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Wedoittooity: In Which I Vehemently Disagree with Andrew Klavan
In a recent podcast during his Mailbag segment, Drew Klavan talked about all our Western values being Christian values. He spoke about caring for the poor through either right-wing acts of charity or left-wing distribution of government “welfare,” for example. Here’s a transcript from the part I take issue with. Podcast 3/4/2020 at minute 36:
Everything about our values is Christian. Even socialism is a Christian movement. It is trying to fulfill Christian goals. My argument with it is it’s doing it the wrong way ‘cause it’s putting aside one the most important Christian goals, which is freedom. Christ freed us for freedom. So, that’s one of the reasons I don’t like socialism, because I think it’s slavery.
However, there’s a wonderful book called The Minion, by Tom Holland, which explains that almost all of our ideas come from Christianity. I made the point that when we were arguing about gay marriage, both sides were arguing a Christian point of view. One side was arguing the shall not, which is part of Christianity, and the other side was arguing the judge not, which is also part of Christianity.
You know how Jonah Goldberg uses “whataboutism” to criticize Trump supporters for noticing how the Left hypocritically bullies and cancels conservatives, as if we excuse Trump’s nasty tweets the way the Soviets deflected from gulags and forced deportations by noting America’s slave history and lynchings? As if Trump calling Mayor Bloomberg, “Mini Mike,” has some moral equivalence to the Democrats’ “kill-it” third-trimester abortion policy or antifa showing up in balaclavas to menace people and destroy private property? Yeah, this is the same type of error I’m ascribing to Klavan in the above quote, but I call it “wedoittooity.”
Let’s start with the source material:
Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get [Mt. 7.1-2].
Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back [Lk. 6:37-38].
First, what do these passages not intend to teach us? I’m taking this from an article by Catholic apologist Jimmy Aiken. Jesus is not providing an out for immoral behavior in general, or immoral sexual behavior in particular. He’s not prohibiting us from admonishing the sinner — in fact, he encourages us to “bring him back” to the truth [James. 5:19-20]. He’s not trying to shut down conversation about moral truths. Ahem. He’s not endorsing moral relativism. As Aiken says, “If it is wrong to make moral judgments regarding the behavior of others then it would be wrong to judge others for judging!”
So, what is Jesus teaching? He’s elaborating on the Golden Rule: treat others as you would be treated — be merciful, compassionate, and forgiving — as you would be judged by God!
Which begs the question, what does it mean to be merciful, compassionate, and forgiving? It doesn’t mean affirming someone in his disordered love. We all know someone who has a disordered relationship with food and is therefore either unhealthily thin or overweight. We still love her, as in willing her (true, objective) good, but we’re not called to encourage her in the disordered behaviors either personally or socially/legally — as we’ve done with gays and same-sex marriage. We are meant to affirm the inherent dignity of each person as a creature of God’s making in His image and likeness. As sinners ourselves, we are meant to have compassion (meaning, sharing in the person’s suffering), recognizing our own disordered ways of being. We are meant to love the other — willing his good apart from, even above(!), our own.
Christianity (maybe especially Catholicism) takes a very positive view of God’s creation and recognizes that God made us good, although we’ve since fallen. Christians can recognize that two men may love each other (willing the good of the other) and care for each other. We may even admire how, together, they’re each made better men (the test of any good relationship). What we can’t do is deny the telos of human sexuality, which is reproduction in cooperation with God’s creative enterprise, and the unity of man/woman as a visible sign of the love of the Holy Trinity in total self-giving, including one’s reproductive faculties. Nor can we deny the objective, primordial truth of marriage as a means of civilizing men and protecting women and children, both for their own sakes and for the common good of society. This is not judgmental of men or women afflicted with same-sex attraction. At worst, it is indifferent (the opposite of love) to homosexual acts with regard to marriage. From a Christian perspective, we would will something better for everyone — chastity — which is properly ordered sexuality either inside or outside (abstinence) marriage.
Almost no Christian I know has argued for the traditional understanding of marriage from a “thou shalt not” perspective. Not Ryan T. Anderson, author of What Is Marriage? Not the signers of the Manhattan Declaration. Even politicians who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act could be assumed to have believed primarily in the “defense” of the reality of and secular benefits to male/female marriage, rather than in hostility to gay couples. It is neither statism nor uncompassionate judgmentalism to deny marriage licenses to couples who don’t meet the most basic, least intrusive standards of male/female, age of consent, and distant blood relation. It is compassion for men, women, and especially children, who have the (natural) right to a two-parent, mom-and-dad family structure. It also happens to be common sense, which is increasingly uncommon.
I reject the charges of wedoittooity.
Published in General
Whataboutism and wedoittooity are a way to accuse your own side when your own ideas don’t fully align. Jonah accuses Trump supporters of “whataboutism” in order to compare us to the Soviets who used it as a propaganda technique. Nice.
Klavan is playing the wedoittooity card because he has personal (family) interests that don’t align with the normative Christian views on sexual morality. Whenever Biblical excuse-making happens, this tends to be the case. We’re human. But, I still spurn (thanks @zafar!) the wedooittooity argument.
And, yes, Trump/Pence 2020! It’s important.
Indirectly related (VDH):
California is a Cruel Medieval State.
It seems to me that fervent debates over what is Christian tend to undercut the love that Christ uniquely brought to our world. We are told not to obsess over the mote in our brother’s eye when there is a log in our own, and that is what, I believe, is Andrew Klavan’s point.
I am, in the best world, an opponent of gay marriage, for the usual wide variety of reasons, starting with Romans 1. But the legal/temporal in this world is dominated by the lower powers at the same time as we are admonished to focus on “whatsoever things are good” (Philippians 4:8).
We have a choice, as opponents of abortion, of either picketing abortion clinics with signs that accuse young women entering of being murderers, or we can open crisis pregnancy centers next door and offer love and support. We can oppose gay marriage while understanding that legal domestic partnerships would have been the appropriate solution that might have actually obtained had we been sensible in 1980 or so.
The Christian churches have all too often treated both the sin and the sinner with contempt; I think that Drew Klavan has a perfectly defensible position here. We should focus on showing the love of Christ rather than the judgement of the self-righteous.
Except that’s not his point. He said that people who object to SSM do so because they ascribe to the “Shalt Not” aspect of Christianity rather than the love Christ commands. My point is he’s completely wrong about that. Christians supportive of SSM believe it is loving to do so. Christians opposed to it believe it’s loving to do so. I say we have the better part of the argument.
I’m taking no position on the details of the debate- my “quarrel” is with the fact that anyone believes that there is a reason to debate. If the love of Christ is in your heart, you love the person, you don’t debate over which side is more loving or self-righteous. It is none of my business to preach at anyone over whether or not a putative “th0u shalt not” applies to some other person.
To poke a little fun at myself, “Thou Shalt Not debate over whether WC or Drew are more correct!” This starts to get into a Heisenberg paradox pretty fast, so I won’t extend the argument.
It’s a debate about marriage policy as it relates to the telos of marriage, and Klavan is the one claiming one side is more loving than the other. I’m pushing back against that claim.
Yes.
Overstated.
Mr. Klavan mischaracterizes the nature of the disagreement about gay marriage and in the process treats with contempt those who value traditional marriage. In fact it is quite judgmental and self righteous of him (defensible) and dishonest (not defensible.)
We will never know if “legal domestic partnerships” would have preserved traditional marriage in our law and culture. You don’t know. I very seriously doubt it would have, even though I favored civil partnerships from the first time I heard the idea. When gay marriage got momentum it was no longer about solving actual problems for actual gay people. It was about recognizing homosexual partnerships as identical to heterosexual ones in every way that matters. That required taking over marriage.
You got me. I write so I don’t have to try to remember!
Well, that’s reasonable.
Sometimes I marvel at what I don’t think I actually know yet apparently wrote.
Next time, will you write my post?
The comments in my code are primarily for me, to give me a ghost of a chance of answering the question “why does it do that” when someone asks six months from now.
Boy, if you think that Mr. Klavan “treats with contempt those who value traditional marriage”, we have a very basic communications issue that will not be resolved by discussion. In my view, apart from the fundamentals of the faith- Jesus’ death and resurrection and the unconditioned grace that is offered to all of us, none of whom deserve it, the arguments about theology alomst always descend into an abyss where it no longer makes a difference who is right or wrong because the love is missing from the discussion replaced by self-righteous judgement.
As I said at the beginning, I am not a proponent of gay marriage, and I believe that every party in any equation is better off when the obvious biological and civilizational norms rule. But when the enforcement of those norms turns us into accusers rather than prayers, we have blown it.
We do indeed have a basic communications issue, if we don’t start with honesty as a bedrock value.
I think this pull quote from the podcast misses a bit of the fullness of of Andrew Klavan’s thinking. He does believe in the telos of marriage, and believes that every child deserves a mother and a father. He also has a son who is gay.
My best guess (and I am definitely out over my skis on this), is that incoming to terms with this, he has focused on two things: 1) that all of us have disordered desires we struggle against, and that it is easy for those of us whose sexuality is not disordered to judge the powerful drive of others. 2) The most important thing is to make sure what you do in life not separate you from a relationship with God. He cannot judge whether it does or not, so he bows out of judging and works hard to fix his own transgressions instead.
You don’t have to defend Klavan to me. I’m a huge fan and believe he gets 95% of everything right (he’s also wrong about the Catholic Church, but that’s for another day).
But, when he says traditionalist Christians are arguing from a “thou shalt not” position, I believe he’s largely wrong. It isn’t animus toward gays, although, yes, I do believe homosexual acts are, by their nature, exploitative and therefore immoral.
It’s that I (and the other traditionalist Christians I read and listen to) believe there’s a reality to marriage that is a positive good for individuals, families, and society, and that other types of relationships simply don’t meet the most minimal, least intrusive, standards for marriage and for public acknowledgment through licensing. I also argue that withholding marriage licenses is not coercive. It doesn’t make anyone do anything, it simply excludes some couples from making claims to marriage.
I believe Supreme Overlord Klavan has said that his views on the subject were in place before he even knew his son was gay.
Boy, is that ever true.
Someone should write some books about that.
Or at least about what Augustine says about that.
(Someone should. Probably some weirdo loser nerdface should.)