Editor's notebook
Hoyt, Robert G.
mon is a conviction about abortion, HIV/AIDS education, and Some of the letters we've published, in this and previous is- teaching about gays and lesbians in the public schools....
...RORERTG...
...Carmel ]," they wrote, "is like Ever renowned for its delicacy in the face of human sticking a finger in a dynamo...
...ference with free exercise of religion...
...spices from the Sermon on the Mount...
...I think it's the predictable (which doesn't mean forness...
...There's nothing wrong with the government taking the meantime, there are two other points that the WSJ over- a wait-and-see attitude about the end of the world...
...Such people don't when serious people challenge a traditional standard of conunderstand family as institution, think we all should do our own duct-giving reasons for questioning its continuing legitimasexual thing ("as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else"), and rank cy, contending that social enforcement of the norm impinges intolerance, very broadly defined, as the worst of social and unfairly on their lives, arguing that revising the code will not personal evils...
...But does such behavior go with the homosexual all gay supporters of gay rights are apostles of normless- territory...
...A problem with that ar- ease...
...Such an ideology exists...
...In Smith the Court acceptance of social norms that are worthy and workable, in- relegated the less restrictive alternative standard to cases where cluding the God-given ideal of permanent, sacrificial, enfam- the government intentionally singles out a religious group for ilied love...
...that is demonstrated, it seems plausible that the same standards My besetting ideological temptation, I suspect, is not so much that protect the Communist party and the Klan ought minimally liberalism as utopianism-flavored, I hope, with not-so bland to have governed in the case of the Branch Davidians...
...Some of the people who don't object to far more importantly-because it does not address the core issue...
...The gays and lesthat the public, including Catholics, will not believe that this bians I know best are people who respect their families of orialliance was forged merely to save printing costs...
...Whether it explodes or implodes, tragedy...
...This I felt he made a large leap when he listed the rising so- kind of opposition-abundantly in evidence in anti-gay camcial acceptance of gays and lesbians along with the paigns in Oregon and Colorado-is visceral...
...And still others are simply and more or less incolumn on gays in the military ["Searching for the Soap"], nocently biased (as who isn't, in one respect or another...
...In this they are like the homosexuals I saw interviewed during the April 25 march on Washington, who may have been carefully selected by sympathizers in the media, but who were IS IT IDEOLOGY...
...It leads me to believe Until the Native American peyote case in 1990, Smith v. that some day society (including the church) may come to re- Employment Division, the courts allowed religious freedom to gard homosexuality (including homosexual unions) as a Sig- he limited only where the state had borne a heavy burden of nificant differencebutnotasacurse oracrime orof itself sinful...
...IIOYr grown out of the habit of thinking seriously about less restrictive alternatives to the way they enforce the law in general...
...My personal experience, along with second-hand knowledge Such voices were heard in Brooklyn during the controversy over gained from books and the media, says that gays are as differthe Rainbow Curriculum and during the school board campaign...
...Sober religious leaders like Dean Kelley, the counselor on ENFORCING THE LAW religious liberty of the National Council of Churches of Christ, CONSIDER THE BILL OF RIGHTS and James Dunn, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, wrote to President Bill Clinton more than a month before the final denouement in Waco, urging him to "demilitarize the confrontation in Waco...
...but they are not anticommunitarian ideAN EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK ologues...
...as I've that it's not gays but straights that cause these other social evils...
...more subtle approach, raising disturbing questions that cannot Maybe the Davidians were nuts, but their kind of nuttiness did so lightly he brushed aside...
...The symbolism ality and/or disdains family values...
...On the second point: Beyond question, some opponents of gay rights have arrived at their convictions out of study and due reflection...
...gin and the family as institution, aren't themselves promiscuous The archdiocese would have done better to follow the prac- but faithful, and would like their own unions regarded under tice of the Diocese of Brooklyn in trusting that Catholic lay the rubric of family...
...as liberal individualism gone amok...
...Others think of it lidity or its necessity is not an adequate rebuttal...
...are likely to respond to such acceptance by their own restrictive alternative to limitation exists...
...But all these judgments...
...It images gays and prevalence of divorce, premarital sex, out-of-wedlock lesbians as predatory, as attracted to any and all bodies simibabies, absent fathers as a significant cause of the decline of larly shaped...
...But other opponents are bigots, people who enjoy hating and are pleased that gay-bashing has social acceptance n my initial reading of David R. Cadin, Jr.'s April 9 in some circles...
...support candidates able and willing to raise these questions...
...Until others hold as birthrights...
...Our government, after all, sorted out carefully by disinterested fact-finders before re- has no duty to protect us from nutty ideas, whether secular or sponsibility for this tragedy can be assessed more clearly...
...witness occurred in Waco, but my point is a more general one...
...argue) revere the icons of a society that views you with con4: 21 May 1993 Commonweal tempt and deprives you of the respect and opportunities that compound with guns blazing against their fellow Texans...
...argued earlier [February 261, are either disprovable or suffiSince then I've come to see the link: For Carlin, acceptance of ciently debatable that they can't properly be used to justify dishomosexual liaisons is like unto tolerance of the heterosexual criminatory policy...
...It sees homosexual lovemaking as perverted, a denial of gument, as a couple of letter writers point out in this issue, is nature and a defiance of God...
...the homosexual "life style" are people who have little respect Acceptance of homosexuality is indeed like, say, tolerance of for any of our inherited social and ethical norms, particularly easy divorce in that it is a departure from an existing norm...
...So REACTION TO WACO why bother in Waco, where the stakes-from the government's perspective --seemed so high...
...And no likely) as straights to be honest citizens, good workers, dutiful Brooklyn Catholic had to choose between voting for good can- sons and daughters, brave and competent soldiers and sailors...
...The better part of prudence would in Waco, Texas...
...It is sad that no one paid much array of theological convictions that stir the soul heed to these voices...
...In religious...
...But those that have something to do with sex...
...proof that the limitation was justified not by any ordinary puband that many or most gays, nd lesbians, because they are human lic interest, but by a supreme public necessity...
...looked...
...Working with the Christian pushing an ideological agenda that includes free-for-all sexuCoalition simply confirms that misperception...
...One could argue that this is precisely what this outcome will take a while, and isn't guaranteed...
...These questions will have to he not merit the end that came to them...
...It's unfortunate that some of the antics of groups like Actis present in but not confined to the gay rights movement...
...There sues [Correspondence, January 29...
...their writers aren't the Catholic church's social teaching...
...To anyKoresh and his followers were likely to have come out of their one inside the faith of the Davidians, who would not suspect Commonweal 21 May 1993: 5...
...It thinks of homosexuality as a communicable dismarriage and the family as institutions...
...To invade a center of energy I like Mt...
...and that no less beings...
...Showing contempt for the Eucharist just gives gay-bashers one But the situation is messier than Carlin portrays it...
...obsessed with it--whereas the government agents were outThat point has been made repeatedly in cases involving the side-in more ways than one-the faith community they had Conllllunist party and the Ku Klux Klan...
...What the letter writers say is false and counterproductive...
...But no one has yet adduced credible evidence that behavior that culminated in the consuming holocaust...
...Carmel ligious community believes it has a duty to kill others and is were familiar with apocalyptic literature--indeed, they were likely to carry out that goal imminently...
...Like the First and the Second Amendment...
...is Up serve to deepen bias and provide ammunition to bigots...
...ernment must sit idly by if there is credible evidence that a re- The difference, it seems, is that the folks inside Mt...
...Why (such rebels might minded concern for marriage and the family...
...some would like to have, or do have, chilpeople in their normal political coalitions would organize and dren under their care...
...Com- have been to leave these folks alone, but that "less restrictive monweal's May 7 editorial ("Agents of Apocalypse") took a alternative" does not seem to have been a serious option...
...They were "nutty...
...didates and against bad alliances...
...and for its superb command of the wide the result will he tragic for all...
...The outsiders were truly innocent of the close parlated into illegal conduct, the government may...
...But, as a utopian who once taught history, I know hostile treatment...
...the struggles f'or the rights of women, Jews, blacks, and Government officials-and too many members of society-have Catholics...
...ent from one another as straights, and are as likely (or as unno Monsignor Woolsey was needed to make alliances...
...That settles that...
...The religious freedom That hardly justifies the intense, aggressive behavior of the All' matter is subtle...
...of course, take allel between the imagery in the Book of Revelation and their prompt and appropriate action both to prevent and to stop the own astonishing sound effects, light deprivation, and military conduct...
...When ideas get trans- surrounded...
...The real-life gays of my acquaintance want gay rights, including social acceptance...
...April are many New Yorkers who think that sex is the sole focus of 9; May 71 bear witness to the first point...
...The views of the Branch Davidians about in American religious groups, the Wall Street the end of the world may seem odd, not only to the Wall Street Journal told us last month all that they think we Journal but to the vast majority of us, but beliefs alone do not need to know about the death of David Koresh and his followers justify a government raid...
...I think that's what Carlin means by "the gay harm but benefit society-simple reassertion of the norm's varights ideology" [Correspondence, May 71...
...nevertheless real and impressive people...
...false and dangerous...
...The cardinal should understand confirms what I've already come to grasp...
...in my judgment they THE AGENDA OF REAL-LIFE GAYS represent the gay/lesbian mainstream...
...mon is a conviction about abortion, HIV/AIDS education, and Some of the letters we've published, in this and previous isteaching about gays and lesbians in the public schools...
...Second, not all opponents of gay rights are moved by high- givable) consequence of pariahhood...
...to amass an arsenal as they await the end of the world...
...Nor And it does not explain why the FBI complied so closely would any Serious First Amendment scholar argue that the gov- with the script that Koresh and his followers were following...
...Assume, moreover, that the Wall Street Journal correctly diThe First Amendment protects us from governmental inter- agnosed Koresh and his followers as a bunch of nutty paranoids...
...It only lends credence to the worst fears and suspiexemption f'ronl gun control laws grounded in the Free Exercise cions of the paranoids, and proves from their perspectiveClause or that religious adherents Should have special license that the world really is out to get them, but good...
...I do not suggest that there is or ought to be an and FBI...
...February 12 and 26...
...aberrations he lists because it too undermines sexual norms that Carlin's argument fails, in short, because it doesn't evidence are needed to preserve and strengthen familyhood...
...knowledge of "ordinary" homosexuals or their agenda, but Well, yes, a little...
...First, not more excuse...
Vol. 120 • May 1993 • No. 10
