Rod Dreher's Wake Up Call

Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option has been out for a few weeks. As a Christian, I’m hoping the book puts down deep roots, that it escapes the fate of most books on the culture, which make a brief stir, then slip off the radar. Dreher’s book doesn’t deserve such a fate.

Dreher has been writing on a “Benedict Option” for years. He coined the term in echo of a passage near the end of Alasdair MacIntyre’s classic After Virtue, where the Scottish philosopher argues that what the West now needs is a figure similar to St. Benedict. Referencing our current state, MacIntyre wrote:

What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. . . . This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another--doubtless very different--St. Benedict.

After Virtue is one of the most cunningly constructed philosophical wrecking balls ever to be swung at the edifice of Enlightenment ideology, and MacIntyre's deep critique of modern bureaucratic culture and the “emotivism” that modernity has spawned leads him to put new emphasis on communal practices as the only viable basis for a meaningful ethics. Dreher, seeing the need for a similar return to Christ-guided practices among Christians, and taking the seminal case of St. Benedict as touchstone, slowly began compiling what would become The Benedict Option.

I come to Dreher’s book from a unique place, a personal history that all but forces me to recognize the troubling truth in his main arguments. Dreher insists that American Christians have for a couple decades now been ignoring their real position in American culture. He is right. What’s more, I believe his widely misunderstood ideas about what must come next, if Christianity is to survive, are right as well.

For most of my adult life I counted myself on the left. As a student in Madison, Wisconsin in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, I was active in the Divest from Apartheid movement and very active in the nuclear weapons freeze movement. My theory-heavy area of study, Comparative Literature, left me with a keen sense of the subtle powers of ideology in discourse, whether political discourse, or literary, or in the everyday. Many lifelong friendships began in Madison, and this web of friends for many years kept me committed to a politically left reading of the world and American culture. That commitment, however, started to crack in 2011.

Already back in university I was something of an odd man out, because I was also Christian. I defined myself as a “left Christian”, of course, often stressing the social doctrine side of the Gospel, and was unorthodox in my speculative, often agonistic, theological struggles, seeking to ground a new understanding of the faith. I had a strong sense of the divine Presence in the world, of a Mystery that wasn’t to be seized in language but must nonetheless be reverenced. Early on I understood that this reverence for God was connected to anything the West might mean by human rights. The faith had a world-historical importance--one might say the world-historical importance--even as it pointed beyond the world. My focus on European literatures gave me in addition a deep respect for the Western tradition.

All through those years, and up to the start of the new century, there were things in the American left I didn't support; causes my peers considered progressive but that I stood against. At that time, back in 1989, in 1995, perhaps even in 2003, this was still possible: I could be a faithful Christian but still part of the American left.

All that has changed. The new century has seen our “left” almost completely abandon the goals that kept people like me in solidarity. Worse, it has seen the rise to prominence of all the elements I didn’t support: the shrill identity politics, the speech codes, abortion “rights” as the meaning of womanhood; and most noticeable of all, the now fanatical fetish of sexual self-definition--the more perverse the better--as the very meaning of "progressive".

As Rod Dreher lays it out in The Benedict Option, what we are seeing in all this is the final, decisive victory of the Sexual Revolution that began in the 1960s, the LGBT movement its final avant-garde:

The advance of gay civil rights, along with a reversal of religious liberties for believers who do not accept the LGBT agenda, had been slowly but steadily happening for years. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision declaring a constitutional right to same-sex marriage was the Waterloo of religious conservatism. It was the moment the Sexual Revolution triumphed decisively, and the culture war, as we have known it since the 1960s, came to an end. In the wake of Obergefell, Christian beliefs about the sexual complementarity of marriage are considered to be abominable prejudice--and in a growing number of cases, punishable. The public square has been lost.

Dreher is especially persuasive in arguing that this victory is not merely a matter of the previous culture “loosening up” its sexual mores or expanding the range of acceptable sexual behavior. He sees it rather as a thoroughgoing shift in cosmology, a culture-wide rejection of the Western understanding of our place in the universe and its replacement with something utterly different. What we are undergoing, according to Dreher, is a far-reaching redefinition of the meaning of sexuality and of the individual’s relation to his or her own being. With the Sexual Revolution’s triumph, sexuality is no longer grounded in any metaphysical truth of human nature, but has become a pure expression of the self’s supposed ability to define itself. One’s sexual being is no longer a given, grounded in one’s sex. Thus, in our new order, “We are married” no longer presupposes a sex-based understanding of what that means; nor, with more recent developments, does the statement “I am a man” even presuppose a male body.

One good reason to read The Benedict Option is to get a sense of what this shift means in relation to the millennia of cultural life that came before. Dreher lays out some of the intellectual history that prepared the soil for the shift, but he’s especially strong in his depiction of just how different this new version of humanity is. He is right, besides, that Christianity can make no peace with this revolution. Biblical anthropology stands on completely different grounds, a vision of the meaning of sex as rooted not in individual desire, but in male and female as embodying a supra-individual cosmic mandate. Sexuality in the Christian rubric was not mostly a matter of what turned individuals on, but of how individuals were to fulfill their relation to that divinely given purpose.

How did this revolutionary victory, once realized, affect the culture? Myself I noticed a very tangible shift in the terrain during Obama’s second term. I now attribute it to awareness among liberals and leftists that, with “marriage equality”, the old regime had finally been routed. This meant a new kind of relationship to those like myself who were, on some matters, still part of that old regime. If previously the left could consider me one of them, a somewhat eccentric religious guy whose “heart was in the right place”, suddenly there was a new coldness. In the past it had always been “Well, Eric, you subscribe to a religious interpretation, I don’t”--but our conversation, whatever the subject, would go on. Now any time the discussion, whether face to face or online, got near any part of my Christianity, their point seemed to be that the conversation would not go on. I’d get the equivalent of a scowl, as if even mentioning the Christian tradition was repugnant: all such thinking needed to be finally and utterly pushed out of sight.

I’d always had gay friends, written on gay writers, supported gays and lesbians in their struggles against the anathema conservatives placed on them. I’d always found the bourgeois Christian stigma on sexual sin over the top; it was often cruel and un-Christian--seeming to imply as it did that sexual sin was in a special category that made it worse, even qualitatively different, than sins like pride or greed. I never thought this way myself. But any nuances in my thought made no difference in the new climate. When it became clear to liberal acquaintances that I didn’t agree to their fickle redefinition of marriage, they jumped straight to ostracism. It was not any more that I “disagreed” with them (as I always had on abortion)--no, I had to be made to disappear. Those who held to the old view of marriage were to have no place in our Brave New World. They could be given no place even to speak.

Why such weight put on this particular issue? I’d disagreed with my fellows on the left before, and my right to such disagreement had been recognized. Why now was it suddenly necessary to censor me?

I now see it as related to something Dreher and others have been onto for years. The logic of Enlightenment, the way this logic has been pushed and combined with the Sexual Revolution, has in fact made sexual self-definition the very center of a new cosmology, even a new religion of sorts. On this Dreher has learned much from the brilliant sociologist and culture critic Philip Rieff:

In Rieff’s theory of culture, a culture is defined by what it forbids. Each culture has its own “order of therapy”--a system that teaches its members what is permitted within its bounds and gives them sanctioned ways to let off the pressure of living by the community’s rules, which are traditionally rooted in religion. Moreover, the asceticism in a culture--that is, the ideal of self-denial--cannot be an end in itself, because that would destroy a culture. Rather, it must be a “positive asceticism” that links the individual negating his own particular desires to the achievement of a higher, positive, life-affirming goal. . . . A culture begins to die . . . “when its normative institutions fail to communicate ideals in ways that remain inwardly compelling, first of all to the cultural elites themselves.” . . .

What made our condition so revolutionary, he said, was that for the first time in history, the West was attempting to build a culture on the absence of belief in a higher order that commanded our obedience. In other words, we were creating an “anti-culture,” one that made the foundation for a stable culture impossible.

That is, instead of teaching us what we must deprive ourselves of to be civilized, we have a culture built on a cult of desire . . .

“Eros must be raised to the level of a religious cult in modern society, not because we really are that obsessed with it, but because the myth of freedom demands it,” says political philosopher Stephen L. Gardner. “It is in carnal desire that the modern individual believes he affirms his ‘individuality’. The body must be the true ‘subject’ of desire because the individual must be the author of his own desire.”

In declaring myself against “same-sex marriage” in 2011, I was thus offending against the very core of this new Sacred. Soon to follow the redefinition of marriage there came the supposed right of individuals to define their gender, indeed to invent dozens of new “genders” to correspond to whatever their self-mythicization might project:

The Romantic ideal of the self-created man finds its fulfillment in the newest vanguards of the Sexual Revolution, transgendered people. They refuse to be bound by biology and have behind them an elite movement teaching new generations that gender is whatever the choosing individual wants it to be.

Back in 2011, during the marriage debate, what struck me most was the almost apoplectic fury of liberals when faced with any disagreement. It was a visceral hatred, flaring suddenly, accompanied by the most vulgar insults and sometimes even veiled threats of violence. And this from people who knew me as someone more or less in their camp on other issues.

Deep hatred of anyone who doesn’t march lock-step with LGBT dogma is now widespread. I remember once going to a Facebook page in support of Barronelle Stutzman, the soft-spoken 72-year-old Washington state florist now being sued out of house and home because she told a gay customer she couldn’t arrange flowers for his wedding. Here were the two first visitor comments that appeared:

And Barronelle, a woman who’d always treated this particular gay customer well but only demurred on wedding flowers--these people would have you believe that she is the hater.

The insults I was getting from my fellow leftists were not far from what these “progressives” dished out to Ms. Stutzman. Which made me realize: Were they actually my fellow leftists in any meaningful sense? Could I in any way work together with people who obviously wanted me in a prison camp?

To interpret such visceral hatred, I now think it useful to focus on the revolution part of Sexual Revolution. We might look at previous political revolutions to get some idea of where we’re at as orthodox Christians. American historian Crane Brinton, in his Anatomy of Revolution, was one of the first to analyze the stages a revolution goes through.

Revolutions are typically won by a coalition of political actors working together. Once victory is clear, there is often a brief “honeymoon period” where it seems to the victorious classes that anything is possible. For obvious reasons, this euphoria wears off quickly. Because it’s not long before those who backed the revolution realize that life goes on much as before: Utopia has not been established on earth. A growing malaise combines with the fact that the revolutionary leaders are used to living in battle mode, and thus comes the predictable next step. Moderates among the leadership are accused of not being radical enough in their policies--“We must not give in to these backsliders!”--a purge takes place, and the radicals take over. The ambient ardor left over from the initial revolution is then refocused on two new tasks: 1) ensuring ideological purity; 2) mopping up what remains of the defeated classes, who are depicted as all that stands in the way of Utopia’s final arrival. Thus begins the Terror. During this immediately post-revolutionary period, wholly new planks are often introduced into the ruling committee’s platform, typically of a more extremist nature than what was originally demanded in the revolution.

If we view the Sexual Revolution through this lens of past political revolution, it’s pretty clear where we are at present. The revolution has been won, sexual Utopia still hasn’t arrived (because, duh, it never can arrive) and the only thing that might keep our successful revolutionaries busy for the next decade is mopping up what remains of those who refused to drink the Rainbow Kool-Aid when it was first served--i.e. us orthodox religious people. Religious conservatives must be mopped up because, according to the logic, it is our mere existence that prevents Utopia’s final arrival.

This is in fact just how it is playing out in America, in our media and in our courts. Note especially the new plank that was quickly added to the revolutionary platform: the trans movement. There’s really no surprise in the meteoric rise of this raging trans craze. All the revolutionary zeal left over after the victory on marriage--something had to be done with it, no? To keep momentum going, the woke among the liberal intelligentsia had to quick set about destroying the very idea of sexual difference. “Yes, let’s invent thirty new genders and demand citizens use new pronouns. Those who don’t will face fines. Let’s put biological males in teen girls’ locker rooms. See how the rubes like that!”

It’s all both supremely perverse and, given where we’re at, depressingly predictable.

Liberals often accuse Christians of being obsessed with sex, but really there’s nothing like the obsessive focus on sex we see in this new mainstreamed liberalism. The reason for it, again, is the need to make the desiring individual the very center of the Sacred. To balk at a man who demands you refer to him as they or ze rather than he is now a kind of sacrilege. And they want punishment for those who don’t conform. (Cf. the struggles of Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson.)

So who here is really obsessed with sex as the Center of all Personal Meaning--Christians or this SJW rainbow crowd? I think the answer is obvious.

None of which is to say that sex is unimportant in Christianity. But the Christian understanding of sex is radically different. Dreher:

In speaking of how men and women of the early Christian era saw their bodies, historian Peter Brown says the body “was embedded in a cosmic matrix in ways that made its perception of itself profoundly unlike our own. Ultimately, sex was not the expression of inner needs, lodged in the isolated body. Instead, it was seen as the pulsing, through the body, of the same energies as kept the stars alive. . . .”

Early Christianity’s sexual teaching does not come from the words of Christ and the Apostle Paul; more broadly, it emerges from the Bible’s anthropology. The human being bears the image of God, however tarnished by sin, and is the pinnacle of an order created and imbued with meaning by God.

The sexual binary of male and female is an integral fact of this created order. In itself it bears metaphysical meaning: “The significance of sexual difference has never before been contingent upon a creature’s preferences, or upon whether or not God gave it episodically to a particular creature to have certain preferences,” writes Catholic theologian Christopher Roberts. He goes on to say that for Christians, the meaning of sexuality has always depended on its relationship to the created order and to eschatology--the ultimate end of man. “As was particularly clear, perhaps for the first time in Luther, the fact of a sexually differentiated creation is reckoned to human beings as a piece of information from God about who and what it meant to be human,” writes Roberts.

Contrary to modern gender theory, the question is not Are we men or women? but How are we to be male and female together? The legitimacy of our sexual desire is limited by the givenness of nature. The facts of our biology are not incidental to our personhood. Marriage has to be sexually complementary because only the male-female pair mirrors the generatively of the divine order.

Gay marriage, as Dreher indicates, denies this complementarity and thus cannot be actual marriage. “Similarly, transgenderism doesn’t merely bend but breaks the biological and metaphysical reality of male and female.” Dreher again cites Philip Rieff:

Rieff, writing in the 1960s, identified the Sexual Revolution--though he did not use that term--as a leading indicator of Christianity’s demise. In classical Christian culture, he wrote, “the rejection of sexual individualism” was “very near the center of the symbolic that has not held.” He meant that renouncing the sexual autonomy and sensuality of pagan culture and redirecting the erotic instinct was intrinsic to Christian culture. Without Christianity, the West was reverting to its former state.

It is nearly impossible for contemporary Americans to comprehend why sex was a central concern of early Christianity. Sarah Ruden, the Yale-trained classics translator, explains the culture into which Christianity appeared in her 2010 book Paul Among the People. Ruden contends that it’s profoundly ignorant to think of the Apostle Paul as a dour proto-puritan descending upon happy-go-lucky pagan hippies, ordering them to stop having fun.

In fact, Paul’s teachings on sexual purity and marriage were adopted as liberating in the pornographic, sexually exploitative Greco-Roman culture of the time--exploitative especially of slaves and women, whose value to pagan males lay chiefly in their ability to produce children and provide sexual pleasure. Christianity, as articulated by Paul, worked a cultural revolution, restraining and channeling male eros, elevating the status of both women and of the human body, and infusing marriage--and marital sexuality--with love.

What we have now, in the West, are two incompatible anthropologies. Worse, those who support the Sexual Revolution are uninterested in classical liberal pluralism, which would allow for space in the public arena for the two anthropologies to compete. After Obergefell, many Christians expected, as the LGBT activists promised, that the legalization of same-sex marriage would not impinge upon the rights of Christian institutions to live by and teach their own understanding of marriage. It is turning out quite otherwise, with a mounting wave of lawsuits that threaten the very existence of Christian schools, universities and charities. The gay lobby pursues these cases with evident glee. It is they who do not want to live and let live.

What then must be done given 1) the post-revolutionary fury with which the LGBT movement seeks to expel orthodox Christianity from the public arena, and 2) the necessity for Christians to remain faithful to biblical principles for the church to survive and thrive? What is Rod Dreher’s advice for Christians at this juncture?

My writing here so far, especially if read by liberals, likely gives the impression that The Benedict Option is little more than a handwringing conservative lament on American sexual ethics. It is nothing of the sort. Rather, Dreher’s book as a whole presents a multi-faceted strategy for revitalizing Christian life through intentional life choices and a renewed engagement with earlier Christian practices--the faith as it was lived and practiced before the 20th century flood.

Part of Dreher’s assessment of current Christian culture is based on research done by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton. What Smith and Denton discovered, through study of the beliefs of actual Americans, was that the de facto “Christianity” now practiced in America, particularly among the young, has very very little in common with the traditional faith. They coined the term Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) to describe this new American religion. Compared to the historical faith, MTD is doctrinally paper thin, and can be summed up in a few bland credos, among them: 1) God is looking over us but not much involved with happenings on earth; 2) God wants us to be nice to each other and to be happy with ourselves; 3) Good people, when they die, go to heaven.

Dreher believes, and I agree, that this way of living our faith is both widespread and seriously inadequate. He also believes that the churches--too much in the business of flattering the feel-good vanities of the flock and not enough concerned with forming souls--are deeply implicated in the spread of this eroded version of what the Apostles taught. He insists that we as a people, the earthly body of Christ, stand no chance of surviving the corrosive secularism of this new century if we continue muddling along in this milquetoast therapeutic version of our faith.

Many of Dreher’s chapters are dedicated to studying alternatives to our current state, and he begins, aptly, with a long chapter on the Benedictine monks of Norcia, Italy. This portrait of a group of men, our contemporaries, who’ve willingly given up everything and dedicated themselves to prayer, contemplation and the works of mercy, allows Dreher to delve into what a more authentic Christian understanding of work, community and spiritual life might look like. It proves a good starting point, as it gives Dreher the chance to clarify a general thesis: that we, as Christians, though not all called to monastic life, are nonetheless called to bring our everyday life activities as much into harmony with Christ as we can. We are failing in this, especially as regards our attitudes to community and work, which for most of us have been shaped almost entirely by the secular culture we were raised in. According to Dreher, this inability to let Christ into our communal and work life has made us into little more than churchgoing versions of the late-modern Standard Issue Human: egotistical but lost, ethically without rudder, consumerists dragged to and fro by advertising, fashion, zero-sum-game politics, Facebook “likes”.

The Norcian monks are just the first of many intentional Christian communities Dreher touches on. Another of them, also in Italy, a group that charmingly calls itself Tipi Loschi--in Italian, “the Usual Suspects”--is practicing a radical form of community building and youth education that also might offer no small light to those seeking a Christian way out. Of course Dreher also interviews people in many intentional Christian communities in the US, whether Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, seeking to answer the question: What does a “Benedict Option” lifestyle really look like? How can one be part of American culture, yet also establish a distance that allows for the cultivation of the soul in a community of like-minded others? Dreher gives multiple examples of the joys and potential challenges.

Not surprisingly, Dreher also addresses one of the starkest challenges serious Christian families now face in America, namely how to raise children in the faith and keep them from being corrupted by the trashy ethos the dominant culture now models for them 24/7. These chapters on youth and education are some of the most interesting in the book, and they address everything from options for schooling (Dreher advises, if at all possible, that you get your kids out of public schools) to the threat posed by smart phone culture.

But what of Christian politics? How should Christians engage in the political process? This is one of the areas where Dreher’s work has been most widely misunderstood. Far too many have seen in Dreher’s project a call to “run for the hills”, to “retreat” from public life; a call to “let the public arena go to hell on its own” while hiding out in the catacombs. Many of these critics, to read them, seem not to have read the same book I just finished. Their reaction to Dreher’s project might have been understandable before the book was out, but now that the book is on the shelves, I think they might need to take a more careful look at the actual arguments, the double-directedness of the project. On this, Dreher quotes with approval one of the Norcian Benedictines, who speaks of the need to have "borders" behind which we live to nurture our faith, but also the need to "push outwards, infinitely." This double focus has always been implicit in Dreher's writing on the Benedict Option, so it's odd how often it's missed. Some critics, I suspect, are mainly afraid to face up to what's happening in America.

Given our decisive rout in the culture wars, you’d think we Christians would step back a bit and ask ourselves if we weren’t doing a few things wrong. Dreher identifies the virtual fusion in many minds of Christianity and the Republican Party as one of the biggest mistakes of recent decades. A sizable demographic, he argues, came to think of their Church as “the Republican Party at prayer”. The problem here, in my analysis, was not so much that power corrupts, but that imagined power corrupts. How so?

Far too many conservative Christians came to believe that, as long as their governors were in office, or as long as a Republican was in the White House, the Gospel was doing well. This was a grave error. It was an example of bad faith, shirking off responsibility to others, in this case to a political party that was more interested in serving its corporate interests than in smoothing the way for the Kingdom. Meanwhile, as American Christians told themselves that all was right with the world because the GOP held enough seats, the GOP was simultaneously self-justifying its relative inactivity on abortion or economic justice or religious liberty by saying that, after all, they were just politicians, and if the churches could not gather enough public support for what they wanted and couldn’t manage to sway corporate opinion as to their demographic clout, who were they, mere politicians, to do anything risky? After all, they needed to ensure they’d get elected next time around.

The degree to which this kind of mutual bad faith weakened Christian witness in America over the recent couple decades would be hard to exaggerate. Dreher, always an astute political observer (his blog is must reading) saw just what would follow once the corporate world realized that money was to be made in cozying up to the LGBT movement. And so in Indiana, when modest religious liberty protections were proposed in 2014, and the corporate boards decided to virtue signal by threatening the state with boycotts should they actually enact such “bigoted” legislation, GOP governor Mike Pence didn’t stand his ground. Under pressure from the business lobby, the Indiana law was swiftly rewritten to the point of making it toothless. This, Dreher has said repeatedly, is what you will get if you put your hopes in the Republican Party.

Which is why Dreher now insists that putting too many of our eggs as Christians in any political party’s basket is a mistake. When push comes to shove, the Republican Party will sell us out. What is necessary for us at present is to build up solid Christian communities. Because, if our eyes are open, there is little hope in anything else.

In one fascinating chapter, Dreher offers portraits of two famous Czech dissidents under communism, Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Benda. These men, he argues, offer examples of the kind of “antipolitical politics” we should begin to practice as Christians. Both Havel and Benda realized the importance of resistance at the individual, everyday level. And they understood the necessity of building alternative communities under or parallel to the overarching, oppressive national political order. One gains hope from these examples of anti-communist resistance because, as surprised even them, their steady underground resistance finally bore fruit. Similar dynamics in Poland also saw the Church prove decisive in bringing down totalitarianism.

But we in America are not (at least not yet) under such intense political pressure. Which is all the more reason, according to Dreher, for us to be both strategic and steady in our political efforts. Being joined at the hip to any political party is not strategic given where we’re at. The only cause Dreher insists we should be intensely involved with (as in paying attention and organizing and pressuring our representatives) is the constitutional cause of religious liberty. Because if that is lost, so much else of what we can accomplish, through schools or charities, will be lost too.

Dreher is emphatic about this fight because it is by no means certain that we will win it. It is all too obvious that the new Sexual Identity Commissars are busy 24/7 trying to take away the rights of Christian schools and universities to teach the faith and run their institutions on Christian principles. We must remember that vast swaths of the liberal intelligentsia no longer even believe religious liberty exists as anything other than “an excuse for hate”.

And so I come full circle, back to the question of the threat posed by LGBT activists and their ever-supportive SJW ranks. These people have already gained far too much sway over our courts, schools, and media, not to mention the sway they’ve gained in many denominations. Aside from fighting for religious liberty, how should orthodox Christians meet this threat in the public arena?

One thing I wish Dreher had included in this book are his thoughts on what might be called the rules of engagement between orthodox religious people and the sexual revolutionaries. How are Christians, in the public arena, to communicate with a public that largely supports the “reforms” demanded by Team Rainbow?

My intellectual background convinces me of one thing: Language is the crowbar of ideology. It is language, the manipulation and coining of terms, that ideology uses to pry its way into social consciousness. It is via new concepts, embodied in language, that new ideologies set up shop.

In many circles in America people no longer bat an eye when someone refers to Rob’s “husband”. And it’s growing ever more common for people to refer to some biological female as he or they or even ze. It’s now considered correct to accept and make an effort to use whatever pronouns an individual demands--otherwise one is a bigot. Courts have already come down on the side of people insisting on these new pronouns; fines have already been levied. In Canada, which now has it worse than we do, refusal to use these newly minted pronouns is literally illegal.

The man next to one says: “I’m Ryan. This is my husband Dave.” The woman next to one says: “I’m nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.” My question: Should Christians agree to use any of this language?

This question is not a trivial one, nor is it easy to answer. On the one hand, Christians must show concern and love for others, regardless of ideological differences, a truth Dreher underlines repeatedly. In this vein, how would it show care and concern if one refused even to acknowledge an individual’s married status? To insist on using partner rather than husband for a married gay couple would now widely be seen as openly disrespectful, besides being, in many instances, legally actionable. Perhaps this will soon be true also with the many new gender pronouns. Shouldn’t Christians just agree to use the terms society is using, as a gesture of peace and goodwill? Can’t Christians just maintain their disagreement in their hearts and in the more closed confines of their communities?

It may be best to do so. But the cost is huge. Because, as I’ve suggested, to use another’s descriptive terms is already to agree to the reality they are promoting. To refer to a woman’s partner as her “wife”, even to do it out of politeness, is to agree that their relationship is actually a marriage. To use ze (rather than he or she) to refer to an individual is to admit that there is such a gender that corresponds to that term. And so: When a Christian agrees to use this terminology, isn’t that Christian more or less burning a pinch of incense to Caesar?

I’d be very curious to see how Dreher might answer these questions on linguistic rules of engagement. I was somewhat surprised he didn’t address such issues in his book. I won’t quote the Havel passage in full, but I wonder: Every time we utter one of these demanded terms, aren’t we forfeiting the bravery shown by the greengrocer who refused to hang the “Workers of the World” slogan in his shop window?

I admit that I’m not sure of the right way forward on this. Is it better, on terminology, to err on the side of peace-making? Or should we ensure that our speech always testifies to what we believe is the truth?

Dreher’s Benedict Option is a brilliant call for Christians to return to the basics of the faith, to recognize how far we’ve been led astray in our hyper-consumerist secular culture. He has made a compelling case for return to an earlier Christian understanding, the authentic one, and for changing our daily lives through a more thoughtful, principled Christian practice. The book doesn’t answer every question (no book can) but it makes for a worthy “starter manual” of sorts for those who recognize the need for serious change. I’m hoping the book puts down deep roots.

Check out Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

Check out Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

And for something completely different, check out my Idiocy, Ltd.

Barronelle Stutzman Case: Shame on the Washington Supreme Court

I’m deeply disturbed by the logical ineptitude of our courts whenever the case concerns religious liberty vs. LGBT rights.

Predictably, the Washington State Supreme Court has ruled against Barronelle Stutzman, the beleaguered 72-year-old florist who thought her religious liberty counted for something in America. I’ve been following this case since the beginning, and it has sickened me since the beginning. (Cf. Gay Marriage and the Bigotry of American Liberals).

Consider this element of the state’s argument against Stutzman, as reported in the CBS News piece on Stutzman’s court loss:

But the court held that her floral arrangements do not constitute protected free speech, and that providing flowers to a same-sex wedding would not serve as an endorsement of same-sex marriage.

“As Stutzman acknowledged at deposition, providing flowers for a wedding between Muslims would not necessarily constitute an endorsement of Islam, nor would providing flowers for an atheist couple endorse atheism,” the opinion said.

As even a smidgin of thinking would reveal, the state is making a false parallel here. Stutzman's religious beliefs would never in any case include the tenet that Muslims or atheists cannot marry. So of course making flowers for such weddings wouldn't offend against her faith regardless of what she thought of Islam or atheism. But her faith does include a basic tenet that she has bravely refused to offend against. Namely: Marriage is by definition between man and woman.

Amazingly, the Washington Supreme Court is lacking in basic ability to distinguish between categories necessary for even understanding the case. Such inability to think in such a body can only have two explanations: it’s either a result of rank stupidity or ideological animus. It’s pretty clear which we’re dealing with here.

And consider this:

Gov. Jay Inslee lauded Thursday’s ruling, saying it was “in favor of equality for all Washingtonians.”

“By ruling that intolerance based on sexual orientation is unlawful, the Court affirmed that Washington state will remain a place where no one can be discriminated against because of who they love,” Inslee said in a written statement.

Uh-huh. What in the hell is he talking about? Stutzman has never discriminated against anyone “because of who they love”. What she has done is simply refuse to make the flowers for a wedding she considers impermissible. Which is something completely different. For years she had been arranging flowers for Rob Ingersoll, the gay man suing her, all the while knowing he loved other men. In short, she never rejected the person because of what he was, but simply refused to take part in a wedding that her religion considered an offense against the meaning of marriage.

The right of the customer to be served regardless of who he is or how he lives should in the Stutzman case be recognized as secondary to the right of religious liberty: the right of the person of faith not to be compelled into actions that offend against that faith.

Shame on our courts. That our secular government, out of the blue, decided to redefine marriage does not entail that all citizens must agree on the redefinition. American laws are capable of balancing the rights of LGBT people and the rights of religious conservatives. So far, our courts have failed dismally in finding this balance.

Have some deadpan with your coffee. Check out my Idiocy, Ltd.. Dryest humor in the west.

Richard Dawkins and the Question of Zombie Rights

"What on Earth is a why question?" --Richard Dawkins: The Delusion (80)
To forestall any misunderstandings I ought to begin by acknowledging that I fully respect Richard Dawkins’ right to speak his mind. That such a mind has spoken, and at such length, can only be seen as a boon to the scientific community. With Dawkins, after all, we finally have incontrovertible proof that zombies can speak.

Of course we already knew, starting mid-1980s, that zombies could tie a tie. But the proof Dawkins has provided of linguistic competence raises the zombie debate to a whole new level. And now many other zombies (as demonstrated by “lively” discussions now splattered over the Internet) are themselves entering the lists in greater and greater numbers.

Though recent studies correlate high-functioning autism with atheism, I think for Dawkins and the other New Atheists the diagnosis isn’t apt. No, with this latter crowd I believe we are dealing with full-on zombism.

Whether Dawkins and these other newly vocal zombies are what is called philosophical zombies or whether they are rather the traditional flesh-eating zombies is not a question I can answer here. Personally I incline toward the theory that finds in them elements of both. In any case, it is not the type of zombie that concerns me, but rather their sudden ascent to language.

What does it mean?

We are still at a loss to answer this question. Admittedly, my current interests are not so much in their recent acquisition of speech, but more in what they actually say when they do speak. Or when they write. Because Dawkins has also proved that zombies can write human-like prose.

From the start, when they first began talking back in 2004, I noticed that New Atheist zombies were liable to toss out all manner of interesting material. It’s the striking oddness of their pronouncements, floundering there at the edge of human language, that’s kept me following their “work”. That they self-identify as atheists is secondary for me. Because in their pronouncements, it’s not so much the atheist element that stands out, but the zombie element. Non-zombie atheists have been around for centuries, and one might at any time have a beer with them. But with Dawkins? Could one have a beer with Dawkins?

Others have remarked on this too. With Dawkins and his fellows there’s a certain zombie panache that both attracts attention, if only for the curiosity of the phenomenon, and horrifies. There's a manic, mechanical flippancy one almost never finds elsewhere.

For instance, Dawkins last year opined that we in the non-zombie community would do well if we aborted infants with Down syndrome. The remark was worthy of note for a number of reasons. First, it demonstrated a nascent zombie “desire” to play some kind of directive role in human affairs. Why? That zombies presume to give us advice on social issues is striking in itself, almost as if my electric range were to start telling me how it wants the French toast made.

Still, regardless of the lame and often horrific things Dawkins and other New Atheist zombies say, I believe we should allow them the right to say on. If only to keep an eye on them. Further (because many have already started to think along these lines) even if we did have prenatal tests that could determine a child would be born with a mind like Richard Dawkins’, I would not be among those in favor of aborting it. The tests, after all, might be inaccurate. It’s happened before. And ethically speaking, the possibility of error more or less ties our hands. Myself, I'd rather let a hundred babbling zombies live than abort one healthy baby by mistake.

Doubtless some will see my position as extreme.

To what degree a person suffering from Dawkins syndrome is a human person like the rest of us is still hotly debated, but again, I think we must err on the cautious side. Zombies like Dawkins do have rights. Though I grant that their work does tangible harm, we must keep in mind that their innate idiocy has so far managed to undermine the influence they might otherwise have. Their own speech clearly proves their inhumanity to anyone with ears to hear. Rather than outright censorship, then, I think it sufficient for now if we simply keep an eye on them, all the while adamantly resisting their crazed efforts to change us.

Yes, I'm aware that some fear we are now on the brink of a Zombie Apocalypse. But I think such fear is premature. Given the limited number of actual zombies out there (a few thousand perhaps) added to the aforesaid stupidity of their discourse, I highly doubt a Zombie Apocalypse is imminent. So far most people are smart enough not to be swayed by the shabby rhetoric zombies deploy. I predict this will continue.

There are so many sad questions raised by Dawkins syndrome. Why it broke out so suddenly and with such virulence in the first decade of this century no one knows. We still don’t really understand the etiology of New Atheist zombism. More research is needed, and swiftly. Once we’ve got a clearer understanding of what is turning these men (it is mostly men) into zombies, we can begin work to decrease the incidence of zombism in coming generations.

A careful study of the early years of the most prominent New Atheist zombies might provide helpful clues. With Dawkins himself, some have speculated that an accident at the time of birth or in youth may be to blame. Did perinatal asphyxia perhaps shut down the parts of his brain capable of spiritual intelligence? Or did he maybe, as a child, drink a bottle of laundry detergent, thinking it was soda?

Dawkins and Sam Harris are very possibly walking/talking evidence of the need for better child-proof packaging. It’s a tragedy really, for everyone. On the one hand, the whole English-speaking world suffers from their drooly pronouncements, their frantic construction of straw men; on the other, they themselves suffer from their inability to comprehend the human minds around them.

I sometines ponder what it’s like to live inside such brains, where all the neural activity is located in the mechanical and calculative sectors.

Oh, and the moneymaking sectors. The “Dawkins Circle”, after all, which Dawkins himself launched some years ago, is certainly proof that zombies can make a quick buck. There is a clear cult-like hierarchy to the organization, carefully designed to lure others who may have drunk laundry detergent. And the price exacted from sycophants each time they try to move up a level--it's repugnant really, but has so far proved surprisingly successful in English-speaking countries. Which makes one wonder: Is there maybe something in our drinking water?

So how does the sycophant proceed once he's joined the Dawkins Circle?

Consider: For $1,000 a year you enter the first level, what is called the “Reason Circle”, which allows you discounts on cult merchandise and the chance to meet “personalities” from the Richard Dawkins foundation; but not Dawkins himself.

For $2,500 a year, the price of joining the “Science Circle”, you get a chance to actually attend an event where the Alpha Zombie will speak; but you won’t necessarily meet him.

Then come the “Darwin Circle” at $5,000 a year and the “Fifth Horseman Circle” at $10,000 a year. Those who have attained to the Fifth Horseman Circle will get to sit at a table with . . . Richard Dawkins Foundation Executive Director Robyn Blumner.

It's mind-boggling almost.

In fact if you want to get close enough to the center of this Zombie Circle Jerk to actually kiss the Ring of Reason, you’ll have to come up with a staggering $100,000 a year. That’s the entrance fee for what is called “The Magic of Reality Circle”, which I take to be the very rectal center of the organization. For your $100,000 cheque, you’ll get a "private breakfast or lunch" with Dawkins himself.

Don’t ask about dinner. Dinner is a different price scale entirely.

This is all as ingenious as it is zombiesque. Can one imagine non-zombie scientists like Charles Darwin or Albert Einstein creating such an organization? Or any of the prominent Western scientists who are also Christians?

Yes, it’s sad what can happen to otherwise normal humans when they fall under the spell of the Dawkins. Or at least it’s sad what can happen to those with money. Because look--the lower classes (even the middle classes!) are not meant to attain Reason in this particular cult. And really: Why in God's name would anyone pay such money to sit by and maybe, just maybe, talk with a tie-wearing zombie?

I can talk with my coffee grinder any time for free. Like a zombie, my coffee grinder is entirely lacking in spiritual intelligence. I don’t much see the need to spend my hard-earned money on the Dawkins model. But others, perhaps because of the water, beg to differ.

As a zombie is a human-like creature adept at simulating humans but lacking consciousness, so New Atheism is a religion-like phenomenon adept at simulating human meaning but lacking soul. With the Dawkins Circle, Richard Dawkins is using a religion-like hierarchy to soak money, in sometimes substantial sums, from deluded admirers who want to say they sat next to him. Founding this little cult does demonstrate business acumen. But money is, here, largely a matter of the merely calculative. What do zombies need money for anyway? Dawkins’ success in building this cult doesn’t do anything to controvert the sad reality of his zombie state. He and Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett with them, have brains in which all the eggs are in one basket--the calculative. And the three of them together, along with a few frothy others, are swiftly on their way to becoming one huge, messy Omelet--an insipid, spreading, tasteless Omelet that those of us with human brains had best keep a close watch on. Because if these zombies aren't using their financial power for human means, what in the end will they use this power for?

A crucial part of our close watch must be the constant work of keeping zombies and their repellent ideas away from Christian children. And Jewish children. And Muslim children. And Hindu children. This task is especially difficult because the young are so susceptible to the lure of virtual or mechanical things, as anyone knows who sees how quickly children take to computer games. We must remember that the relation zombie discourse holds to human language is similar to that which computer-generated images hold to the real world. In short, it is seductive but deceptive; it is empty. New Atheist zombies clearly recognize that enticing our children into alignment with them is their surest route to dominating us. It's a perilous mix of factors we face here. We must not let them succeed.

It is my thesis that the arrogant and eggy certainties of the zombie mind are aimed specifically at engulfing our more flexible and receptive human minds--especially those of our children: Christian children, Hindu children, Shinto children, Shia children. To defeat this threat, we must point out the irreality of zombie discourse at every turn.

As I’ve already mentioned Dawkins, Harris and Dennett, I should probably say something about Christopher Hitchens, the so-called Second Horseman of the Arsepocalypse. Hitchens passed away three years ago. Though there's still some debate on the question, I personally believe Hitchens was not in fact a zombie, though he did exhibit increasing zombielike symptoms in later years. Hitchens attributed his esophageal cancer to a life of drinking and smoking, but I suspect a different culprit: the existential pressure wearing him down as the zombie part of his psyche struggled to push out the remaining human elements.

Which raises a frightening question: Is zombism perhaps infectious? Did Hitchens maybe contract his condition from the wrong drinking buddies? God forbid. And yes, I mean the real God.

To conclude, I believe we must continue, at least for a time, to allow the New Atheist zombies to speak and write as they will. But even as we do so, we must be wise enough to see the serious threat their discourse poses, and we must take every single utterance they produce with a big grain of salt.

Like I do, when my refrigerator tries to tell me what juice to buy.

“Thanks for the advice, Siri,” I say, “but you can’t taste the juice, so why get involved?”

And Siri shuts up. Unlike our New Atheists, she at least knows when she’s out of her league.

Which is why I prefer dealing with the simpler mechanical devices. They may say impertinent things now and then, but at least they’re not likely to go and start their own fake religion. I mean--Can you imagine a vacuum cleaner trying to tell us our place in the universe? Before the rise of the New Atheism, I couldn't imagine such a thing. Now I can.

Eric Mader
Taipei
02/07/15

This and 42 other important public service announcements can be found in my new book Idiocy, Ltd.

Kim Davis and the Decline of Religious Liberty

Do you believe in religious liberty and freedom of conscience? Do you believe American law is obliged to protect citizens’ religious liberty?

A test case: Let’s say there’s a Muslim-owned print shop in Illinois and a man comes in wanting to print 500 copies of a pamphlet he wrote. Rashid, the owner of the shop, sees that the pamphlet attacks Islam as a false religion and specifically attacks Muhammad as a false prophet. The shop owner refuses to print the pamphlet, saying it is blasphemous.

“Get your pamphlet printed somewhere else!” Rashid says. “It’s against my religion and my conscience to take part in spreading such blasphemy.”

Do you support Rashid’s right to refuse to print that pamphlet? I do. Were our laws to force him to print it, I’d consider it an offense against his dignity and an offense against our American idea of religious liberty.

Would you say Rashid is unjustly discriminating against the man who wrote the pamphlet? Though I strongly believe in freedom of speech, I wouldn’t consider this a case of unjust discrimination. Rashid isn’t saying the man has no right to print his pamphlet, only that he, as a Muslim, refuses to take part in such printing.

Last week a Christian woman in Kentucky went to jail because she refused to take part in licensing same-sex marriages. I’m not personally a fan of Kim Davis’ way of making her stand, but I do believe strongly that our law should allow some route for people such as Ms. Davis to recuse themselves from taking part in gay marriages. That she ended up in jail is an offense against religious liberty.

Though same-sex marriage has great support at present in many Western countries, the fact remains that there are tens of millions of citizens who firmly believe such marriages are an offense against God’s law. One can work to convince these believers they are wrong to think as they do, but one cannot simply discount their convictions, which are clearly grounded in long-standing religious traditions.

In Kim Davis’ mind, her taking part in legitimating same-sex marriages would be a form of blasphemy--hardly different from Rashid’s printing of anti-Muslim pamphlets. You can think Kim Davis is being petty or silly or even bigoted for believing such blasphemy is real, but that is the thing about religious liberty: It’s not up to you to decide what is and isn’t valid in her religion.

If you support Rashid’s right not to print those pamphlets, you should likewise support laws defending the rights of religious bakers, caterers and even county clerks in their refusal to take part in legitimating or providing work toward the celebration of same-sex marriages.

Really, the two cases, that of Rashid and that of the Christian marriage traditionalist, are almost precisely similar. But for some reason, in our current cultural climate, it's become impossible for otherwise intelligent people to see this.

Why is it so difficult for people to see that religious liberty is being offended against when bakers and florists get run out of business or when county clerks are not given a legal route to recuse themselves from taking part in gay marriage?

Too many liberals, weighing in on this issue, show no sense of balance. There's a rising liberal fundamentalism, which, if its proponents had any historical sense, they'd recognize as a contradiction in terms.

Were a customer to come into that hypothetical Muslim print shop asking to print menus or pamphlets on zoology, and were Rashid to proclaim “Get out of here! I don’t serve atheist Jews!”--that would be a case of illegal discrimination. And the customer would be right to take Rashid to court. Likewise were a restaurant owner to refuse to serve a gay customer simply for being gay, we would be talking about real and harmful discrimination. But Rashid, and the Christian bakers too, have the right to refuse to take part in things they consider blasphemy. It's as simple as that.

American liberals are committing egregious mistakes in the way they're trying to integrate same-sex marriage into the culture. What we need are sane and balanced RFRA laws. We need them now.

(Personal note: As a Catholic with great respect for my Church's teachings, but also with an active and critical intelligence, I would not define myself as "opposed to" gay marriage. At the same time, however, I am definitely not a fan of the absolutist tactics of the marriage equality movement, which is now cheerleading one witch hunt after another. I remain engaged in the theological debate over the issue and see routes for changing doctrine, and I'll pursue these routes in dialogue with fellow Catholics. But simultaneously, the sight of so many liberal friends eager to betray fundamental liberal principles is depressing to say the least.

As a strong pluralist, I would insist that America is failing here. There is room for everyone under the tent, and our law should be protecting both sides in this important debate. Because, regardless of the Obergefell decision, the debate is far from over.)

Eric Mader

Don’t Allow Gay Marriage to Threaten American Pluralism

In one of the many cases now pending, this Oregon couple will likely soon lose both home and business. It doesn’t have to be this way. The answer? A sane legal balance. RFRA laws.
The situation in America for many people of faith is growing intolerable. And all indications are that it will only get worse.

Personally, I recognize many strong arguments in favor of same-sex marriage, as well as many strong arguments against it. The issue is immensely complex, with potential ramifications that are rarely raised to the level of public discussion.

Although I've long supported the LGBT movement in most of its goals, going back to the 1980s and 1990s, I was until last year strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. This wasn't simply a religious stance on my part either, but also an anthropological one. Though my position has since moved more toward support, I don't count myself as being either in the support or opposition camp. I believe rather that as of yet we cannot map out what this cultural shift even means. As regards the long-term viability of same-sex marriage in society, I think only time will tell--and by time, we should think decades at a bare minimum. Why? Because no one at present can predict how such a change in familial mores will play out over generations.

My thinking on the issue entails a special sympathy for both sides: a sympathy that pushes me this way and that. And so, though I can well understand gays and lesbians’ desire to make a clean sweep of their previous outsider status by claiming same-sex marriage as a "right" along with the other rights they have fought for, yet I see the suddenness of the push to establish this last new "right" as a step onto thin ice, one which besides is leading to systemic new forms of injustice, with results that may well prove bad for everyone, gays and lesbians included.

Among these injustices, the growing animosity against orthodox believers, Christians or others, is making possible a serious betrayal of the American project. It's this betrayal I want to address.

Many Americans seem to believe that the “definition of marriage” has been decided by our Supreme Court. This is incorrect. The meaning of marriage has not been decided by the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court has no mandate to legislate any such thing. It is not the right of courts to change the definition of a cultural institution as fundamental as marriage.

As a Catholic, I could follow many other Christians and weigh in here by insisting that God has given us the definition of marriage. But I will not, and never have, followed this line of debate with secular Americans, because quite simply I do not intend to impose Catholic thinking on them. I recognize that the Catholic understanding of marriage is founded in traditions that many Americans don't adhere to and that we Americans live in a pluralist society.

I say, then, that I do not believe any church, mine included, can impose its teaching on marriage on the whole of American society. And so, even when I was adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage, I didn't attempt to make my case simply by stating my church's position. In a pluralistic society, one might argue vehemently; one cannot, however, expect to impose one's arguments as absolute.

But on precisely the same grounds, and for the same reasons, this "new" definition of marriage now being imposed by the "marriage equality" movement cannot be claimed as absolute either. It is not absolute because, first, we live in a pluralistic society, and, second and more importantly, marriage norms, in any culture, can only be decided by that culture as a whole. As I’ve argued elsewhere on anthropological grounds (see Appendix below) this “as a whole” really must mean virtually the whole of the people.

And so: When 98% of Americans recognize same-sex marriages as valid, we will be able to insist that American culture has abandoned its previous understanding of marriage. But we are nowhere near such unanimity at present, are we? What we have instead is a situation in which the meaning of marriage remains contested. It is contested between two rough camps--one of which sees marriage as always between a man and a woman, the other of which claims that it can also be between people of the same sex.

The upshot: Neither side can be judged to be definitively right, in the public sphere, if we are to remain true to our ideals as a liberal and pluralist society. This seems to me an evident matter of political fact. That many on both sides of the current debate don’t recognize this fact is perhaps to be expected. But that so many in the LGBT camp are now so aggressively set on denying it is disappointing. Having suffered bigotry for so long, they are swiftly turning into bigots.

The right legal path to take for the committed American pluralist is similarly clear: None of the contestants in the current battle over marriage should be discriminated against under the law. Which means that the now ascendant culture, represented by the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, has no right to force Americans to agree with it that these new "marriages" are actually marriages. Which entails, in turn, that those refusing to cater to these marriages either in speech or business practice must not be prosecuted or forced by law to do so. Again, this goes with pluralism, and it goes with the constitutionally protected right of free exercise of religion.

But this is not what we are seeing in America at present. Quite the contrary. We are seeing witch hunts--and worst of all, state authorities are validating and sometimes even organizing these witch hunts.

If Americans who refuse to recognize same-sex marriage are to be “discriminated against” in any way, let them be discriminated against by neighbors or future customers who might of their own accord decline to befriend them or patronize their businesses. That would be within the bounds of reason. That would be just. But the state itself, if it is the American state, cannot begin to fine citizens or run them out of business or require them to undergo “diversity training” just for adhering to their religion. That is not the American way. So what exactly is going on?

I would argue further that school boards, universities or private companies should not be able take action against citizens based on their religious convictions on marriage, because, just as it is illegal to fire someone because he or she is a Christian or a Muslim or a lesbian, so it must be illegal to fire someone for holding firm to their traditional beliefs on marriage, which beliefs are for many a crucial part of their religion, besides having literally millennia of history and precedent behind them.

But rather than respect for the constitutional rights of religious people, what are we seeing instead? We are seeing witch hunts.

To refuse to bake a cake for or photograph a gay wedding is not "discrimination" against homosexuals as such. It is plainly, and only, a refusal to recognize the newly proposed definition of marriage.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, if a bartender were to say to a customer “I won’t serve you because you’re gay”, this should be seen as a very wrongful kind of discrimination and I would agree that the bartender should be subject to legal consequences. Because everyone has the right to order a drink. In this register all customers are equal. But that same bartender, if he were to say, “I’m willing to serve you drinks at my bar, but under no circumstances would I be willing to cater your wedding”--if he were to say this, he should be fully protected by our law.

And what law is that? The kind of law that should already be in effect in all fifty states: a religious liberty protection law (an RFRA law) that would give defendants legal standing to argue in court that forcing them to participate in same-sex marriages is an intrusive burden on their sincerely held religious beliefs. Such laws are the bare minimum, and we would have them if the wisdom of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 were being followed at state level. Such laws are not about discrimination, regardless of the way our mainstream media, always out for the provocative headline, presents them. RFRA laws protect Americans of many different faiths in their freedom to pursue their beliefs and traditions. If you don't believe me, if you think "RFRA law" just means an excuse to discriminate against gays, go read the article just linked.

Personally, as I say, I believe RFRA laws are the bare minimum. That they are howled against, that even corporations choose to threaten boycotts against states trying to pass them, shows how poisonous the American climate has become.

The level of rancor shown by liberal fundamentalists over this issue impels me to suggest an even more direct legal route, one I know will get little hearing, but I will propose it even so. Since marriage is deeply contested in our polity at present, what we need are laws that stipulate something such as the following: No fines or suits shall be levied against any business, religious organization or private citizen based on differing definitions of marriage. Yes, I can hear the screaming already. But such a law would firmly uphold our Constitution (see the arguments put forth by same-sex marriage supporter Damon Linker and by Yuval Levin). It would be simple, clear in scope, and would protect the millions of American citizens who have reasons of faith for not recognizing same-sex marriages. End of story.

And is it really true that these latter Americans are motivated by hate and bigotry, by a desire to push gays and lesbians out of the public square? Isn't it clear rather that this is generally not the case? Many of the most prominent instances we see where individuals are being sued or run out of business involve people who hadn’t previously refused to serve gays or lesbians.

This current conflict is clearly not a matter of animus against gay people but rather a matter of religiously grounded refusals of a radically novel definition of marriage. Again: End of story.

The overly dogmatic assertion of LGBT rights at present, especially the current knee-jerk belief that they must trump all other established rights, is un-American. And the insistence on such rights so confidently in the realms of marriage and family risks, sorry to say, a very evident slippery slope. To take just one possible example, one may likewise argue that everyone has a right to be a mother. Motherhood, after all, is a good thing, a natural and eternal thing, and everyone should have the right to it. So lets all support maternal rights!

Fine and good, so far. And yet, as a man, I cannot exercise this "universal right". But what if I were to insist on my right to give birth? What if I were to start attacking and demonizing anyone who claimed my new demand was out of line? And what if, eventually, the majority came to agree with me?

What we would have, I propose, is a situation almost precisely parallel to what we have seen in the marriage debate. A social fact previously seen as fixed and biologically grounded (on the one hand motherhood, on the other marriage) would suddenly be up for revision, and those against the revision would be demonized as archaic "haters".

And in our current climate no one should find my analogy outlandish or flippant either. I personally wouldn't be in the least surprised if in future decades technology did allow the possibility of men becoming “mothers”. I would see it a possibility that shouldn’t be taken up--but who’s to say what others might think? In fact I’m sure there are men out there right now who'd thrill at the chance of being able to carry a baby to term inside their medically altered bodies. I've read comments in online threads stating this very desire. But as I say, I wouldn’t be among those supporting the practice. I'd support laws against it. Will that, in these coming decades, make me a “bigot”? I’m afraid it will. Which should indicate something of the misuse of this term in our present impasse.

Let the contest over marriage continue, by all means. It was perhaps inevitable this contest would come. But the state, if it is truly the American state, must not take definitive sides. Even though I personally may incline toward supporting same-sex marriage, I see it as deeply wrong that recognition of such marriages should be imposed on those who have their own long-established reasons not to recognize them.

Is the state going to return to reason? Sadly, it now seems unlikely. Rather than balanced laws that protect the deeply held beliefs of Americans, we have state-sponsored persecution and predatory lawsuits. This is not American. Even many who support gay marriage shake their heads at what is happening. It is deeply un-American.

Religious liberty protection laws are needed now. These laws are needed to erect a wall of protection around Americans whose rights to free speech and free exercise of religion are being curtailed and whose livelihoods risk being taken from them over what is, at present, a contested social issue.

If there should be a renewed push for such laws, I would ask that people in support of gay marriage think over the proposals carefully rather than merely react against them. Because this is not only a matter of LGBT rights. It is a matter of our polity and its long history of recognizing the rights of competing beliefs among citizens. And if things are getting ugly now, they will almost certainly get worse, and get worse quickly, if the current trend continues. American pluralism is not something we can afford to betray.

Eric Mader


APPENDIX: How cultures validate marriages

I post the following to explain something of why I would insist the whole community must recognize marriages for them to be valid. I won’t try to reproduce the whole debate context in which I made these remarks back in 2011, but post only part of my rebuttal to what I found were my opponent's reductive arguments as to "what marriage is". I begin by laying out his own argument:

Right at the outset you try to get at the essence of marriage by saying it is "an agreement between two people". I think this fact that you take to be so obvious is crucial to where your argument goes subsequently. Now don't get me wrong here, I don't really disagree with you. Yes, marriage is always, in our America, an "agreement between two people". But still, I find this description only partial, and that if you use it as the definitive one, you will quickly, so to speak, throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In my thinking marriage is not so much an agreement as a status. It is a status shared by two people vis-a-vis society and God. You can even leave God out of it if you like, I think my point still stands. Marriage is not so much between two people as it is, first, between two people and, secondly, between that couple and society. What's more--again even if we leave God out of it--I think we can see here the importance of a kind of "sanctifying" in relation to marriage. Cultures everywhere, ours included, typically affirm the beginning of a couple's married life with a complex ritual. This universality of ritual demonstrates, I think, that marriage has an important communal element. And so I would argue: marriage is not simply an agreement between the two people marrying, and perhaps it is not even essentially such.

When you write[, evoking your disbelief in God,] that marriage is "sanctified . . . by a group . . . yet to be seen at a podium that can read a teleprompter", I find myself asking what you can possibly mean by "yet to be seen". You yourself chose to use the word "group"--because I think you acknowledge the communal element of marriage. To me it's obvious the pastors or priests or rabbis who perform the majority of marriages in our society do just this "teleprompter reading" when they conduct marriage ceremonies: they do it as spokesperson for the "group": i.e., the community gathered for the event. And they are present and visible. What I'm getting at is this: Even if you don't believe in the God that is the ground of these religious systems, you still must recognize, anthropologically speaking, that this is a communal ritual meant to confer a certain status on the couple. Further, that the great majority of marriages still happen via these ancient rituals is just more evidence that, as I argue in my essay, the meaning of marriage predates the modern state by a long shot. These rituals reach back centuries or millennia, as you know. Marriage, even our current understanding of marriage, is much older, and more primal, than the mere "registry of marriages" that our state governments provide in city halls across the country.

But then what does it mean to base your support for same-sex marriage on this state-sanctioned aspect of marriage that finds its most tangible form in a mere license (choice B in your dichotomy)? You seem finally to be arguing that marriage is just a matter of "two consenting adults" and "a license". For me, this is such a partial definition as to be almost meaningless. It fatally impoverishes one of the central institutions of our culture. You even choose at one point to evoke a fishing license as a kind of metaphoric parallel to marriage. I know, I know--you'll say that this is because here you're trying to stress the "non-holy" or merely "statutory" aspect of marriage, that in fact this is the whole point of your choice B--namely, the state shouldn't "get involved" in issues that relate to the choice A aspect of marriage, the "special" or "holy" aspect. Well, I also believe in separation of church and state, but on this point, I think you're putting the cart before the horse--way before the horse. Because, in America, the state was not founded with a charter to establish the definition of marriage. That definition had already been established by the people the state was founded to serve. Yes, the state's business may have eventually extended to offering "marriage licenses", etc., but this doesn't change the fact: the state had no charter to impose either marriages or divorces upon the citizenry. The only instances otherwise would have been when the state enforced the divorce of accidentally married siblings (I don't know if this has happened in the US) or when the state outlawed Mormon polygamy. But this latter example only further proves my point: the state was there to support monogamous marriage as the only acceptable kind because this is what the American people had recognized from the beginning. In other words, in the Mormon case the state did what it was supposed to--it defended the marriages of the vast majority of citizens against a minority attempting to change the definition to suit their own new practice.

The idea, then, that the state is entitled to change the definition of marriage is wrong. Further, even if a slight majority of citizens were to vote for such a change it would still be wrong. Why so? Because marriage is a status recognized by the community; and in the case of state or federally licensed marriages, one must say: recognized by the community as a whole. Thus if even twenty or thirty percent remain unconvinced that a couple is viably married, this should be decisive in convincing the state not to license such a marriage. The license, after all, is not the marriage itself, but merely a recognition that the community acknowledges the marriage as real. And the community, in this case, is the whole of the citizenry, not a mere majority.

What we have, then, in the case of the "marriage equality" movement is an instance of a minority pressing a) an entirely novel definition of marriage that b) has zero historical precedent, and hoping to get it established in law by c) a majority of Yea votes, while ignoring d) the sizable percentage of Americans that, whether for religious or cultural reasons, will not regard such marriages as real. This, in short, is a serious impasse. And the state shouldn't go there. Because the state's business is only to recognize marriages recognized by the community--it is emphatically not to suggest that certain novel kinds of marriage be recognized by offering to license them.

Aside from the other problems I raise in my essay, I think this problem of tens of millions of American citizens who don't agree with this changed definition should already be enough to decide the issue.

It used to be the case, and doubtless still is in some churches, that the pastor conducting the ceremony would say: "Into this holy estate these two persons now come to be joined. If any person can show just cause why they may not be joined together--let them speak now or forever hold their peace." I think the case of same-sex marriage can be considered from this point of view. There are still far too many people who would stand up and say: "Sorry, but, er, yes, I do have reason these two should not be married. They're of the same sex." You might call this bigotry if you want, and in some cases it certainly is connected with bigotry, but usually it's simply a matter of our culture's idea of what marriage is.

If it some time comes about that 98 percent of the American population believes same-sex couples can be married, then we'd be talking about a different reality and my argument here would lose much of its force. Because 98 percent would amount to communal recognition. But this is nothing like American reality at present. And so I think: case closed.

Perhaps you can see by these remarks why I think your dichotomy A [marriage as a holy or sanctified bond] or B [marriage as a legal status offered and licensed by the state] can't really support your argument. Marriage in America is both A and B. Anthropologically speaking, the two "choices" can't be separated, so ultimately they aren't choices, and your attempt to argue for same-sex marriage by saying that marriage is mostly B doesn't hold up.

And it doesn't hold up on one further ground as well. If one were pressed to choose which of the two, A or B, the institution of marriage could live without, one would have to choose B. Because choice B, as I've shown, is little more than the state's recognition of a communal reality. It is nothing but a license. It says something about the merits of their arguments that those pushing for same-sex marriage have to lean so heavily on this choice B.

I can't help but feel, Steve, that in many of my remarks above I am not so much arguing against your points as I am raising aspects of marriage you already recognize but that you have decided, in the interests of the same-sex marriage debate, to put aside. You can do this maybe because these aspects don't much matter to you.

Gay Marriage and the Bigotry of American Liberals

I’m an American heterosexual man and fervent Catholic. Nonetheless, I have for some time wondered if there may not be room in Christian culture, even Catholic culture, for acceptance of same-sex marriage. Last year I began systematic study of related theological issues in hopes of discerning possibilities. Though I've no solid conclusions yet, I continue to research and think through the Church's teachings. Theology, however, is not the topic of this post. I only intend to point out, here at the outset, that I see this subject as an important one.

In any case, I have no animus against LGBT people. For most of my adult life, which began in the 1980s, I’ve supported them in their struggles. My support, however, is starting to take a beating.

The thing is: I do have a strong animus against LGBT activists’ recent efforts to use the power of the state to effectively force people to agree with them on marriage. Such force is clearly not the way to go. But gay activists and their supporters evidently disagree, because they’re moving that way like a freight train.

If a restaurant refused to serve food to a gay or lesbian couple simply because of their sexual orientation, I’d recognize that couple’s right to sue the restaurant for discrimination. Eating in a restaurant, or staying in a hotel, or shopping--all these are neutral activities, and as a business owner one does not have the right to refuse customers because of who they are.

But the people of faith in America whose livelihoods are now threatened by lawsuits did not in fact “refuse to serve” gays or lesbians--as liberals claim. Study the cases. Nowhere did a baker refuse to make a birthday cake or a graduation cake. Nowhere did a florist refuse to arrange get-well flowers for a friend. Nowhere was there a general refusal of service.

No, the recent cases over gay weddings are something else entirely. They are about people of faith declining to contribute creative work toward weddings their religion teaches against. And here the more compelling right is on the side of the religious business person. Our constitution requires protection of religious liberty, a crucial part of which is protecting people from being compelled to engage in activities that contradict their faith.

Consider the sad case of 70-year-old florist Barronelle Stutzman. Did gay marriage supporters really want their movement to lead to this kind of state persecution? Because state persecution is precisely what it is. Go read the link if you’re not familiar with the case. It is sobering, and just one of a growing number of similar cases.

The State of Washington on its own initiative decided to raise suit against Stutzman. Understandably, the state has an interest in protecting LGBT people from discrimination. But there are ways to balance LGBT couples’ rights not to be discriminated against and the rights of people of faith to hold to their faith as they see fit. We might tailor laws to meet the needs of both sides in a reasonable compromise. It’s not impossible.

Louisiana is exploring a religious freedom statute at present that would protect religious people from suits raised specifically in relation to marriage. Such laws are needed. The problem is that whenever they are are proposed, the now ascendant liberal fundamentalism screams out: “Bigotry!”

Sorry, but bigotry is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. I would argue that in cases like Stutzman’s it’s the religious person who is the more obvious victim of bigotry. She is one of a growing number of victims of an ascendant anti-Christian bigotry.

And talk about animus. Going to a Facebook page in support of Barronelle Stutzman as I prepared this article, here were the two visitor comments that appeared first:

This is what bigotry looks like. And such attitudes and this kind of language have grown ever more widespread among professedly "liberal" Americans. Remember: These are posts aimed at a 70-year-old grandmother who’d never said anything hateful against gays and whose only crime was politely refusing to make flowers for a gay wedding.

Because Stutzman sincerely believes such a wedding offends against her faith, she should not be forced to offer her services toward celebration of said wedding. It’s simple as that. Given that the meaning of marriage is clearly substantive in her religion, whether she’s willing to offer work toward this or that wedding is a matter of her own religious liberty.

I strongly believe every American has the right to live their life the way they choose. The success of the gay marriage movement in legalizing their marriages vis-a-vis the state does not however give them the right to force other Americans, who have their own traditional ideas of marriage, to participate in their weddings.

Many Americans who like myself have long felt solidarity with gays and lesbians in their struggles are now starting to recoil at what the LGBT movement has turned into. There’s a growing disgust at the arrogance, the cultural narrowness, the assumption that the public arena now belongs entirely to them. To hear them say it, in their own words, dissenters against their agenda should just shut up or expect to lose their jobs.

Most Americans support a kind of classical liberalism, strongly pluralistic, which envisions a public sphere where groups with widely divergent goals and ideals can coexist and in which the rights of different groups are protected in a balanced way. Writing in relation to the marriage debate last year, Damon Linker sagely summed up his own support for such a vision, while underlining how the gay marriage movement had started to betray this vision. Sadly, things have only gotten worse since then. (See also Linker’s follow-up piece.)

One of my literary heroes, the satirist George Saunders, describes a healthy America as follows: “America, to me, should be shouting all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of them nuts, but please, not just one droning glamorous reasonable voice.”

Sadly, our current liberal elites are precisely what Saunders warns against: droning and glamorous and, in their own narrow minds, reasonable.

Liberal fundamentalism, now most strongly in the same-sex marriage movement, is becoming a threat to American pluralism.

I call them “lib-fundies”. Perhaps a definition is in order.

Lib-fundie (liberal fundamentalist): A person who believes that American separation of church and state means that individuals cannot express or live by religious convictions in public. The lib-fundie thus thinks a student expressing thanks to God in a graduation address is out of line, or that a street corner preacher, standing on a public sidewalk, should be shut up by police.

Lib-fundies favor ever-increasing legal encroachments on expression of religious beliefs. They assume that truth and belief in God are mutually contradictory notions, and that right law is a matter of ensuring their own views become obligatory on all citizens.

Lib-fundies pay lip service to religious freedom to the extent that they will say: “If you want to teach your children Bible stories at home, that’s your right” or “You can go to your church or temple and worship any way you want.” It has been widely noted that in public pronouncements Barack Obama regularly replaces "freedom of religion" with "freedom of worship". The purpose of the shift is clear. According to Obama's phraseology, expression of religious beliefs is not proper to the public arena.

By their very language lib-fundies reveal their intention: To prevent religious Americans from speaking openly about their faith anywhere outside private homes or churches.

“Please close your windows and doors tightly before you talk about God. And please talk in hushed voices. Because in the public arena, only We know what’s best.”

That is the voice of the liberal consensus, and even a cursory study of our history will show that it is not in line with our Founders' original idea of "separation", which only entailed that no particular denomination should gain dominance over the state. It was never assumed that religious language was improper for a politician or that theologically-grounded thinking was improper in a political debate. It was most certainly never assumed that religious people should keep quiet in public about their beliefs.

Lib-fundies lamely identify progress with eradicating religion from Western culture. Contrary to the clear evidence of 20th century history, they believe the eradication of religion will usher in a Golden Age of peace and human flourishing. They conveniently forget the golden ages brought us by Stalin, Mao and Co.

As a Catholic, I will fight these people. That I share many of the goals of the American left in terms of the environment, workers’ rights, the struggle against corporate power--it makes my fight more conflicted. But fight them I will.

Americans who allow their support for the LGBT movement to push them toward throwing our traditions of religious liberty out the window are making a grave mistake.

Eric Mader

My new book Idiocy, Ltd. is now in print.

Third Party USA: A Radically Alternative Approach to our Fake Political Gridlock

About

Third Party USA seeks citizens eager to create a third political party capable of breaking the undemocratic alliance between the 1% and our government.

I. Preamble

Third Party USA is a principled attempt to return American government to the citizens. Third Party supporters believe strongly that American government has fallen into the hands of a wealthy superclass that is undermining the livelihoods of the great majority of Americans. The currently massive political power of this superclass threatens the American way of life.

Third Party will work to get corporate money out of politics. Its candidates will accept no corporate campaign contributions and will work to put average citizens back in the driver's seat. Accepting no money from corporations, Third Party will not be beholden to corporations.

Third Party does not subscribe to the debunked trickle-down economic theory that continues to make the super-wealthy wealthier while citizens fall further and further behind with each passing year. Third Party believes in strong public education and infrastructure all citizens benefit from.

Third Party neither supports nor rejects abortion rights, prayer in the classroom, same-sex marriage, concealed handgun permits. Most hot button issues now part of the "culture wars" will be left to individual candidates and their constituents to decide. Third Party will prescribe no position on such issues in its platform.

It is high time in our democracy to separate the "culture wars" from the more substantive systemic problems we face. Third Party's platform will focus on 1) wresting control of policy-making from the super-wealthy, and 2) resetting government priorities to put average citizens back in first place.

Working for middle-class Americans and those below them on the social ladder, Third Party will work unashamedly against the super-wealthy, corporations, and Wall Street, who have together made a shambles of our country.

Third Party does not work for 100% of Americans, but for 99% of Americans. The 1% already have their two parties. Third Party will fight them tooth and nail.

II. How we've been divided

I am not a political scientist, expert in American history, or former congressional aide. Even so, I have a very clear vision of what is wrong in my country. Many citizens with no more political expertise than myself can also see it.

Depressed to see America sinking ever further from what it should be, I am now convinced that the only force that might break this downward momentum is a third political party: a new party that would follow the ways of neither Democrats nor Republicans.

And no, I am not proposing a Libertarian Party here. Quite otherwise.

I am proposing a party that returns to fighting for the common citizen, the American citizen that is not on a corporate board and has concerns beyond merely maximizing corporate profits for shareholders.

Many of these common citizens are Evangelical Christians, many are atheist lesbians, some are white, others are black, Latino, Amerindian or Asian. Some of these citizens believe strongly that the right to life, others are pro-choice. Some want to fight for the right of two men to marry, others to protect the constitutional right to bear arms.

That is a very diverse group indeed, isn't it? Many citizens in this list strongly believe many others are morons or have a screw loose. Yet all these citizens have two things in common: they are Americans and they are quickly losing ground in a system geared to the super-wealthy.

So where are the real morons here? In my mind the answer to this is now unavoidable: To the extent these diverse average citizens continue to let their ideological differences over sex or family or firearms keep them divided--to that extent they are all morons.

I live and work in Asia and have for some time. The country I live in has its own problems to be sure. But in recent years nothing has been more depressing for me than to see my fellow Americans back home squabbling over second-tier issues while Wall Street and the 1% continue to turn their country into a banana republic.

So I am proposing a party that works hard for these people--one that, bridging their many differences, fights for their economic and social well-being in a nation run amok. I'm proposing a party that can harness what they have in common to create a new political force.

III. Sounds impossible, right?

It will likely be very difficult. Third parties face formidable barriers to success in America. Yet I think these barriers are not insurmountable in our current dismal state. Polls show Americans have never been more convinced for the need of third party than they are now.

I have another reason for hope. It is this: My basic strategy is simple as pie. It is based on simplicity and cutting right to the heart of the problem. It is a strategy that will allow Americans to fight for their differences while also fighting for their common good.

How can it work?

It can work because Third Party as an organization will take no sides in the culture wars now being used to divide us. This neutrality is key.

Political observers have for some time noted how the 1% and their corporate allies use differences among citizens over hot button issues related to sex, gender or ethnicity as a divide-and-conquer strategy. Given that Americans debate stridently over issues like abortion or same-sex marriage, and the two parties represent different sides on these issues, citizens are easily fed the illusion that Democrats and Republicans stand for significantly different things. But they do not--especially not during the past two decades. When it comes to voting on meat-and-potatoes issues (free trade, the minimum wage, how Wall Street is regulated, how much money will go to education vs. corporate bailouts, etc.) when it comes to these economic decisions, our two parties don't show any significant disagreement. Check the record. They nearly always side with the super-wealthy against the average citizen. And so our two-party scam continues--election cycle after election cycle. Our Democrats and Republicans actually make up just one party. One party with two flavors on offer: sexual/social liberal vs. sexual/social conservative.

This is not democratic politics. This is an afternoon talk show. The wonder in my mind is that Americans are still watching. And voting for these scammers.

IV. The monkey wrench we will throw

Third Party will focus on breaking the stranglehold the super-wealthy currently have on our legislature. Meanwhile, Third Party will encourage individual candidates to develop their own positions on second-tier hot button issues. Abortion, gay rights, gun legislation--on these candidates will be instructed to follow their own conscience and the wishes of their constituents rather than any party platform. Because Third Party will have nothing in its platform relevant to these issues.

Is the the idea clear now? Is it a foolish idea? Is it really impossible to unite "red state" Americans and "blue state" Americans in a common cause--resetting our government to working for the common good rather than always for the likes of Citicorp and Monsanto?

V. How would it look on the ground?

We might envision a Third Party candidate running in a conservative red state district who wants prayer in schools, wants Wall Street carefully regulated, and fights to force the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes.

At the same time a Third Party candidate in a blue state race will be fighting to protect a woman's right to choose, fighting for green energy, and fighting to get Wall Street regulations that work while also fighting for bigger tax exemptions for the struggling middle class.

Third Party candidates will thus often vote on opposite sides of issues while also holding to core party goals: to put the citizens back in control of government; to ensure an even playing field for Americans in terms of public services, education and opportunities; to make America once again a nation centered on average working people.

VI. Of course Third Party is not for everyone

If you think the 1% should continue to run our country, then Third Party is not for you.

If you think Wall Street can manage banking laws on its own without government oversight, just keep voting Republican. Third Party is not for you.

If you really think the biggest problem in America right now is either immigrants, gays, rednecks with guns, Hollywood, or homophobia on campus--go ahead and keep voting for your party of choice, Republicrat or Demican. Third Party is not for you.

If, however, you are like me, and you see that gay marriage, gun rights or prayer in schools are all second-tier issues that have served the 1% by pitting average citizens against each other--then Third Party is for you.

If you are like me and think Wall Street executives, having gotten their massive bailouts at our expense, now mainly deserve to be jailed--then Third Party is for you.

If you understand that American democracy depends on a strong middle class and that countries completely ruled by a wealthy superclass are inherently undemocratic--then Third Party is for you.

On these various issues--gun rights, abortion, gay marriage, religious liberty in the public arena--do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting they are unimportant. What I am suggesting is that we must decouple them from the more pressing battle we now face: the battle to save American representative democracy. Look closely at what has happened in our country. We are now approaching Game Over, and the citizens have lost. Call it oligarchy, call it the Deep State, call it corporatocracy--what you will. Washington's systemic problems are no longer just chronic; they are verging on fatal.

Where corporations are said to be people and money is said to be free speech, democracy will not long survive.

VII. But how can Third Party break into the halls of power?

Third Party will depend massively on social media and the efforts of community organizers and bloggers to turn out votes for candidates. Third Party will overrun the system with HOPE. And this time the hope will be justified. Third Party candidates will depend for their campaigns on individual citizens' contributions and the contributions of non-corporate entities (small businesses, etc.). No corporate money will be accepted. Because of this general party standard, citizens will be able to count on Third Party candidates to stay the course--to stick to implementing the policies they touted on the campaign trail.

Third Party candidates' TV ads will be few, but their presence in social media and elsewhere will give them a different kind of clout. It will be the clout of tens of millions of Americans fed up with the corporate-serving political theater that our government has become.

VII. Who am I to make it happen?

The answer is: Making it happen will require input from a huge variety of people. I myself am only offering this basic charter for a new party. It is time. Placing my charter here and elsewhere online, I hope it gathers talented people who might discuss possibilities, hash out ideas and slowly create an organization. Talented people are certainly out there, whether organizers or potential candidates. As for myself, I am only capable of seeding this idea. I certainly don't have the skills to organize a party, having only limited political experience as an activist. Besides which, my career is now overseas.

But I know there are tens of millions of Americans who see America's problems pretty much as I do. There are millions who hope someone will find a route to break this current phony deadlock between our two parties, both of which largely serve the same people: those people who have bought our democracy. And they really have. They have already bought American democracy.

Americans have been fighting over hot-button issues for too long. Distracted, we have let the wealthy superclass soak us for all we're worth. But we needn't give up any of our personal convictions in order to change course. We can continue to stand strong on "culture war" issues that matter to us even as we work to right the wildly careening ship of our state. We can do it by building a Third Party.

Fighting for Third Party principles is also patriotic. Around the globe people see that America is slipping. We will continue to slip if we do not break through the smoke-and-mirrors game corporate lobbyists and Washington continue to play against us.

And so: A Third Party already!

Our current two parties well deserve it!

VIII. How to proceed

Go to Facebook to "like" and join the Third Party USA page. Individually invite your friends to join. Start sending me items to provoke discussion, and I will post them. When a certain critical mass of supportive citizens is reached, we will begin the process of initial organization. We will take things step by step--but note: We'll only be able to take things step by step if we begin with the first step and keep moving through the second and third and so on.

So keep coming back and keep thinking on how to get this initial idea off the ground; how to give it traction and bite.

As I have said, I am not a political theorist. This rough charter is my idea, yes, but I myself do not know how to move it from idea to organization. I'd be very willing to give this over to a group of political theorists or organizers, people who understand electoral politics better than myself, who can formulate strategies for the first steps. I would only request that this opening charter remain as is.

As for the name I've given this project "Third Party USA", I recognize this may not be the best name for a party. It has advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps a better name would be "Citizens Party USA". Those who work to build the party will have to choose the most effective name.

Many essentials, then, are open for discussion. I am certainly not offering myself as the leader of this initiative and will not assume a dominant role. Only the very basics of strategy (no platform positions on culture war issues; no corporate support accepted) must remain the same for this project to be what it is.

I hope soon to be able to vote Third Party USA.

Eric Mader
Taipei
April 7, 2014