent laws. Once those are removed, pedophilia will have to be stricken from the penal codes, removed from the psychological literature as a pathology, and taught as just another "sexual preference" entitled to respect and compassion. I have read the law review articles; I know what's coming. It has nothing to do with being "right," and everything to do with being informed. If you're cool with that, that's your deal; I am not.
But, once again, nothing in my last e-mail dealt particularly with being gay. I will tell you that there are gay people in my life whom I love dearly. I was raised by "Christian" parents to be that way. I would raise my children to do the same. And of course, if one of my children was "born" gay, then they would still be my child, and I would still love them, of course. But if you read any of the social science (and I am not talking about "Christian" social science, but psychiatric and psychological journals), you will know that an enormous amount of homosexual conduct - and yes, even perceived orientation - is a direct result of childhood or adolescent sexual abuse. So, incidentally, is heterosexual promiscuity. Child psychologists know this. So do educators. But instead of eliminating the abuse, as a society we are moving toward legal protection of it. And you think that's okay?
My indignation has nothing to do with "judging" gay people and everything to do with my firm belief that it is the role of parents to inculcate children with their beliefs - parents who are in a position to put all of their teachings about love and tolerance in a context - not the role of government schools, who teach the latest social theory du jour, unattached to any morality of any kind, "Christian" or otherwise. It is precisely because the schools have become unmoored from any particular moral code (pick one, I don't care - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, whatever) that things have gone as far as they have. Because the alternative is not a different, equally firm, secular standard of conduct; the alternative has been no standard.
I am not blindly mouthing some garbage that got forwarded to me from some crackpot URL. I have been in education for 13 years, ****, and in that time I have seen a steady decline in academic standards, as well as standards of conduct. By way of example, one of [my sister's] friends teaches here at [a local middle school]. He told her about an incident in which a mother who was there for a parent teacher conference walked into the girl's bathroom to find a girl fellating one boy while taking it up the a** by another. Tell me what this has to do with being gay. Tell me there is not a significant problem in our public schools.
Instead of addressing the problem, the response has been to castigate those who want to maintain strong academic and conduct standards and a healthy environment for all children - black, white, poor, wealthy, whatever - as "racists," "sexists," "religious bigots," "judgmental all-knowings" and, clearly, the other sorts of labels you would like to saddle me with. Fine. At 43 I have seen plenty, and I can deal with what others think of me, rightly or wrongly. But the fact is that it is the very poorest citizens who suffer most, because they are not in a position to pay taxes and tuition at any sort of private school. If what I am describing is not the case with the public schools in Milwaukee, then you can consider yourself very fortunate. (Although I know that the school voucher movement has a very strong leader in an African-American woman from Milwaukee named Polly Williams, so I suspect things are as bad there as they are elsewhere.)
I also have good friends (whose politics are significantly different from mine, if that makes you feel any better) and who are schoolteachers in the public school system here. They admit to me - reluctantly - that there is not enough time in the day for math, science, reading, geography, etc., because their time is consumed with other so-called "social" programs mandated by the school system - self-esteem training, sensitivity training, "diversity" training, sexual orientation training, and related irrelevant nonsense. In their more honest, even desperate moments, they confess that they cannot do what they were hired to do - which is teach - because they are expected to do what parents used to do, and they can't. More and more children are coming to school unprepared, hungry, dirty, sexualized and sexually-abused, violent, uncivilized and amoral. There was a time when it was parents' responsibility to feed their children, bathe them, wash their clothes, help them with their homework, teach them right and wrong, protect them from exposure to materials they were not emotionally and psychologically prepared for (and yes, I think that other people's sexual practices and sexual orientations are among those).
But since the parents aren't doing it, schools think they should. And there's the problem. Because without any moral context (which legally, they cannot give) and only 7 hours in a school day, this is doomed to failure. The result is a system where diminishing academic effort has given way to ineffective - and in many cases, oppressive - social programming. (Speech codes come immediately to mind.) Parents are irresponsible, schools are ineffective, and everyone is gradually giving up civil liberties with little or no thought to the consequences.
If, in all of that, all you saw was some homophobic rant, then you read it with blinders on. Clearly I hit some nerve for you. Or maybe I am just bearing the disproportionate brunt of all the ire you have saved up from the "99%" that you've deleted and ignored. I am sorry about that, but that's the way it goes, I guess. You and I have known each other for 18 years, and shared many a story about intimate and painful personal faults and failings - ours and others. You know me well enough to know that this "judge not" nonsense is just that - nonsense. If one misperceived e-mail is all it takes for you to respond by saying, "maybe it's time I chose those I keep close to my heart more carefully," then you are obviously reacting to something other than that one message from me.
As per your request, you will not hear from me again.
I see it used all the time by people who want to hide behind it - to avoid taking a position on a controversial topic. Sort of like, "Abortion? I'm personally opposed, but I wouldn't impose my morality on anyone else." If there's nothing wrong with abortion, then why be personally opposed? It's like being personally opposed to spaghetti or shag carpet. People who say that want it both ways - they want acknowledgment of both their higher moral standard and their "tolerance." Because, in this day and age, "tolerance," is the only universally-mandated virtue.
But there is a big difference between not evaluating someone's - or your own - culpability before God, and not evaluating the rightness or wrongness of particular conduct.
Let me offer an example that cuts the other way. In this day and age, we have explanations for certain types of wrongful conduct. For example, we know that people who were abused as children are far more likely to abuse their own children. Some charge that that is just an "excuse." But there is a big difference between an explanation and an excuse. Just because we understand what might drive someone psychologically to abuse their children doesn't mean that it isn't wrong, that we don't try to protect the children, or need to punish abusers.
By the same token, even if we are not to "judge" someone in the eyes of the Creator, we are still able to identify conduct that is destructive. And certainly conduct from which we want to protect our children.
My friend's fury at my June 28th message stunned me. Particularly because she oddly characterized it as being about homosexuality, when I was speaking largely about heterosexual promiscuity in middle-school-age kids, never even discussed homosexuality, and made only a passing reference to legal scholars discussing gay marriage.
I don't know if I will ever know what made her go off like that. But, in the interests of closure, this was my response:
********************
"Ohhhhhhh-kaaayyyy. Whatever.
I will take you off of my e-mail list. But since this is the last e-mail you will get from me, I will set the record straight about a few things. For starters, I don't know where you got the idea that my last e-mail had anything to do with being gay, per se. Most of the behavior that I was decrying - particularly the promiscuity I know of that is going on at the middle school level - was definitely heterosexual. Otherwise, the political movement I was describing was among pedophiles. If being gay is a sensitive issue with you, well, okay. On the other hand, if you're trying to tell me that we need to be sensitive to the needs of pedophiles, we will have to agree to disagree.
And you can spare me the righteous indignation - I am not claiming to "know everything," or that I am "right" and everyone else is "wrong." What I am telling you, I am telling you as a lawyer. I did not bring up anything about gay marriage in the last e-mail. But regardless of how you feel about gay marriage (for example), the polygamists, polyamorists and pedophiles are already crafting the constitutional Due Process and Equal Opportunity arguments that will analogize their sexual preferences and civil rights to those of homosexuals. And I can tell you as a lawyer that there is no meaningful distinction between the "civil liberty" and "privacy" arguments made by homosexuals in favor of gay marriage, and those which will be made by the others. And for those who claim that consenting adults ought to be able to do as they please as long as it does not hurt anyone else (an argument with which I agree as a Libertarian, by the way), so this will knock out pedophiles, I can tell you that that argument is a house of cards. They will argue that there are already laws which have eliminated statutory rape, and which allow children under 18 to get judicial emancipation, as well as laws that allow girls as young as 13 to get abortions without their parents' consent. These laws, it will be argued, are justification for the elimination of age-of-consent laws. Once those are removed, pedophilia will have to be stricken from the penal codes, removed from the psychological literature as a pathology, and taught as just another "sexual preference" entitled to respect and compassion. I have read the law review articles; I know what's coming. It has nothing to do with being "right," and everything to do with being informed. If you're cool with that, that's your deal; I am not.
But, once again, nothing in my last e-mail dealt particularly with being gay. I will tell you that there are gay people in my life whom I love dearly. I was raised by "Christian" parents to be that way. I would raise my children to do the same. And of course, if one of my children was "born" gay, then they would still be my child, and I would still love them, of course. But if you read any of the social science (and I am not talking about "Christian" social science, but psychiatric and psychological journals), you will know that an enormous amount of homosexual conduct - and yes, even perceived orientation - is a direct result of childhood or adolescent sexual abuse. So, incidentally, is heterosexual promiscuity. Child psychologists know this. So do educators. But instead of eliminating the abuse, as a society we are moving toward legal protection of it. And you think that's okay?
My indignation has nothing to do with "judging" gay people and everything to do with my firm belief that it is the role of parents to inculcate children with their beliefs - parents who are in a position to put all of their teachings about love and tolerance in a context - not the role of government schools, who teach the latest social theory du jour, unattached to any morality of any kind, "Christian" or otherwise. It is precisely because the schools have become unmoored from any particular moral code (pick one, I don't care - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, whatever) that things have gone as far as they have. Because the alternative is not a different, equally firm, secular standard of conduct; the alternative has been no standard.
I am not blindly mouthing some garbage that got forwarded to me from some crackpot URL. I have been in education for 13 years, ****, and in that time I have seen a steady decline in academic standards, as well as standards of conduct. By way of example, one of [my sister's] friends teaches here at [a local middle school]. He told her about an incident in which a mother who was there for a parent teacher conference walked into the girl's bathroom to find a girl fellating one boy while taking it up the a** by another. Tell me what this has to do with being gay. Tell me there is not a significant problem in our public schools.
Instead of addressing the problem, the response has been to castigate those who want to maintain strong academic and conduct standards and a healthy environment for all children - black, white, poor, wealthy, whatever - as "racists," "sexists," "religious bigots," "judgmental all-knowings" and, clearly, the other sorts of labels you would like to saddle me with. Fine. At 43 I have seen plenty, and I can deal with what others think of me, rightly or wrongly. But the fact is that it is the very poorest citizens who suffer most, because they are not in a position to pay taxes and tuition at any sort of private school. If what I am describing is not the case with the public schools in Milwaukee, then you can consider yourself very fortunate. (Although I know that the school voucher movement has a very strong leader in an African-American woman from Milwaukee named Polly Williams, so I suspect things are as bad there as they are elsewhere.)
I also have good friends (whose politics are significantly different from mine, if that makes you feel any better) and who are schoolteachers in the public school system here. They admit to me - reluctantly - that there is not enough time in the day for math, science, reading, geography, etc., because their time is consumed with other so-called "social" programs mandated by the school system - self-esteem training, sensitivity training, "diversity" training, sexual orientation training, and related irrelevant nonsense. In their more honest, even desperate moments, they confess that they cannot do what they were hired to do - which is teach - because they are expected to do what parents used to do, and they can't. More and more children are coming to school unprepared, hungry, dirty, sexualized and sexually-abused, violent, uncivilized and amoral. There was a time when it was parents' responsibility to feed their children, bathe them, wash their clothes, help them with their homework, teach them right and wrong, protect them from exposure to materials they were not emotionally and psychologically prepared for (and yes, I think that other people's sexual practices and sexual orientations are among those).
But since the parents aren't doing it, schools think they should. And there's the problem. Because without any moral context (which legally, they cannot give) and only 7 hours in a school day, this is doomed to failure. The result is a system where diminishing academic effort has given way to ineffective - and in many cases, oppressive - social programming. (Speech codes come immediately to mind.) Parents are irresponsible, schools are ineffective, and everyone is gradually giving up civil liberties with little or no thought to the consequences.
If, in all of that, all you saw was some homophobic rant, then you read it with blinders on. Clearly I hit some nerve for you. Or maybe I am just bearing the disproportionate brunt of all the ire you have saved up from the "99%" that you've deleted and ignored. I am sorry about that, but that's the way it goes, I guess. You and I have known each other for 18 years, and shared many a story about intimate and painful personal faults and failings - ours and others. You know me well enough to know that this "judge not" nonsense is just that - nonsense. If one misperceived e-mail is all it takes for you to respond by saying, "maybe it's time I chose those I keep close to my heart more carefully," then you are obviously reacting to something other than that one message from me.
As per your request, you will not hear from me again.
posted by Portia Sterling | 10:48 PM
1 Comments:
Real true friends in life we can count on one hand. The rest are aquaintences or merely people we know.
The response you received was due to a severe smashing on her toes. Rather than evaluate her psotiton she lashes out at you. Typical of liberals.
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