As long as we’re talking about “marriage” we’re going to continue to see a stalemate on this issue as those who believe in a traditional, biblical view of sexuality and those who want the basic rights afforded to others all around them each refuse to give an inch.

So what’s the solution?

The State needs to get out of the “marriage” business. It should recognize that as long as it uses that term, and continues to privilege certain types of relationships over others this issue is going to divide us as a nation, and is only going to become more and more contentious. We need to move towards the system used in many European countries where the State issues nothing but civil unions to anyone who wants them, and then those who desire it may seek a marriage from the Church.

Let me be clear that I don’t oppose this suggestion. There are problems, like the fact that “civil unions” are not treated as equal to marriage. We might be able to fix some of that with legislation, but I suspect the lingering taint of “not real marriage” will persist for generations.

But for other reasons as well I’m reluctant to accept such a compromise. Part of my response has to include a little history. Here’s a snippet from Gary Wills:

The early church had no specific rite for marriage. This was left up to the secular authorities of the Roman Empire, since marriage is a legal concern for the legitimacy of heirs. When the Empire became Christian under Constantine, Christian emperors continued the imperial control of marriage, as the Code of Justinian makes clear. When the Empire faltered in the West, church courts took up the role of legal adjudicator of valid marriages. But there was still no special religious meaning to the institution. As the best scholar of sacramental history, Joseph Martos, puts it: “Before the eleventh century there was no such thing as a Christian wedding ceremony in the Latin church, and throughout the Middle Ages there was no single church ritual for solemnizing marriage between Christians.”

Only in the twelfth century was a claim made for some supernatural favor (grace) bestowed on marriage as a sacrament. By the next century marriage had been added to the biblically sacred number of seven sacraments. Since Thomas Aquinas argued that the spouses’ consent is the efficient cause of marriage and the seal of intercourse was the final cause, it is hard to see what a priest’s blessing could add to the reality of the bond. And bad effects followed. This sacralizing of the natural reality led to a demoting of Yahwist marriage, the only kind Jesus recognized, as inferior to “true marriage” in a church.

The church fathers ranged from men who thought that marriage was a lesser good than celibacy (St. Augustine) and those who thought it a lesser evil than fornication (St. Jerome). Most seemed to agree with St. Paul that “It is well for a man not to touch a woman.” (1.Cor 7:1)

The Church came to marriage late and grudgingly. Only in the twelfth century did Aquinas add an Aristotelian spin on marriage and make it a sacrament. Note that this is not a biblical argument but a natural law argument. Protestant founders like Luther and Calvin seemed to reject it when they left marriage as a civil institution.

Which raises the question: exactly what claim does Hyatt think Christianity has over a civil institution that predates the religion, and which the religion resisted for centuries?

So here’s a counteroffer for Hyatt: let’s leave “marriage” as a civil institution. It has an extremely long history of being a civil institution, and for most of its history the Christian church was happy to leave it as such. Perhaps the Church could use a more theologically loaded word like “covenant,” since that already has some legitimacy among conservatives.

This is a serious suggestion. Conservatives have claimed the word “covenant” as a way of reclaiming of the idea of marriage from the 15 min. in Las Vegas variety. Unlike civil unions, covenants will not be tainted as a kind of marriage lite. It stands a much better chance of working for everybody than the original compromise.

They could learn a lesson from that old time religion, Christianity, where instead of just shouting at people, like John the Baptist did (and look what happened to him), St Paul professed to become all things to all men in order to win souls to his cause. Eventually, that strategy made Christianity the majority faith of the Roman empire.

I’ve run across these ideas about Paul before, and I thought I’d use this as an excuse to complicate them a bit.

John, Jesus and Paul

Let’s get the first part out of the way. According to tradition, John the Baptist and Paul both met the same fate: beheading as a punishment for troubling the authorities. And according to most historical Jesus scholars, John the Baptist played mentor to Jesus, so you can’t say he never accomplished anything. Any comparison has to accept that John started the movement that Paul found so inspiring.

Hoffman alludes to 1 Corinthians and Paul’s claim to be “all things to all men.” But accepting that at face value causes a problem when you run into one of Paul’s testy moments. For example, in Galatians we get to see Paul when his authority has been questioned.

Paul insisted that he derived his authority solely from God – no scholar’s modesty here. He prayed that “If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received [from me], let him be accursed.” And cursed “I wish those who unsettle you would mutilate themselves!” Since his opponents were arguing for circumcision, this is sometimes translated as a wish that they’d ‘finish the job’ and castrate themselves. Fun guy.

Rather than being a flexible teacher, Paul had a very touchy pride that appears to have led to rifts between himself and the rest of the movement. His preaching led to a near riot in Ephesus (Acts 19:21-41), which the author of Acts attempts to explain away as caused by the base motives of the pagans, but which was more likely caused by the perception that Paul was dishonoring the patron Goddess Artemis.

Constantine

Then there’s the question of how much Paul accomplished. This question is hard to answer, because we have no reliable numbers from the period. Most of the traditional estimates come from Christian sources that were written very late. Some estimate that 10% of the Roman population was Christian by the time of Constantine.

There are problems with that number. 10% is also an estimate as to the number of Jews in the Empire. We have a great deal of archaeological evidence for the presence of Jews, including artwork and synagogues. In comparison, we have scant archaeological evidence for the presence of Christians.

This has led some historians, notably Peter Brown and Kenneth Harl(*), to suggest that Christians never spread as widely or as deeply as once thought. Whatever Paul’s successes as a missionary, his converts mainly stayed within the Jewish communities. The Neronian persecution put the brakes on future missionary work, and Christianity remained a minority of the Jewish minority until Constantine

If Brown and his colleagues are right then Constantine’s role is absolutely vital. There are many people who shaped early Christianity, like Paul, Ignatius and Origen. Without their influence Christianity may have survived, but it seems unlikely that it would become a world religion. However, without Constantine and the powers of the emperor, there is no real question: Christianity would have remained an afterthought.

So what can we atheists learn from “old time religion”? I suppose the lesson is that it doesn’t matter how cranky and controversial you are. If one of your converts holds absolute power, then your success is assured. I’m not sure how this lesson is useful, but there it is.

(*) Arguments here drawn for Kenneth W. Harl’s Teaching Company lectures, “Fall of the Pagans and the Origins of Medieval Christianity.”

That said, a book review at MIT’s The Tech caught my eye, particularly the closing paragraph:

The historical Jesus that emerges from Ehrman’s mainstream defense is a purely human, miracle-free Jewish male with a very common name living in first century Palestine, who after an unremarkable youth went on to teach things that many others had taught before; one more apocalyptic preacher, among many others at the time, whose predictions were proven wrong within a generation; one more “troublemaker” crucified like countless others by the Romans after a drive-thru trial during the Pilate administration. Being such, the Jesus that can be reconstructed from history with any certainty is, for all practical purposes, as irrelevant as the mythical one, effectively shrinking the debate on his existence from a grandiose quest with theological implications to an inconsequential and endless exercise in academic hair-splitting.

John Shuck gives another review worth reading. He responds to Ehrman’s view of Jesus:

I find his apocalyptic Jesus really depressing. That Jesus is hard to preach. I am not sure if we have to have Jesus resemble Harold Camping to be a real guy. We might be skeptical of a Jesus we admire, but we might also be skeptical of a Jesus we despise. It may be equally hard to accept that Jesus is an onion. Peel off each layer of fiction until you get to…nothing? Give this country preacher a break! I have to encourage the folks, you know?

Shuck also has a worthwhile review of Robert M. Price’s The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems. He catches Price in one of his agnostic moods and quotes him:

There may once have been an historical Jesus, but for us there is one no longer. If he existed, he is forever lost behind the stained glass curtain of holy myth.

In a way, this isn’t all that far from Ehrman’s position. Ehrman would argue that Jesus probably existed and probably was an apocalyptic preacher. However, beyond that there’s little we can say, because all the details are mired in the religious belief of Jesus’ followers.

That summer, one marked distraction was provided by the prediction of an impending apocalypse. For decades, astrologers had foretold that, on 16 September 1186, a momentous planetary alignment would stir up a devastating wind storm, scouring the Earth of life. This bleak prophecy had circulated among Muslims and Christians alike, but the sultan nonetheless thought it ridiculous. He made a point of holding a candlelit, open-air party on the appointed night of disaster, even as ‘feeble-mind[ed]‘ fools huddled in caves and underground shelters. Needless to say, the evening passed without event; indeed, one of his companions pointedly remarked that ‘we never saw a night as calm as that’.

Say what you want about Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn, but the man had style.

In 2008, when Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 122 was preparing to deploy to Iraq, the unit’s commander, Lt. Col. William Lieblein, did something very wise and sensible — he changed the nickname of the unit from “Crusaders” back to its former name, the “Werewolves.” Stating the obvious, Lt. Col. Lieblein said, “The notion of being a crusader in that part of the world doesn’t float.”

But now, under new leadership, the unit is going back to being the “Crusaders,” complete with an insignia of a crusader shield with a big red cross on it and a crusader knight as its mascot.

The squadron’s new commander, Lt. Col. Wade Wiegel, is apparently focused on the history of the name within the Marines rather than the larger history of the name. At least in print.

Rodda and Fred Clark focus on the offensiveness of the name. Clark brings up the massacre of Jerusalem, and points out the obvious problem of accepting the Crusaders as role models. But there’s another problem that interests me.

Let’s be honest: taken as a whole, the Crusaders lost. They lost bad. They spent as much time fighting amongst each other and against their own allies as against the infidels. They committed every sin in the book, from the aforementioned massacre to (allegedly) cannibalism. Yes, they had initial success against a disunited foe, but they were unable to sustain, and they left behind an Islam that was more unified, more militant and meaner.

Why do we celebrate these losers? Whether it’s the Crusaders, or the Confederate States of America or the Spartans, we always seem to want to romanticize the folks who got spanked by history. Why can’t we let them moulder in peace and model ourselves on the winners?

Massey starts by quoting David Wright of Answers in Genesis setting the date of the Deluge at 2348 BC. He then provides some basic ancient history, so that we can see just what the rest of the world was doing during or soon after being drown:

It must have come as a real shock to Noah and his children when, in 2334 BC – only 14 years after the flood – Sargon the Great began establishing the powerful Akkadian empire. [...] “Barefoot and pregnant” doesn’t begin to describe the work involved in repopulating the planet at the pace necessary to give Sargon armies to fight and people to rule.

[...]

Down in Egypt, the United Kingdom established by Menes circa. 3000 BC was humming along nicely. By the time of Noah’s flood, the Egyptians were just wrapping up their 5th dynasty. Pharaoh Unas was, no doubt, quite perturbed to see his empire underwater, especially since he was in the middle of building a pyramid complex at Saqqara, which you can visit to this day.

It reminds me a bit of the old Onion article: Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World:

Members of the earth’s earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.

[...]

“I do not understand,” reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. “A booming voice is saying, ‘Let there be light,’ but there is already light. It is saying, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass,’ but I am already standing on grass.”

“Everything is here already,” the pictograph continues. “We do not need more stars.”

A 77-year-old man from Oklahoma cannot deny human-caused climate change

[...]

Inhofe doesn’t just deny any human contribution to climate change, he denies that such a thing is even possible. He claims the Bible tells him it isn’t possible.

And yet for the past 26 years, Inhofe has represented the state of Oklahoma in Congress. Oklahoma was the heart of the Dust Bowl, one of the worst “anthropogenic” ecological disasters of all time.

The Dust Bowl proved that human activity is quite capable of altering the climate. It proved that Inhofe’s reading of Genesis is hogwash.

There’s an added layer of irony here. It was a belief in anthropogenic climate change that led to the Dust Bowl. Let me just quote a paragraph from Marc Reisner’s classic history/polemic, Cadillac Desert: the American West and its Disappearing Water:

This enormous gush of humanity pouring into a region still marked on some maps as the Great American Desert was encouraged by wishful thinking, by salesmanship, that most American of motivating forces, and, most of all, by natural caprice. For a number of years after 1865, a long humid cycle brought uninterrupted above-average rainfall to the plains. Guides leading wagon trains to Oregon reported that western Nebraska, usually blond from drought or black from prairie fires, had turned opalescent green. Late in the 1870s, the boundary of the Great American Desert appeared to have retreated westward across the Rockies to the threshold of the Great Basin.

Such a spectacular climatic transformation was not about to be dismissed as a fluke, not by a people who thought themselves handpicked by God to occupy a wild continent. A new school of meteorology was founded to explain it. Its unspoken principle was divine intervention, and its motto was “Rain Follows the Plow.” Since the rains coincided with the headlong westward advance of settlement, the two must somehow be related.

Professor Cyrus Thomas, a noted climatologist, was a leading proponent. “Since the territory [of Colorado] has begun to be settled,” he announced in declamatory tones, “towns and cities built up, farms cultivated, mines opened, and roads made and travelled, there has been a gradual increase in moisture…. I therefore give it as my firm conviction that this increase is of a permanent nature, and not periodical, and that it has commenced within eight years past, and that it is in some way connected to the settlement of the country, and that as population increases the moisture will increase.” Ferdinand V. Hayden, who was Thomas’s boss and one of the most famous geographers and geologists of his time, also subscribed to the theory. (Hayden happened to be a notable rival of John Wesley Powell, who believed otherwise.)

The exact explanations varied. Plowing the land exposed the soil’s moisture to the sky. Newly planted trees enhanced rainfall. The smoke from trains caused it. Vibrations in the air created by all the commotion helped clouds to form. Dynamiting the air became a popular means of inducing rain to fall, Even the Secretary of Agriculture came out for a demonstration in Texas. “The result,” he reported, “was—a loud noise!”[originally all one paragraph]

The idea that “Rain Follows the Plow” gave an intellectual underpinning to the mad dash for farm land in the American Midwest. In other words, everyone was banking on “anthropogenic climate change” to alter the climate of states like Iowa, Oklahoma and Nebraska. Unfortunately, in this case, the skeptics were correct. Rain does not follow the plow.

The title “Dust Bowl” was coined after April 14, 1935, also known as Black Sunday. High winds following a prolonged drought picked up an estimate 300,000 tons of topsoil and carried it across the plains. By April 19, the soil that had been lifted up to the upper winds made it all the way to Washington D.C.

A group of senators were meeting to discuss the proposed Soil Conservation Act when they noticed that it was getting dark in the middle of the day. According to legend, several senators from the midwest had been passionately arguing against the bill. When it got dark, they stepped outside, and watched their states pass overhead. If one of the senators berated the soil in the name of the Bible, no one recorded it.

Somewhere I picked up the idea that Cyrus the Great, the ruler of Persia who allowed the Israelites to return to their homeland, was a great example of enlightened rule. In a recent TED talk, Neil Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, spoke about the Cyrus Cylinder. The Cylinder, a triumphal declaration of Cyrus’ conquest of Babylon, explains how Cyrus repatriated displaced people, rebuilt temples to the Babylonian god Marduk, and in general acting like an enlightened and merciful conqueror. MacGregor spoke about it in glowing terms:

The Cylinder bears one of the “great declarations of a human aspiration,” comparable to the American Constitution and Magna Carta. Cyrus the Great and the Persian Empire he established (ca. 550-330 B.C.E.) bequeathed to history “a dream of the Middle East as a unit, and a unit where people of different faiths could live together.”

Over at HuffPo, Jacob L. Wright … complicates this story:

As most historians who specialize in early Persian history would readily point out, the chief objective of Cyrus and his successors was no different than that of other imperial powers: to maintain control of their vast empire and to exploit the wealth of its subjects. [...]

Influenced in great measure by the biblical image of Jews returning to their homeland under Persian hegemony, many assume that the rule of Persian kings was much more tolerant than that of the Assyrians. But recent research has demonstrated the significant lines of continuity between these two empires. The Persians engaged in the same mass deportations and harsh punishment of rebels for which the Assyrians are famous. The extent to which the Persian court involved itself in the affairs of its subject peoples was determined by concerns for the king’s prosperity. In order to ensure that wealth flowed from the provinces into the imperial coffers, rulers sometimes practiced the politics of benefaction, granting favors to representative groups in return for loyalty and compliance.

Hat tip to Robert Cargill, who sums it up well:

The fact that Persia preferred to rule its provinces, including עבר-נהרה (Avar-Nahara), the Persian province Yehud (known previously as Judah) through temples and religious leaders (and governors, rather than risking the rebellion of foreign kings), should not disguise the fact that it was just as authoritative as Babylonian and Assyrian empires that preceded it. In fact, Persia went the extra step of promoting a single national tongue – Aramaic – an issue that is just as controversial today in the US as it was then in Persia.

Loomis followed this up with a piece on one of the most interesting people in American history, Victoria Woodhull. Woodhull was briefly a major figure in the battle for women’s equality. Historically, there are times when her contributions are overlooked and times when she receives a great deal of attention. The past decade or so have been a time of great attention, with half a dozen biographies. David Sehat spends some time on her in The Myth of American Religious Freedom as part of his coverage of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Woodhull’s friend and ally and one of Sehat’s liberal heroines.

Unfortunately, the attention she receives is not always the good sort. Woodhull was scandalous, and that makes it hard to tell fact from rumor and salacious allegation. Loomis plays it safe, but in the process has to leave out some of the great stories that surround Woodhull. I shall relate some of them, while still providing the sort of historical discernment you’d expect from a semi-anonymous internet blogger.

(and since this turned out to be much longer that I anticipated, I’ll stick it below the fold)

Sex and Spirits

Born Victoria Claflin, Victoria married a physician named Calvin or Canning Woodhull at the age of fifteen. She then found herself in the predicament that suffragettes and temperance women warned about: Calvin turned out to be an alcoholic, and he was unable to support her or their two children. Since the laws of the day gave Victoria almost no power, she was forced to find some means to provide for herself.

This is where it gets hard to sort through scandal and find fact. What does seem true is that Woodhull spent some time as an actress and a casual prostitute. She also became a Spiritualist and a spiritual healer. At some point in the mid-1860s she left her husband, entered an open relationship with the wonderfully named Colonel James Harvey Blood and fled to New York.

Then things get weird. Woodhull, along with her sister Tennie C. / Tennesse Claflin, took up with the industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt. At that point, Vanderbilt was looking for spiritualists who could help him contact his departed mother and son. Tennesse became Vanderbilt’s mistress, and Victoria became his spiritualist.

In the work Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull, Barbara Goldsmith relates a fascinating story that may or may not be true. Goldsmith suggests that Woodhull used her connections among New York prostitutes to gain information from the mistresses of Vanderbilt’s competitors. Woodhull then passed on this information “from the spirits” during her spiritual sessions with Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt was so impressed by the spirits that he supported the sisters in founding a brokerage firm, Woodhull, Claflin & Company.

While it is true that Vanderbilt backed the sisters in their brokerage, it’s impossible to know if Woodhull was really engaged in this … unique form of industrial espionage. Which doesn’t stop some historians from passing on the story. And me. *cough*

Moderates and Hard-Liners

Woodhull’s ascent was rapid and impressive. Using her new fame, money, and a newspaper called Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, she threw herself behind the movement for women’s rights. The movement was at a low point when Woodhull showed up, and her notoriety and $10,000 earned her a position of influence.

But the movement was already divided, and Woodhull exacerbated the problem. There was the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in bustling New York City, and the American Woman Suffrage Association in genteel Boston. The NWSA was the more radical wing, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. The AWSA was more staid. It’s titular head was Henry Ward Beecher, one of America’s most famous preachers and part of the influential Beecher family.

The liberal NWSA supported a much broader agenda than the AWSA. This was particularly true of Stanton, who wanted a breakdown of the moral establishment. Beecher, on the other hand, was committed to the moral establishment. He was arguing what we’d now call a “complementarian” role for women that included voting.

Not surprisingly, Woodhull allied herself with Stanton and the NWSA. She had already delivered a speech before a congressional judiciary committee in support of women’s suffrage. Titled Constitutional Equality, It is actually one of the clearer statements of individual rights from the era:

One portion of citizens have no power to deprive another portion of rights and privileges such as are possessed and exercised by themselves. The male citizen has no more right deprive the female citizens of the free public, political expression of opinion than the female citizen has to deprive the male citizen thereof.

In contrast, Beecher thought that women were morally superior to men in many ways, and that women’s suffrage would fit in with women’s role as the guardians of the Republic’s morals. Though their goals were sometimes the same, Woodhull and Beecher were exact opposites in their beliefs.

Not Ready for Free Love

Woodhull’s fame began a slide into infamy as her past and unorthodox relationships began to come to light. Woodhull cemented this reputation by delivering a speech on “the Principles of Social Freedom.” This was another bold statement of individual rights:

If life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights in the individual, and government is based upon that inalienability, then it must follow as a legitimate sequence that the functions of that government are to guard and protect the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to the end that every person may have the most perfect exercise of them. And the most perfect exercise of such rights is only attained when every individual is not only fully protected in his rights, but also strictly restrained to the exercise of them within his own sphere, and positively prevented from proceeding beyond its limits, so as to encroach upon the sphere of another: unless that other first agree thereto.

Over the hissing of the crowd, Woodhull tied the notion of women’s rights to the cause of free love, Like “free thought”, “free love” is a phrase that’s hard to pin down. But to Woodhull, it represented the keystone of individual freedom. Individuals should be free to make and enter contracts – legal or romantic – on their own negotiated terms without the interference of society, “If it be primarily right of men and women to take on the marriage relation of their own free will and accord, so, too, does it remain their right to determine how long it shall continue and when it shall cease. ”

Only the extremely liberal members of the movement were willing to fight for free love. Many suffragettes, including Susan B. Anthony, began to pull back and disassociate themselves from Woodhull. This, unfortunately, also drove a wedge between Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Stanton would go on to become more radical, as she took aim at the connection between religion and state, arguing that the authority of Christianity over public life had to be stripped away for women to attain equal rights. Anthony became more pragmatic, and made common cause with people who agreed with Beecher. Anthony would be more successful, and Stanton would be largely forgotten.

Thrown Under the Bus

Members of the movement were now afraid that Woodhull was doing more harm than good, and many turned against her. Some of Henry Ward Beecher’s sisters, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, began to publicly accuse Woodhull of licentious behavior. Like Frances Wright before her, Woodhull was exactly what opponents of individual rights were afraid of: a woman who had broken free of her assigned social place and was encouraging other women to do the same. Many were afraid that her ideas would lead to social anarchy.

Woodhull fought back. Privately, she began threatening to reveal the sexual histories of the women’s rights leaders who were either attacking of failing to support her. For Woodhull’s defense, it could be said the she was forcing people to recognize that they accepted the tenets of free love in private, while reviling them in public. She was merely exposing the hypocrisy of those who were, after all, slandering her. Against her defense, this was blackmail.

Her most famous target was Henry Ward Beecher himself, who had engaged in an affair with a parishioner named Elizabeth Tilton. The whole thing seems to have been a poorly kept secret, and Woodhull probably found out through some mutual friends. In a speech as president of the National Association of Spiritualists, Woodhull came clean about her open relationship and her various lovers. She then compared herself to Beecher by revealing her knowledge of Beecher’s relationship to Elizabeth.

David Sehat calls it a “stunning act of self-immolation.” It might have seen canny at the time, but Woodhull underestimated the media frenzy that would result. I’m not sure what the best analogy would be, but I’m guessing that if you caught Rick Warren having a gay tryst with Franklin Graham then the results would be about the same.

By exposing Beecher, Woodhull had almost undermined one of the moral establishment’s leading proponents. Some of the media firestorm was carried in Woodhull’s paper. Anthony Comstock stepped in and arrested Woodhull, Tennessee Claflin and Colonel Blood. Officially this was about obscenity, unofficially it was to silence some of the strongest critics.

If it is difficult to find the real Woodhull underneath all the scandal, it is even more difficult to asses her long term impact. I’m afraid I have to agree with David Sehat’s estimation that the Beecher-Tilton scandal ultimately backfired on the opponents of the moral establishment. Still, during her brief public career, Woodhull and her supporters were able to articulate a strikingly clear vision of individual freedom that stands up well even 150 years later.

The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet to me is just nonsense. Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said here is the fact. Galileo got outvoted for a spell.

There’s been a lot backlash. In one response, Corey Robin dredged up one of the most painful examples of the Galileo Gambit in American history. This is a quote from Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America, and his famous Cornerstone Speech. This was delivered in Savannah, Georgia, shortly before hostilities began:

As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests?

Any guesses which principle Stephens was talking about? Any guesses at all? It’s the same principle which Stephens declared was the cornerstone of the Confederate government:

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.

I could wish that this had discredited the Galileo Gambit for American politicians, but sadly that is not the case.