A 15-year-old Wisconsin boy who wrote an op-ed opposing gay adoptions was censored, threatened with suspension and called ignorant by the superintendent of the Shawano School District, according to an attorney representing the child.
Mathew Staver, the founder of the Liberty Counsel, sent a letter to Superintendent Todd Carlson demanding an apology for “Its unconstitutional and irrational censorship and humiliation” of Brandon Wegner.
Wegner, a student at Shawano High School, was asked to write an op-ed for the school newspaper about whether gays should be allowed to adopt. Wegner, who is a Christian, wrote in opposition. Another student wrote in favor of allowing gays to adopt.
Wegner used Bible passages to defend his argument, including Scripture that called homosexuality a sin
Like Mona Charen, I liked Simon Schama’s “History of Britain”. For a long time, only academics paid much attention to the revision of the whig interpretation of the English Reformation by such as Christopher Haigh, Eamon Duffy, et al. so, it was refreshing to see it in this popular documentary.
Now apparently Schama is vexed over popular American reception of Downton Abbey for fear that Americans will start believing that maybe, just maybe, something was lost in the great modern egalitarian leveling process. Mrs. Charen notes in her article that “Downton Abbey doesn’t succumb to the modern prejudice of portraying all aristocrats as morons or monsters, the better to grind the ax about the evils of the old class system. The earl is an honorable man who tries to live up to the code of the gentleman. His mother is spoiled and willful but basically decent.” For of specific example of this “Upper class?! rawr!” portrayal, I am reminded of the dreadful Altman hairball Gosford Park. To know all you need about that movie, please take a moment and absorb this from James Bowman’s review:
For decades Hollywood lived by the philosophy that the only good Indian was a dead Indian. Savage red men bit the dust in their thousands for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, so that anyone who ventured into a Western could be sure of what he would see. Why did it take people so long to get bored knowing that every Indian would be nothing but an Aunt Sally for soldiers’ or settlers’ bullets? I don’t know, but eventually they did get bored — and Hollywood promptly flip-flopped. For the last thirty-five years, you could be equally certain going into a movie that any cinematic redskins would invariably be the good guys: decent, honorable and, as sure as shooting, victimized by the white man.
And we are still not bored with it. Maybe in another 30 years we will be. In the same way, I reckon that it has been at least 40 years since an aristocrat of the silver screen has been anything but a thorough rotter and a cad. You have only to call a character Lord something- or-other and your audience knows immediately what to think of him. Why don’t we get bored with this? Once again, it is a mystery. But one possible explanation is that we need the myth of the wicked upper classes to confirm us in our taste for vulgarity and sloppiness. If we thought that manners and what they used to call “breeding” were anything but a cover for the basest kind of behavior, we might have to cultivate them ourselves once again instead of letting it all hang out.
He has it cold I dare say. Downton Abbey by contrast gives everyone a fair shake. It spends much time showing modernity creeping in like the vines in Love in the Ruins (more reactionary entertainment for you by the way), and the producers of this series, presumably not reactionaries, give the good things of modernity their due. That is, they try to split the middle. But advantage reactionaries, because we all sit in a smouldering pile of rubble that was once Western civilization, and you can’t watch this show without knowing where it all eventually leads. My only quibble based on the few episodes I’ve seen is the nagging sensation that I’m watching a version of Brideshead Revisited that has been sanitized of Catholicism so to speak, but it is still worth the time.
Let the “Vote for him or the babies get it!” commentary begin! Rather than go through the merits, or lack thereof, of this Arlen Specter fanboi, I thought I would post their YouTube:
The shredding of the Constitution! The shredding of the Statue of Liberty! Oh noes! I take it a vote for Santorum is not an endorsement for making the United States officially and confessionally Catholic. At any rate, it got me thinking about religious art and how Our Lord is traditionally the center of the piece. Generally, all eyes are on Him, pointing toward Him, or He is simply the biggest thing in the picture. In the picture below, one’s eyes might be attracted to His glow, but note the center…and the index finger. And there lies much of the problem I think. Brothers and Sisters, I give you the Christian Rorschach Test (you pass if you are at least a little bit creeped out):
Given this understanding of the Religion Clauses—and the absence of government employment regulation generally—it was some time before questions about government interference with a church’s ability to select its own ministers came before the courts. This Court touched upon the issue indirectly, however, in the context of disputes over church property. Our decisions in that area confirm that it is impermissible for the government to contradict a church’s determination of who can act as its ministers.
One of the Civil War buffs I knew once remarked that the problem was that Southern nationalism didn’t really materialize until long afterAppomattox. I am reminded of that when I see the recent spate of objections to the new translation of the Mass. This time, I’ll refer to a non-Catholic doing the fisk of a late malcontent, Jeff DeGraff, here: http://themcj.com/?p=27553
In short, we didn’t ask for this change to the Mass and from all indicators didn’t want it.
Jeff? Buddy? Catholics are exactly the same as everyone else. If Rome gave them what they wanted, Communion wafers would be replaced by baklava, Communion wine by Jäger shots and you would not only have the right to drill your best friend’s hot wife during the liturgy, you would have the obligation.
My wife and I were ELCA synod delegates back in 199something. At that convention there was a proposal to “study” homosexual issues. We were assured it was just a study, but when one lady came to the microphone to argue in favor of it, she gave us the “First they came for the Communists…” schpeel. It was then that I realized that even if we managed to defeat this ploy (we did that year), that it would be brought up again and again until everyone wore down. So it was no surprise that the ELCA (with its bewildering union with the Episcopal Church) eventually green lit homosexuality with almost no limits.
Fr. Z. brings us the story of a retired Minnesota ELCA bishop writing an open letter to the Minnesota Catholic Conference with the usual false comparisons the the civil rights movement, that people against gay “marriage” are just against it because they don’t know any gay people, etc.
