Comments on: John Ensign on Marriage

By: cod3fr3ak

cod3fr3ak — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:37:18 +0000

I read the Screwtape Letters and didn’t like it very much. I found most of his arguments to be a bit thin.

By: alex

alex — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:54:25 +0000

I have a hard time considering any effort at Xian apologetics to be genuinely subtle, as opposed to just wriggly, but there you go, diff’rent strokes…

By: Erin

Erin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:21:51 +0000

@lemuel pitkin: I dont think cases of family values are always the cases in which family privacy is necessarily violated. I still believe that is a domain that was made politically available by the public success against Clinton for his affair, and therefore still remains a very common violation that the American public cares about. However, important variation in the response exists in how the opposition deals with the issue. Outside of Illinois I’m not sure how many people followed Obama’s early treatment of Republican opponent Ryan’s family disaster (kinky sex) but Obama was at the forefront of shutting down any attempts to make details of Ryan’s disaster public knowledge for the sake of his wife and kids.

By: Erin

Erin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:14:49 +0000

I find the discussion about whether their private lives are none of our business, our at least not professionally relevant, to be incredibly interesting. But leaving aside the ideals of whether or not it should be, this seems to be a case of the chickens coming home to roost, and roost, and roost. When the GOP put Clinton’s extramarital affair on trial as a relevant part of his professional performance, I wonder if they knew how many gay-bashing gay republicans or promise-keeping philanderers they had among their ranks.

By: roac

roac — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:32:04 +0000

For my money, Lewis’s best fiction by a good long shot is Till We Have Faces. The questions raised in Narnia and the sci-fi trilogy presuppose answers to be found Christian doctrine. In TWHF, not necessarily. You can read the book from an atheist perspective and still feel that you’ve learned something about yourself.

By: Harry

Harry — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:57:02 +0000

I don’t agree with you, alex, about C.S. Lewis—the fiction is certainly unsubtle, but his little essays in Christian apologetics are full of surprises (about marriage, psycholanalysis, what it takes to be moral, etc). Not deep, on the whole, but interesting, and intellectually honest. Of course, the guy wouldn’t have got any references to Fred Kite or even, I dare say, Bluebottle, but you can’t have everything.

By: mds

mds — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:07:49 +0000

Well, regardless, I’m going to continue mocking Senator Ensign’s blatant hypocrisy and decry his political stances that have done actual damage to gay couples. (And do the same with the latter for the current administration.) If a law is introduced in Congress criminalizing adultery, or the Senate moves to expel Senator Ensign from the chamber, I’ll definitely protest. But since all that many of us are doing is pointing out that yet another mote inspector is sporting a rather large eye beam, I’m not going to feel all that guilty. In the meantime, Senator Ensign should feel no need to resign. Let the voters of Nevada decide if the disconnect between his legislative record and his apparent beliefs is worth removing him.

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:18:44 +0000

Subtle is overrated. Especially as many people have trouble with obvious.

Ensign’s case being a good example.
Bad: cheating on your wife
Worse: cheating with an employee in your office.
Obviously Ridiculous: cheating with an employee in your office, whose husband and son also works there while campaigning on family values.

Though I guess subtle might be the suggestion that he appears to value that family…

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:30:18 +0000

Nice sequencing of entries. First, ethicists are not particularly ethical. Second, politicians who run on a platform of morality are not particularly moral.

By: notedscholar

notedscholar — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:05:38 +0000

This has always been on the way to my position, which is that people should not be allowed to get married. Either that or they should be forced to get married. These people clearly haven’t heard of the 14th amendment.

By: alex

alex — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:17:15 +0000

“C.S. Lewis was a good writer” – for certain values of ‘good’, generally not related to ‘subtle’.

By: Salient

Salient — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:50:50 +0000

Hmm. I learned everything I need to know about this issue from King Henry V: The mercy that was quick in us but late, By your own counsel is suppress'd and kill'd: You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy; For your own reasons turn into your bosoms, As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.

By: Tracy W

Tracy W — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:49:49 +0000

cod3fr3ak: Whats amazing is that the most vocal opponents of “moral” issues are almost invariably the worst perpetrators of said offenses.

Perhaps that’s why they are vocal opponents – they are on some level, perhaps not consciously, aware that they have such impulses within themselves.
C.S. Lewis said in one of his books that he had nothing to say about the sin of gambling because he never felt tempted to do it himself and thus didn’t feel qualified to comment on it in others. (I’m not a Christian, but C.S. Lewis was a good writer).

By: alex

alex — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:07:26 +0000

“the person concerned asserts that particular family arrangements are superior to others” – like, maybe, voting against same-sex marriage?

By: juju

juju — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:12:39 +0000

@18: “He deserves to reap what he has sewn.”

I think the best he can do is rip it…