"Orthodox Fundamentalism" Discussion on Ancient Faith Today

Awhile back I wrote a response to an article by Dr. George Demacopoulos on "Orthodox Fundamentalism.

You can read his original article here: Orthodox Fundamentalism

You can read my response here: Response to "Orthodox Fundamentalists" by George Demacopoulos

Kevin Allen invited us to talk about this subject on Ancient Faith Today, and you can listen to it here: Orthodox Fundamentalism: what is it and does it exist?

Someone posted a quote that I think well sums up the problem with Dr. Demacopoulos' use of the term "fundamentalist":

"We must first look into the use of this term ‘fundamentalist’. On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like ‘son of a bitch’, more exactly ‘sonovabitch’, or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) ‘sumbitch’. When the term is used in this way, no definition of it is ordinarily given. (If you called someone a sumbitch, would you feel obliged first to define the term?) Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of ‘fundamentalist’ (in this widely current use): it isn’t simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like ‘stupid sumbitch’ (or maybe ‘fascist sumbitch’?) than ‘sumbitch’ simpliciter. It isn’t exactly like that term either, however, because its cognitive content can expand and contract on demand; its content seems to depend on who is using it. In the mouths of certain liberal theologians, for example, it tends to denote any who accept traditional Christianity, including Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Barth; in the mouths of devout secularists like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, it tends to denote anyone who believes there is such a person as God. The explanation is that the term has a certain indexical element: its cognitive content is given by the phrase ‘considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.’ The full meaning of the term, therefore (in this use), can be given by something like ‘stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine’." -Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: 2000), pg. 245.

One additional point that I would make is with regard to Dr. Demacopoulos' assertion that anyone who uses the phrase "The Fathers say..." has never read the Fathers: Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) is a highly regarded contemporary Orthodox Theologian, and you often find him using the phrase "The Fathers say..." Just googling the phrase, I found it used by St. Dorotheos of Gaza, the Elder Cleopa of Romania, and Fr. John Romanides... and I suspect many more examples could be found. Also, at one point in the discussion Fr. Demacopoulos made the statement: "the fathers believed in the birth death and resurrection of Jesus..." So apparently we can make general statements about what the Fathers believed, and so saying that they as a group would say something is not substantively different.

Also, Dr. George quoted Paul Tillich as saying that the opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty. It is true that we do not say that we believe something that we know empirically. A better way to look at this came from a sermon from a protestant minister who spoke about a husband and a wife sitting on a porch watching their children playing. He said that the wife knows that her husband is the father of those children. The husband believes he is the father of those children. Of course the husband's belief is only as good as his wife is trustworthy, but we believe that the Church is absolutely trustworthy... but while we can be certain to a high degree, we will only have complete empirical verification of that when we see Christ face to face.

For those who might be wondering why my Facebook account has suddenly disappeared

It's because Facebook thinks drag queens should be able to use stage names like "Lil' Miss Hot Mess," but doesn't think Christian Clergy should be allowed to use anything but their legal names.

See "Stories from the Culture War Trenches" by Rod Dreher.

Update: They have done the same thing to Fr. Tryphon, who if he used his legal name (which I don't even know) would not be recognized by anyone who hasn't known him since he was kid.

Facebook has gotten too big for its britches. It's time for the users they depend on to whittle them back down to size. Refuse to advertise on Facebook until this policy is reversed.

Response to "Orthodox Fundamentalism" by George Demacopoulos

Note: See also a further response: Fundamental Errors: A Response to "Tradition Without Fundamentalism" by George Demacopoulos.

Dr. George Demacopoulos of Fordham University recently posted an article entitled "Orthodox Fundamentalism," on the Greek Archdiocese's website. There are a number of problems with it that I think need to be pointed out.

To begin with, he doesn't really explain what he means by the term "Fundamentalist". The term, as it was originally coined, referred to those conservative Protestants that, in response to modernist tendencies, especially in mainline Protestant denominations, posited that there were five fundamental (one might even say "minimal") beliefs that Christians had to adhere to:

1. The inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture
2. The deity of Jesus Christ
3. The virgin birth of Christ
4. The substitutionary, atoning work of Christ on the cross
5. The physical resurrection and the personal bodily return of Christ to the earth

The term "Fundamentalist" was later (beginning in 1979, around the time of the Iran hostage crisis) applied to radical Moslems, and then later to just about any conservative expression of any religion. I don't think this broadening of the meaning of the term was an accidental move. It was an attempt to associate conservative Christians, like Jerry Falwell and his group "The Moral Majority" with the likes of the Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden, and this was done for domestic political purposes. The term has thus really ceased to have much meaning, aside from those who wish to use it as a synonym for "stupid," and that seems to be the primary level of meaning with which Dr. Demacopoulos is using the term.

Dr. Demacopoulos makes a loose connection with the original meaning of the term when he says: "Like other fundamentalist movements, Orthodox fundamentalism reduces all theological teaching to a subset of theological axioms and then measures the worthiness of others according to them." The only problem with this statement is that he provides no examples, and the statement is simply not true. If we take, for example, the Greek Old Calendarists, which would be among the most likely candidates to fall into the category that Dr. Demacopoulos is speaking of, you could say that the Calendar issue is used by them as a litmus test issue, but it is hardly the case that they would argue that one needed to only be on the Old Calendar to satisfy their definition of fidelity to Orthodoxy. In fact, the fault the Greek Old Calendarists have, is not that they have a minimalist understanding of Orthodoxy, but that they are maximalists who take some issues which should not be matters over which one should be willing to break communion over, too far. Even among the Old Calendarists themselves they have further divided over many issues. So in fact, their tendency is exactly the opposite of Protestant Fundamentalists, who really were focusing on the minimum one had to believe. And it is actually the Orthodox modernists who typically try to reduce the "essentials" of the Orthodox Faith to the lowest common denominator, and so they are far closer to being fundamentalists in the original sense of the term.

Dr. Demacopoulos then asserts: "The key intellectual error in Orthodox fundamentalism lies in the presupposition that the Church Fathers agreed on all theological and ethical matters." This lazy straw man caricature is not what one would expect of professor of theology at a respected university. If that is the key intellectual error, I would like to find one example of a person who actually fits that description. I doubt that even the slug-nuttiest Old Calendarist that one might find would argue that "the Church Fathers agreed on all theological and ethical matters."

We are then told that "Typically, this manifests itself in accusations that individuals, institutions, or entire branches of the Orthodox Church fail to meet the self-prescribed standard for Orthodox teaching." I would be curious to know why St. Mark of Ephesus would not be considered an "Orthodox Fundamentalist," because he broke communion with those who failed to meet what St. Mark considered to be the standard for Orthodox teaching. Probably, the answer we would get is that St. Mark was not a intellectual troglodyte, but regardless, there obviously are boundaries that can be crossed that warrant such an action, and so the issue is not whether someone is a fundamentalist because they believe there are such boundaries, but rather the merits of the specific issues at stake... which we are not provided with in this article.

He then goes on to provide examples that knock down the straw man he has set up:

"Indeed, a careful reading of Christian history and theology makes clear that some of the most influential saints of the Church disagreed with one another—at times quite bitterly. St. Peter and St. Paul were at odds over circumcision.  St. Basil and St. Gregory the Theologian clashed over the best way to recognize the divinity of Holy Spirit.  And St. John Damascene, who lived in a monastery in the Islamic Caliphate, abandoned the hymnographical tradition that preceded him in order to develop a new one that spoke to the needs of his community."

Here again, we find careless overstatements. Where do we find St. Peter and St. Paul disagreeing over circumcision? We find them in very clear agreement on that issue in Acts 15. Most likely, he has in mind Galatians chapter 2, but the disagreement was not over circumcision... it was over St. Peter's hypocrisy while around those "of the circumcision" -- there is no indication that they had a substantive disagreement on the issue. They had a disagreement over St. Peter's behavior and inconsistency, and St. Paul called him on it, to his face, and in the presence of all (Galatians 2:11,14). There is also no indication in the text, nor in Church Tradition that this was a matter of ongoing disagreement or division between these two saints. This was rather an example of even a great saint being capable of falling into temporary error.

It is also clearly excessive to claim that St. John of Damascus "abandoned the hymnographical tradition that preceded him". What was the hymnographical tradition that preceded him? The way older aspects of the services have generally ended up being sidelined was not usually by them being replaced by new hymns, but rather by being supplemented with newer hymns, and then as time went on, some of the older texts were generally omitted. If you take the introduction of the texts we use now for the canons at Matins, these hymns were originally sung with the Biblical Odes, which were the older texts that preceded the composition of those hymns. Only as time went by did the practice develop of generally omitting the odes, and retaining the troparia that were composed to be sung with them (though the older practice is still followed to some extent on the weekdays of Great Lent). So to suggest that St. John tossed out all that preceded him is simply contrary to fact.

Also, there is a wee difference when a holy man, such as St. John of Damascus, introduces some new liturgical practice, than when a committee of cigar smoking "theologians" does so. For example, the Greek practice of saying "With the fear of God and with faith and love, draw near" is clearly a change from the original form of "With the fear of God and with faith, draw near". But it was, I believe, introduced by the Kollyvades Fathers. I was told by someone who is a good source on the matter that St. John of Shanghai also followed this practice. I am inclined to bow to the wisdom of these saints, but think it is right to be skeptical of changes that are introduced by someone who may be very intelligent, but who is not in the same league as these saints.

We find even further hyperbole when Dr. Demacopoulos asserts: "It is important to understand that Orthodox fundamentalists reinforce their reductionist reading of the Church Fathers with additional falsehoods.  One of the most frequently espoused is the claim that the monastic community has always been the guardian of Orthodox teaching.  Another insists that the Fathers were anti-intellectual.  And a third demands that adherence to the teachings of the Fathers necessitates that one resist all things Western."

While it is true that monastic communities have generally been bulwarks of Orthodoxy, I don't know of anyone who would say that this has always and invariably been so. I doubt a single example could be produced of anyone who would seriously argue that the Fathers were anti-intellectuals. And the closest example of one who argues that the teachings of the Fathers necessitates that one "resist all things Western" would be Fr. John Romanides, and his admirers... but not even they would make such a sweeping statement as is made here, and I don't think Fr. John Romanides was an anti-intellectual.

And when Dr. Demacopoulos makes the assertion that "By repurposing the tradition as a political weapon, the ideologue deceives those who are not inclined to question the credibility of their religious leaders", it would be helpful if he would provide some examples and name some names so that we would have some idea of who and what he is referring to.

Furthermore, I am not so sure that "The significance of the Fathers lies in their earnest and soul-wrenching quest to seek God and to share Him with the world." If that were the case, I am not sure how they would be any different than Lao Tzu, Gautama Buddha, Socrates, or Muhammad. Their significance is in how they explained, articulated, passed on, and earnestly contended for "the Faith once delivered unto the saints" (Jude 1:3). They were not just smart men who were earnest, but holy men who received the Faith of the Apostles, and passed it on without alteration -- and in doing so, in the face of new challenges to that Faith, enriched the Church with their words, their faithful lives, and their examples. We understand the Faith better because of them, but we do not now have a new faith or a different faith.

And he closes with this call to action: "It is time for Orthodox hierarchs and lay leaders to proclaim broadly that the endearing relevance of the Church Fathers does not lie in the slavish adherence to a fossilized set of propositions used in self-promotion." But I don't see how Orthodox hierarchs or lay leaders can answer his call, even if they were inclined to do so, because Dr. Demacopoulos gives us no indication exactly who or what he is talking about.

If someone can be pointed to that is fairly described by the descriptions found in this article, I would certainly think such a person was worthy of criticism. But let's talk specifics, rather than tossing around meaningless terms that would have us believe that there is real line of philosophical agreement between the average conservative Evangelical Protestant, some unspecified group of Orthodox Christians, and Jihadist terrorists that are beheading and stoning those they disagree with.

Update: Someone referred me to the conference that Dr. Demacopoulos was apparently referring to. There was a conference (entitled "Patristic Theology and Post-Patristic Heresy") held in Piraeus, Greece, on February 15, 2012, which was at least in large part in response to the Volos conference he mentioned. Among its speakers were Protopresbyter George Metallinos, Professor Emeritus of Athens University, and Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos). Are these really the "Orthodox fundamentalists" who claim that the Fathers were anti-intellectual, and agreed on all points of theology and ethics? You can read their papers, among others, in a pdf format, by clicking here and clicking here.

See Also: Fundamental Errors: A Response to "Tradition Without Fundamentalism" by George Demacopoulos

You may not be interested in Culture Wars, but Culture Wars are interested in you

There are those in the Orthodox Church who say that we should have nothing to do with the culture wars that have been raging in our culture since the 60's. They accuse conservative converts of trying to bring those culture wars into the Orthodox Church. Ironically, those who talk like this are usually the very people who actually are bringing the culture wars into the Orthodox Church by their promotion of the acceptance of homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion, women's ordination, and various other liberal causes. It is not as if the Orthodox Church was full of people who thought gay marriage was a great idea until converts started showing up. In fact, the Orthodox in traditionally Orthodox countries are very conservative, and though, for example, there are not lots of Protestant converts to Orthodoxy in Russia, the Russian Church has taken a very strong and vocal position on these issues.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow is not a convert from Protestantism, but he made these comments at the end of a recent concelebration with Metropolitan Tikhon of the OCA:

"The task of our Churches is to pray and work in order that the Lord would grant His mercy on the peoples of our countries, so that God’s strength would make moral basics stronger, which originate in God’s morals of the Bible, and so that the relations between our countries would strengthen based on common moral values.

That is why we endure the deviations from these God’s moral standards so painfully. The deviations take place both in the United States and other Western countries at the present time. It is a great challenge for Christian Churches. Many of them, especially Protestant organizations, fail to overcome this challenge – they follow the path of the renunciation of their own identity, refuse from moral values of the Gospel in favor of political fashion. But the Orthodox Churches cannot do this and therefore the Orthodox Churches encourage people to profess the faith. We have a right to speak about it like this here at this cathedral, because our Church has gone through decades of suffering and profession, but it has not faltered or cheated on itself.

That is why we heartily wish that the Orthodox Church in America would preserve the fidelity to Christ, His Commandments, and would be, if not very bright and strong, but still light for its people. We are aware that even the light of a small candle becomes a powerful point of reference and helps people find their way to salvation" (see “Orthodox Church is the Bridge that is Able to Unite Russian and American Peoples," translated by Pravmir.ru).

This coming right on the heels of a controversy within the OCA, in which a senior priest has suggested that the Church needs to re-think its position on homosexuality, I can't help but suspect that these comments were made in reference to it.

It would be nice if we could ignore the culture wars, but the culture wars are coming after us, our Church, and our families. You can choose what you are prepared to defend, but you cannot choose who will attack what you wish to defend. Franklin Roosevelt was not "fixated" on militaristic fascism... but he spent quite a bit of his efforts and energy fighting it, because militaristic fascists were attacking the country that he, as president, was sworn to defend. Today it is pro-abortionists, pro-homosexuals, and certain varieties of feminists that are attacking the Traditions of the Orthodox Church. We didn't pick them, they picked us. We have no choice but to defend the Church and its Tradition, or to raise the rainbow flag and surrender.

We do believe that the Orthodox Church is the True Church, and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it, but that does not mean that large parts of it, including our own, cannot fall into heresy and error, if we are not vigilant. It has happened more than once in Church history, and there is no reason to think that we are somehow immune today.

The people of God are the guardians of piety, as the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs of 1848 (in reply to Pope Pius the IX) states. It is therefore not only permissible, but obligatory for all of the faithful, and even more so for the clergy, to oppose these attempts to infect our Church with the same heresies that have wreaked such havoc in mainline Protestant Churches, and are in the process of doing the same in the Roman Catholic Church.

Update: You can also hear the Patriarch speak of his view of the culture wars in America in this exchange with Franklin Graham, son of the evangelist Billy Graham:


For more: Fr. Lawrence Farley, in a recent podcast, made this case very eloquently, and I would encourage everyone to listen to it:

Magical Thinking in the Orthodox Church

And you can read it here:

http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/nootherfoundation/magical-thinking-orthodox-church/

He also was recently interviewed by Fr. Chad Hatfield on the question of women's ordination, and the historic order of Deaconesses: http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/svsvoices/deaconesses

For the Houston Mayor... Here are My Sermons

As you have probably heard, the Mayor of Houston, Annise Parker, has subpoenaed the sermons of several ministers in Houston, particularly those sermons that mentioned her, homosexuality, or her push to allow men who think they are women to use the ladies room if they wish. I think every clergyman in the country should respond and send her recordings or texts of their sermons.

Her e-mail is mayor@houstontx.gov

Her facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/MayorAnniseParker

Her Twitter account is here: https://twitter.com/AnniseParker

Maybe all those sermons will do her some good.

Here are some of mine:

The Inconvenient Truth about Homosexual Marriage (Romans 1:18-27)

The Empty House: what happens when a person or a nation abandons God? (Luke 11:23-26)

“As it was in the days of Noah” (Genesis 6:5-8)

Flee Sexual Immorality (1 Corinthians 5-6)

All of my other sermons for the past few years are posted here:

http://www.saintjonah.org/podcasts/sermons.htm

You can also see what I have posted on my blog on the subject, here:

http://fatherjohn.blogspot.com/search/label/Gay%20Marriage

You can try to intimidate us all you like, but we still have freedom of religion and freedom of speech in this country, and we will continue to exercise those rights as we see fit.

Stump the Priest: What Can We Do to Fight for Traditional Values?

 St. Alexander Peresvet in single combat with the Tatar champion Chelubey 

at the opening of the Battle of Kulikovo (8 September 1380).

What are the ways (either derived from doctrine, history, or as guided by current leadership) that ordinary members of the Church--those who need to go to work everyday and may not have a whole lot of extra time to devote--contribute in trying to influence our culture to affirm traditional values and "push back" against those forces that are trying to destroy them?

There are a number of different levels on which we have to push back:

1). The most important thing for us to do is to begin with ourselves, and to make sure that we are living a pious Christian life, in accordance with the Orthodox Tradition. If we do so, we will influence those around us, and what we say and do otherwise to defend traditional values will carry weight, whereas if we speak out about these values, but do not live them ourselves, everything else we say and do will be a waste of time.

2). Going one step further, we must make sure that our homes reflect traditional Orthodox Christian values. Aside from working on ourselves, ensuring that our children will grow up to be devote Orthodox Christians is the greatest work we can accomplish.

3).We should also work within our parish to make sure that there is one more welcoming spiritual haven for those seeking salvation. A parish has many things that need to be done, and not everyone can do them all, but everyone can do something. We should ask God to show us what our part is, and take it as seriously as we would our secular jobs… in fact we should take it more seriously.

4). Beyond that, there are a number of things that we can do impact those outside of our parishes:

a). We can of course pray for our country and for the whole world. This is a very important duty that we all have.

b). Since we live in a representative democracy, we can and should vote for candidates that reflect Christian values. We never have perfect choices, but we should pray, and vote for those who come closest to the values that we hold. Among the highest values that we hold are the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of the family. We should not vote for those who favor killing innocent unborn children for the sake of convenience. We should also not vote for those candidates that seek to undermine the traditional definition of marriage, or support other policies that are detrimental to the family. Sometimes weighing these values and looking at the choices we have can be difficult, and of course reasonable Christians can disagree, but let everyone vote their conscience first -- not their pocketbook.

c). We can make sure that we are well informed, so that we can talk intelligently with our friends and coworkers about these issues, and hopefully sway them over time.

d). Some may be called to run for public office themselves, and there is no reason why a pious Orthodox layman should not pursue so a path, if they feel that this is what God has for them to do.

e). You can support groups that defend Tradition values with your time and/or your money. You can also engage in lawful protests.

f). And if it should come to the point that the government is either asking us to do things that we cannot in good conscience do, or forbids us from doing things that our conscience requires us to do, we can engage in civil disobedience.

I would encourage you to read The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, especially the section on the relationship between Church and State, Christian Ethics and Secular Law, and the section on the Church and Politics.

Hammer Control?

Many are arguing that Wayne LaPierre argued that violent movies and violent video games share some of the blame for the recent school shooting in Connecticut, that he was undercutting the traditional argument that "Gun's don't kill people, people kill people". The problem with that observation is that guns are tools, just like hammers are tools. Movies and Video Games are mediums, and mediums communicate information. If we have lots of video games in which people went around cracking people's skulls with hammers, and we had movies that glorified killing people with hammers, we would probably see a rise in murders committed with hammers. If we did, hammers would not share equal blame with those movies and video games.... hammers are tools, which can be put to either good or bad uses. The answer is not hammer control, or limiting the size and weight of hammers.

Human beings have a natural aversion to killing other human beings. You have to train a person to kill another person. Guns cannot train anyone, and neither can hammers. Movies and video games can train people.

As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman observed in his article "Trained to Kill", without training, human beings are very ineffective killers:

"In more modern times, the average firing rate was incredibly low in Civil War battles. Paddy Griffith demonstrates that the killing potential of the average Civil War regiment was anywhere from five hundred to a thousand men per minute. The actual killing rate was only one or two men per minute per regiment (The Battle Tactics of the American Civil War). At the Battle of Gettysburg, of the 27,000 muskets picked up from the dead and dying after the battle, 90 percent were loaded. This is an anomaly, because it took 95 percent of their time to load muskets and only 5 percent to fire. But even more amazingly, of the thousands of loaded muskets, over half had multiple loads in the barrel--one with 23 loads in the barrel. In reality, the average man would load his musket and bring it to his shoulder, but he could not bring himself to kill. He would be brave, he would stand shoulder to shoulder, he would do what he was trained to do; but at the moment of truth, he could not bring himself to pull the trigger. So, he lowered the weapon and loaded it again. Of those who did fire, only a tiny percentage fired to hit. The vast majority fired over the enemy's head."

However, with training, people can become killing machines:

The Japanese were masters at using classical conditioning with their soldiers. Early in World War II, Chinese prisoners were placed in a ditch on their knees with their hands bound behind them. And one by one, a select few Japanese soldiers would go into the ditch and bayonet "their" prisoner to death. This is a horrific way to kill another human being. Up on the bank, countless other young soldiers would cheer them on in their violence. Comparatively few soldiers actually killed in these situations, but by making the others watch and cheer, the Japanese were able to use these kinds of atrocities to classically condition a very large audience to associate pleasure with human death and suffering. Immediately afterwards, the soldiers who had been spectators were treated to sake, the best meal they had had in months, and to so-called comfort girls. The result? They learned to associate committing violent acts with pleasure. The Japanese found these kinds of techniques to be extraordinarily effective at quickly enabling very large numbers of soldiers to commit atrocities in the years to come. Operant conditioning (which we will look at shortly) teaches you to kill, but classical conditioning is a subtle but powerful mechanism that teaches you to like it.

Violent movies and video games train people to kill. That doesn't mean that everyone who watches violent movies or plays Halo is going to kille 20 little kids, but those things do make you capable of shooting another human being in a way that people in the Civil War were not, even though they all had access to guns.

Mass Shootings and Cultural Decay

This is a sermon reflecting on the shootings in Aurora, Colorado, but the comments are applicable to the shootings of today as well:

Click here to listen

Delivered on 7/22/2012.

Update: The shooter was allegedly a "Goth" who suffered from some personality disorder. This disorder is becoming an epidemic: Spiritual-Deficiency-Disorder.

You should also read "Trained to Kill", by military psychologist Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.

The incredible Hutzpah of the Left on Gay Marriage

Click here to see the "controversial" answer of Miss California.

Click here to listen to some of the obnoxious abuse that has been heaped on Miss California (warning, it is offensive).

By now, most people are aware of the fact that Miss California was asked by an obnoxious gay activist judge whether she thought every state should legalize gay marriage, and she gave a very non-confrontational answer in which she apologetically stated her own opinion that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and quickly stated that it was not her intention to offend anyone by saying so.

Her answer has been called controversial, despite the fact that her opinion happens to be the opinion shared by all of human history since the dawn of time up until very recently. Her opinion happens to also coincide with the stated opinion of President Obama, but I think the Gay activists give him a pass because they know he doesn't really mean it.

Even the ancient Greeks, many of whom held the opinion that a homosexual relationship was superior to a relationship between a man and a woman, never imagined calling a homosexual relationship "marriage". Marriage can only be between a man and woman because only a man and woman can produce offspring. We have laws that govern marriage because human societies have always seen the importance of identifying who a child's parents are (DNA testing is a very recent phenomenon), and what responsibilities the parents have to each other, to the children and what responsibilities children have to their parents. We have spousal benefits, because of the fact that having children and raising them requires that certain accommodations be made to facilitate that.

Two gay men do not need spousal benefits, because they can both work. If one becomes disabled, there are disability benefits available for him. There is no need to define their relationship legally, because they cannot produce children. If they want to provide for property rights for their gay lovers, there are legal means available for them to do so.

Most people are not in favor of being mean to other people... including gay people. Most people do not think gays should be beaten up, or otherwise mistreated. However, Gay Activists are not happy with being tolerated -- they want everyone to approve of their lifestyle. But you know what? This is America, and we don't have to approve of their lifestyle... and we certainly do not have to change the meaning of marriage that has existed for all of time to make them feel better about themselves. Aside from everything else, redefining marriage will not make them feel better about themselves, and they will have to move on to some other means of being obnoxious in their never ending pursuit of the elimination of any opinion about their lifestyle that does not coincide with their own.

They say they want tolerance... but who is being intolerant here? Miss California's answer was exceedingly tolerant, perhaps too tolerant. Their abuse of her ever since has been incredibly intolerant.

And to answer the specious arguments that the definition of marriage has changed over history, because polygamy use to be allowed -- polygamy literally means "many marriages", and it refers to the practice of a man who has had multiple marriages to multiple women -- each marriage, however, happens to be between a man and a woman. The man's wives are not married to each other. A polygamous man can divorce one wife, while remaining married to the other women. Christians have always been opposed to polygamy, because we believe that the ideal is for one man to marry only one woman for life. Polygamy, however is not a thing of the past (it exists in many parts of the world), and if gay marriage is allowed, it is hard to imagine how polygamy can remain illegal in the United States for long.

Some are saying Gay Marriage is inevitable. If it is, the Islamic take over that will follow such a deterioration of our culture, is also inevitable... and they will then ban gay marriage, and cut off the heads of the gay activists who are pushing this agenda. If it comes to that, they will long for the day when the most intolerant thing they had to deal with were Southern Baptists, like Carrie Prejean.

Even Canadians find Perez Hilton's attacks obnoxious: