I guess media bias is just the same in Australia: “Pell defends Catholic schools’ right to discriminate” So says the headline on the Australian TV ABC News web site. What it’s really about is the Catholic Church’s right not to be forced to subsidize what it views as immoral. In this case, Catholics being allowed to expel students who violate moral codes, including ones who declare themselves to be unchaste gays or girls who get pregnant, for example. I’m sure unchaste heterosexuals and the boys who are the fathers suffer the same fate.
Some educrats want to force Catholic schools to follow the same anti-discrimination, i.e. forced tolerance for immoral behavior, laws as public schools. But Cardinal Pell has it right: “We have a right to teach our Christian teachings and to follow out the consequences of that,” he said. “Nobody is forced to send their children to Catholic schools. Parents send children to Catholic schools because they know they will get a certain set of values there.” Or at least they should.
Just recently here in New Jersey, we had a case where a local Catholic school let go a woman teacher when it was discovered she was pregnant by her unmarried boyfriend. She was told she could keep her job if she got married. She refused, and told everyone (including her students) that what she was doing was just fine. After she was let go, the newspapers were filled with irate and angry letters – aimed at the Catholic Church. How intolerant! How caveman! How discriminatory! The nerve, the nerve!
More broadly, (non-thinking) people have come to believe that ‘discrimination’ of any sort is a moral bad. I’ve strongly opposed having open and out homosexual scoutmasters for the Boy Scouts – for a number of very, very good reasons. At a meeting on this issue, I bluntly expressed all these reasons, and one lady came up to me afterward saying, “I understand all your reasons, and I don’t blame you one bit. But still, don’t you see, it’s DISCRIMINATORY…” My answer: Of course it is. It’s my job as a father to discriminate actively and carefully regarding who has access to my children, and what they are taught. I gladly and wholeheartedly discriminate against homosexual scoutmasters for my sons – as I should. Three big parts of the problem – 1) People can’t think anymore; 2) People are completely afraid of giving offense; and 3) People have no notion of right and wrong, other than what the newspapers tell them.
Even more broadly, the Supreme Court case affirming the Boy Scouts’ right to discriminate against homosexual scoutmasters will have long lasting repercussions for the Catholic Church. But for one vote on the Supreme Court, private organizations would have lost their right to freedom of association. The Knights of Columbus would have to admit Muslims, the Boy Scouts would have to admit transvestite scoutmasters, and the Jewish Defense League would have to admit Yasser Arafat supporters. The fact that the Boy Scouts won this case by a slender thread shows how close we are in this country to a whopping loss of individual freedom, including freedom of conscience, speech and religion.
One future test of the right of association in the United States – people are going to start forming ‘straight’ clubs and gyms and associations – so that their kids don’t have to be exposed to homosexual behavior. At my local YMCA, homosexual men often appear in the boys’ locker room (supposedly reserved for boys under 18 and their fathers), and display all sorts of ‘affectionate’ and effeminate behavior. And there are going to be parks for ‘straight’ people and their children, where the bathrooms aren’t littered with used fecal condoms – as they are in certain New Jersey public parks…