[Vision2020] Trinity Festival protest

[Andreas Schou]

On 8/10/07, g. crabtree <jampot at roadrunner.com> wrote:
> To a certain extent I agree, but then again I didn't choose the
> battleground. I fight where the opponent is. Mr. Schou for some reason
> wanted to attempt to make a point involving that resource and I was only too
> happy to refute him on the ground of his choice.

Gary --

Not having wanted to donate money directly to Doug Wilson, I'm
unfortunately without direct quotations from his books, and I am not
going to take a walk down to the library in order to win an argument
I've already had a thousand times, and which I'm sure is boring the
list members who've had to sit through me having it a thousand times.
This will be long. It will bore most of you. You can stop reading
here, if you like.

So let's go back to the beginning here, which was the teachings of
Doug Wilson's denomination, the Confederation of Reformed
Evangelicals, on the issue we were originally discussing: the
execution of homosexuals for homosexuality. The issue is confused more
than a little, now, by the rapid backpedaling and sidestepping that
occurred in 2003, when Christ Church finally realized that the locals
were paying attention to what he was saying (he thought) to an
external audience.

First of all, let me start out by saying that of his two most regular
confederates, George Grant and Steve Wilkins (the two co-presenters at
most of the "History Conferences"), our Doug is by far the most
publicly reasonable. George Grant is an unreconstructed Christian
Reconstructionist, who, in 1993, wrote an entire book (titled
"Legislating Immorality") devoted to the subject of executing people
for crimes ending in the letter 'y'.

Steve Wilkins, on the other hand, is largely a southern theo-partisan
and co-founder of the League of the South, a neo-confederate hate
group. His works include a full-throated defense of the Salem Witch
Trials as being appropriate for American jurisprudence, a reprinting
of the works of R.L. Dabney, including "A Defense of Virginia," in
which Dabney claims that the purpose of the Civil war was to breed a
race of killer mulattos to destroy the pure Southern Anglo-Celtic
stock.

You'll likely get the same answer from the vast majority of members of
his church -- like, for instance, Andrew Sandlin, whose Church of the
King in California is part of the CREC, is a former editor of the
Chalcedon Report, whose sine qua non was the establishment of,
essentially, Christian sharia courts in the United States. Here's a
quote:

"It is not our responsibility to select certain portions of the Law of
God that we like. I realize that in late 20th century America, we have
certain tender sensibilities about how abortionists or homosexuals
should be treated. We live according to a "rights" theory of life,
rather than a responsibility view of life. So there are some of God's
laws that do, especially on first reading, seem harsh and difficult.
The question we have to ask is -- Are we going to conform our ideas
and practice to the Law of God? -- Or are we going to permit the
modern culture dictate to us our ethical values?"

So, again, up until 2003, Doug really had nothing to lose by saying
whatever it is that he wanted. These guys -- knuckle-dragging,
unreconstructed theocrats like Grant and Wilkins -- were the only
people he was speaking to. And he wasn't particularly good at
moderating his message for public consumption; again, he hadn't had to
up to this point. At that point, he was, in fact, poor enough at
moderating his message that his books were widely promoted and
discussed on "kinist" websites, "kinism" being basically racism with a
theocratic twist (again, if you've the stomach for it, you can look at
the November 2003-February 2004 archives of blogs like Badlands and
Little Geneva).

Now, why is that? Because his "nuanced" views were, at the time,
non-existent. His current protestations to the contrary
notwithstanding, he was making public claims that the only option for
homosexuals was execution -- he actually made that claim (along with
arguing that raped virgins should be forced to marry their rapist) at
a debate with Edward Tabash in October of 2002, long before I actually
knew who he was.

When backed into a rhetorical corner with no way out of admitting to
what he said (and knowing that continuing to say these things in
forums accessible to outsiders would certainly hurt him in Moscow),
Doug started to scramble for "nuance" where none had previously
existed. He told the Daily News that exile was an alternative to
execution -- a rhetorical move that, when he found that it did not, in
fact, quell the furor over his bigotry, he disavowed. He began
claiming around this time that the "real issue" (as though no one
really cared about the slavery issue) was homosexuality.

This was not a particularly novel claim, as George Grant and Steve
Wilkins had been explaining that the reason for the "abortion,
feminism, and homosexuality" was, in fact, the abolition of slavery
for years.

So this brings us, then, to his contemporary views on using the
judicial system to murder gays and lesbians.

I actually sat down for lunch with him, at Zume, around this time. I'd
characterize it as a perfectly pleasant lunch. And I got to ask him
quite a few interesting questions -- about his links to Christian
Reconstructionism; about homosexuality; about the implementation of
Mosaic Law in modern society. I didn't ask about the slavery issue (at
the time, it was, of course, a little touchy), but I did get a fairly
straight answer with regard to his wildly skidding theology (or
politics; the distinction is a bit vague for Wilson) with regard to
homosexuality. It was that "oh, sure, in 500 years, when everybody's
Christian, execution will be mandatory, but there will, of course, be
very few homosexuals at that point, so it will merely be a sad, rare,
eventuality."

He's a little more coy about it here, but from this blog post --
actually, a reprint of an answer he gave me on the list back in 2004
-- you can see exactly the same answer. Again, remember that this is
written specifically to mollify an outside audience.

"There are a number of other questions I am leaving unanswered. One of
them has to do with the governmental treatment of certain individuals
convicted of certain homosexual acts in some unnamed Christian
republic five hundred years from now. They are reasonable questions,
but please keep in mind that I am in a series of controversies of some
unreasonable people, and so I will answer generally. In such a
republic, would homosexual acts be against the law, and if so, what
would the penalty be? Like I said, reasonable questions. Yes, such
behavior would be against the law -- just like it was throughout all
fifty states just a few short years ago. And what would the penalties
be? The answer to that question requires a certain level of cultural
maturity (beyond what is currently in evidence) -- that has to take
into account careful exegesis of the Old Testament texts, the nature
and purpose of common law, the circumstances of each particular case,
the flow of redemptive history, and the forgiveness that is offered to
everyone in Jesus Christ.

It is not hard for me to imagine a secularist differing with all of
this. But the one thing he should be careful to do is not to
misrepresent it."

This wasn't really the end of it all. In order to further muddy the
waters, Doug Wilson (in conjunction with Doug Jones) produced a
further elaboration of this "nuanced" view. I'll use World Magazine's
summary of his view, rather than repost it:

"In an article entitled "Owning the Curse: Re-Thinking Same-Sex
Marriage," written with Douglas Jones in the journal Credenda/Agenda,
Wilson makes the following argument: (1) Homosexuality, according to
Romans 1, is God's judgment on societies that reject Him. (2)
Christians should not reject God's judgments, but take responsibility
for them so as to repent. (3) Homosexuality is a particular judgment
against the Church, for failing to promote Biblical fatherhood. (4)
Homosexuality may well be genetic--as are other sins from our
inherited fallen nature--and Christians should treat homosexuals
kindly, as victims of bad fathering. (5) Christians should let gay
marriage happen, as God's judgment on our culture. (6) The only remedy
for this judgment is restoring "right worship" and recovering Biblical
fatherhood."

So, in other, less charitable words:

Homosexuality (including gay marriage) is a judgment on America, much
like a plague of locusts or frogs, brought on by feminism. Men haven't
sufficiently oppressed women; therefore, God judges us by making men's
sons effeminate. Therefore, under the current system, harsh punishment
for homosexuality is uncalled for, because it would be an "autonomous"
(contrast "autonomy" with "theonomy")  rejection of a judgment against
America by God. However, once America has brought its house in order,
punishment for homosexuality can include death; however, the Mosaic
code specifies only *maximum* punishments -- a judge might sentence a
homosexual merely to exile, if he were merciful. The death penalty is
reserved only for the most "serious, unrepentant" cases.

And that's the final word.

-- ACS