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Public Discourse

Justice Kennedy, Henry David Thoreau, and the Children of Gays and Lesbians

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Both the majority opinion in last summer's same-sex marriage case and recent public statements point to a troubling lack of coherence in Justice Anthony Kennedy's thinking.
Public Discourse

On Human Sexuality, Conservative Victory is Inevitable

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The emotional and physical devastation produced by the collapse of familial bonds may take decades to fully manifest itself. Once it does, the essential human need for restrictions on sexuality will again become clear.
Public Discourse

Crybullies Aren’t Just for College: On Corporations and LGBTQ Political Correctness

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Calls for “Safe Spaces” on campus don’t just threaten the future of academia. The same mindset seeks to silence dissent and respectful disagreement in business as well.
Public Discourse

Why ISIS Might Win, Even If It Loses

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If Western culture continues to be defined by the pitiful desire to go on living in as much physical comfort as possible, we will continue to be victimized and oppressed by the much more powerful appeal of radical Islam to die for God and eternal happiness.
Public Discourse

The New Dignity: Gnostic, Elitist, Self-Destructive Will-to-Power

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In a world with no clear origin, no purposeful end, and no intrinsic meaning, human dignity is founded on nothing more than a self-creating will to power that is, in the last analysis, self-destructive.
Public Discourse

The American Dream in Crisis: It’s Time for a New Moynihan Moment

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The American Dream is in crisis because the American family is in crisis. We must commit to a national—not purely governmental—effort to promote strong families.
Public Discourse

Rights Through Obligations: The Case of Free Speech

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Some rights are grounded in the need for agents to fulfill their perceived responsibilities, including their obligation to pursue knowledge. This obligation, along with the communal nature of inquiry, supports a right to free speech that acquires particular stringency in those communities where inquiry is most essential.
Public Discourse

Could America Survive without Religion?

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Can freedom survive in a society in which most citizens believe that human beings, who are supposed to have inalienable rights, are merely material beings inhabiting a universe of purely material and efficient causality?
Public Discourse

Anti-Zionists Misread the Bible

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The authors of the New Testament never eliminated distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, but they did prophesy a world to come centered in Jerusalem.
Public Discourse

The End of Europe

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Unless Europe is willing to affirm, defend, and promote its roots, it has no future beyond a dystopia of non-judgmentalism, managed decline, and increasing religiously inspired violence.
Public Discourse

Substantive Due Process: What is the Question, and Why Does It Matter?

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In debates over marriage and abortion, we should make arguments based on constitutional texts and judicial precedent. But would it be legitimate also for judges to consider overarching questions of justice and natural law?
Public Discourse

Uncivil Discourse, Part Two: A Call for Intellectual Humility

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To rehabilitate our public discourse, we each need to cultivate more self-awareness about the potential weaknesses and limitations of our own proposals.
Public Discourse

Uncivil Discourse: Modern Media’s Ideological Junkspace

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Political discussions in the public realm have become increasingly shallow: something more akin to a children’s mud fight than the rational discourse America’s founders hoped would characterize the civic life of the American republic.
Public Discourse

A Lesson for Aspiring Academics: On Alice von Hildebrand’s Happy Failure

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In her memoirs of teaching at Hunter College for nearly forty years, Alice von Hildebrand shows aspiring academics the importance of perseverance, courage, and love in the face of hostility toward one’s moral and religious views.
Public Discourse

Due Process and the Logic of the Law: A Response to Hadley Arkes

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To properly understand due process, we must grasp the key distinctions between law and decrees and between law and morality. If judges are authoritative arbiters of the “logic of morals,” we have subjected ourselves to an unelected, life-tenured legal elite whose reach exceeds our grasp.
Public Discourse

Rending the Rainbow Veil: How to Make Your Church a Safe Space for Christians with Same-Sex Attraction

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Church communities should strive to be safe spaces where those with same-sex attraction can take refuge, openly sharing their experiences. We must affirm their dignity as children of God and lovingly refuse to encourage any behavior that is contrary to their good.
Public Discourse

Lessons from Vincent Van Gogh: Celebrity Culture and the Rights of Domestic Workers

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Our treasured religious beliefs tell us time and time again to care for the poor and the destitute and to love the strangers among us. We know that domestic workers and underprivileged laborers deserve our care and attention, but in our celebrity-suffused culture, we often forget this truth.
Public Discourse

Birth Certificates, Fatherhood, and Same-Sex Marriage: Sotomayor v. Sotomayor

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Which Justice Sotomayor will show up in the next landmark family-law case: the Sotomayor who affirms the “precious” rights and duties of biological parents? Or the Sotomayor who insists on full "marriage equality"?
Public Discourse

Recovering Lincoln’s Teaching on the Limits to the Courts–and Giving the News to David Blankenhorn

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History clearly demonstrates that the legislative branch can legitimately act to counter the rulings of the judicial branch. This is as true for marriage as it was for slavery.
Public Discourse

Why Christians Shouldn’t Be Zionists

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God has not left behind Israel and its land—he has expanded them.
Public Discourse

Attention, Low-Income Women of Oregon: Your Reproduction Is Now the Government’s Business

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Oregon’s implementation of its new contraceptive metric is an alarming sign that nationwide governmental monitoring of America’s low-income women’s reproduction is on its way—along with flagrant disregard for women’s privacy and religious freedom.
Public Discourse

More Than We Wish to Know: Chen Guangcheng and the Truth about Chinese Human Rights Abuses

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We hear endlessly of “change” and “reform” in China, and the United States has premised its policies on these promises. The memoirs of Chen Guangcheng paint a very different portrait.
Public Discourse

Michel Houellebecq and the Islamist Future of Europe

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A best-selling new novel taps into an angst that has become an obsession in Europe.
Public Discourse

Diversity in the Christian University

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Within a Christian university, the legitimate goods of diversity must be balanced against a notion of unity, an idea of the particular “constitution” of a place—its heritage, its tradition, and the constituency it serves.