We live in polarized times, and it shows up in many issues. One of the unfortunate consequences of this is that if you say that a particular course of action might have any negative consequences anywhere, you must be against that course of action. You must be an enemy of it. If you think home …
A Tall Tree and a Short Rope
[Trigger warning: strident feminism pretending not to be] Sarah Moon writes here about complementarianism’s “ugly relationship with rape.” She poses two questions of us bad people, and they are as follows — first, how do we define rape? And secondly, what do we propose to do about it? Okay. I would define rape as having …
The World’s Largest Daisy Chain
There is an argument against homosexual marriage that I have offered from time to time which has been met with a strange sort of incredulity. It came up again the other night during the Q&A after my debate with Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, and so I thought I should jot …
Reading the Kid on the Floor
Ministers preach from the Bible, and so it is not surprising that the enemy wants to do what he can to dilute the source of all true ministerial authority. This is how we drifted from “thus saith the Lord” to “it seems to me.” Nowhere is this more evident than on the subject of feminism. …
A Silent God Would Be Silent on Rights
So I have made a distinction between certain negative rights (leave me alone in these specified areas) and positive rights (free chocolate milk for everybody). But surely it is more than how it is stated, whether negatively or positively. Couldn’t a master of circumlocution cast gay rights as a “leave me alone” issue? The answer …
The Chocolate Milk Test
In talking about gay rights, we have to distinguish between different kinds of rights. If someone tries to ramp up the stakes by saying that he is talking about human rights, then we have go on to distinguish between different kinds of human rights. The first kind of right is a liberty right — the …
Just One More Finger
David Lampo tries to convince us that conservatives, Republicans, and libertarians should rally around in support of gay rights. Unfortunately, in order to make this case, he does not advance a new argument, but rather doubles down on an old confusion about the “wall of separation” between church and state. So this is not the …
Get Him Winding Some Bandages
In this article here, Carl Trueman writes as a complementarian, but one who is wondering what the big deal is. Here is the money quote near the end: “It is thus not complementarianism in itself to which I object; I am simply not sure why it is such a big issue in organisations whose stated …
Homo Republicanus
I sometimes think that secularists, including the conservative ones, have never heard of Venn diagrams. The concept of overlapping spheres of thought continues to elude them. The idea of layered hierarchies is floating above their heads, just out of reach. If you point out the incoherence of secularism (or say that you do such a …
Larry, Moe and Curly in the Gates
In ancient Israel, the gates of the city were not just a point of entrance. They served the same function pointed to by our phrase “the public square.” When a virtuous woman was praised “in the gates,” this meant that she was publicly recognized (Prov. 31:31). When Boaz wanted to conduct an important financial transaction, …