Aristocrats of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your…shame.

I might note that abolishing the nobility in law would allow for the creation of private registrars to keep track of the now-meaningless titles, and that the customers of those registrars could set up whatever rules they liked. A good socialist could really get behind this kind of privatization.

It’s the Downton Abbey effect. Much of the what there is of a plot is driven by the fact that the estate is entailed thus Lord Grantham’s daughters cannot inherit.

“You can be an atheist and support the idea of women bishops, I think.”

That’s a remarkable sentiment. How’s it supposed to work, do you think? How’s the atheist to gain a voice in church affairs?

Ordinarily, membership would have its privileges, including some say in the choice of organizational leadership, where the organization is structured to make leadership depend on the membership. But, not all churches are organized that way. In some, the membership depends on the hierarchy. And, that is how aristocracy is supposed to work too, yes? The serfs depend on the aristocrats.

It’s different for the aristocrats without the title and the land, I suppose — the supporting players, the hapless fifth business, or the mere conduit on the family tree connecting lucky cousins. Proximity must lend a certain poignancy to powerlessness. But, that is how it goes in a world of very great historical particularity. Privilege without particularity is so profoundly random, that its unfairness must rankle.

A bishop without a religious faith to propagate . . .

That’s a remarkable sentiment. How’s it supposed to work, do you think? How’s the atheist to gain a voice in church affairs?

Nancy Fraser Reframing Justice pdf, a section of Scales of Justice

Uhh, redistribution, recognition, and representation three equal principles of justice

Reframe “just representation” from those geographically or institutionally included in a decision process to those affected by the process and it’s outcome.

Then make justice and representation claims based on facts that feminists everywhere (including atheist or non-member feminists) are empowered by women bishops or Lady Campbell’s inheritance rights

How much loot do these ladies stand to get their hands on?

As the piece notes, often none at all. The complaint from those with a title but no estate is that the title descends no matter what, and if it doesn’t go to the daughters, it’ll go somewhere, perhaps to a third cousin twice removed who’s a trainee pig farmer in Arkansas. The counter-argument there would be that it’s not your title, but has instead temporarily settled upon you like the aristocratic lurgey, and if strict male primogeniture has an inbuilt sense of humour, so be it.

As if it were the most natural thing in the world…
Except for the obvious ones, the differences, between inherited status through birth alone and inherited status through wealth alone, don’t seem all that pronounced.
Both have their origins in the accomplishment of some ancestor, and subsequent maintenance of the results of accomplishment through legal, cultural, and societal structures built to aid that maintenance. Lots of other parallels.
The obvious difference is access to the castles of privilege.
Present, open to all qualified comers in the kingdom of money, but entirely absent in the bloodlines of nobility, except through marriage.
Just guessing of course, but you’re probably not too interested in some kind of equivalent economic disinheritance, the dismantling of financially privileged birth, total financial start-overs for each generation.
Because the aristocracies of wealth are so much more humane? Natural? Egalitarian?

I think we should tax these people’s wealth/estates away from them, of course. But once the estate’s gone, I don’t really care if they keep the pretty aristocratic titles for historical purposes, and I suppose women ought to be able to inherit those, why not.

@ 10: “I do find it extremely infuriating that atheists have an opinion on women bishops, which is really none of there business, but whatever.”

…this is little to do with the substance of the thread, but you seem to’ve confused disbelief in the existence of a God with disbelief in the existence of the CoE; the existence of a large institutional employer identifying as the latter is fairly well documented, and a number of its bishops hold positions in one of the less-representative branches of a representative government.

“Just guessing of course, but you’re probably not too interested in some kind of equivalent economic disinheritance, the dismantling of financially privileged birth, total financial start-overs for each generation.”

Do you even read the posts here? I mean that is the only way you could be so clueless about Corey’s opinions.

A somewhat related issue is the ban on the British monarch marrying a Catholic or being Catholic. Is the logical position here the republican one that the whole institution is ridiculous and the situation can only be solved by abolition, or that a legacy institution should still be subject to process improvements despite their anachronistic nature?

Disestablishment doesn’t actually help, here, Hector: private organisations still use Caesar’s courts, Caesar’s company acts, and Caesar’s trusts jurisprudence.

[all enforceable arrangements are enforced by the state: binding people — and this includes holding any form of property, you’ll note — is done on the state’s terms or not at all.]

Dear Crooked Timber, I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights I am a duke!

My great-grandfather, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time.

The second son of the late duke seized the titles and estates—the infant real duke was ignored. I am the lineal descendant of that infant—I am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater; and here am I, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the companionship of academics on a blog!

Bryan@24 – Is there a giant hound somewhere in this sordid story of contested inheritance ?

@4: True. Specifically, Lord Grantham’s eldest daughter cannot inherit. I do not see why barring women from inheriting is any more or less arbitrary or discriminatory than preserving hereditary elites in perpetuity by handing over everything to the first child to emerge from Mummy’s crotch.

I see Lady Liza (nice name, was almost the title of “My Fair Lady” until Lerner and Loewe figured out something else) is going to the mattresses on behalf of her elder sister, which is big of her. Can’t imagine Edith doing that for Mary.

“I do find it extremely infuriating that atheists have an opinion on women bishops, which is really none of there business, but whatever.”

Religious people of all types have an opinion on atheism, which is really none of their business either.

I think all this addresses comments and post. I recently learned that one of my great grandmothers made 100 loaves of bread a week for two colleges in a midwestern town over a hundred years ago so that three of her ten children could attend one of those colleges (two of those three being girls, btw — and the college idea being hers, not my great grandfather’s). Some recent immigrant, a Swede or German maybe? No, a descendant of New England 1600’s types (as was her husband). Her (and most of the rest of my family’s) consistent and persistent advantage, I’ve come to realize? Always first. First to NE. First to Virginia. First to the next place west, be it Tennessee or Wisconsin, Minnesota or Montana, Washington or California. (Always carefully buying Indian land — legal niceties, so important — they truly were, in an admirable way, yet they were also meaningless, of course. Hello Hilary Mantel on Thomas Cromwell’s legal interests.) British aristocracy: a useful analogue, to a point. But it all gets a little more complicated when we’re talking a kind of middle class aristocracy — a very hardworking middle class , which I think is more what American history has been about much more than British or anyone else has (till recently? hence my “to a point”). All this, plus I’ve been reading Empty Mansions and before that Ebony and Ivy. In the big picture, Corey’s on track. There’s room for all our arguments when there is such a thing as a real and vital middle class (or its analogue — class v. status arguments, and all that).

(The space I have just carved: Wow, so historically narrow. Or maybe not. I don’t know.)

And there’s no imaginable reason women should not be clergy. Or anti-clergy (hello, Anne Hutchinson). Or atheists, too. The end.

“namely that we continue to think that there are problems of injustice even when everyone has enough, just so long as there are some inequalities”

Maybe that’s because the concept of ‘equality’, as it has developed, is not useful anymore. Once the equal legal rights for everybody are achieved, we should forget inequality and concentrate on exploitation.

A woman in the second tier of the pyramid is nearly as much an exploiter as the men on top of the pyramid, and therefore she is not a victim but a perpetrator. And the same is true, arguably, for all of the middle-class individuals: men and women, whites and blacks, gays and straight. Not one iota of justice is done by shuffling them around inside the exploiter class.

@Chris, at least for me, I don’t care deeply about the plight of almost-at-the-topwomen for themselves.

Far more about the precedent and message set by a glass ceiling, and the effect on all women in an organization if their leadership is mostly male.

Not that a glass ceiling is not an injustice in itself, just that its importance relative to other injustices is due to effects in the rest of organizations.

While an atheist may think women should not be barred from bishoprics, an anticlerical atheist can easily think it makes no difference at all whether women hold the position because the position itself should be abolished. It is also a little odd to suppose that theological commitments are governed by principals of equality. Framed by little violins (and the faux irony) or not, the mom’s best friend story makes no difference: it applies to anyone who loses out. The loss of access to the estates should not have been a surprise. If variation in inheritance — including getting to give your stuff to whom you like on death — is okay, then historical happenstance should be a good enough reason.

Reply to Chris, not Gracchus

FFS, sexism is sexism. You might as well say that women in the west can’t complain about sexism because women in have it worse. I have lots of privilege by reason of my birth – I’m white, I live in a rich country, I’m middle class etc etc. I still get to says sexism sucks, as it applies to me, as well as (OMG, I can think about more than one thing at once!) point out and be active on sexism elsewhere.

This is exactly the type of nonsensical shite used to shut women up everywhere. It’s unworthy of you Cory. There’s always someone worse off, somewhere.

Although, in the interests of full disclosure, you should know that a similar case in the Spanish aristocracy has already been to the Committee for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and they took the same view as you.

However, although they have some powers of adjudication in certain circumstances, they are not as whole, a bunch of lawyers. Every lawyer I have spoken to about that – which included different colours and political persuasions, thought they got it wrong.

How’s the atheist to gain a voice in church affairs?

Traditionally by becoming a vicar. It’s the CofE we are talking about here.

Why, why when injustices are ranked, is sexism always deemed the least. This is an old tactic and I’m sorry to see it here, especially in this gleeful, jeering tone.

Katherine, you’re right that the aristocracy is sexist and we should oppose it. But your solution is to extend the privilege rather than reducing it?
If she wants a peerage, she can buy it with donations to a political party like the rest of us commoners.

But your solution is to extend the privilege rather than reducing it?

It’s not extending the privilege. It’s shuffling it.

And my solution, like I clearly said, is to abolish the whole thing. Whilst it’s there though, it would at least be better (for a tiny tiny value of better) for the privilege to be more equitably distributed.

And it was also done in Japan just recently, when it looked like there wouldn’t be a male heir to be Emperor, and the law simply did not allow a woman to inherit at all. Now it does. Simple.

And in the first quarter of this century (and previously) there was a specific type of land title (Fee Tail – yes really) which only allowed a man to inherit land (the source of the problem in Pride and Prejudice). The Law of Property Act 1925 abolished it. Also simple.

Sorry Katherine, missed your middle post. I still think your simple law should get rid of the shower rather than accommodate them.

FFS, sexism is sexism. You might as well say that women in the west can’t complain about sexism because women in have it worse.

No it isn’t. Some instances of sexism are worse, or more important, or more damaging to individuals, or more deserving of attention than other instances.

Women getting burned alive in a sweat-shop in Bangladesh; or a 14 yr old child bride bleeding to death on her wedding night in Yemen; etc have greater claims on my attention and resources and empathy than Lady Liza Campbell or some wanting a board position on a Fortune 500 corporation.

You can complain; I can ignore you.

The step Katherine makes, probably the recognition step, is pretty interesting. Any particular instance must be generalized to a cosmic rule, then individuated back to her particular claim. Yemen child-bride = Sexism = Lady Liza Campbell. Just the totalitization and meta-narrative feminists supposedly resist, unless it makes them richer.

Sorry for three in a row.

The sexism of Japanese farmland inheritance is more important to me than Lady Liza Campbell, even though both are about patriarchy and inheritance of property, precisely because the Japanese instance also touches, or involves more evidently, the issue of redistribution in addition to recognition.

When you can show me that your complaint about recognition will also increase economic justice rather than decreasing it, I listen more attentively.

Sorry Robin.

@Manta 63
I have in fact nothing against preventing women from inheriting, I have a lot against inherited privilege in general.

The problem is that if you say that “also women have the right to inherit aristocratic privilege”, you imply that inheriting aristocratic privilege is OK.

Male only inheritance in this sectarian “nobeleman” circles can get very ugly, up to the point where the women can be removed far from any privilege. In a worst case szenario, a stay at home widow with no job record or own social security claims will get no inheritance at all. Some distant male relative who got the inheritance will then send her some monthly money, often not much. If she breaks out of the system, e.g. by declaring welfare or working an “inapropiate” job she then faces complete social exclusion. I dont even know they do it here in Germany, since our inheritance law requires at least to give every child some mandatory minium.

The problem is that if you say that “also women have the right to inherit aristocratic privilege”, you imply that inheriting aristocratic privilege is OK.

No you don’t. And you especially don’t when you explicitly say at the same time that the aristocratic privilege is not okay, and you think it should abolished.

“the battle against sexism or racism is based on the idea that nobody should have privileges because of his birth,”

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. At least, it’s a very partisan way of framing that issue.

A person might be against sexism/racism/etc for the (egalitarian) reasons you give – “male privilege”, “white privilege”, etc are unearned advantages that no-one should benefit from. But a person might equally be against sexism/racism/etc for almost opposite (meritocratic) reasons – in point of fact, being white/male/etc doesn’t make you any better at X, so we shouldn’t favour whites/men/whatever for job X. In reality people may have overlapping beliefs, of course.

Compare, then attitudes to a field where some allegedly “privileged” group may genuinely have an advantage. Egalitarians would say something like “In an ideal world, firefighters would be 50% men and 50% women, but men are stronger so as a concession to reality we accept there will likely be more men than women, but for reasons of fairness we should do our best to encourage the fire department to make that gender gap as small as possible, and/or rectify it in other ways.” Meritocrats would say “In an ideal world, firefighters would be the people best at fighting fires, and if that’s mostly men, there’s nothing wrong with that. Your efforts to ‘reduce the gender gap’ are in fact (1) unfair and (2) likely to get me burned to death.”

The egalitarian argument for a gender-blind aristocracy doesn’t make much sense, except as an incremental move to full destruction of “privilege”. But the meritocratic one does. In the past, nobles were expected to lead troops into battle, etc, so it made sense that the Duke of Hoojumaflip had to be a man. Nowadays, the daughter of the Duke can be just as good a noble as the son, so why bar her inheritance?

Random, I don’t understand: do you oppose or not laws/customs preventing women from inheriting nobility titles? Estates? Privileges?

Do you (at least theoretically) agree with the lady in the OP that cannot get her nobility title, or, like apparently Robin, mock her?

My point of view is: since her plight does not touch me either as a possible victim or a possible beneficiary (i.e.: either way I will not get a nobility title), I feel free to mock her; a different standard would apply if I were one of the potential noble-people.
Similarly, my take to Katherine @42 is that women in the west can complain about sexism and men in the west should take their complain seriously; but people in the third world have no moral obligation to give a fig about it.

The egalitarian argument for a gender-blind aristocracy doesn’t make much sense, except as an incremental move to full destruction of “privilege”.

Just because someone has class privilege, doesn’t mean one isn’t affected by gender privilege. Just as black men can complain about racism, even though they benefit from gender privilege because they are men. Just as white working class men can complain about class privilege even though they are white and male.

Heck yes, I’d like to see the full destruction of unearned privilege. Whilst it exists, it would be better rather than worse if the aristocracy doesn’t also bolster gender privilege.

Similarly, my take to Katherine @42 is that women in the west can complain about sexism and men in the west should take their complain seriously; but people in the third world have no moral obligation to give a fig about it.

Yes, and…? Is anyone suggesting that people in the third world should give a fig about this particular case. Was anyone even so much as giving it a sideways glance until Robin showed up to laugh snidely?

Random, I don’t understand: do you oppose or not laws/customs preventing women from inheriting nobility titles? Estates? Privileges?

Actually, I recommend reading the NYT article on the topic; it’s an eye-opener. Based on its reading, I can answer easily this question. I oppose laws/customs etc. preventing women from inheriting X, because I favor forced heirship of X (or no heirship of X at all). Now what is the position of the instigators of the online petition to suppress discrimination based on gender? According to the NYT:

Interestingly, no one is campaigning to take the matter even further by, say, requiring that estates be divided among all the children and not left to just one.

So exactly as Corey Robin writes, they seem to want exactly the amount of equality before the law that suits their class interest, and not an inch more. Not my side.

Meredith,

I’m agnostic about women priests and can certainly see arguments both ways , but it is by no means a clear cut issue. I’d prefer we did the safe thing and for now, kept the all male priesthood. But unquestionably, I don’t want those who have no stake in the Christian Faith one way or another, and don’t understand the issues at stake, to be blithely pressuring the church to have women priests, or women bishops.

“This noblewoman of the OP instead is ok with birth privileges, she just wants a larger chunk of it for herself.”

I’m not up to date on the privileges of the British nobility, what are they nowadays? Is it just about the title? Inheritance of loot is obviously involved but that is not in itself an aristocratic privilege. When the argument is that inheritance per se is a privilege that should be abolished, then I’d have to say that this may be true (and not gonna happen any time soon) but it would still be the right thing to oppose a sexist inheritance system specifically for its sexism.

And also, yes one can be anti-religion and still think that sexist churches or religions are worse than non-sexist ones.

I was asking about us (as in “us commoners”): should we give a fig about the injustice suffered by the lady? Or can we mock her?

It is just possible not to give a fig about this lady but not also feel the need to mock her, you know. There’s plenty to mock about the aristocracy, but cheering on the fact that men get titles but women don’t isn’t my idea of fun.

Katherine, I don’t care about your idea of fun or your needs.
I was asking as a matter of moral obligation: you seemed to claim that mocking her is immoral, but don’t explain why.

@Salem
I honestly think that my “anti-birth-right” position is a meritocratic one, not an egalitarian one; I think that “equality of rights” and “meritocracy” are more or less the same thing, so I really don’t get your argument.

In fact I think that the argument “female firefighters are on average less efficient than male firefighters, but we should have more of them because equality so that more of them will die while firefighting” is rather stupid. The correct way would be to have an umbiased firefighting exam where the more skilled in fighting fires should win, and if this unbiasedly produces more male firefighters so be it.

Also, I think that your meritocratic argument for (past) male nobes is wrong, because while nobles mostly prided themselves of being the “warrior caste”, in reality they mostly were the “landowning caste”, wich doesn’t require being male.
The “defender of the homeland” was mostly PR, IMHO.

“I’d prefer we did the safe thing and for now, kept the all male priesthood.”

Yes we can’t have all those dangerous women priest wandering around causing car accidents and natural disasters. Much too unsafe.

Z,

So your forced heir ship would forbid people from saying ‘f*ck my sons’ and leaving their money to the Catholic Church? That doesn’t seem to be particularly respectful of personal freedom.

I’m all for high estate taxes, but I should be able to disinherit whoever the hell I choose.

TM,

As long as there’s no money attached , I agree that honorific titles can be inherited whichever way one chooses.

@TM 82
“And also, yes one can be anti-religion and still think that sexist churches or religions are worse than non-sexist ones.”

While I agree with this, the problem is if you can ethically enforce (or try to enforce through political action) non-sexist beliefs on people whose belief you don’t share, expecially since those people are free to opt out from their religion.

Hector writes: I should be able to disinherit whoever the hell I choose.

Depending on your jurisdiction, there may already be legal limits on the amount of disinheritage you can choose to apply to close family and dependents.

@Hector
“We make concessions away from the ideal of fairness to respect personal freedom”

Well this might be the “socialist” view of it, but I don’t think this is an official view.
I personally think that a parent has not a right to disinherit his descendants.

Also forced heirship generally covers just a share of the inheritance.

mcmanus: are you really pulling this reverse Dawkins/Muslima jack move? Really? (The rest of y’all too, you’d best pretend I’m a reasonable person like Katherine and agree with what she says, else I may come over all furious of a sudden. You know how women are. I’m having my period right now. Yes, blood is just seeping out of my body this very moment, with hideous clotted flesh in it, and this is surely affecting my ability to be civil to people. This is easily seen from the fact that at all other times of the month I am the least argumentat–what was that? Oh.) The undiscerning or inexperienced reader may think, “oh, it’s mcmanus, who lives under a bridge and waits for the tippy tapp tap of commenters walking across to shout demands. I bet we’re going straight to no woman in any Western society ever can complain about any injustice ever until the practice of FGM is eliminated. Or maybe until western men on business trips stop raping children at brothels in Phnom Penh?” Yeah, you think that, precious little n00b. No. No one can complain about obviously, patently ridiculously sexist inheritance laws in a Western country because we have to care more about obviously, patently, ridiculously sexist inheritance laws as they apply to Japanese motherfucking farmland, about which we will–as it chances to be in this case, and as it chances to be every time, by chance, purely as the result of a chain of events arising from quite random and different causes in each case–not hear even a single tantalizing detail, not even a sprig of curly, tasteless, parsley fact to adorn the sparse plate of “not-caring about sexist laws in countries which are either richer than Chad or not Japan” that mcmanus is serving. Perhaps if we had enough facts it could be an um…what are those…shiso leaf!

But, not-mcmanus people of Crooked Timber, it’s pretty simple. It’s stupid to have aristocratic titles. If the aristocrats have special powers denied to other citizens then that’s unjust rather than stupid. If there is an actual law, across the land, that the stupid titles, though not unjust in and of themselves, be allotted only to one group of citizens and never another, then that’s unjust as well as stupid. What would we all be saying if there were a rule that black people couldn’t inherit titles of nobility? “Sorry. That Duke married a black woman, so his eldest son–and indeed all his sons–are ineligible to become the next Duke. It will have to be his racist half-wit nephew. The law’s the law!” Would we all be sitting here saying, “well, sure it’s racist, but we really ought to abolish the aristocracy,” or would we be saying, “what a shameful, stupid, racist law!” Hmmmm?

It was my impression that Antonia’s grandparents very much wanted her and her sisters to be able to stay, but after her father’s death they all got shoved out the door just the same, cast out of the garden, now only able to look at photographs of the vast central hub of their childhoods and pretty much all their adult lives, all the woods, and silly hiding places inside the house where other children had carved their names hundreds of years ago. There is no angel with a flaming sword at the gates, but rather a snidely triumphant cousin, poorer than they all his life, now that I come to think of it, but only in the sense that he did not have nearly so nice a country estate. It wasn’t as if he had been selling his teeth one by one until then. Not nearly so nice a country estate. Not by half! LOL no, really, this place was spectacular. I imagine he is rather pleased with the whole affair. I think they even have a little thingy on an island in the pond, like a pretend temple or something. I should have gone to stay sooner.

Belle, how can you worry about houses when Hector may have to treat gay people in his congregation with respect?

Lurker 96: You are really asking whether I can publicly denounce sexist practices in an organization that I am not a member of. Yes of course I can.

Hector, your horror is my satisfaction. You made my day. Apart from that: I don’t care what you think, either.

“And I’m horrified at the prospect of Katherine, TM and MPA Victoria trying to impose their whims on the church through political action.”

Awww Hector. I horrify you? I really am a lovely person.
/Bats eyelashes.

MPA Victoria,

Do you believe in freedom of religion, or not? Never mind, I can guess the answer and it already makes me more frightened.

@Hector
well, because I think that parents have a duty to care equally about their childs. Since it is a duty, they can’t discharge it even after death.
And about “*institutionalizing* hereditary privilege”, the problem comes from the fact that different families pass very different amounts of heredity to their descendants; this should be dealt to with measures that diminish inequality among families in general. As I said before, I don’t think abolishing inheritance is a good idea.

@Belle Waring
I don’t understand why you think that “titles” are less bad than racism or sexism – or rather, I understand that you mean that they are bad but not as relevant because their impact is minimal.

But if their impact is really minimal, either the Lady in question has no real claim to make (the spanish case as I understand) or if there is also a substantial economic interest some sort of “forced heirship” should prevail on the title, and split the property equally amongst heirs, or even the father should have the right to give the stuff to whomever he wants as inheritance if you prefer.

[hides in fear of retaliation]

Belle:
why should we care about “injustices” that:
befall people that are anyhow quite more privileged than us
and do not affect us one way or another?

At least her ladyship provides some entertainment.

Re: well, because I think that parents have a duty to care equally about their childs

When they’re under 18, sure. Not when they’re legal adults. Would your forced heirship end when the kids are 18?

MPA Victoria,

So what tactics would you use to get churches to marry gays, ordain women, and issue position papers defending abortion rights?

What are examples of taking money from the government?

And do you really want to pressure churches into marrying gays and endorsing abortion rights? This is worse than I thought.

“What are examples of taking money from the government?”

Tax free status for example.

Belle, Antonia’s parents got this nice estate because of some rules. If they want the estate, they follow the rules; if they didn’t like the rules, I’m sure they could have said no to the inheritance in the first place and spare their daughter the agony of loosing her childhood home. Personally, I dislike these rules, and even the possibility of formulating them, but I’m not on the side of those who want them corrected only insofar as it favors them (the case discussed by Corey according to the NYT, you tell me if this was the case of your friend).

TM, personally I’m in favor of forced heirship, so in particular in favor of the abolition of all these quirky inheritance laws.

Hector, personally I don’t think that personal freedom extends beyond the grave. By all mean give all your money to the Church while you are alive. Once you’re dead, I believe it is up to the community, so in most cases the state, to manage it, and I think a fraction of it should go to the person in your legal care while you were alive (as a continuation to your obligation), the rest to the community.

@Hector
“Would your forced heirship end when the kids are 18?”
Actually forced heirship is the law of the land where I live (Italy), so it is not “mine” forced heirship. I think that here forced heirship doesn’t end at 18, though I don’t know for sure.
Also no, I don’t think that all parental duties end at 18 (though a big part does).

@TM 115
Well I can’t speak for CR obviously, but I would basically pick (b).
The point is this: aristocratic inheritance is not based on privilege, it is the legalisation of privilege; the difference between aristocratic inheritance and normal inheritance is like the difference between legalized racism and unofficial racism: the first is much worse than the second.
Now if you can split property inheritance from title inheritance, I think the Lady (or her sister) could make a case for having her part normally, but this is not the case, she is actually asking for the *title* on grounds of egalitarianism (implicit in my opinion in anti-sexism).

Re: Discriminating in hiring practices? Yes.

So, you would revoke the tax free status of churches which refuse to ordain women?

I suppose I should expect this: after all, the Lord did tell us we would suffer for witnessing to His truth.

Thanks at least for clarification Lurker, although I must admit I can’t follow your argument.

It appears from a quick google search that US law outside Louisiana does allow you to entirely disinherit your children, but not your spouse. Which at least makes more sense to me than Random Luker’s ideas.

“Out of curiosity, how does your forced heirship idea treat the spouse?”

The standard approach is that part – usually 1/2 – of the inheritance is distributed among spouse and children under statutory rules. The other half is distributed as the decedent sees fit. In Germany, the spouse is entitled to at least 1/4 and the children together to at least 1/4. That’s what is called Pflichtteil. I thought that was a rather standard approach.

Lurker: interesting that daughters aren’t mentioned under Italian inheritance law.

Bob is taking the pragmatic option again and has decided to commit his time to reforming Japanese inheritance laws, from Texas?
Awesome

Re: I thought that was a rather standard approach.

Not in America, thank God.

Hector, what’s your denomination? Episcopalian? (My guess is based on your citation of “scripture, tradition and reason” as authorities.)

Hector, I don’t see why dead people should have any right at all, either morally or for the benefit of society.

Oh FFS hector, there are plenty of Catholics (male and female) who from within the Church oppose any number of Church policies. One being the hierarchys position on female priests.
So as a non Catholic (although baptised, communed, confirmed etc in that tradition) I would personally, when push came to shove, support that faction over the others – if needed. Personally I think the Church is unreformable so best of to just leave it be, and join a more enlightened branch of Protestantism.
Also your idea that *people outside the Church cant criticise it’s practices* is absolutely absurd considering you spend all your time banging on about feminism.

“The only reason *not* to seize all the property is because we want to balance fairness to the community against respect for personal sentiments and affections, and if you’re going to do that then you should go all the way and people disinherit whoever they choose.”

The first part does not imply the second part.
For instance, you may want to respect the personal sentiments and affections of the spouse and the children for the house where they live/lived.

Moreover, society may want to prevent the accumulation of capital among generations favored by allowing “all the inheritance to the first son” customs.
We may agree that forced inheritance is not the best solution, but it’s better than no solution at all.

Ronan RF,

If you dissent on the matter of women priests, you’re not being an obedient Catholic, and your opinion means less than the opinion of a particularly ill behaved kindergarten class.

You can criticize churches for having male-only priests, forbidding gays from marrying, etc.. all you want. The church is under no moral obligation to listen to you, though.

Corey Robin at 6:43 am-
I think the revolution can spare me those few hours…
120+ comments on from your 29 and see, there now, see, that’s what you’ve done with your few hours.
What would have been there otherwise? What discomfiting truth worked slowly to the surface, like a splinter, up through the taut skin and swollen cell membranes of ignorance?
One slight nudge in another direction and…
We cannot know, we will never know.
The mingled injustices of aristocratic inheritance and its gender-chauvinisms make it easy to disregard the humanity of Campbell’s position.
That’s what bugs me.
Ranking that against the verymost ghastly bottom-end of injustice is a profane and diversionary tactic, but elevating Campbell’s relatively comfortable dissatisfaction to piercing immediacy is profane as well I think.
I want insight, not cheap catharsis.
What I already said at the redditor-sex-glurge post (which somebody could make a software thing where you could mash up these vectoring tangents as they blur toward unity and now they’re almost identical headed toward, toward…something) the real inheritance of all of us here is a nightmare of pathology, mostly un-or-mis-diagnosed, treated by its symptoms and never cured.
The language is filled with spells that lock us into patterns of thinking, healthy long-standing traditions have been suborned to serve the very things they evolved to protect us against, and as McManus affirms, that’s the gambit of the neoliberal parasites.
“Oh, you want some liberation yeah? Purple fingers! Pussy Riot! No more chador, no more veils! Condi Rice! Women in Iraq can VOTE!”
Congenital oppression evolves.

“You can criticize churches for having male-only priests, forbidding gays from marrying, etc.. all you want. The church is under no moral obligation to listen to you, though.”

On the contrary; if a Church’s policy is morally wrong, then they have a moral obligation to change it. That’s kind of the point.

Re: But she has to be the Duke for it to be symbolic. We already have duchesses.

So now you want to move the field of battle from assaults on Christianity to assaults on the English Language?

Re: but is used in it’s male form when speaking of someone of indefinite sex.

We used to do that in the English Bible (e.g. ‘Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly”), but I seem to recall a big hullaballoo in the 1960s about gender-neutral language.

Is the British Nobility more like a public institution or like a private club?

If it’s the latter, then they can discriminate anyone they want in any way they like and that is none of your business. Moreover, no one is stopping you and your friends from issuing your own titles, in any manner you choose.

But of course it’s not exactly a private club, because, for example, they have some seats in the House of Lords allocated to them. So, maybe that’s what needs changing: get them out of the public sphere, and let them do whatever they want.

I agree strongly with Mao Cheng Ji. If I make a title, I should be able to bequeath it to whoever I choose, just as a private club can choose to be male only.

“black cat/blackess catess”

I’d say the same of Christian churches being bullied into ordaining women and gays. their club, their rules, none of your business.

MPAV-
Hey thanks for the re-post entire!?
It might help your ongoing attempts a little if you would pause to consider that bouncing your own perky self off of me in order to be more acceptable to the in-kids here is only going to work if you understand what I’m saying and also why I’m saying it.
That aside, it sure would be/could be fun and exciting if somebody in the Controlling Authority at CT did a post on Turing’s official “pardon”, and the truly central nature – to the net to the current moment to the topic of West.Civ. sex-pathology – of all that that weird sick brings with it, before the timeliness of it slips past. If it hasn’t already.
I don’t think it has. But what do I know.

Bianca Steele,

Actually, the churches which marry gays, ‘ordain’ women, etc. are seeing massive hemorrhages in membership. look at what’s happened to the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutherans since they decided to ordain gays, or other mainline Protestant bodies.

I should add to my @173: Especially when the couple leaving are two out of fewer than a dozen active church members under thirty-five, and even more especially if they’re taking out a decent percentage of the Sunday School with them.

@174: What happened when the Episcopal Church started ordaining women? A lot of Catholics, especially with daughters, became Episcopalians, is one thing that happened.

” So you object to morality clauses again?
Is the NAACP under any obligation to hire a race realist to answer their phones?”

Are you against any anti-discrimination requirements?

“Actually, the churches which marry gays, ‘ordain’ women, etc. are seeing massive hemorrhages in membership. look at what’s happened to the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutherans since they decided to ordain gays, or other mainline Protestant bodies.”

A trend that a) began long before said doctrinal changes happened, and b) has also occurred in the Catholic Church (the long-term decline in the US has only been balanced out by the influx of Latinos).

@bianca steele 176

So, problem solved, why should we force the Catholics to have female priests?
People who dislike it can just become Episcopalians.

The magic of the free market strikes again!

dn 180,

Very true. To blame the loss in membership on a liberalization of the rules is absurd. And, to me, anyone who leaves a church based upon increased inclusivity is someone I wouldn’t want in the congregation anyway. It’s obvious they’re not picking up on the message of the founder. At all. They must have skipped the Sermon on the Mount.

Hector 183,

Seriously, why on earth should you care if there are women priests or that your church would marry gay people?

Why should you care?

On the first, why wouldn’t you welcome the end of discrimination against women in that particular case? On the second, same thing — with the added point that it doesn’t impact you, personally, one iota. It doesn’t ask anything of you, personally.

Don’t want to marry someone of the same sex? Don’t. Simple as that. But why would you want to stand in the way of those who do?

Random Lurker 182,

The issue of “force” seems to be misplaced in your comment. That is being done by those churches that “force” and enforce strict discrimination against women.

I love how apologists for religious bigotry so often try to turn the tables on the people calling for an end of discrimination. They suggest it’s those people who are doing the discriminating. Nonsense.

Kind of like the whole “liberty” issue when it came to southern slave “rights.”

If one wants an actual explanation for the decline in mainline Protestantism, the answer is not that complicated: pluralism. Starting around the 1960s, the children of mainline Protestants simply began to conclude that non-Christianity didn’t condemn anyone to hell. The rest is history.

dn 190,

It’s actually amazing that Christianity lasted this long. Its completely absurd mix of Greco-Roman mythology with mistranslated Judaism, sans the actual hard practice of “getting right with god,” along with its export to seemingly non-fertile grounds in Europe . . . . all make for a long-shot.

Of course, no Constantine, and it dies on the vine. We might be worshiping Mithras instead.

For those from temperate zones, a religion from the desert should have been a non-starter. Most likely the hook was the promise of “eternal life” which is going to appeal to many, especially when it takes no effort in return, beyond “belief.”

What a deal!!

“retention” is an absurd statistic. If everyone randomly swapped religions with someone else, the biggest religions would have the most “retention”. People don’t randomly swap religions, but a Catholic is more likely to marry another Catholic than an Episcopalian is to marry an Episcopalian.

Roy Belmont @ #23

But then it seems a little facile to spend critical thought-time on a relative handful of remnant Lords and Ladies when the social tension’s so enormously coming from the moneyed-up side.

Let me introduce you to the Right Honorable Gideon “George” Osborne MP, who will one day become the 18th Baronet Osborne, and all his Tory aristocracy chums.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Osborne

js 197,

Sounds perfectly fair. Divide it equally. Since no one chooses to be born, and no one “earns” their birth position. It’s all just dumb luck. Why should first-born children of either gender be guaranteed the lion’s share? Or all of it?

Split it all up evenly, without regard to gender, and then tax those estates above a certain amount — more the bigger they are. Several brackets, progressively, etc. The tax being split evenly as well.

Approaching 200 comments! Unbelievable.

Titles of nobility are the subject of litigation in several European countries. The German courts have been asked to intervene in cases in which a potential heir has married “beneath” his class, which is even more remarkable to me than primogeniture, in its antique, anti-egalitarian implications. The Princes of Fürstenberg (yes, the family of the fashion designer), who lost sovereignty in 1806, only a few years ago closed the major public park in the town of Donaueschingen, claiming it as the palace gardens and their personal property, so sometimes it’s about property and power, too — shocking, I know.

I think I like the French solution the best: people just make stuff up; many experts (!?), I understand, believe that more than half of the titles of nobility in social use in France are based on fraudulent claims. I’m not sure why that wouldn’t work in England, too. The lady should just claim to be the Duke, or whatever, and move on. The worst thing that can happen is heated arguments at cocktail parties. Such a strategy is not unlike the evolution of religions of conscience into highly idiosyncratic “spiritual beliefs” in the U.S.; every woman her own theologian! Why not?

I agree with Katherine and L2P when it comes to the first part of the OP. On the second part, that it’s ironic, presumably, that members of the aristocracy are proposing to submit themselves to the justice of the international courts, Corey has a point, if the point is that they’re illustrating the decreased power of aristocracy and the absurdity of defending aristocracy while submitting to extranational courts. (If the point is that they shouldn’t be allowed to petition to the courts because they are supposed to be opposed to international courts on principle, or because courts should defend poor people and not the rich, which could be read into the OP if it were read quickly, but which I think is probably not what Corey meant–though what do I know–then what Katherine and L2P say is very relevant.)

Ms. Waring’s story above (21) reminded of a wonderful movie, Summer Hours, directed by Olivier Assayas.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0836700/

From the blurb on above site:

Two brothers and a sister witness the disappearance of their childhood memories when they must relinquish the family belongings to ensure their deceased mother’s succession

The family in question isn’t “aristocratic.” Upper class, most likely. But the home is beautiful and it’s sad to think of the loss to that family of memories, touchstones, the stability that a home can bring. The gathering place for memories and love, etc.

A really great film.

I do find it extremely infuriating that atheists have an opinion on women bishops, which is really none of there business, but whatever.

I do find it extremely infuriating that bishops have an opinion on abortion, which is really none of their business, but whatever.

Plume @192 –

You know, a lot of what you’re describing there is a caricature of what pre-Constantine Christianity was really like; the evidence from 2nd/3rd/4th century sources suggests that the whole “faith alone” thing which we associate with “born-again” religion today was actually not characteristic of most early Christianity at all (an interpretation also supported by New Testament writings such as the epistle of James and certain gospel passages). Heavy consequences for wrongdoing are well-attested; long excommunications were apparently not uncommon, and various sources describe the early practice of reconcilation for serious sins (adultery, idolatry, murder, sometimes other crimes) as something which could only be done once in a lifetime, generally involving a years-long period of penitential humiliation and asceticism – public confession, fasting and sleep deprivation, sackcloth and ashes, being forced to wait outside the church door, etc. The watering-down of penance was a centuries-long process that lasted well into the middle ages.

dn 208,

I’ve read a ton on early Christianity. Geza Vermes, Bart Ehrman, Crossan, Pagels, Armstrong, Rubenstein, Wright, etc.

And while I oversimplified the Pauline revolution, given the brevity of the comment, it’s basically true. Paul and his followers did their best to extend their new version of Judaism to non-Jews. In order to do so, in order to make it more appealing, they had to get rid of most of the requirements of Jewish law. Those requirements were simply deal breakers for “gentiles.” Adhering to food laws, dress codes, farming codes and the like were deal breakers. So Paul emphasized belief in Jesus above all else. Belief. Faith.

Christianity, in fact, is the most “faith-based” faith among all the major religions. It is the least concerned with actual morality in the here and now, for the here and now. Buddhist ethics and morality, for instance, put Christianity to shame.

Now, I’m not saying that certain Christians didn’t develop “Christian ethics” of their own, on their own dime. They did. We have a long history of “social justice” Christianity. But the church proper — the Pauline church — wasn’t established on those grounds. It was established as a breaking away from Jewish law, custom and practice.

This might be a good moment to share my favorite thing, which is the Jacobite succession to the British Crown. http://jacobite.ca/kings/index.htm

It gets seriously hilarious when you scroll down. Modern aristocrats are ridiculous.

“You pay for Hectors church, he pays for your favorite non-profit that he may not like. That’s how the system works.”
Ah yes but my non profit doesn’t claim that it has the right to exclude women from the managing board.

Don’t aristocracies (theoretically, once?), though rooted in their sovereign like URIs to their TLD, adhere to common rules of, oho, Christendom, like RFC 2616? And RFC 2616 practically implies the IETF. So perhaps the appeal to the Strasbourg court is not too inconsistent.

I don’t know whether I think making female inheritance* of aristocratic position is a good thing, if we must maintain the aristocratic positions, because I can’t decide what net effect I think it has on injustice among the non-aristocrats.
*(only if no sons? or inheritance by legal children in order of age? or by any provable children? Hybridized aristocratic genes might be the most useful ones!)

Laurens Dorsey, I think Downton Abbey and steampunk are both popular partly because our eyes are bored; most of us can only afford inexpensive mechanical reproductions, most of the time, and are indoors, so we’re starved of visual complexity. Weeding takes more looking-at than an iPod does. Plus also how pleasant to imagine being rich, of course, unless one is rich enough to imagine being poor and virtuous instead.

js. 197, just for the record, what sparked most of the controversy on this thread are not the details of this lady’s claims (which hardly anybody really cares about) but the bold statement from the OP, nailed and refuted right in comment 1:

*“There was a time when the battle against sexism and the battle against the aristocracy were thought to be one and the same.“*

Because most of us who have some acquaintance with the history of “the battle against sexism” know that that battle is not the same as, nor is it to be subsumed under, the fight against aristocracy or capitalism or racism or any other form of oppression or injustice. It’s a battle on its own and has had, and still has, to be fought over and over again on its own, and not rarely against supposedly progressives espousing precisely the view that sexism doesn’t need all that attention because it’s really part of the larger battle, which is actually, when you really think about deeply enough, much more important than sexism, if that even exists, and so on.

And the thread has totally vindicated L2Ps argument and those of Katherine and others later and your quibbles about this or that wrinkle of inheritance law are really just a distraction of what this thread is about and I’m not the least interested in going further down that path. I think everybody here with sense and decency, including Corey, should be able to come out and admit, that asterisked statement was BS, that’s no way of thinking about sexism. Then you can go on and debate how best to go about abolishing aristocracy.

MPAV 214,

Very true. And my favorite non-profit doesn’t seek, and doesn’t receive, a religious exemption so it can avoid laws and regs every other institution must adhere to.

We either have anti-discriminatory laws and regs, or we don’t. If we do, then everyone has to adhere to them, as members of this society. No religious exemptions. Period. End of story.

If they seek carve-outs in order to continue such reactionary policies, they need to relocate elsewhere.

218: Feminism has come such a very long way since Sylvia Pankhurst

I couldn’t find much of a quote on the nobility or aristocracy, because foe the most part, like Lenin, feminists used to not even bother with them. There is a correction to the Irish Communist Party platform (not just the estates, everything).

But heck, maybe Emmeline would chain herself to the Buckingham Gates for the rights and privileges of Lady Liza Campbell

Sylvia Pankhurst to Belle Waring/Katherine in 5 generations of heroes of feminism.

Right to the vote to the right to inherit a title as bleeding-edge radicalism.

bob mcmanus, if only the most primitive of strawMAN arguments can save your case, it’s time to abandon it.

The thing about bishops is they can only move diagonally.
Reputable scholars have said that the Book of Job was written by at least three different (human) hands. One of whom didn’t contribute much to the stark weird poetic strength of the story. More like a monotheistic “Eat at Manny’s – best lunch in town!” kind of co-option deal.
So that the book, and the book it’s in, becomes seeable as itself less a thing than a collection of things, not all of them superstitious horse feces.
–
The inverse of this whole aristo-feministo dust-up might be expressed in the goal-achieved celebrations of the careers of women like Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Power hitters of the patriarchy, but women. So victory.

Yes bob, but what was Sylvia Pankhurst doing to stop the Russo-Japanese war?

One of my weirder fascinations concerns the Dukes of Norfolk.

In theory, the title, Duke of Norfolk and the associated hereditary position of Earl Marshal, as well as all the subsidiary titles (there are like 8, I think), save one, descend to “heirs male”. In 1975, the 16th Duke died “without male issue”, as they say, and the title passed to his second cousin, once removed, who became 17th Duke. Which stands as a measure of how far they’re willing to take it. (We’re now on the 18th Duke, the son of the 17th.)

What’s weird is that, historically, they were not that fussy, and inheritance has repeatedly passed through the female line, when it was convenient, which is how the title lasted long enough to emerge as among the oldest in the English peerage.

The title originated with the so-called Bigod Earls of Norfolk. That title and its lands returned to the Crown, and Edward II gave that title and the hereditary position of Earl Marshal to his brother, the third son of Edward I, Thomas of Brotherton. When Thomas of Brotherton died, the titles, Earl of Norfolk and Earl Marshal went to his daughter (!), the formidable Margaret Mowbray, granddaughter of King Edward I. When Richard II made her grandson, Thomas Mowbray (along with Bolingbroke, one of the Lords Appellant Richard didn’t execute) Duke of Norfolk, he made the long-lived Margaret, Duchess of Norfolk in her own right. Thomas Mowbray died in exile, and was supposedly stripped of his title by Richard, but Richard shortly lost out to Bolingbroke, and the Mowbray family held on, until the fourth Duke “died without male issue” as they say, and Edward IV attempted to get the title back by marrying his four-year-old son to the 4th Duke’s three-year-old daughter and heir (!). That didn’t work out as Richard III put that son in the Tower and he was never heard from again. Richard III resolved the inheritance muddle by making his supporter, John Howard, Duke. John Howard was the son of another Margaret Mowbray, this one the eldest daughter of the first Duke, Thomas Mowbray and Elizabeth Fitzalan. (Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey and Elizabeth I all descended from this couple.)

That first John Howard was promptly killed at the Battle of Bosworth, defending Richard III, beginning a long family struggle to hold on to the title, despite conflict with the monarch, repeated thru the following generations. The son, a Thomas Howard, was wounded on the field at Bosworth, and imprisoned for three years, but rehabilitated by Henry VII, and, after the victory at the Battle of Flodden, was restored to the Dukedom by Henry VIII. His son, another Thomas, served Henry VIII, but, a Catholic conservative, got on the wrong side of the Protestant Reformation and narrowly escaped execution, when Henry VIII died before the sentence was carried out. The fourth Howard duke, still another Thomas, this time, unusually a nominal Protestant, not that it did him any good, married Mary Fitzalan, daughter and heir of the 19th Earl of Arundel. Thomas, executed for treason, in part for scheming to marry Mary, Queen of Scots, lost the title of Duke. But, his son with Mary Fitzalan, Philip Howard, inherited the title of his maternal grandfather, as 20th Earl of Arundel and the Howards took as their seat, Arundel Castle. Philip Howard, who died Elizabeth’s prisoner in the Tower of London, was canonized as a Catholic martyr. The 22nd Earl of Arundel married a Stuart, and his eldest son, though a mental defective confined to an asylum in Padua, was restored to the Dukedom upon petition of most of the House of Lords during the Restoration in 1660, with the understanding that an influential and well-respected younger brother would play the role, and eventually inherit the title, which Henry Howard did.

I’m not sure what my point is, except to note that the legalistic insistence on male primogeniture is apparently rather a late development.

dn 229,

I asserted nothing without qualification. My comment was comparative. As in, compared with X religion, etc.

Also, there is the issue of what your interpretation of “ethics” and “morality” happens to be. The meaning of the words. As mentioned before, mine is based, boiled down, on the arc of cruelty to kindness. Kindness and compassion toward all things, etc. being at the top of the heap.

Given the treatment of the early Christian fathers toward one another, I don’t think they make for very good guides. They accused each other of the most vile acts, if one though the other a “heretic.” And the bible we have is the one the winners left us. The losers in the factional disputes were all but written out, and we mostly know them based upon the accusations made against them by the winners.

They had each other assassinated. They had each other thrown in jail and tortured. They started little wars over dissent and differences over doctrine. In one famous case, over the presence or absence of a single letter in an essential word. And when the early church fathers talked about “morality” and “ethics” I find very little in this regarding kindness and compassion. Most of what I see is prudery and a ton of discrimination against women.

Since you are defending them, perhaps you can present an example of their words of wisdom on ethics and morality?

@Plume
Sorry for the late reply.
I think the point about male only priesthood in Roman Catholicism is that it doesn’t really disadvantage anyone who is not a Roman Catholic (since a woman who is not RC could not become a RC priest anyway) and if you are a Roman Catholic, believing in the RC church interpretation of your religion is part of the deal – if you don’t believe in it, you should not call yourself a RC.

So this is very different from the “slavery is freedom” thing, wich impacted the slaves a lot even if they disagreed.

hix @ 235

Willy had a bit more say than was good for Germany or Europe.

@230:

B.W. , that was a tour-de-force of pedantry. Perhaps you still have left some undiscovered talents. If so, the market value of such pedantry might solicit an astonishingly high price, provided you’d be willing to trim it to the suitable occasion.

TM: PREACH!
And look, to the extent that these people still want primogeniture they’re assholes. This woman sounds like an asshole. There should be regular old division of inheritance and there should be estate taxes. But bob mcmanus’ Wollstonecraft comment is merely the reductio of the sentence TM quoted from the OP, to wit, “where’s your precious feminism now?” (This is generally said by the sneering bad guy right before a super-powered person comes in, so I guess I’ll just have to hope Storm from the X-Men is about the blow the door off its hinges.) If blackamazon or someone wants to start a new “solidarityisforwhitewomen”-style tumblr/hashtag I’m happy to read it and maybe shut up and learn a thing or two, but when white liberal guys want to set up such a tumblr to explain to me which possibly feminist causes are OK and which should have their heads pushed under water in favor of class issues? Not so much with the liking. Is my mom’s friend Antonia a poster child of tragedy or something? No. Is it sexist to have a law that forbade her grandparents to leave their property to her because she doesn’t have an important penis? Yes. Duuuuhhh. Are we even needing to argue about this for any reason?

Cross-posted Corey, yes, I see your point. As I say, my only experience with the situation was having someone I know being made very miserable so perhaps I’m pointlessly sympathetic to them (like the Bush I officials who were my parent’s friends in DC. It’s harder to think people you actually see being normal are evil, but there it is). I know there’s only a few Lords that can vote on anything and they can be overridden anyway, right? I agree that it may seem like a sad retreat of liberalism for people to be saying, “hang on, can’t some of us be courtiers also, pleeease, it would give us better self-esteem!” I didn’t mean to be unpleasant about it and don’t think you were advancing a necessarily sexist line. I’m often unpleasant about things without entirely 1000% meaning to be, though, so, probably sorry.

I think what you’re seeing in the push to make aristocracy gender neutral is a kind of trickle down feminism. The logic is that if we get elite women into top positions, this will somehow eventually benefit women further down. In practice nothing good ever seems to trickle down so women in general don’t get very enthused about the prospect. You can see that in the last NYC mayoral race, when Frank Bruni and Maureen Dowd wrung their hands over how working class women in New York just didn’t appreciate Christine Quinn and insisted on voting for de Blasio. Never mind that de Blasio promised to do more for them – what about the symbolism of a female mayor?

A previous poster argued that elites are ok with gender equality as long as class privilege is preserved. A previous poster was wrong. Male elites – genuine patriarchs – would have to yield almost literally half their kingdoms to make things equal with women of their class. That’s not happening. They’re perfectly happy to pay lip service to feminism and yield on symbolic issues but they’re not going to willingly give up half the CEO slots, half the law partnerships, etc. If elite women want that to change, they’ll need to build broad support and they can’t do that without tending to the needs of ordinary women. I don’t think it’s coincidence that the Scandinavian countries that have achieved the greatest equality for women are also the most egalitarian in socioeconomic terms. American women in the top few percent need to choose between keeping class privilege and gaining sexual equality. So far most have chosen the former.

A tangential note on Catholicism – Constantine didn’t make Christianity into the religion of the empire – he chose it because it was (regardless of merits) a strong and rapidly growing faith. The idea that the whim of one autocrat could overwhelm the beliefs of millions always struck me as a bit peculiar. Mithras never had mass appeal. Also, the first female Speaker and thus far most powerful American female politician, Nancy Pelosi, is a Catholic and a product of Catholic education. I’m sure her work for women’s equality doesn’t compare favorably with progressive atheists such as Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens but I think she deserves some credit.

Plume @232 – you did, in fact, assert without qualification at 192 that earliest Christianity offered eternal life “sans the actual hard effort of ‘getting right with God'”, and you maintain that this was “basically true” though an oversimplification. It is not; the texts of the NT and the known history of the early churches amply demonstrate otherwise. As this is rather off-topic, I don’t care to get into a deep discussion, but I will note that there are many passages of Paul and pseudo-Paul which exhort the Christian believer to precisely the virtues you describe. In the words of the letter to the Galatians: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law… Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ… And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” Virtually every letter offers similar passages; the gospels likewise are filled with moral exhortation and are plainly opposed to the idea of faith without works. (“Why do you call me Lord and not do what I say?”)

Certainly, it’s true that Christian moral thinking also includes ideas most of us would criticize; chief among them its frequent contempt for this-worldly happiness, as well as the intertwining of ethics with theological orthodoxy. And yet this does not in any way support the insinuation that Christianity is somehow morally lazy. Sometimes we agree with its particular moral demands, sometimes we don’t, but plainly the violation of those demands was taken seriously.

(You may be interested in some of the “Sayings of the Desert Fathers“, which provide a nice sense of one ancient Christian ideal of the holy man. Some are inspiring, others less so. That’s how it goes with most “ancient wisdom”.)

dn 245,

Yes, the statement you noted first, the offer of eternal life sans ethical and moral practice as conceived of by Jewish tradition of that time . . . yes, that is in fact the case. I am not wrong in saying that. That was, in fact, the case with early and later Christianity, and still is the case.

If one accepts Jesus as their savior, they do not need “good deeds” to gain heaven, according to central Christian tenets. And accepting him as that savior is the only way to gain heaven, according to those tenets. You can’t, even if you live the most ethical, moral and beautiful life possible, unless you accept Jesus as your savior. There is no way around that.

Think about it. A Buddhist, or an atheist, or a Hindu, etc. etc. who lives the most beautiful, moral, compassionate existence, full of the most giving, generous and loving heart . . . overflowing with kindness . . . . they can not gain heaven, according to Christian belief.

It’s not about the works, or non-Christians could gain heaven, too. It’s about belief. And this makes Christianity a lesser religion, when it comes to morality and ethics, as far as I’m concerned. And I say so having grown up in a Christian household, but deciding early on (age 9, roughly) to leave the church. Reading and later studying mythology and then comparative religion made it impossible for me to “believe” any more.

@ Plume: As dn says, you would be much better off to make the case against any particular Christian ethics, but trying to argue against the whole structure is unproductive because there are many cases of shared morals that serve as obvious counterexamples to your narrative. Overall I find your insistence on denigrating our Christian friends to be not valuable.

248: In Tokugawa times it was illegal for samurai to marry commoners, but this was evaded by the adoption of women, usually the daughters of merchants, into neighboring or friendly samurai families. It was also used to bring money into poor samurai families. Fairly common.

It should be understood that the adoption of male heirs was not just a middle-class or UMC practice, but extended down to the lowest peasant farmer land-owning family. Although officially the family head, in actual practice because of the nature of adoption and the nurture of 2nd and 3rd sons, women had more autonomy and decision power in such situations.

I think the practice of heir adoption is declining as precipitously as the Japanese birthrate and shortage of younger sons, but is still common in the craft and artisan traditions.

@Belle Waring 240
“Is it sexist to have a law that forbade her grandparents to leave their property to her because she doesn’t have an important penis? Yes.”

But the problem is that, as far as I can understand, there is no law that forbade her grandparents to leave their “property” to her – the problem is that said property was attached to the title, and the title is not property – which is the reason they couldn’t leave it to her.

In my mind, there is this really clear distinction:

a) property -> capitalism -> equality of rights but usually not of substance.

b) title -> feudalism -> stupid divine right legal infrastructure, based on the feudal concept of “privilege”, that is localized rights -> we don’t even understand what equality of right means, which makes a lot of other questions (like equality among sexes or among “races”) quite moot.

If the Lady of the OP said: Hey, I (or my sister) want to inheir my parent’s home, and I don’t think that only people with a penis should qualify – I would get her point.

But she is asking for the stupid title, that works according to the (b), and simply makes no sense outside of (b), and she asks it on the grounds that it doesn’t conform to ethical rules of (a), such as no penis based discrimination.

So in my opinion when you say “a law that forbade her grandparents to leave their property to her” you are totally missing the problem

@ bob mcmanus

So if heir adoption is declining (I don’t know if it is or not), then would female heirs be replacing that? (I guess that’s a rhetorical because this is Japan we’re talking about.) In at least two cases adopting out would still seem to be the better choice: One would be an important business with only a suboptimal male heir, and the other is the case where there isn’t any male heir at all and they want to adopt out. I don’t see how the declining birth rate would make adoptions less likely, except so far as titles go extinct and class distinctions are rigidly maintained.

I don’t think there should be primogeniture either, as I said earlier. The estate should be divided among the various heirs.

I’m only pressing this point because I wanted to solve a mysterious jewel-theft and murder at their country home.

“I’m only pressing this point because I wanted to solve a mysterious jewel-theft and murder at their country home.”

It was the laudanum. Franklin walks in his sleep when he uses it. He took the Moonstone.

I mixed up miss Marple with Jessica Fletcher.

Could it really have been the case that had her grandparents said, “we both are willing and actively will that that no one be the Duke of Earl” they could have left their property to whom they wished? I sort of got the impression not.

I think you are right, as I understand it, the property is tied to the title and the title survives independently of its owner’s will (perhaps even forbidding some things to be sold, I don’t know). What they could have said is “even though I’m born with this title and the accompanying right to enjoy this nice property, I understand that it came to be and not my brother because I was born first and that it will go to my sons (or nephews, or cousins…), and not my daughters, and I don’t like that, so I want no part of it.” The house would have presumably gone to the second cousin anyway (so no change in the final situation) and no one would have felt robbed of cherished childhood memories (because your friend would have grown up in a house whose ownership did not rely on gross unfairness). Turning your previous analogy around, isn’t this what you would do if you were offered substantial advantages for a lifetime (far exceeding your current wealth) on the tiny small condition that everything you own at your death would be given to the Foundation of the Aryan Homeland in the Pacific Northwest? But I admit I’m as cold-hearted as it gets when it comes to the emotional attachments some people feel towards material objects which just happened to be very valuable.

djr’s remark @264 is also quite pertinent.

Plume @247 – Again, you are incorrect (and also engaging in some serious goalpost-shifting; “sans ethical and moral practice as conceived of by Jewish tradition of that time” isn’t what you originally said at all). You’re not distinguishing between “faith is necessary” and “faith alone is necessary, works are not”. The former is a central Christian tenet, but the latter is in fact roundly rejected by most of the world’s Christians. And the NT supports them; or else what was Paul saying when he wrote that “He will render to each one according to his works” (to cite just one passage among many)? The idea that early Christians thought good works unnecessary is only possible to hold if you ignore the Sermon on the Mount, Sermon on the Plain, the Sheep and the Goats, the parables, the epistle of James, large portions of Paul, extracanonical documents like the letter of Polycarp or the Didache, the evidence of the early penitential system, etc., etc.

You don’t like the theological exclusivism. I get it. Neither do I. That doesn’t justify completely misinterpreting actual Christian practice, which is something that alienates potential friends and allies. I will say no more on this topic.

The key here is that we make a big mistake when we seek a kind of equality of exploitation. As in, working hard to bring about a kind equality of access to power over others. Gender-based, race-based, etc.

Rather than trying to end apartheid (and aristocracies), we work hard to make it so previously locked out groups get a shot at the top of the pyramid, so they can join the exploitation club. And they still leave their former peers behind in the process.

Better thing to do:

get rid of the pyramid altogether.

There is no real gain in human rights, no real revolution, if we just make it possible for women (and minorities) to be exploitative bastards, just like men, at the top of some institution. The thing to do is end the ruling class, period. Not add to it.

So, again, divide up the estate equally. Tax it, progressively. No differences in place for gender. All genders should have equal rights under the law, and we need to stop allowing massive concentrations of wealth — which means massive concentrations of power.

Mao 270,

But I don’t see that as having anything to do with “morality” per se. Having “lust” in one’s heart is a matter of biology — and subject to further clarification and definition. It’s wired in to us as a species. Making sure it’s 100% mutual before one acts is an aspect of morality. But the lust itself?

To me, the arc of morality goes from cruelty to kindness. Immorality is the former. Acting with kindness and compassion is the latter. Forced abstinence or adherence to “no sex except in marriage” etc. etc. . . . . that’s not “morality.” That’s just silly, arbitrary denial of natural impulses.

Mao 272,

I would say the punishment is absolutely cruel. It’s literally overkill. To condemn someone to hell for saying “you fool”?

The punishment, as is the case throughout the bible, doesn’t fit the “crime” in the slightest. It is actually an insane overreaction and certainly not “moral”.

The god of the bible kills Lot’s wife for merely looking back on the genocide that god just committed. He kills Onan for failing to impregnate his brother’s widow. He wipes out the entire human race, sans Noah and his family, because he thought they were “wicked.” He slaughtered 3000 Jews for worshiping a golden calf. He ordered the total annihilation of every man, woman and child in Jericho for failing to bend a knee to his most highness.

(If you take the bible literally, of course)

Massive problem with “proportional response,” to say the least. And that is part of the foundation for Christianity, and rears its ugly head most violently with the End of Days. As in, everyone who does not accept Jesus as their savior is damned for all eternity. Of the living, that means some 5 billion humans slaughtered. At least.

Sorry, but I have a real problem taking objections to criticism of Christianity seriously when all of that is on the table.

How are you supposed to convey your ethical and moral demands, then? Please turn the other cheek and love your enemies, or a little angel will cry? I’m afraid it might turn out less effective than scaring me by Fiery Gehenna.

In any case, whatever incentive is given to comply with the demands, I still dispute “the lack of ethical and moral demands”.

“Of course, no Constantine, and it dies on the vine. We might be worshiping Mithras instead.”

Arguably we already do. A huge portion of the militancy (in the sense of actual military arm) of Christianity appears to have come from the absorption of the Mithras cult. It dramatically changed the emphasis of Christian teaching.

Sebastian H 277,

That’s interesting. The cult of Mithras having a connection to Zoroastrianism as well. Likely one of the sources for the good versus evil absolutism. Militancy and militarism flows from that. The eternal battle of good versus evil.

Which one is which gets scrambled, of course, when the supposed good guys have the mother of all genocides as a major part of its foundation.

GiT 280,

And, Hector’s comment brings up some rather obvious problems. If the lack of the ability to procreate is the reason for denying gay people the chance to marry, then the same must be done to infertile hetero couples, or hetero couples who don’t want to have children.

Basically, this would entail reserving marriage solely to those who want to have children, can have children, and do have children.

Some people just want to exploit religion to cover their own irrational bigotry. Unfortunately, the three monotheisms of the Levant do a good job of setting the table.

I hope someday that we outgrow the need for gods and masters.

Ambling back, the entail as I understand it was an intergenerational contract designed to keep one generation from selling or just overexploiting the land. Worked well for wooded plantations, sometimes, not so well for keeping up drainages. I don’t think it would be theoretically impossible to combine entail with division among the heirs, but it would be very hard in practice. One of the ag-based explanations of the nineteenth c. is that England’s primogeniture produced a few men in position to become capitalists, where Napoleonic (?) division of estates impoverished everyone gradually (made worse by salt-farming, cam0flauged by centralizing wealth at the court).

dn,

Very glad you’re not done. Your erudition is much appreciated.

Fee tail, tail male, and male primogeniture are three different (but related) things. Fee tail originated as a way for people to make family settlements; it could be used, for example, to provide a landed estate for a marrying couple while making sure that if they had no kids, the estate would revert to the grantor. (The English translation of the name of the statute that made it possible is “Of conditional gifts.”) You could grant a fee tail estate that could be inherited by daughters as well as sons, and based on the 13th and 14th-century yearbook evidence, lots of people did. (This is what I did my third-year paper on in law school.) “Tail male” is a variant where you limit the inheritance only to male heirs. There was no “law”, as such, saying only males could inherit; the law did, however, authorize private actors to convey their property subject to such a restriction. (At the time, by the way, you could sell or give away your land while alive, and your heirs could inherit it by operation of law, but you could not leave it to anyone in a will.)

Male primogeniture is sort of an overlay (okay, it actually antedates fee tail by quite a bit) where all the land in fee tail or fee simple goes to the oldest son; if there is no son, unless it’s a tail male, it is divided equally among the daughters. My understanding (based on reading a Wikipedia article a couple of years ago) is that the older English titles of nobility follow that same practice, but since they can’t be held by more than one person at once, it would go into abeyance if there were no sons and more than one daughter. Sometime around the sixteenth century, though, the monarchs started writing most grants of titles so that they could only be inherited by (and sometimes through) males. (Sometimes they didn’t, though, which is how the Duke of Monmouth’s wife got to keep her title of Duchess of Buccleuch and pass it to their children despite a bill of attainder against him.) It may well be that tail male for land tenure became more common around the same time, and that post-feudal English society got more sexist vis-a-vis inheritance rights than it had been earlier.

I understood Mr. Bennett’s estate to have been a tail male, which means his daughters could not have divided it up in the absence of a Mr. Collins. If there were no male heirs anywhere in the descent of the original grantor, it would have reverted to the crown.

The fee tail was abolished as a legal form of land tenure in 1925, so Belle’s mom’s friend’s family estate must have been restricted in some other way (maybe a trust?).

Until I read the Wikipedia article on the Duke of Norfolk’s case just now, I did not know that a title of nobility was ever devisable (and I’m still a bit sceptical).

Finally, in the whole history of English land tenure going back at least to the Norman conquest, it has never been the case that women could not own land or property. What they could not do, if they were married, is control it.

dn 284,

I agree with your last paragraph, and it’s very well put. Jesus, though this is arguable due to the lack of evidence of his actual existence, is thought to have been a Jewish apocalyptic preacher himself, who preached the imminent coming of the kingdom of god. Not that he himself was god, as that would have gone against all Jewish tradition. There is no tradition of a god-man or man-god in Judaism. The idea of a demi-god, or a dead and resurrected deity, comes from the so-called Pagan religions, including Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Egyptian, etc. And the Messiah was a human being only, according to Jewish tradition. Anointed by god, but not a god himself.

So, yes. He and Paul didn’t expect to be on earth much longer, which is also why Jesus said that the End of Days would happen before his audience of that time passed on from this earth. Obviously, it didn’t happen, which means Christianity is based upon a failed prophecy of their god’s return. The church had to do a lot of scrambling in the wake of that.

Most of the NT was written after the sacking of Jerusalem, which seemed to be end of the world to many at the time, but they came out the other end intact. And the official version wasn’t put in place until roughly 379AD. Or, some 350 years after Jesus was crucified, give or take a year or two.

I’m guessing the source of our disagreement is in the definition of “morality and ethics.” I don’t see what the church demanded as either. They were very strict and stern when it came to punishing what they saw as “moral” failures. The key is their definition of said.

how is it that, by and large, the people who are most dogmatic about conforming to their religion’s doctrines are simultaneously those most oblivious to the origins of those self same doctrines? or is this just a thing within western monotheism?

Hector 290,

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

He was clearly a Jew, reared as a Jew, preached and healed as a Jew, remained in the Jewish tradition throughout his lifetime. And, yes, the trinity and the incarnation are alien to Jewish tradition. But he never said anything about either. That was said by those who followed him in order to turn him into a deity.

Ironically, the two concepts come straight out of Paganism, and are the result of Roman and Greek influence primarily, showing the shift to Roman centrality in early Christianity. As you move through the four accepted gospels, you can see the change from a Jewish conception of a messiah, to a gentile one. You can also see the change from Judaism to anti-Judaism, with the Romans being let off the hook for the crucifixion, and Jews blamed instead. From what we know about Pilate, that whole scenario is laughable. He wouldn’t have left it up to the crowd.

It is not a stretch to say the roots of anti-Semiticism are to be found first in Luke.

G’night, all.

“No, but I’m against human laws overriding the laws of God. ”
My God demands that you send me all your money.

“That person in Seattle is being fired because of his behavior, not because of his race.”
Homosexuality is not an choice.

“I’ll pose my question to you again: do you think that the NAACP should be required to hire a race realist? If not, then why do you want to force the Seattle Catholic school to hire someone who enters a same-sex marriage?”

A real racist couldn’t work at the NAACP while being gay does not effect teaching. Plus I say again going for a brisk jog is not the same as recreating the Baatan Death March.

MPA Victoria:

Homosexual *behavior* is absolutely a choice. No one’s talking about being fired because of their orientation. This teacher was fired because of behavior he freely chose to engage in.

I said ‘race realist’, not racist. For example, someone who believes in racial differences in IQ. You can be a race realist and subscribe to all of the NAACP’s policy goals.

In the case of the fired teacher, he was presumably engaging in behavior that runs counter to Catholic moral teaching about sex, so that might cast doubt on his ability to fulfill his role at a Catholic school (which does include moral formation of youth, as well as academic instruction). It’s not even the sex per se that is the issue, if he’d been discreet about it he might not have been fired, but by getting married he brought his (presumable) sexual behavior into the public eye.

Teaching is viewed as a form of ministry for the Roman Catholic Church, as well as for other churches, and should be subject to ministerial exemptions, if freedom of conscience is to mean anything.

“Homosexual *behavior* is absolutely a choice. No one’s talking about being fired because of their orientation. This teacher was fired because of behavior he freely chose to engage in.”

Hector, is it your view that, when churches are employers, they are immune to employment law by virtue of their religious freedom? In other words, that the state may not regulate their employment practices when those practices are grounded in faith?

Clew: I believe my statement, “because PENIS and AVOID THE FRENCH REVOLUTION” is more parsimonious.

And wait, in the example above, I get to be a billionaire, and the Aryan Brotherhood gets the money when I’m gone, and they wouldn’t have had it otherwise? Or I’m enjoying the Aryan Brotherhood’s billions during my lifetime which then revert to their previous dickwad owners? Gotta be the former I assume. God, either way, have I ever mentioned to you people that in the fictional storybooks about Harry Potter, I myself would be sorted into Slytherin house due to my excessive in-group loyalty, willingness to bury bodies for cousins and so on? I promise I’d be robbing them blind the whole time, trust me people. Their accountants would be as naught.

In any case, I thought of not posting at all earlier on my granddad’s dying on the zero-out year as it’s–tasteless yes, but perhaps pertinent and Americans’ total unwillingness to discuss personal financial matters at any times contributes to the government being able to pull a lot of bullshit, as no one knows what’s going on in even their closest friends’ lives, but no–rather–unlucky! since I am superstitious as you know, and you will be happy to know (well, that’s mean-spirited and you’re probably not like that, interested that my irrational beliefs are true maybe) that within the same 24-hour period I was notified of tax problems in my grandfathers estate. I knocked wood like all get out, but not enough, apparently.

Hector,

Mark is generally regarded as the earliest gospel, and it references both the Jewish revolt and the destruction of the Temple – thus after about 70 CE. Robinson’s view seems to be a minority one.

godoggo 298

Don’t know much about history, but I do know that you don’t make a compelling case about it by saying, “See Robert Graves and Joseph Campbell.”

Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and his Masks of God series, are respected works of scholarship. I first read both at the age of nine, and returned to them often through the years. Campbell was a scholar of comparative myth, religion and cultural anthropology, and was one of the most learned men of his generation. As for Graves. He was both poet and novelist, as well as a scholar of comparative myth and religion. And while his idiosyncratic (some say poetic) readings of those myths has its detractors, if you read his Greek Myths, you will no doubt find much to agree with and much (footnotes and bibliography) that sends you on many wonderful journeys of discovery.

I could have picked other scholars. But I chose two highly accessible popularizers of the study of myth, which I’ve read often and with great enjoyment. Given that you admit little knowledge of history, you might want to look first before you leap. Especially when I never said they were “historians” in the first place.

For more on the Triple Goddess, here’s Wiki on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_deity

Plume: grrr.

MPA Victoria,

What the hell do you mean? Of course it’s a choice. you can choose to have sex , 0r not.

And if you choose to indulge in behaviors that the Catholic Church considers immoral (not without reason) then don’t expect a job with a Catholic school.

All property is theft, I guess, except maybe my kidneys. They’re my “own.” Or do they belong in part somehow to my parents? To the social underpinnings — other people– that enable me to eat and sustain them? How much societal capital should go into treating my diseased kidneys? (This is just an illustration, btw. My kidneys are fine, as far as I know.) I refrain from the uterus-embryo-fetus example (though maybe this is the example Corey’s post truly suggests), but I choose a body part intentionally. Bodies. How limited and huge our imaginations. How vast yet distinct the body, my body, each body.

My question: how are we to think ownership (or all the related conditions, from possession to various liens)? That kind of question seems to me to underlie Corey’s post. The authority that creates “ownership,” with all that condition’s individual rights and obligations: what are the source and nature of that authority? Its relation to individuals’ or groups’ “own-ness”? Why in matters of succession is priority given to some people (including “corporate entities”) and not others? I don’t believe there are grand, -ism answers to these questions. We’ll have to muddle through them. But I think they are pressing today, whether we’re talking claims to Arctic seas, intellectual property rights, or what it might mean that the NSA is taking this comment into its maw. Not to mention that distribution leaves a good portion of the world hungry, and that distribution isn’t the whole story (Chris Bertram).

Time to revisit the very idea of the patent? In my recent amateur researches, I’ve been struck by the way the English respected land patents already granted by the Dutch in NY and NJ. Why would they do that? Not just convenience, but (my intuition) some sense of a divine order of kings and nations (hence the religious thread here in comments is maybe not as strange as it first seemed to me when I came back). Of course, even with the European “claims” distributed through the haze of overlapping and competing patents, the Indians always had to be compensated properly, at least by the English and Dutch (I don’t have any idea how the French and Spanish handled this — well, I have an inkling with the Spanish). The idea of “first-ness.” Indians here first. Got to acknowledge that. Isn’t that an interesting impulse? (Seen here, too, in threads about early Christians and such.)

And I want Belle to know that my heroic (yes she was) great grandmother, baker of loaves and maker of babies, was born in Alabama. (In all honesty, I have to add that her father was some crazy CT son, who went south before the war and took his family north right after the war, and that she mostly grew up in the upper midwest. But in the world she grew up in, she and her extended family stood out as “from the south” — and were all much loved and respected by the once cappie-wearing veterans around them nonetheless. It was a sad time, and people went on, happy for kind and good folks.)

“The evidence of the NT suggests that it was probably the decline of apocalyptic fervor that produced the idea of the Church as a this-worldly institution, which in turn produced the authoritarian hierarchy, which in turn produced the institutional corruption we so lament.”

Hmm. Apocalyptic fervor is a function of the religious doctrine, and the Church as a this-worldly institution is a way to organize and maintain the social order (it has to be, just like any this-worldly institution). You pick a doctrine, modify it to suit you needs, and build an institution. I agree that an apocalyptic fervor would make this particular doctrine problematic, but I don’t see the direct cause and effect here; it’s not like the true believers decided: the second coming is not imminent, so let us build a this-worldly institution. But perhaps that is not what you meant by “produced the idea”, so, just to clarify.

“And if you choose to indulge in behaviors that the Catholic Church considers immoral (not without reason) then don’t expect a job with a Catholic school.”

If you work for me, and I consider blood transfusions immoral, and you have a blood transfusion, can I fire you for it?

(yes, I know we’re both in the US, where I can pretty much fire you for any damn reason I want, but pretend for a moment we’re in a civilized country)

Your idea of a civilised country clearly differs somewhat from mine.

Mao – to elaborate: In the NT there are 13 purported letters of Paul. Only 7 are now accepted by most scholars to be “genuine”. Among the distinctive hallmarks of these 7 are a) an eagerness for the second coming, expected within the present generation, and b) a lack of reference to Church organization or to the idea of “the Church” as a universal institution (as opposed to the purely local assembly). In the other 6 letters, considered to be by one or more forgers, there is something different: the anticipation of an imminent end fades, but there is a new concern for “the Faith” and “the Church” conceived of as lasting institutions. The three “pastoral epistles”, in particular, are concerned with the selection of church leaders who are of good character (described in terms of very conventional morality rather than spiritual charisma) and will be responsible for combating heresies and what you might call “keeping the Faith”. Shepherding the flock, in other words.

There are also hints that the lack of a second coming posed something of a problem even in NT times. The spurious 2 Thessalonians, for example, appears to be modeled on 1 Thessalonians, except that its second half is a wholesale revision of the eschatology of the earlier letter; the new version gives us the famous “son of perdition” and the prediction of a great apostasy before the end, which the writer assures is still to come (so don’t you fall away!). Among the non-Pauline letters the spurious 2 Peter also urges the reader to avoid heretics and directly attacks “scoffers” who are skeptical of the second coming (“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance”).

The few sources we have from the immediate post-NT period appear to show further signs of the early development of the hierarchy. Pseudo-Paul in the NT writes of “elders” (presbyters) or “overseers” (bishops) who are not yet clearly distinguished. The purported letter of Clement, probably the earliest non-canonical text known, also fails to make the distinction, but urges its readers to follow said leaders. The seven purported letters of Ignatius, from the early 2nd century, provide the first evidence of the monarchical bishop as the singular head of a community, with presbyters under him, that became the basis for the subsequent development of the hierarchy we know from later history.

Obviously this concept of church leadership didn’t just spring out of nowhere. Tradition has it that authority in the Church derives from the “apostolic succession”, an unbroken line of leaders from the “apostles” themselves. Probably, as the less-formalized authority of the founders of the churches passed to succeeding generations, the institutions of leadership became the way of holding the community together and enforcing orthodoxy as the hope of an imminent end faded.

dn 321,

And that apostolic succession was angrily debated. Sometimes violently. Bart Ehrman does good work on that in his Lost Christianities, which is, IMO, his best work and the one least given to a search for a popular audience.

He notes that that succession was almost always locally based, and that the texts pursued by each may eventually have been cast out of the canon. The winners decided. The losers were almost completely written out of the story.

It’s often forgotten that the term “heretic” was not some objectively constructed thing. It was generally applied by opposing forces in doctrinal battles, hurled back and forth across the bunkers. Who and what was deemed “heretical” wasn’t established, officially, until much later. Roughly the end of the 3rd century. Again, by the winners.

Plume – of course. I don’t mean to say that apostolic succession was the neat and clean process that tradition would have us believe it was, or they all shared the same “orthodoxy”, or that they were particularly good at enforcing it. Merely that the concepts developed, and that it became more of an issue as “keeping the faith” in the face of the non-arrival of the end became more important.

Hector 327,

What does same-sex love or marriage have to do with “morality”? People are born gay. It’s their biology, same with heteros.

The only reason fundamentalists inject “morality” into the mix is so they can cover for their own bigotry with condemnations based on supposed choice. But it’s not a choice. It’s biology. And bigots know it’s much more difficult to condemn people for that.

Given the fact of all the things your god considers “abominations,” found most readily in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, one would think you would have stopped this cherry-picking farce by now. It’s 2014, for goddess sake!!!

Also, my concern for defending traditional gender rolles against the gender-egalitarian fads and fashions of our time is also a big part of why I’m troubled by women priests.

I believe in gender complementarianism, not egalitarianism.

Also, no, the question about straight couples who can’t procreate or choose not to . . . no joke intended. It’s a serious question.

If the criteria for disallowing same-sex marriage is based upon the inability to have children, then you’d logically be in favor of denying any straight couple the marriage ritual if they can’t or won’t have kids.

You’re not alone, of course, in that inconsistency of application. But it’s irrational to the point of absurdity, regardless.

Hector do you ever wear clothes of mixed fabrics? Or eat shell fish?

MPAV 334,

I listed those before. Perhaps in another thread.

You can add these “abominations,” subject to the death penalty:

Working on Saturdays
Talking back to one’s parents
Saying to someone, “You fool!”
If raped in the city, failing to scream out loudly enough

Re: Jesus never married, as far as we know

I thought the official line among cultural liberals was that he boinked Mary the Magdalene and sired the Merovingian House. Good to know.

As for the goal of [Christian] marriage being procreation, see here:

“Grounds for nullity include: Simulation of consent; that is, the conscious and positive exclusion at consent by either or both of the contracting parties of one or all of the essential properties or “goods” of marriage: a) exclusivity of the marital relationship; b) the permanence of the marital bond; c) openness to offspring as the natural fruit of marriage (canon 1101§2).”

The Book of Common Prayer also lists procreation first among the purposes of marriage, and not by accident.

Re: Hector do you ever wear clothes of mixed fabrics? Or eat shell fish?

Of course, I’m Christian. Not Jewish.

Anal sex (straight or gay), by contrast, was condemned not just by the Jews, but by the early Christian church. (As was oral sex, for what it’s worth). I don’t know if either of them is a sin or not, but I also think the matter is definitely not clear cut, and reasonable people can disagree.

Hector 338,

Grounds for nullity isn’t the same as the church considering a marriage invalid before hand. Nullity is upon request of the couple, or half of it. It’s so they can get out of the marriage. Unless I misread you, the Catholic Church doesn’t start out saying this or that marriage is “invalid” if there is no complaint from the marriage participants.

“I thought the official line among cultural liberals was that he boinked Mary the Magdalene and sired the Merovingian House. Good to know.”

Good God, Hector. And you wonder why you have trouble getting the time of day here. Few things about religious conservatism are more annoying than the traditionalist habit of insisting that “we’re all about Timeless Deep Truths while y’all are just a bunch of shallow, rootless fad-followers.” Maybe consider that you’re on a blog full of actual scholars who, yes, are actually capable of telling Dan Brown apart from a historian, and maybe have even thought a little bit about matters of philosophy and religion?

Plume,

I’ll raise your ’10-20′ years, and say this: no one knows the future, but I’m confident that in the next hundred years, the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and most Protestants will not perform same sex marriages. Maybe they will recognize some sort of blessing of same-sex relationships or some other ground (a policy which I would favour), but that’s where it will end.

I don’t know if the Episcopal Church and the Church of England are going to officially recognize same sex marriage, but I suspect that if they do, they’ll split, and whichever offshoots don’t recognize same sex (Christian) marriages will be demographically healthier than those which do.

Hector,

Please post a link to actual Catholic doctrine that says a marriage is invalid before hand if the couple is not open to procreation. That sounds too absurd, even for a church.

Again, we’re not talking about grounds for nullity put forth by one or more of the married couple. To get out of the marriage. Your claim is that the church itself does not recognize the validity of the marriage even if the couple is absolutely fine with the situation.

For the record, I don’t mind that the government confers the ‘legal status’ of marriage on gay couples. The government can define marriage how it wants. I object to churches doing the same, because Christian marriage is supposed to mean something very specific.

For my part, Plume, I find absurd your idea that a voluntarily childless couple is validly married if they want to stay together, but invalidly married if they don’t.

The whole point of Christian marriage is that it’s supposed to tie you together for life even if you fall out of love, and even if you don’t want to be married any more.

Hector 350,

For my part, Plume, I find absurd your idea that a voluntarily childless couple is validly married if they want to stay together, but invalidly married if they don’t.

I never even remotely suggested or implied the latter. I sought clarification about your claim, regarding Catholic doctrine. It’s not my view. I thought you were saying it was the Catholic view. That Catholic doctrine allowed for nullity in certain cases, etc.

Also, Leviticus and Deuteronomy are rather beside the point here. I don’t think all of the Old Testament is divine in origin, and I certainly don’t think any of it is as reliable as the New. Even if the Law of Moses was in fact entirely revealed by God, though, Jesus overturned and abrogated it when He died on the cross, so it’s entirely irrelevant to anyone today. The problem for the ‘liberal’ side, though, is that St. Paul, St. Jude, and the early church all condemn unnatural sex acts, and the traditional reading of that covered anal and oral sex whether between straight couples and gay ones. Quite possibly they were wrong, but I don’t think it’s immediately obvious that they were, and there is ground for disagreement (and that’s before we even start on the natural law arguments , etc.)

Rather optimistic to think churches only rely on official legal priviledges to hold power over people. Id go much further to keep them in line than cutting those privileges to overcome their outside legal power to sanction. Getting the quasi monopoly religion under direct government as they did in the UK and some Nordics is quite clever in that regard.

@Plume 352

“nullity” is not the same thing as divorce. The idea is that one of the spouses “cheated” at the act of marriage, and implied that he/she was open to have childs, so that the marriage was contracted in bad faith, and thus not valid from the beginning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annulment_%28Catholic_Church%29#Grounds_for_nullity

Random Lurker 358,

I never said it was the same thing as divorce. Without looking, I’d say that’s the first time I’ve used the word in this thread.

Hector 357,

Notice the changes in the four official gospels regarding that day and Pilate’s part in it. From what we know of Pilate, he never would have let the crowd decide anything.

That was clearly included, in Luke first (I think it was), in order to shift the blame from the Romans to the Jews. Luke being the likely origin for the anti-semitism to come. That was an expression/indication in the shift in power away from Jerusalem to Rome for the early Christian church.

“Why should that couple have to leave, if they like their church except for that one issue?”

They shouldn’t if they rather stay and not get married. And they should if they rather get married. They can organize their own church: exactly like that one only with the gay marriage. Or you could become the Pope (or Ayatollah or whatever) and make your own rules. Because this is how the rules are made, not by a democratic process. But it’ll take some time and effort. I still don’t see what the controversy is.

“If you want a clear answer, then if you work in a job where you’re supposed to be promoting the values of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and then get a blood transfusion, then absolutely they have a right to fire you.”

Thanks for the clear answer. In effect, then, as an employer, I may legally and morally force my employees to conform to my own religious or ethical views, on pain of termination? For any religious views I hold? That seems quite a radical notion, if you don’t mind my saying so.

I don’t think a Catholic-owned furniture company has the right to fire a carpenter for being seen buying condoms at Walmart, for example. A Catholic school or publishing house, sure.

Belle Waring: I have lost track of what statement was under discussion, but “PENIS and AVOID THE FRENCH REVOLUTION”

(a) is worth repeating

(b) sounds like a good plan for the weekend.

On it.

Layman,

Well, partly because I think the morality of homosexuality is something on which reasonable people can disagree. And partly because in some cases, hiring someone who has blood transfusions, buys condoms, has a same sex marriage, etc., would interfere with their ability to do the job. This is why I keep coming back to the question of whether, for example, if someone believes that African-Americans are genetically less intelligent than whites, if the NAACP is within their rights to refuse to hire him.

N.B. Such a belief wouldn’t necessarily make it impossible for you to *do your job*. You can believe in the race realist thesis, and also agree with the NAACP about all their policy goals, because science and morality are separate issues. The NAACP would be within their right to fire you, though, because your beliefs might indirectly hurt their brand.

“Well, partly because I think the morality of homosexuality is something on which reasonable people can disagree.”

Frankly, I don’t think that’s enough. There are lots of ways people can be immoral outside of their job with no effect on their job performance. They could blaspheme. They could mix meet and dairy products in one dish. They could touch the skin of a dead pig, tossing it back and forth with their child. They could paint the fence on Sunday. They could covet their neighbor’s ass, or his wife for that matter. Why is it just this particular one which matters so much to you?

“Don’t you think some of them would really rather burn such people at the stake? In fact, is it not secular authority which reins in such excesses of zeal?”

Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if burning and torturing was, historically, initiated and maintained mostly by kings/queens (e.g. Ferdinand&Isabella?) for political purposes, and against the pope’s own inclination. Too lazy to look it up.

“Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if burning and torturing was, historically, initiated and maintained mostly by kings/queens (e.g. Ferdinand&Isabella?) for political purposes, and against the pope’s own inclination. Too lazy to look it up.”

Well, ignorance is surely restful. Relax!

The issue of the teacher in the Catholic school is actually one where Hector is basically right. It’s a Catholic school; its curriculum includes religious instruction, and its mission statement makes no bones about the fact that they’re out to inculcate Catholic faith and morals in the kids. For that, they want anyone in a position of authority over students to be an exemplar of Catholic morals, since said morals are what they’re trying to impart to their charges.

Like it or not, this is a big selling point for such a school – religious people want religious morals incorporated into their kids’ education, and as things stand they have a constitutional right to that, so long as they don’t try to force it into the public schools.

Plume,

By saying that you don’t think Pilate would have offered to release Jesus on the Passover, you’re basically depending on the accounts of his character in Philo and Josephus. And considering that testimony more reliable than the Gospel accounts, as well as the one in the apocryphal first-century ‘Gospel of Peter’, which exonerate Pilate of responsibility. Josephus, for what it’s worth, we *know* was writing well after the fall of Jerusalem, whereas I would dispute that any of the Gospels were written that late. John’s Gospel makes clear that the responsibility for Jesus’ death belonged first and foremost not to Pilate, but to the Jewish authorities. (Of course, Pilate’s moral cowardice is from some points of view more morally outrageous than the religious authorities’ fanaticism).

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go with the Gospels, and even with Pseudo-Peter, before I trust Josephus and Philo. Even if they were right though, and Pilate had little but contempt for Jewish customs, that doesn’t rule out that he decided to throw a bone to the mob in this case. With tragic results.

On a more general note, I find your attempts to ‘Judaize’ and ‘contextualize’ Jesus to be historically incorrect, as well as incredibly tiresome. If there’s anything that the Gospels make clear Jesus *wasn’t*, it’s a reforming Jewish rabbi of the first century.

Re: Damn skippy!

And yet you think it’s OK to fire people for making politically incorrect & unfashionable remarks about gender and race.

Where is your moral consistency?

@382, re: Catholic schools

I went to a Catholic, all male, high school, and we had a Spanish teacher who was gay ( this was in MA so people were starting to see the light on these issues). Most of us suspected he was gay, told jokes accordingly, but he never, y’know, came out and told us, for obvious reasons. The only reason that I know this because one of my good friends was at the time working out his own sexuality (gay), which you can imagine in an all male, Catholic high school is a very, very difficult thing to do. My friend found the friendship and advice of this teacher particularly helpful in sorting out his confusion re: his sexuality. This is something that would not have been possible had this Spanish teacher been very strictly screened out before hand.

Schoolkids are not some homogeneous lump of clay to be moulded into smooth, identical, dogma-approved shapes. They are real human beings with all of the problems and challenges that come with it. In so far as your discussion on this question is only about respecting the opinions of stodgy church leaders, and not about respecting the well-being and needs of the students themselves, you should be dis-included from any discussion of school policy.

dn @ 382

“The issue of the teacher in the Catholic school is actually one where Hector is basically right. ”

I’d say he isn’t even wrong. The argument seems to be ‘if it is OK for the church to teach that homosexuality is a sin, then the church can expel homosexuals from their ranks’. If you reject the premise in that argument, the whole thing collapses. Hector can’t see that, because he’s unable to examine the premise.

If the church wants to behave like the Klan, should the state allow it? I think not.

“I understood Mr. Bennett’s estate to have been a tail male, which means his daughters could not have divided it up in the absence of a Mr. Collins. If there were no male heirs anywhere in the descent of the original grantor, it would have reverted to the crown.”

@288: My recollection is that Mr. Bennet’s estate was a fee tail. I could be wrong about divvying it up among the daughters, but that was also from memory and I didn’t bother to check that before posting.

SOU,

Catholicism isn’t a democracy, thank God, and the church based it’s moral teachings on rather more weighty considerations than which way the winds are blowing today.

“I believe scarce goods should sometimes be rationed, and it makes sense to ration access to women”

Women are not “Goods”.

What if the gay teacher had purchased an indulgence ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence

MPA Victoria,

Yes, they are, in the relevant sense. as are men. do you have anything more morally or intellectually mature to say?

“Yes, they are, in the relevant sense. as are men. do you have anything more morally or intellectually mature to say?”

Anyone who views people as “goods” would do well to avoid questioning the moral maturity of others.

‘quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi,’ in the original Latin, which I’ve always found a refreshing way to shut down democrats, feminists and politically correct types.

“‘quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi,’ in the original Latin, which I’ve always found a refreshing way to shut down democrats, feminists and politically correct types.”

Yep. You told me.

Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione Hector

“I’ve never made any pretense to respecting free speech rights *in general.* like I’ve said to Plume, I believe in rule by an authoritarian vanguard party. My concern isn’t with protecting the right of everyone to say what they want, but specifically in protecting the rights of people to defend truth , virtue and morality as I see them. So no, I wouldn’t give feminists the same political rights as I would give gender realists. what is permitted to God, is not permitted to the cow, as the Latin proverb goes.”

Oh, you’re a nut then. In that case, never mind.

Lyman,

No , I am an anti-democrat.

imagine a situation where there are these religious schools regularly practicing corporal punishment, citing the relevant scripture to defend the practice. if the state steps in to stop this, is it infringing on the religious liberty of the institution? or is it protecting the freedom of the children who will no longer be beaten in public? would this banning restrict the freedom of parents to send their children to schools that share ‘their values’, or is it reasonable to expect those parents to not always have schooling options that conform to their beliefs 100%?

Whenever i hear: “we must be permitted to continue practice X, because freedom!”, and practice X is widely and properly acknowledged to be limiting the freedom of another, outsider, group, many people roll their eyes and tell you to f-off for such duplicitous behavior. like (in the american context) with “states’ rights to self-determination” and the issue of slavery/jim crow. or what if say BYU didn’t allow black profesors, because they are seen as lesser in the eyes of god? (this is not an idle ‘what if’ – the mormon church for a long time disallowed black clergy) if the state tells them they have to accept blacks in teaching positions, is this a step to far in infringing upon religious liberty?

if the intolerant aspects of your religion are so central that these sorts of regulations by the public sphere threaten the core of its teachings, then i have no qualms about that religion be incrementally annihilated by the march of history.

The battle against gay people and same-sex marriage is among the silliest, most absurd and ridiculous “culture wars”, evah. For sooo many reasons. But perhaps the biggest one is this. There is no chance of any loss for heteros in the process, even if gay people “win.” None, whatsoever.

An analogy:

You love ice-cream. Most particularly, vanilla. There is a really good shop nearby that your frequent, religiously. The owner there, for some reason, has always limited flavors on tap two just three: chocolate, strawberry and your favorite, vanilla.

So, one day, while you were asleep, the owner is struck by this idea that he should start offering more, that more flavors actually exist in the world. So he brings in new tubs of ice-cream. Butter pecan, mint chocolate chip, coffee, cookie dough, blueberry, raspberry swirl, etc. etc.

Yesterday, you stopped by for your usual two scoops of vanilla, and you were stunned to see all the new flavors. You saw the owner standing there, and you started to scream at him:

“How dare you bring in that filth to this store!!! How dare you!! I will picket you until the cows come home and you go back to the holy trinity!!”

And the owner looks at you and then points to the big fat tub of vanilla ice-cream, looking up at you, just waiting for someone to take it home and love it. And he says:

“I made sure none of the tubs comes in contact with each other. Your favorite vanilla is just as fresh as it always was. Here, let me fix up the usual two scoops.”

“No!! All those flavors contaminate my beloved vanilla!! You’ve been warned!!!”

And you march on out of the store, ready to do battle against the hordes of new flavors oppressing you, relentlessly.

. . . . .

See, the thing is, if you don’t want to order some new flavor, don’t. Order your vanilla. It’s just more variety and it can’t hurt you. You lose nothing, nothing at all with the added choices. Ignore them. Don’t look at them. Let them be.

Or is it that you just fear the temptation? Devil’s Food Cake ice-cream, anyone?

MPA Victoria,

Are there *any* sexual choices that you think people can be fired for? What about if a Tamil immigrant working for you decided to marry his second cousin? (Assuming it’s legal). this is a practice that Tamils are especially notorious for, and has become a big dysgenic problem in England.

Plume,

I don’t want churches to ‘marry’ gays, because it waters down and trashes the Christian ideal of marriage. Gays can’t procreate, they can’t demonstrate complementarity of the genders, and there is at least a reasonable argument that they may engage in immoral sex acts.

I don’t have an opinion on the morality of the sex acts involved, but I don’t want to encourage voluntarily childless marriages and egalitarian gender roles among straight Christians.

re: Christianity and gay marriage – they have married men together in the past.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/us/beliefs-study-medieval-rituals-same-sex-unions-raises-question-what-were-they.html
whether these older ‘spiritual brotherhoods’ (etc etc) are directly comparable to modern same sex unions is beside the point. the classic charge is that marriage is explicitly and uniquely defined as the heterosexual union, and as such any deviations from this model inevitably dilute the status of the true form of marriage. but if we prove that there were, in the Church’s history, myriad forms of interpersonal union, then this charge is demonstrably false, for how else do you explain the perfect model of marriage you so espouse surviving these past 1000 years if it had to coexist for centuries with that scourge of gay marriage?

MPAV: your Latin is better than mine, though I can’t say the same of your morality.

“MPAV: your Latin is better than mine, though I can’t say the same of your morality.”

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur

/those who think of other people as “goods” don’t get to lecture the rest of us on morality.

I would not trust you with political rights , but you might be a fine person in your personal behaviour.

SoU – Point taken, to a degree. Part of the issue here is that if we’re going to talk in terms of “rights” for kids, then we need to make sure we’re not actually just talking about the rights of grown-ups stepping in to dictate unilaterally what is good for kids. If it’s about respect for kids as unique and autonomous human beings, you might justify restricting them from being subjected to potentially-harmful religion as a matter of rights. Then it’s a matter of where you think this is justified, in other words what sort of autonomy you conclude kids have a right to at what age. On the other hand, if it’s just a matter of protection from abuse apart from the question of autonomy, that’s a lot different and it opens a big can of worms. Is simply getting anti-gay teaching out of schools enough? What about in churches or homes? Do you censor all moral opposition to homosexuality as hate speech? This would go against precedent here in the US, where even neo-Nazis and the Klan have the right to speak their foul minds. What are you prepared to do to stamp out ideas you find harmful and offensive?

I wouldn’t really trust myself with political *power* either, I’d make a g*dawful leader.

Layman,

This has nothing to do with orientation. This whining little clown of a vice principal was fired for his behaviour and his sexual choices. He was offered his job back if he divorced his partner.

A society where a Catholic school is forced to hire people whose chosen behaviour violated their core moral teachings is not one that I want to live in.

“This whining little clown of a vice principal was fired for his behaviour and his sexual choices.”

You really are a disagreeable shit, aren’t you? I’ve tried to avoid saying that, but apparently you insist.

Maybe his key mistake was not molesting the students.

Godoggo,

No, his key mistake was getting married. the church offered him the deal of staying with his gay partner, and having a commitment ceremony, and presumably having sex, and doing everything but calling it a marriage. If he’d done everything but call it a marriage, he would have his job today.

I don’t take his side (nor for any employees of Catholic schools who are caught buying condoms, remarrying after a divorce,refusing to bear children, or committing other sexual sins). I do hope he finds a new job, and is happy with his partner. just not in the Catholic Church.

@430
“If it’s about respect for kids as unique and autonomous human beings, you might justify restricting them from being subjected to potentially-harmful religion as a matter of rights.”
from a prescriptive standpoint, this is actually a very tough question for me, and something i have vacillated about a lot. from the more social-policy standpoint i think we are speaking from here, it is clear that such a strong restriction would be un-enforcible and an extreme curtailment of the rights of parents. still – children should have the option of escaping an environment which subjects them to abusive hate-speech, religious environments included, and we should strive to make this possible. there are a number of children in the US currently who are born into religious cults of various types, at extreme psychic costs, so this is not just a bunch of hot air. but then something like the Catholic doctrine of original sin – while problematic for the guilt complex it inculcates in people – hardly measures up to this because it is a view of the human condition generally, rather than a specific condemnation of a distinct group of persons.

“Is simply getting anti-gay teaching out of schools enough? What about in churches or homes?”
good questions.
first, i want to note that schools and churches should be evaluated differently, as they serve different social functions. schools are primarily and fundamentally there for the cultivation of knowledge and good practices in children. any other aspects of a school’s identity are necessarily secondary to this objective, and therefore i am fully in favor of closing schools which insist on continuing practices in the name of some secondary or tertiary aspect of their identity which impede this primary goal. therefore, churches have a distinct set of criteria.
second – if a church leader gets up every sunday and says ‘gays are going to hell,’ that is their prerogative and should be the target of private action, but not state action. but if that same leader gets up and says ‘gays going to hell, and it is our job to expedite the process’ – well, you bet i would be dropping the wrecking ball. invocations to violence are themselves violent in their effects on the targeted party.
thirdly – the tax exempt status of many churches, in my mind, should subject them to a greater purview of state regulation than other private organizations not receiving the same subsidy. any churches who do not want state interference should also be talking about giving up their special protections from the state, at least if they expect me to really listen. i know that in the US, especially recently, getting tax exempt status is not that stringent of a thing, but my opinions on that matter mimic mine here.

fourthly – and this is the kicker here – i have personally witnessed Catholic schools teach that homosexuality is a sin in a way that does not unduly subject gay students to abuse/psychic pain. i have heard explications of (conservative) Catholic doctrine, from a member of the clergy, which in my mind (and in the mind of others who were much closer to these concerns) were even-handed and innocuous. there is a large space of gray area in this sort of thing, and it should be explored. to act as if ‘don’t persecute people for their differences’ is identical to ‘you can’t hold moral beliefs’ is sophistry of the highest order, and those out in the public sphere making these arguments know it.

incidentally, a school teaching that gays go to hell is a lot less hostile of a space when that same school has a gay faculty member who (actual and potential) gay students can speak to about their concerns.

Troll fight!

I don’t know if sex acts A and B are sins, SOU, but I’m very certain whacking off is a sin. do you want to forbid Catholic schools from teaching that it’s a sin to whack it?

@445
hah, thanks. i realize what im up to here is largely an exercise in futility. exercise nonetheless tho, right? …

‘“good practices” would include Catholic sexual morality, no? ‘
very true – i guess what it comes down to for me is that i see education as a presentation of the facts, but not inculcation of beliefs.
so the Catholic school should present their case regarding sexual morals, but work hard to not bring undue amounts of pressure, and certainly not coercion, to bear in this discussion. so it is perfectly acceptable to ask of students: ‘what is the Vatican’s view on gay sex, and cite relevant scripture’, or even ‘ write an essay explicating the Catholic view that homosexuality is a sin’ . but once you get to ‘homosexuality is evil, explain why and how’ you have crossed the line.

I’ll admit it is a hard brightline to draw, but i do believe that discerning adults can tell the difference. especially if you are trained as an educator, you should be able to do this. we train and expect our teachers to be able to discuss american politics without unduly inserting their own perspectives into the classroom – we can have the same expectation regarding the presentation of moral beliefs. I have this faith because, as i said above, i have seen it done before.

“here again we run into the issue of children’s autonomy vs. the rights of parents,”

you are very right to bring this up as a major issue, and sadly i have little to say here other than ‘yeah, that’s a stumper’. but part of the reason i support tolerance in school hiring practices is because i think that cultivating tolerant spaces outside of the home is helpful to those who face hardship within the home. i personally found my high school a very safe space, or at least certain parts of it, and i think this is something that should be true for all children.

This seattle dude is welcome back at the school if he divorces his partner and has a commitment ceremony instead.

Wait, I thought the line was that civil society could do what it wants, making civil marriage whatever it is that the people want it to be, so long as they didn’t make the church perform the weddings. So what’s the difference between a commitment ceremony and a civil marriage, to the religious institution? I’m not seeing this as a difference society needs to respect . . .

As for discrimination in general, I know it’s not perfect, but the concepts of protected categories and BFOQ have proven pretty useful over the last several decades. A society could decide to put discrimination because of race into a different conceptual category than discrimination based of preference for certain flavors of ice cream, with none but unfrozen caveman lawyers to complain about inconsistency. Obviously, membership in the religion would be a BFOQ for a pastor, and pretty obviously not for a janitor, speaking of another issue resolved long long ago.

451 Not in Montana you couldn’t. Less civilized jurisdictions (ie, the 49 states with at will employment) you have to look at whether the Civil Rights Act applies, or a state analogue. EEOC said 30 years ago that the answer is no, so if you’re bound by that, it’s a no.

If you don’t want to live in a society where these are the rules, you’re more than welcome to try to find a different one.

And no, I definitely don’t want to live in a society where those are the rules.

There are some pop punk bands that I really really really like. Some of them even wore skinny ties.

Re: “Race realist”. The NAACP has people who are hostile to their mission and the label Hector choses to apply to them, the label I presume he thinks is the most accurate description, is “race realist”. Also, he wants to engage in “age-disparate relationships” with “traditional power structures”, and… the rest of it.

What do you want clarification on, Colin Street? I’ve been up front about my views on my preferred age range and gender rolles in relationships. Race realists are (broadly) people who believe that there are innate, biological differences between racial groups in terms of physical, physiological, cognitive and behavioural traits. I.e. that race really means something, and is not a ‘social construct’. I am personally strongly in favour of what I call ‘gender realism’, the analogous belief about men and women (which I would use to argue in favour of semi-traditional gender roles).

Re: As in, it doesn’t impact your ability to live your life one iota. Why on earth should anyone care if gay people can marry too?

You’re wildly missing the point, as usual. A same sex couple *cannot* participate in Christian marriage, any more than a man and a tree can. They’re completely incapable of fulfilling one of the goods (procreation) that marriage is supposed to be about. Nor do they reflect complementary gender roles, the union of opposites.

If Christian churches are allowed to ‘marry’ gay couples, then they are saying that neither procreation nor complementary gender roles are essential to the definition of marriage, and that a nonprocreative relationship characterized by egalitarian gender roles is the moral equivalent of a procreative relationship that follows the dominant-male, Ephesian model. That would be the death of Christian marriage, and it is an evil that I will fight against to my last breath.

Christian churches should, ideally, deny religious marriage not only to same-sex couples, but also to interreligious couples, to divorced people with a living former spouse, and to those who obstinantely refuse to have children.

And, Hector, I think you know all of that, and are just playing a role of the provocateur here. It’s satire and spoof. You can’t actually believe what you’re writing.

SoU – “i guess what it comes down to for me is that i see education as a presentation of the facts, but not inculcation of beliefs.” I think I disagree with this, to be honest. Education is about teaching facts, yes, but it’s also about teaching ways of thinking and judging – or else this wouldn’t be such a hot topic.

I agree that religious education can be tolerant and positive when done right; I had a public-school education myself, but I’ve known Catholic-school kids who’ve had experiences not unlike yours. One possible route might be that a Catholic school should make it a point to hire some openly non-Catholic faculty and make it clear to students who they are. Maybe even be required to do so. This would be an excellent way of teaching about religious tolerance and would open the door to dialogue – and if one of said faculty were gay, so much the better. (It might be that conservative parents would revolt at such a requirement – but I think they would have trouble making the Wisconsin v. Yoder defense; unlike the Amish, who consciously separate themselves from all aspects of English society and therefore can justify keeping their kids away from English education, Catholics live in our midst in a pluralist civil society and have to make accommodation.)

In the case in question, though, as Hector noted somewhere back amid all the bile, the teacher in Seattle was fired not for being gay per se, but specifically for marrying his partner, which if he is Catholic would be a conscious and public decision to flout the religious positions on homosexuality and marriage being taught at the school. If the teacher himself weren’t a Catholic that would be one thing, as it ought to be recognized that as a non-Catholic he would not be bound to follow the Vatican. But if he is a Catholic, as I assume is the case, the message this sends to the students is “you can ignore the teachings of the Vatican and still be a Catholic” – which is, in fact, against official doctrine, whether we non-Catholics like it or not.

As an addendum to my last paragraph: I refer back to the Vatican and official Catholic doctrine despite the existence of self-identified Catholic dissenters because talking about the official doctrine is the only way to make “religious freedom” work. If every yahoo with his own unsupportable beliefs (of whatever persuasion, conservative or progressive) got to say “it’s against my religion to do X”, we couldn’t have a civil society. No. You have to be part of a community, so there have to be agreed community norms, and if different religious communities are to coexist then said communities have to be expected to abide by their own norms consistently. Either conservative and liberal self-identified Catholics agree on Catholic norms, as a community, or else you have to question whether they actually follow the same religion. If they can’t do that then there’s no reason for civil society to respect “Catholicism” as distinct and deserving of religious-freedom protections.

Plume,

I think *religious organizations* should be able to fire people for publicly buying condoms. Secular employers should not.

Re: Bottom line: What you see as “morality,” I see as reactionary nonsense.

Yes, I’m aware. We clearly have very different moral frameworks.

Hector 471,

I would have no problem whatsoever with the Catholic church or any other church calling for revolution. But you have to know that they would have few followers, even among the flock. If the flock had to choose, they would no doubt pick democracy over the society envisioned by the leaders of those religious organizations. Fortunately for the rest of us.

I honestly think you overestimate the vector of agreement between the top and the rank and file among the religious. It isn’t there. Most people ignore the stern ravings from Catholic leaders — and other religious bureaucracies. Goes in one ear and out the other. Maybe stays lodged in there for a moment or two on Sundays. But then, poof!!

People live their lives according to far more modern precepts. Though I do have to say I hold out some hope for the current pope. He seems to get this. He seems to realize that being all hung up and obsessed with gay people and abortion is a loser for the Catholic Church. And I love what he’s said about income inequality and the capitalist system so far.

Plume – I disagree about religion vs. civil law. Religious freedom is by nature a trade-off: you grant religious communities the right to do their own thing, and in return they grant you the right to do yours. You’re exempt from their morals. They’re exempt from ours. So long as neither of you sees yourself as harmed, this is okay; the only reason the Seattle case is controversial is because there are children involved, so there’s a question of who gets to decide whether children are harmed – you? the parents? the kids themselves?

The problem with Catholicism, frankly, is the mealy-mouthedness going on: the rank-and-file have lots of strong opinions both for and against homosexuality, but the people in charge are acting like politicians – they state and restate the traditional line that gay sex is wrong, but aren’t willing to actually do the dirty work of enforcing this in the parishes (by, e.g., enforcing the excommunication of gay parishioners, as they ought to if they really believe in the official teaching that all mortal sins incur an automatic excommunication). It’s to the benefit of the hierarchy that they remain vague on whether a person is or is not a true Catholic in full communion with all the saints – a Church that’s out to “re-evangelize the West” absolutely can’t afford the kind of ugly schism that would result if they took a hard line in either direction. So instead they just let the internal disagreements fester.

One day it’ll all come to a head and there’s going to be an ecclesiastical bloodbath like we haven’t seen in years. In the meantime, though, those of us on the outside can only watch and wait.

Plume,

Just to clarify, do you believe that, e.g. the Catholic Church should have the legal right to refuse to ordain women, to marry gays, or to in other ways police the sexual behavior of its members? Or don’t you?

dn @466

re: your first paragraph, i totally agree & think that is a great idea. ‘required’ might be too strong, but im open to positive incentives for sure.

re: 2nd, ignore Catholic teaching while still Catholic – this is what we in the debate community used to call ‘non-unique’
there are innumerable Catholics who act in contradiction to proper Church teachings, on a variety of issues. i mean, that is the origin of the term ‘cafeteria Catholic’ is it not? they are not kicked out of the church for these things – and it is only political overtones which give the gay marriage question greater salience than, say, observance of rules about birth control or amassing great wealth. so i guess what i am saying is – i wont buy this argument from members of the church until there is some indication that it is going to be honestly applied, and that means talking about other ways in which people violate catholic morality, or giving a real defense of how gay marriage is uniquely and specifically damaging to one’s moral compass, in a way that say avarice isn’t. and i get that ‘marriage is a sacrament’ and all that, – but so is the priesthood, and that post has been debased in modern times to a revolting degree and we don’t see a lot of contrition from the vatican about THAT now do we.

lastly, i believe to this day that acceptance of gay marriage is not against Catholic teaching, but in fact a fulfillment of its essence and spirit. i say this because the church has historically accepted gay marriage – i say this because Pope Francis is arguing the same thing – and i say this because i have read the Gospels many times and i understand their message(s) pretty clearly, and there is nothing you can do to convince me that Jesus would have shunned and stigmatized homosexuals for their identity.

plus, the dude spent every night for a couple of years living with a dozen other unmarried bachelors? i mean, cmon now! (/sarcasm!)

finally i just want to add that in general i very much have appreciated your comments here and their role in staunching the decent into Hectorial filth.

Unless it’s the blatherings about how John’s Gospel was written after 70 AD, because methodological naturalism.

As was the attempt to justify women priestesses. (What’s next, ordaining donkeys?) Oh hell, this has been a filthy thread.

Hector,

Jesus certainly doesn’t need my help to be what he always was: a Jew, born and raised a Jew, a practicing Jew, a Rabbi, who based all of his teachings on Jewish sacred texts and commentaries.

Accusing me of “Judaizing” Jesus is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read on the Internet. Almost as ridiculous as your most recent assertion that ordaining women is akin to ordaining donkeys.

I’m guessing you get invites to social gatherings by the score. Not.

Plume,

What they’re offering you, is that they won’t revolt, besiege the capital, and end up by putting your head on a stake. That’s the liberal bargain.

If Belle Waring, John Holbo or others request that I shut up, I will of course do so. See, my moral code, unlike some people’s around here, revolves largely around obedience to rightful authority, and on this blog, Ms. Waring and her colleagues are the authorities.

No, Plume; it is about you and your views. You respect no reason other than your own, so the fact that e.g. Catholics really, truly believe that reason itself compels them (or at least permits them) to believe in God and Jesus and Mary the rest means nothing to you. You simply dismiss them as unreasonable – and if they try to base their morals on what they believe to be reasonable religious beliefs, well, that’s not just unreasonable to you, that’s dangerously irrational! Insanity, IOW. In this you liken yourself unto a god; the Great God Plume’s conclusions about what is right and wrong cannot be gainsaid by any man.

The established law of religious freedom, in fact, guarantees precisely the ability of religious people to maintain their own institutions among themselves, even where it conflicts with the civil power. See, for example, the 1972 case of Wisconsin v. Yoder, in which the Supreme Court voted 8-1 to uphold the right of the Old Order Amish to withdraw their children from school after 8th grade, even though the state’s laws required children to attend until the age of 16. (Justice Douglas’s lone consent argued for the right of the children to speak for themselves and be heard, and you may prefer that position, but as a matter of established law you are simply wrong.)

dn 490,

Also, notice what you’re doing here. On the one hand, you defend the right of religious people to believe what they want and to act on those beliefs. You defend their right to act based upon their conception of morality.

But, you condemn me for acting on mine. Can’t have it both ways.

Sorry to disabuse you of something. But Christians don’t have a monopoly on “morality” or “moral teachings.” Far from it. I’ve spent my life reading and studying ethics, moral philosophy, social justice, etc. etc. And my reading, studies, observations and contemplation over the course of 50 plus years leads me to different conclusions from those you defend.

But you defend only “Christian” beliefs, and want to deny dissent from them. Sorry, but you are the discussant in this dialogue attempting to act like a god. Not me. I’m arguing for pluralism, secularism, dissent and a multitude of interpretations. You? Just one.

SoU – Thanks for your kind words.

With regard to “cafeteria Catholicism”, I of course agree that there are some serious problems there beyond homosexuality, and I honestly don’t know how to deal with them as a matter of policy. I think it’s an inherent problem of religious freedom; what to do when you find yourself dealing with a religious community that won’t police itself? How can you take on yourself the position of being the judge of a community to which you don’t belong? Again, I don’t have any answers.

Re: acceptance of gay marriage in the RCC – I again have to confess that I just don’t see it. I’m aware of e.g. the work of John Boswell about medieval same-sex unions, but also am under the impression that his conclusions are extremely controversial in the academy, if not rejected outright. Likewise my impression is that Pope Francis has been walking a very fine line between creating an impression of greater welcoming-ness to same-sex-oriented people in the Church while also expressly maintaining the position of Benedict and JPII on the morality of gay sex acts. I simply don’t see a route for change to happen, so I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.

With that I think we’ve pretty much said everything that can be said here, so I’ll bow out before Hector gets any more unbearable. Thanks again for a good conversation.

“In short, dn, I see discrimination against gay people as immoral. I see the attempt to control sexuality as immoral. I see the attempt to tell women what they must do with their own bodies as immoral. I see the termination of someone’s employment based upon their sexuality as immoral. Etc. etc.”

Damn skippy!

dn,

Please reread the following. Talk about straw men.

No, Plume; it is about you and your views. You respect no reason other than your own, so the fact that e.g. Catholics really, truly believe that reason itself compels them (or at least permits them) to believe in God and Jesus and Mary the rest means nothing to you. You simply dismiss them as unreasonable – and if they try to base their morals on what they believe to be reasonable religious beliefs, well, that’s not just unreasonable to you, that’s dangerously irrational! Insanity, IOW. In this you liken yourself unto a god; the Great God Plume’s conclusions about what is right and wrong cannot be gainsaid by any man.

Seriously, the description above is so wildly off base, it’s a wonder you could get through it without laughing. Reading it again now, I know I can’t.

“SOU, I await the day when you and MPA Victoria are kept firmly in your place, learn something about the virtues of obedience, and don’t distract the discussions of civilised men with your witless blatherings. unfortunately, I don’t think either of us is getting our way anytime soon.”

Ha! I would LOVE to see you try and put me in “my place” Hector.

Plume,

Why am I supposed to care about your morals? Especially when they involve silliness like ‘telling women what to do with there bodies is immoral.’ do you think it’s immoral to tell a five year old to eat there broccoli?

MPAV: Your sneering at the concept of obedience to your moral superiors is really giving me a great impression of your moral and intellectual maturity. Not.

This is exactly why I’m troubled by the idea of a world in which folks like you get to vote and enjoy other political privileges.

Not really, Plume. The duties of a woman to her unborn child, even at the embryo stage, are surely far more important than eating ones broccoli, so I’d consider her will in the matter much more trivial than I would the child’s feelings about broccoli. I should expect any civilised and moral people , at least if they are Christians, to agree.

Of course, we live in an age which talks a lot about fashionable buzzwords like ‘women’s right to choose’ and ‘autonomy’ and other things that are neither particularly interesting not consequential to the issue.

Corey Robin! Are these really the kind of comments you want to allow in your thread?

@ 504 “MPAV: Your sneering at the concept of obedience to your moral superiors is really giving me a great impression of your moral and intellectual maturity. Not. ”

@ 482 “As was the attempt to justify women priestesses. (What’s next, ordaining donkeys?)”

@502 “Why am I supposed to care about your morals? Especially when they involve silliness like ‘telling women what to do with there bodies is immoral.’ do you think it’s immoral to tell a five year old to eat there broccoli?”

I have a pretty high tolerance of Hector St. Clare but this is too much.

If the proprietors of this blog, includeing Mr. Robin want me to stop remarking on gender related threads, I will certainly defer to their authority.

Shorter Hector: how to undermine a feminist worldview? Compare women priests to donkeys! Boom-boom! I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.

Hector St Clare – you are now banned permanently from commenting at Crooked Timber. Any further comments from you will be deleted immediately.

Henry, I’m glad someone was listening. I feel strange that my comment resulted in Hector being permanently banned, though.

Lynne @516. don’t feel bad – i for one thank you for calling attention to the mods and getting some action on this. i’m pretty certain i am not alone in this.

Because that would be insane.

It’s like the fever finally broke.

You know, when Hector used to hang at Yglesias in the glory days when y’all were ever bragging about how superior you were instead of bitching about how the comments were going down the tubes (please), there was a guy who called himself fostert who would go on these long amazing manic-phase rants about Thai prostitutes and Russian gangsters and acing the engineering gre on acid before taking a breath to tear every rightwinger a new asshole, and he’d defend Hector to the hilt. Now I see his name pop up occasionally here and there, well, not here of course, but anyway nowadays it’s always concise and controlled. I miss those amazing rants.

So there have been a small group of eccentrics making the same argument online, over and over again, for the last 10 years? Were they all going for the job Yglesias got?

But never mind fostert, although he really was that entertaining. The post is that the endless talk of the quality of comments one finds here implies that it wasn’t always a sewer. This is wrong.

” The post is that the endless talk of the quality of comments”
Endless? I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

” implies that it wasn’t always a sewer. This is wrong.”
A sewer? Well sorry we don’t live up to your high expectations godoggo.
/Sheesh

Well, that escalated quickly.

I have long thought that he believed what he believed with a sincerity and zeal that I for one found, on occasion, genuinely alarming. But maybe I shouldn’t criticize someone who can no longer respond in this forum.

If anyone is still paying attention to the original topic, worrying about injustices in the inheritance laws for titles of nobility seems a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic — the bigger problem is still going to be there regardless of your efforts.

Manta 535,

Why? In good conversations in the real world, that kind of cap would pretty much shut it down.

Some of these threads go into the hundreds. So you want to ban virtual simulations of (nearly) real-time talk?

If the number of posts per bothers you, skip them. It’s not rocket science.

fair enough godoggo, i misread you. though i’d assume you’re probably right on your 530, but that’s just nostalgia, I guess

I remember fostert rather fondly, thanks for the reminder godoggo. I also welcome this latest development. I’ll leave it at that.

Geez, I just saw elsewhere that Hector has been banned. Halle-fucking-lujah. It’ll be nice to have interesting debate without wondering when Hector’s going to blunder in and insult me.

Sorry, I wasn’t clear Lynne. Belle mentioned it had happened, and I hunted around a bit to see where and why. And here it was. I had bowed out of this thread a while back so hadn’t seen it.

Also Felix Holt, which I coincidentally read during law school while I was taking Property. It was terribly satisfying having the legal bits of the plot make perfect sense.