Comments for Straw Votes and Revelations at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 11 out of 11 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sun, 19 May 2013 23:14:03 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/straw-votes-and-revelations.html#comment-7774 Prof Arkes I tried to include links in my previous post One can find the Court of Cassation's judgment on Juritel, the case is Stéphane C. et Bertrand Z. c/ Procureur de la république de Bordeaux The Constitutional Council's decision can be found on the Conseil Constitutionnel website [Décision n° 2010-92 QPC du 28 janvier 2011] An English version of the the Pécresse report can be found on the Preserve Marriage website The Senate's report can be found on its website Bienvenue au Sénat under Rapports Législatifs - Michael Paterson-Seymour Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:01:45 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/straw-votes-and-revelations.html#comment-7768 Arkes would perhaps have a point if we were under a moral obligation to support whatever the Republican Party chooses to dish up. Santorum is talking a good game at this stage in the primaries -- when his words have no effect except on himself. It's a poor politician who can't say the right things to people whose votes or money he wants. However, we know more about Santorum than what he said at the straw poll; we know his record of past actions. This is what Arkes so desperately wants us to forget. It's the same strategy Romney is using -- don't look at my record, listen to my recent speech! When you vote for the lesser evil, you are voting for evil. - Howard Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:12:53 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/straw-votes-and-revelations.html#comment-7767 Prof Arkes The French case is usually referred to as the Bègles case, from the name of the town where the mayor celebrated a marriage for two men. The Procurator-General sought a decree of Nullity The TGI (Court of first instance), the Court of Appeal, the Court of Cassation and the Constitutional Council unanimously rejected a right to SSM The judgement of the highest court, the Court of Cassation was pronounced on 13 March 2007 The case then went to the Constitutional Council, which is the Supreme Court for constitutional cases. Check the Commentaire aux Cahiers for a very valuable commentary on the rather brief (by Anglo-American standards) judgment. A good discussion of the case (in English) can be found in the Pécresse report on Marriage and the Family to the National Assembly, dated 25 January 2006, after the first appeal. This report also quotes the great French jurist Carbonnier “The heart of a marriage is not the couple, but the presumption of paternity.” This was echoed in a report of the French Senate "Preserving the presumption " is est pater quem nuptiae demonstrant ", [Dig. 2, 4, 5; 1] adopted in all European legislation as Ms. Frédérique Granet-Lambrechts, professor at the Robert Schuman University of Strasbourg, told your reporter, Article 312 of Civil Code provides that a child conceived or born during the marriage has the husband for its father. The presumption of paternity of the husband rests on the obligation of fidelity between spouses and reflects the commitment made by the husband during the celebration of marriage, to raise the couple's children. The report presenting the order to the President of the Republic rightly points out that " it is, in the words of Dean Carbonnier, the ‘heart of marriage,’ and cannot be questioned without losing for this institution its meaning and value."" [My translation] It is significant that, in a country so committed to the principle of laïcité as France, no one has suggested that Carbonnier's views, or those of the Courts are either the result of religious convictions or an attempt to import them into his interpretation of the Code. I apologize for the length of this post, but I trust you and your readers may find it useful - Michael Paterson-Seymour Wed, 17 Aug 2011 05:49:37 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/straw-votes-and-revelations.html#comment-7763 Thank you again, Dr. Arkes. I have a more non-specific question: can a trained,educated, practicing Roman Catholic really possess any interest in this country? I seem to be "arguing" with almost everyone with whom I discuss affairs. Take the Catholic support for same sex marriage as a "civil right". If para #2357 of the C.C.C. says in its last sentence that under no circumstance can homosexual behavior ever be approved, that should conclude the discussion; but instead it goes interminably on. - Manfred Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:31:45 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/straw-votes-and-revelations.html#comment-7760 Mr. Patterson-Seymour brings some vastly interesting news and shows, again, the deep value that may come along, for the writer as well as the readers, in these possibilities for the readers to offer comments in a timely way. I’d be intensely interested in hearing more, and I wonder if he has any citations he could send along. Messrs. Putt and Colston ask me to say more about this matter of a “prudential accommodation,” and so it may indeed be worth saying far more in another column. I was rather taken aback recently when a figure of some standing among conservatives expressed deep surprise that I would not accept the rightness of abortion in cases of incest and rape. He had trouble even grasping the case for classic prudence here: As Aquinas—and Lincoln—recognized, statesmen at times are compelled to make an accommodation with an evil for the sake of compressing or limiting that evil. In the case of Lincoln, it was the evil of slavery. One may have put up with certain things that the public will not see removed. At those moments it becomes critical that one avoid any endorsement at all in principle, and that one seeks ways of limiting or confining the evil. At the same time, one actively builds the understanding in which that evil could be seen, more and more, as the evil it is. It was telling, I thought, that this conservative friend was faintly disturbed by my unwillingness to endorse abortion in these cases. Once again, that critical holding back from a moral acceptance or endorsement is felt quite keenly. On all of this, more later. - Hadley Arkes Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:31:09 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/straw-votes-and-revelations.html#comment-7754 Isn't opening a crack in the door to abortion as a prudential accommodation to the passions of the public dangerously similar to legislating from personal belief? - Ken Colston Tue, 16 Aug 2011 06:54:37 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/straw-votes-and-revelations.html#comment-7753 Mr. Arkes, who ought to be a Supreme Court nominee sometime for his acuity, opens the door to abortion in cases of rape as a prudential accommodation to the passions of the public. Isn't this accommodation dangerously similar to legislating on the grounds of personal belief? - Ken Colston Tue, 16 Aug 2011 06:46:17 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/straw-votes-and-revelations.html#comment-7752 Ah, California, a nice place to live if you're an orange, as Fred Allen once said. Hadley, you left out Perry, the presumed front-runner according to some, who famously said, "That's fine with me," when asked about so-called gay marriage, suggesting that whatever a state wants to do is OK with him. The polygamy argument can be extended to ridiculous lengths such as marrying one's mother (after all, we love each other), to marrying one's dog (trust me, he consents) to marrying a tree (after all, I love to hug her). That the topic of traditional marriage -- one man/one woman -- is up for "debate" is yet another sign of decaying Western civilization. Surely, a generation or two ago, no one in his or her right mind would accept the idea of same-sex couples "marrying" but now it's considered arguable on at least "legal" grounds. Morality, as usual, takes a back seat in the public square. - Grump Tue, 16 Aug 2011 05:33:36 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/straw-votes-and-revelations.html#comment-7751 Mr. Arkes says it all in that last paragraph. Santorum has been willing to charge forthrightly into moral battles while most of the other candidates hunker down in the fox holes. It's not just the social issues, either. In every opinion he expresses, one hears a foundational moral truth undergirding it. And yet, as a former D.C. lawmaker, he knows you can't always get the purest solution, hence Arkes' "accommodation in prudence". I don't think the GOP understands the gem it has in Santorum. If he doesn't make it through this vetting process, it would nonetheless be prudent for the winner to find a prominent place on his or her team for this wise young man. - Bob Servilio Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:32:53 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/straw-votes-and-revelations.html#comment-7750 It is worth noting that the two highest courts in France rejected the equality claim for SSM precisely because the only difference between marriage and civil unions (PACS, available to couples regardless of gender) is the rule that "the child conceived or born in marriage has the husband for father." (Article 312 C Civ)which is obviously gender-specific. Their argument, very briefly, was (1) Mandatory civil marriage, makes the institution a pillar of the secular [laïque] Republic, standing clear of the religious sacrament (2) The institution of republican marriage is inconceivable, absent the idea of filiation, enshrined, not in Church dogma, but in the Civil Code (3) The sex difference is central to filiation. No one ventured the ludicrous argument that questions of civil status, such as paternity, can somehow be "privatised." - Michael Paterson-Seymour Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:17:24 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/straw-votes-and-revelations.html#comment-7749 I pay careful attention to the writing of Professor Arkes. He is a great teacher. I hope he will consider amplifying his thinking on "an accommodation in prudence with the passions of the public". - Bangwell Putt Tue, 16 Aug 2011 01:49:50 +0100