To them, you understand, it's all connected

And they understand that the law is a teacher

I’ve mentioned before that some of my Roman Catholic friends, especially, would claim the word “integralist” for themselves. What that word means varies a bit from person to person, but it generally means that they think the state/government should explicitly favor/promote/teach Christianity, and perhaps have some kind of explicit partnership with the institutional Church. (Most of them would also desire to preserve a large degree of personal and group freedom for non-Christian citizens in this integralist state, but the state is still intentional friend to Christianity.)

It also seems to me that the best argument for some kind of Christian integralism is that… you already live in an integralist state. Its flag is rainbow colored, and it definitely prefers that flag to some stars and stripes that are preserved for historical reasons. (My own city government seems to have transitioned from flying it during Pride Month, to flying it all the time, which anyone could have predicted.) There is already a state religion. The question is not “should the state be allied with Christianity, or with no religion at all?” The question is only which religion the state promotes.¹

Witness, for example, the Respect for Marriage Act

Witness, for example, the dishonestly named “Respect for Marriage Act”, signed by Joe Biden yesterday. David French, of course, was for it… I think one of the mistakes French makes is that he imagines he can rip this policy and that policy out of progressive legislation and analyze them in isolation. Why isn’t it good to require that one state recognize a marriage, any marriage, recognized in any other state? Imagine the chaos that would result if they did not! But the progressives writing and promoting this stuff, who seem to have a more accurate doctrine of how the state affects its citizens than David French, would reject any attempt to separate ideas like that. They see them as all connected.

To wit, it has been widely reported now that the signing ceremony for the Respect for Marriage Act included at least one drag performer. In fact it was a drag performer with a history of saying vile, pedophilia-esque stuff about which legacy media reporters will be studiously incurious. But to ask a question one step back… why is a drag performer present for this signing ceremony in the first place? What does a man dressing as a woman have to do with one state recognizing the legal marriage of another? Directly, of course, the answer is “nothing at all”.

On the other hand, if this isn’t really about marriage and progressives know this isn’t really about marriage, if this is really about further crippling our ability to understand what men and women are and should be in their designed complementary difference, further crippling our understanding that (to twist a Chesterton quotation²) we might love a man for being unwomanly and love a woman for being unmanly… well then, you have something that unifies support for gay marriage and support for drag. And certainly progressive activists think both battles are the same battle. And they fight endlessly at the level of government, not waiting for the populace to “come around” to their side first but acting in front of that, because they understand that the law is a powerful teacher.

In fact Biden… yes, in a somewhat rambling, half-senile-sounding speech that was full of lies (and do presidents normally wear sunglasses when giving a formal speech?), even said the law “strikes against hate in all its forms”. Hey, that’s not what David French told me it was about.

Ian Miles Cheong @stillgray

Anyone who criticizes surgeons who perform transgender surgeries is responsible for racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, etc. because it's all "connected," says Biden.

And also:

Daily Wire @realDailyWire

Biden: "We need to challenge the hundreds of callous, cynical laws introduced in the states targeting transgender children, terrifying families and criminalizing doctors who get children to care they need. We have to protect these children."

You watch that clip and you think again… oh, Roman Catholic bishops, if you let a communing Roman Catholic get away with stuff like this and he can still show up for the Eucharist next Sunday, you’ll let him say and do whatever he wants without consequence. Again I just find it remarkable that we went nigh overnight from “if two consenting adults want to… then who are you to stand in the way?” to insisting that if you want to stop doctors from chopping off the body parts of healthy children that’s just like racism.

Once more, the law as teacher

One final thought… Canada probably has now the most widespread “medically assisted death” operation in the world… and every prediction conservatives made per “if you legalize death by medical suicide, these things will happen” is coming true. Witness:

Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z

A Canadian doctor gave approval for euthanasia to a man after he wrote them this email. As was charmingly put to me once by an academic expert, to not allow poor people to commit suicide simply because they are poor would be discriminatory and rob them of their dignity.

And also this reply:

Derek @gringlegriff

@yuanyi_z Why can't the poor decide if they would rather die than be poor? You are being paternalistic here.

Yuan Yi Zhu, responding to that reply, wrote that this is what euthanasia does to a country’s collective conscience. He’s right about that. Would “Derek” have written this ten years ago? Obviously I don’t know the guy, but I doubt it. The law is a teacher. Now see the law teach.

1. A late addition here, if I may:

President Biden @POTUS

Marriage is a simple proposition: who do you love? And will you be loyal to the person you love? It’s not more complicated than that. The Respect for Marriage Act recognizes that everyone should have the right to answer those questions for themselves.

This is president as preacher or pastor, folks. The Left isn’t afraid to sermonize from positions of power. That’s a doctrinal definition right there.

2. And yes, I showed that video in class because the students, mostly, had no idea who Chesterton was. And it makes for a quick, lighthearted yet serious introduction to some of this thinking.