I think Christopher Lund captures a valuable insight
about competing notions of identity. My friend from
UT, J Bud, makes a point that strike me as similar
when he talks about our various "zones of tolerance":
"The bottom line is that Neutrality is no more
coherent in the matter of religious tolerance than it
is in tolerance of any other sort. What you can
tolerate pivots on your ultimate concern. Because
different ultimate concerns ordain different zones of
tolerance, social consensus is possible only at the
points where these zones overlap. Note well: The
greater the resemblance of contending concerns, the
greater the overlap of their zones of tolerance. The
less the resemblance of contending concerns, the less
the overlap of their zones of tolerance. Should
contending concerns become sufficiently unlike, their
zones of tolerance no longer intersect at all.
Consensus vanishes.
This, I believe, is our current trajectory. The
embattled term 'culture war' is not inflammatory; it
is merely inexact. And we can expect the war to grow
worse. The reason for this is that our various gods
ordain not only different zones of tolerance, but
different norms to regulate the dispute among
themselves. True tolerance is not well tolerated. For
although the God of some of the disputants ordains
that they love and persuade their opponents, the idols
of some of the others ordain no such thing."
J. Budziszewski, The Revenge of Conscience (1999).
--- "Christopher C. Lund" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Perhaps there is also a linkage between gay rights
> and religious liberty in
> the sense that both are largely about identity.
> Precisely because religious
> and sexual identity are not entirely immutable
> (although neither seems to be
> wholly a matter of unconstrained choice), the
> government can leverage people
> away from being who they, in a deep sense, really
> are.
>
> I heard one gay-rights speaker once conclude by
> saying something like: "This
> is who I am; I can be no other." I don't honestly
> think she meant to sound
> like Martin Luther before Emperor Charles at the
> Diet of Worms ("I cannot,
> and I will not recant. Here I stand; I can do no
> other. God help me.
> Amen.") Perhaps she didn't even recognize the
> resemblance. But, there it
> is.
>
>
Rick Duncan
Welpton Professor of Law
University of Nebraska College of Law
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902
"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or
Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or
numbered." --The Prisoner
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