A Eugenics Common Sense?
Calling fetuses defective if they are prenatally diagnosed with genetic conditions foreshadows a dangerous path toward eugenics.
Truth and Lies, Nature and Convention: The Debate Over Same-Sex Marriage
The case for same-sex marriage, as articulated in a new book that debates the issue, still refuses to recognize that civil society needs real marriage, as it has always existed, to preserve itself.
Building a Culture of Religious Freedom
If we want a culture of religious freedom, we need to begin it here, today, now. We live it by giving ourselves wholeheartedly to God with passion and joy, confidence and courage; and by holding nothing back. God will take care of the rest. Adapted from remarks delivered yesterday at the Napa Institute’s 2012 annual conference.
Abortion, Conscience, and Health Care Provider Rights
A faulty understanding of conscience as an instrument of subjective preferences and feelings is fueling efforts to undermine conscience protection for doctors who oppose abortion and provision of contraceptives.
The Economic Crisis and Europe’s Rule of Law Problem
Close attention to particular decisions by European institutions and governments before and during the present economic crisis suggests that many have significantly infringed the rule of law.
Religious Freedom’s Legal and Moral Basis
The right to religious freedom was crucial to the Founders’ vision of America. Religious freedom is a right to be protected because it enables us to fulfill our human obligation to seek the truth. The second in a two-part series.
Religious Freedom Under Fire
The threats to religious freedom in our nation are real, and they’re serious. And things will get worse unless we defend our rights. The first in a two-part series.
Expertise and Ethics
The virtuous life is an art; and one learns art not from theorists but from the artists themselves.
Marriage, Religious Liberty, and the “Grand Bargain”
In the name of “marriage equality” and “non-discrimination,” liberty—especially religious liberty and the liberty of conscience—and genuine equality are undermined.
Here’s Twenty Bucks: Don’t Have Babies
Melinda Gates and the Family Planning Summit will waste 4.6 billion dollars on contraception for women in third world countries instead of addressing the educational and healthcare-related challenges pregnant mothers face.
Casey at Twenty: Pro-Life Progress Despite a Judicial Setback
Since Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the pro-life movement’s incremental strategies—strengthening parental consent laws, advancing legal protection on the basis of fetal pain, and defunding Planned Parenthood—give us reason to be optimistic about the future of the pro-life movement.
The White House and Sexualityism
Against what social science tells us about human happiness, the government is promoting sexualityism—a commitment to uncommitted, unencumbered, inconsequential sex—as the answer.
Hotel Pornography and the Market of Morality
The legal institutions of a democratic and capitalist society are designed not to give people what is good and prevent them from getting what is bad; they are designed to give people what they want and not give them what they don’t want.
Will the Obamacare “Tax” Trump Religious Liberty?
Though the Supreme Court has long been hostile to tax exemptions for religious reasons, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Establishment Clause should give religious organizations reasons to hope that they won’t be penalized by the Obamacare “tax.”
In Defense of John Roberts
The Supreme Court should be an apolitical institution dedicated to enforcing the minimal and clear requirements of the Constitution.
Chief Justice Roberts and the Changing Conservative Legal Movement
The clash between Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion and that of the joint dissenters is best seen as a clash between two visions of judicial restraint, and two eras of the conservative legal movement.
Pornography, Respect, and Responsibility: A Letter to the Hotel Industry
A letter on pornography and business ethics written by two prominent public intellectuals—one a Christian, one a Muslim—sent to hotel industry executives last week.
HHS Mandate: Unjust (as well as Illegal)
To recap two major problems with the HHS mandate: it restricts the natural right of religious freedom and imposes a false view of religion.
Immigration: He Who Is Without Sin
Those who complain about illegal immigration are still morally complicit in the problem: they gladly take advantage of cheaper prices made possible by undocumented workers.
Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right
Vigilance on behalf of religious liberty is a just response to what is highest and noblest in human experience—mankind’s relation to something higher and nobler than itself. Adapted from a monograph by the Witherspoon Institute’s Task Force on International Religious Freedom.
Casey at Twenty: Lessons from a Judicial Disaster
The lesson of Casey is that the nomination and confirmation of judges with a sound judicial philosophy is an essential foundation stone of a culture of life.
