The Petulant Franck
Than you for this remarkable article submitted by TSM Correspondent, Brad Fairchild. Brad’s summary of the Franck Lecture is astute and quite generous in contrast to the very harsh reviews I have seen available. Here is Brad’s Summary:
I would characterize the lecture given by Matthew Franck in the Talmadge Room at Oglethorpe University on Monday afternoon as an exercise in congenial contempt by the speaker for his audience, which was comprised mostly of individuals who were opposed to his message. That message, which was not very adeptly bolstered by a labyrinth of academese, seemed to conclude that Christians who are opposed to same-sex marriage are persecuted by those (mostly secular) folk who are in favor of it.
After brief introductions by Dr. Bradford Smith (a self-proclaimed “neutral” who says he would have been “Belgium in 1914”) and Dr. Joseph Knippenberg (the friend and host of the speaker), Franck took the lectern and seemed, understandably, a little nervous, as at least half of the people in the room of about 100 were either clad in purple or wearing other pro-LGBT items. The audience welcomed him with respectable, but not enthusiastic, applause. He seemed to find his footing quickly and relax as he began his talk.
I’ll just try to hit on some of the major points that I remember. I don’t pretend to recall the ins-and-outs of his argument, but I believe that I was able to glean the gist of his position. He started by claiming that the people who argue against the supporters of “traditional” marriage (I’ll call them SOTM from here on) do so by three basic means: first, they simply ignore the arguments of the SOTM (which I don’t really see as a good starter – maybe it could be number three); second, they “privatize” the SOTMs’ motives, by which he means they claim that the SOTM motives are just private forms of irrationality; and third, they merely declare the victory of the “new morality.” Where the persecution comes in, I didn’t quite see.
At one point, Franck seemed to flirt with employing that old jewel of linking homosexuality with communism. He claimed to be “struck by those who think they know what history will be” in response to gay supporters who assert that they are on the right side of history. “Just ask Whittaker Chambers,” he said, referring to the communist (and gay) HUAC informant who renounced his former affiliations and eventually became a darling of the conservative movement.
The main thrust of his argument however, was that people who base their actions upon religious precepts are unfairly denigrated by the “secularist orthodoxy” and that this denigration may eventually lead to an uprising of sorts of religious people against the enforcers of “political correctness.” He may not have expressed it explicitly, but his implication here was that this would be no mere public debate, but an actual physical revolution. He added, “Americans are sailing towards these deadly shoals.”
Errant and activist judges are the primary enemies here, apparently. Franck says that their “shabby reasoning” in recent cases serves to silence the religious beliefs of SOTM. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is the result of those who tried to make an “end run” around democracy and thwart the will of the people via the courts. The Lawrence v. Texas case of 2003, which decriminalized sodomy, contains “alarming language” that could lead to “incest, polyamory… why not Big Love? A jeep in low gear will gradually gain traction.” He cited the current case of a Columbia University professor who is sleeping with his consenting daughter and is now challenging the incest laws in light of the Lawrence ruling.
Franck claims that religion is based in reason (don’t ask how he got there) and therefore to act upon conclusions derived from religion cannot be a bad thing. It was in regard to this assertion that he spent a large portion of his time on a case from Derby, England in which a Christian fundamentalist couple was denied by the authorities the opportunity to foster children at their home because they considered homosexuality to be a sin. Rather than seeing this as a victory for children who would be spared such an upbringing (whether gay or not), Franck deems it a persecution of a good and charitable Christian family that will eventually lead to even natural children of SOTM couples being ripped from their homes by the State and placed into “politically correct” environments.
At some point, I don’t quite recall when (perhaps after taking Apple to task for disallowing an anti-gay app or maybe after conjuring a hypothetical future in which he and Knippenberg would be non-erotic domestic partners) Franck quoted novelist Evelyn Waugh, which I found amusing in that Waugh was, like Franck, a Catholic conservative who had a more-than-passing fascination with homosexuality.
I have to say, I am quite impressed with the students of Oglethorpe University. During the subsequent Q&A session, a good number of polite and sober individuals asked pointed and well-reasoned questions of the speaker. In fact, it was when Franck was confronted with the holes in his arguments that he began to show signs of losing his composure. Often, he would contradict or belittle the posited question by saying this study or that study did not use a proper sample size or the science was faulty or it was merely anecdotal. One brave student dared to ask whether Franck agreed with Stephen Douglas or Abraham Lincoln concerning the debate of who had the right to decide whether slavery could be spread to the territories. Franck appeared irritated at the student’s attempt to liken his arguments to those of Douglas, snapping “NO! You agree with Douglas!” The student then asked how he came down on the case of Brown v. Board of Education and before the student could even finish the sentence, Franck yelled “Now that doesn’t follow AT ALL!!!” and then immediately asked for the next question.
It was shortly thereafter that Franck declared victory. Literally. He stated that he had “won the argument” that he came to make, “because you all want to move on to another subject. Before I came here all I heard was ‘Shut up and go away’ and now, I’ll be here till midnight [answering your questions].” Then he dismissed the audience, saying “And I’m NOT going to be here till midnight. Have this argument amongst yourselves.”
One woman expressed her displeasure at the earlier comments that compared homosexuality with incest and polygamy, saying she found such speech highly “offensive,” and it was then that Knippenberg stepped in and put an end to the proceedings by chirping, “I think two hours is a lot to ask of any speaker.” Knippenberg invited the audience back to hear the other three lectures in the series: one entitled “The Affordable Care Act Meets the Principle of Enumerated Powers” by Professor Michael DeBow of the Cumberland School of Law, Samford University; one entitled “Religious Exercise, Religious Hiring, and the Common Good” by Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies from the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance; and a lecture by Joe Knippenberg himself, I believe , and which appears to concern the issue of tax credits for private school tuition. The first two are in the Talmadge Room at Oglethorpe University on March 14 at 4pm and 7pm, respectively, while the third falls somewhere, undisclosed, in April.
TSM Correspondent: Brad Fairchild
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