Blogging on the Radio

In case you — like me — missed it, here's an MP3 file of Addie Goss's radio piece on Rhode Island blogs for the Brown Student Radio show Off the Beat (which, for some reason, never found its way onto the show's archive page).

(I didn't realize how halting. my. speech. can. be. when I'm trying to make points extemporaneously. I'll have to work on it... or else stick to well-memorized talking points as others in the opine business do.)

Adults' Self-Esteem Always Trumps

In a nutshell, the Providence Journal editorial board believes that adults' feelings and desires trump the needs of children:

It is a shame that, rather than continue caring for children, Catholic Charities opted to close up shop [in Massachusetts]. First, though, the archdiocese sought an exemption from the anti-discrimination laws, a move that prompted seven members of the agency's board to resign. In a move that might play well in a GOP presidential campaign, Gov. Mitt Romney proposed changing the law to accommodate the church. (That might have kept Catholic Charities doing its good work with adoptions, but it would sanction discrimination, which is wrong.)

It would seem that, from a certain point of view, it is not the American ideal to accommodate different beliefs inasmuch as is possible. To secular zealots, the government — ever more involved in the intricate workings of society — cannot "sanction" what some believe to be unfair discrimination, so there can be no compromises. We cannot tolerate a civil practice that requires homosexuals to adopt through other means than a charity associated with a millennia-old religion, so the charity must either contravene the religion's teachings or else — in a retrograde act worthy of "shame" — cease operations.

I suppose an argument about whose shame it is ultimately comes down to whose beliefs better justify obstinacy. On one side, a group of people who believe that we are endowed with immortal souls and are bound by laws that transcend any particular human era (so that we must often reject that which our times condition us to prefer) are choosing not to reject the system by which they seek to understand those higher laws, because to do otherwise would be to jeopardize their own and others' eternal well-being. For the other side, the modern secular ideal of anti-discrimination requires that any act for which academic "studies show no substantial problems" must be permitted and facilitated by everybody if not doing so would hurt somebody's feelings.

As a matter of our shared government system, the Projo may be correct that, with "so many children in need, it makes no sense to limit the supply of potential parents." Somehow, though, in the convoluted fog of progressive emotional fiat, it apparently makes sense to limit the number of trustworthy agents seeking to bring those children and parents together.